Interior offers TotalEnergies $1B to halt offshore wind
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- The Department of the Interior, led by Doug Burgum, will pay TotalEnergies $928,333,333 to renounce its two offshore wind leases in Carolina Long Bay and New York Bight, both originally awarded in 2022.
- TotalEnergies, the world's third-largest oil company, agreed to invest $1 billion in US oil and methane projects as a condition of the deal, while continuing to develop wind projects in Europe and Asia — including at home in France.
- Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the deal as serving affordability and national security, claims the article calls "Orwellian" given that offshore wind is among the cheapest electricity sources and TotalEnergies itself runs wind farms in France.
- Revolution Wind in New England, which recently came online, stands to lower electricity costs for New Englanders by half a billion dollars a year — savings the article says the deal foregoes.
- The administration's prior attempts to shut down wind development have been "repeatedly stopped in court," per the article, making this direct cash payment to a foreign oil company a workaround.
- The article links rising US energy costs to policy attacks on clean energy, noting that in 2025, while countries like China and India built cleaner grids, America's became dirtier with increased coal usage driven by AI data center demand.
Why it matters: US taxpayers are funding a nearly $1 billion payout to a foreign oil company to stop building cheap, reliable offshore wind energy in favor of more expensive fossil fuel development — while forgoing hundreds of millions in projected consumer savings, like Revolution Wind's $500 million annual reduction for New Englanders. The deal also exposes a contradiction: TotalEnergies continues building wind abroad and even in its home country, undermining claims the arrangement serves US national security.
