US to pay almost $1bn to French energy company to kill wind project plan [View all]
Source: The Guardian
As a fuel crisis triggered by the war in Iran drives up global fossil fuel prices, the Trump administration has announced it will pay French energy major TotalEnergies $1bn to kill plans to construct wind farms off the US east coast.
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In the deal announced on Monday, TotalEnergies will give up two offshore leases it had purchased off New York and North Carolina. Trump’s Department of the Interior will reimburse the company the $928m it paid for the leases under Joe Biden.
TotalEnergies has pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the country, a US interior department statement said, and will invest nearly $1bn this year in the development of four trains at the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas, and the development of upstream conventional oil in the US Gulf and shale gas production, the statement said.
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Lena Moffitt, executive director of the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, called the new deal “a taxpayer-funded bribe to kill homegrown clean energy and hand the money straight to oil and gas executives”.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/23/trump-administration-wind-project-plan
Lena Moffit sums it up well. Total sees free money, some of which will go to the people accepting it as bonuses or rises in their stock price, so of course they'll accept the bribe. And of course Trump offered it, because it's not his money. He doesn't pay taxes.
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