The Trump administration will pay an energy company almost $1 billion to not build offshore wind farms in the U.S. as part of Donald Trump’s vendetta against clean energy.
Reversing a deal made during the Biden administration, the White House will pay TotalEnergies $928 million to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the coast of New York and North Carolina, reimbursing the French multinational the amount it paid for the leases during Biden’s presidency.
TotalEnergies will then invest the reimbursed funds in oil and gas projects in the U.S., including a facility in Texas, and pledge to increase oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.
TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné called the agreement a “pragmatic” business decision, according to the New York Times.
“When the Trump administration came to power and began setting U.S. energy policy, we said that we’ll have to reconsider, clearly, these offshore wind project developments,” he said.
Pouyanné continued, noting that while “we don’t renounce onshore wind” and that “we continue to invest in onshore solar, onshore wind, batteries,” ultimately, “offshore wind is too expensive from our point of view.”
Representatives for the Interior Department did not respond to the Times about the source of the nearly $1 billion. The Daily Beast has reached out to the Interior Department and the White House for comment.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the deal on Monday at an annual energy conference held in Houston, the New York Times reports.
“The era of taxpayers subsidizing unreliable, unaffordable and unsecure energy is officially over, and the era of affordable, reliable and secure energy is here to stay,” Mr. Burgum told attendees.
President Trump’s opposition to wind turbines is well-documented, and was on display most recently when he ranted about them during a St Patrick’s Day meeting with the Irish prime minister, Micheál Martin.
“Windmills all over the country, destroying those gorgeous Scottish fields,” Trump told reporters when asked about British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s hesitation to pledge his full support for Trump’s war in Iran, seemingly referring to the wind farm located next to his golf course in Aberdeen.
He also falsely claimed that China does not use wind turbines, telling Martin, “Windmills, which don’t work, uh, they’re tremendously expensive, and the best testament to that is the windmills are made in China, but China doesn’t use them.” China is the world’s largest producer and user of wind energy.
He has previously described wind turbines, which he calls windmills, as “the most expensive and inefficient energy in the world,” arguing that they destroy “the beauty of the environment” and are “10 times more costly than any other energy.” Offshore wind farms are less expensive to build than nuclear projects, and wind is cheaper to generate than fossil fuels.
Two days after his meeting with Martin, the president reposted a photo of wind turbines and a message from Douglas MacKinnon on Truth Social that read, “This is a photo from yesterday on the drive from LA to Palm Springs. Hundreds and Hundreds of these pieces of junk windmills. No surprise to The President, but ONLY ten percent of them working as we drove past!!! Eagle and bird killers which suck the taxpayers dry!! My best to The President!”
In December, the president became the subject of significant mockery online after inaccurately claiming that wind turbines were “killing all of our beautiful bald eagles” in response to a photo of a dead bird with a windmill in the background. The bird was a falcon, and the wind turbine in the photo was located in Israel; the photo was taken some eight years ago. Wind turbines kill significantly fewer birds than fossil fuel operations or even house cats.
The administration’s deal with TotalEnergies comes after it paused all large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in December, citing national security risks identified by the Pentagon.
Two weeks before the pause—which did not come with a timeline for when it would end—was announced, a federal judge struck down Trump’s January executive order attempting to block wind energy projects.
An October report from the Wall Street Journal found that red states would be hit hardest by Trump’s vendetta against wind energy; the four states responsible for the most wind energy production—Iowa, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma—are Republican strongholds.
Former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who previously served as Trump’s ambassador to China, told the Journal, “We want to make sure that he understands wind energy is important for Iowa.” Trump won Iowa by 13 points in the 2024 election.
The state’s current governor, Republican Kim Reynolds, echoed Branstad’s sentiments, telling the outlet, “We don’t have gas or oil in our state, but we have renewables. We have biofuels and we have wind. We are on a wind path. So, we can make it work for our state.”
