The Trump administration announced on March 23, 2026, that it will pay French energy company TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion in taxpayer funds to walk away from two planned offshore wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina. The Justice Department will reimburse the company for federal leases it originally purchased under the Biden administration, and TotalEnergies will redirect that money toward a liquefied natural gas plant in Texas, oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and shale oil projects. Together, the two scrapped projects would have provided power to more than one million homes.
The deal was announced at CERAWeek by S&P Global in Houston, the energy industry's premier annual conference. Energy Secretary Chris Wright attended the conference and used it as a platform to push the world's largest oil and gas producers to ramp up production immediately, framing fossil fuel expansion as a national priority.
Wright has been a consistent critic of wind energy subsidies, arguing the industry has had decades of government support and should no longer need it. His presence at CERAWeek alongside the TotalEnergies announcement reflected a coordinated administration push to redirect energy investment away from renewables at a moment of significant global supply disruption driven by the ongoing Iran war.
Critics were quick to condemn the deal. Environmental groups called it a new strategy to kill clean energy after the administration lost repeatedly in court trying to halt offshore wind projects through stop-work orders.
This marks a meaningful shift in tactics. After failing to block more mature wind projects through regulatory roadblocks, this is the first instance of the federal government paying to stop wind farms before they even break ground. TotalEnergies wasn't actively developing the leases at the time of the deal, and industry experts note it doesn't permanently close the door on offshore wind a future administration could lease the same ocean rights to another developer.
The announcement comes as the Iran war continues to strain global oil and gas supplies, making US liquefied natural gas exports increasingly valuable to European and Asian markets. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum praised the agreement while governors in New York and North Carolina condemned it as a bad deal for their states and for American ratepayers.
Trump has frozen all offshore wind lease auctions and has stated he intends to prevent any new wind farm construction for the duration of his presidency. For now, the administration's push toward fossil fuels continued funding, in part, by the American taxpayer.