Trump Tries To Bribe Away His Offshore Wind Demons

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You just can’t make this stuff up. Having lost a humiliating year-long battle to stop five new offshore wind farms from rising in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, US President Donald Trump is now trying to bribe away two other offshore leases held by the French firm TotalEnergies, leaving US taxpayers on the hook for almost $1 billion while saddling local ratepayers with millions more in higher electricity bills. Because…Vive la France? Who voted for this guy, anyways?

4.3 Gigawatts Of New Offshore Wind Capacity…

To make the whole waste of taxpayer dollars thing even more stupid, TotalEnergies doesn’t have any immediate plans to build any wind turbines in either of those sites, at least not while Trump remains in office.

Both leases were issued on a competitive basis at auction back in 2022, through the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in the US Department of the Interior.

One consists of an 84,332-acre site in in the New York Bight, a corner of the Atlantic Ocean formed by the coasts of New Jersey and the Long Island part of New York. The project is known as Attentive Energy, a venture that began to take shape during the first Trump administration, in 2018. TotalEnergies joined as a partner in 2021, and the following year Attentive Energy won the New York Bight site, designated Lease Area OCS-A 0538, with a bid of $795 million.

TotalEnergies also won the other site, known as the Carolina Long Bay project, in 2022 for $160 million under the designation OCS-A 0545. That area covers 110,091 acres off the coasts of North and South Carolina.

TotalEnergies estimates that the Attentive Energy project could yield 3 gigawatts in offshore wind capacity. With the Long Bay project yielding up to 1.3 gigawatts, that’s up to 4.3 gigawatts’ worth of money-saving electricity for local ratepayers.

How much savings remains to be seen, but it could be very substantial. By way of comparison the much smaller 704-megawatt Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island is projected to save local ratepayers up to $500 million per year in wholesale electricity costs, by reducing the impact of seasonal natural gas prices spikes among other factors.

…And A Billion-Dollar Bribe To Make It All Go Away

Connecticut is also a partner in the Revolution project, and that cost comparison comes from a report issued last September by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Now that Trump has blown up global energy markets, offshore wind is an even more valuable hedge against rising prices among other power generation resources.

Still, for reasons best known only to himself, Trump is determined to make the US offshore wind industry go away. His choice of options is shrinking, though. Earlier this year a series of federal judges decided that the President has no authority to stop work willy-nilly on projects already in the construction phase, like he tried to do with the five Atlantic coast projects including Revolution Wind, Vineyard Wind, Sunrise Wind, Empire Wind, and the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.

In December, a federal judge did uphold the President’s authority to stop issuing new offshore wind lease areas. However, the same judge ruled that the President has no authority to issue specious re-review or suspension orders against activity impacting leases that have already been issued.

That silo includes the two TotalEnergies leases, leaving Trump with just one other option. That explains the billion-dollar bribe — er, negotiated settlement — reported by The New York Times on March 17.

“Under the terms of the proposed settlements, the Interior Department would cancel the leases in federal waters for the two projects,” NYT explains. “The Justice Department would then pay more than $928 million to TotalEnergies, reimbursing the company for its winning bids in lease sales during the Biden administration.”

According to NYT, in return for the payout TotalEnergies will drop its plans for building new offshore wind farms at the site, and it will also agree to invest in new natural gas infrastructure in Texas.

Will They Or Won’t They?

As of this writing, TotalEnergies has not announced whether or not it will take Trump up on the offer, though the news organization Maritime Executive points out that the company is in for a costly legal battle if it decides to pursue its plans for the two sites. Alternatively, Trump could try to unilaterally cancel the leases.

The third alternative is for TotalEnergies to sit back and wait for Trump to leave office as scheduled on January 20, 2029. That’s almost three years away, but as new wind turbine tehnologies and new cost-shaving systems continue to emerge in the offshore wind industry (here’s one recent example), stakeholders like TotalEnergies could stand to gain from a few years’ delay.

Besides, while Trump may have been in a more powerful position to negotiate just a few months ago, his disastrous war in Iran has sparked widespread opposition along with a renewed appreciation for the advantages of domestically sourced wind and solar energy. The unrelenting stream of scandal from the Epstein files is among other factors undermining Trump’s once-invincible image, leading many political observers to anticipate that his iron grip on the Republican majority in the US House and Senate will evaporate as early as this coming January, when  newly elected Democrats take over the majority role.

Building The Case For Offshore Wind

Another factor that could influence the outcome of the negotiations is the large footprint of TotalEnergies in the fossil fuel profile of the US. In particular, the Texas natural gas infrastructure angle is consistent with the company’s position as the leading US exporter of LNG (liquid natural gas). By positioning its gas holdings as a complement to its growing footprint in the renewable energy field, TotalEnergies has also provided itself with a pathway for wriggling out from under a public relations disaster if it drops the two wind leases. After all, the US solar and storage markets are still ripe areas for growth.

“The United States is among the world’s most dynamic renewable energy markets. We are developing an integrated portfolio combining 25 GW of operated and non-operated solar and wind projects, storage and trading—making us one of the top five U.S. renewable energy players,” the company effuses on a web page dedicated to its low carbon ventures.

On that page, TotalEnergies also takes note of “the Attentive Energy projects in New York and New Jersey with a production capacity of more than 3 GW and commissioning scheduled for 2029,” and the Carolina Long Bay project, with a production capacity of 1 GW, operational from 2031.”

That’s…interesting! In a progress report submitted to BOEM on January 23 of this year, Attentive Energy sure seemed set on developing that New York Bight site, if not soon then at some time in the future.

The report covers activities from May through October of 2025, including “engagement with Tribes, fishing communities, agencies, and other parties on survey activities, technical studies, onshore and offshore routing, jurisdictional resources, and other technical and resource considerations.”

“Attentive Energy will continue to meaningfully engage with parties to inform engineering, permitting, baseline studies, and other aspects of project development,” Attentive summarized.

Hold on to your hats…

Photo: US President Donald Trump has failed to stop the US offshore wind industry, but a billion-dollar bribe may tempt the French firm TotalEnergies to back off (cropped, courtesy of National Laboratory of the Rockies by Suzanne Tegen).