Trump Admin Cancels Wind Energy Projects, Redirects $1B to Fossil Fuels

The Trump administration paid the French energy company TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion as a refund for money it invested in offshore wind farms under the Biden administration. Instead, the company will use the money to invest in American oil and natural gas.

The Details: The Justice Department will pay back TotalEnergies for federal leases it purchased to develop wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina under the Biden administration. Instead, the company will spend that money on a liquefied natural gas plant in Texas and invest in developing oil drilling operations in the Gulf of America (also known as the Gulf of Mexico).

Key Quotes: The Interior Department said, "Under this innovative agreement driven by President Donald J. Trump's Energy Dominance Agenda, the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry."

How the Media Covered It: CNN (Lean Left bias) highlighted that the two cancelled wind farm projects "could have generated more than 4 gigawatts of electricity for US households and businesses." It also noted that though US Interior Sec. Doug Burgum pointed out that offshore wind is one of the most expensive forms of energy; wind energy also has set prices that don't fluctuate, unlike oil and natural gas. Fox Business (Lean Right) heavily quoted officials in the Trump administration who favored the deal, including Burgum and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Reuters (Center) included a response from an offshore wind trade group that criticized the use of taxpayer funds to block the project. A senior representative from Oceanic Network said, "This is political theater meant to obscure the fact that offshore wind capacity is being pulled out of the pipeline when energy prices are skyrocketing, even as other ‌offshore wind ⁠projects continue delivering reliable and affordable power to the grid."

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