Federal Actions Impacting Offshore Wind Development

The Trump administration is considering a new strategy for throttling the country’s offshore wind industry, after federal judges blocked its five previous attempts to stop wind farms under construction off the East Coast.

Senior administration officials are drafting settlement agreements that would pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two wind farms off New York State and North Carolina, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times, including copies of the agreements.

Under the terms of the proposed settlements, the Interior Department would cancel the leases in federal waters for the two projects, known as Attentive Energy and Carolina Long Bay, the documents show. 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.

In exchange, TotalEnergies would abandon its plans to begin building the wind farms. It would also commit to investing in natural gas infrastructure in Texas, as the Trump administration prioritizes the production of fossil fuels over renewables like wind and solar power.

The proposed settlements, which have not previously been reported, reveal a significant shift in the Trump administration’s approach to targeting the country’s nascent offshore wind sector following the series of legal setbacks.

Mr. Trump has disparaged offshore wind power since 2012, when he tried unsuccessfully to stop a wind farm visible from one of his golf courses in Scotland. He has often called the projects ugly and inefficient, and he has claimed without evidence that they are “driving whales crazy.”

“It is quite unusual for the administration to do this cash outlay, seemingly just because Trump doesn’t like offshore wind,” said John Leshy, who served as the general counsel for the Interior Department during the Clinton administration.

A spokeswoman for TotalEnergies declined to comment. Representatives for the Interior Department and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.

It is unclear whether TotalEnergies will accept the proposed settlements. If the company refuses the offers, the Trump administration would still cancel the leases, the documents show, leading to costly litigation that both sides might be eager to avoid.

Attentive Energy would sit in federal waters 54 miles south of Jones Beach, N.Y. Once fully operational, it would produce enough electricity to power more than one million homes and businesses.

The project was initially expected to begin generating electricity in the early 2030s. But in November 2024, Patrick Pouyanné, the chief executive of TotalEnergies, said the company would “put the project on pause” with Mr. Trump’s election.

At the same time, Mr. Pouyanné suggested that the company would hold onto its lease for the next four years, preserving the opportunity to restart work on the project after Mr. Trump’s term. The deal the administration is considering would require the company to give up the lease altogether.

Attentive Energy is a joint venture between TotalEnergies and the developers Rise Light & Power and Corio Generation, although TotalEnergies submitted the winning bid for the lease. Representatives for Rise Light & Power and Corio did not respond to requests for comment.

Carolina Long Bay, a wholly owned subsidiary of TotalEnergies, would lie in federal waters 22 miles south of Bald Head Island, N.C. It would have the capacity to power around 300,000 homes and businesses starting in the early 2030s.

Under one of the proposed settlements, TotalEnergies would receive $795 million to abandon its plans to build Attentive Energy, the documents show. Under the other, the firm would get more than $133 million to walk away from Carolina Long Bay.

In addition, TotalEnergies would agree to “accelerated investments” in gas plants and gas production sites in Texas, according to the documents, which do not disclose how much the company would spend or the names of specific sites.

Those investments would help “address the national energy emergency” that Mr. Trump declared last year, William Doffermyre, the top lawyer at the Interior Department, wrote in a Feb. 23 memorandum to Stanley Woodward Jr., a senior Justice Department official, according to a copy of the memo reviewed by The Times.

Mr. Trump declared the first-ever national energy emergency on his first day back in office in January 2025. While experts said at the time that the United States had abundant energy reserves, the war in the Middle East has recently caused oil and gas prices to soar, adding to concerns about energy supplies.

Despite what Mr. Trump sees as an emergency, he has taken several steps to quash wind and solar projects on federal lands and waters. In particular, the Interior Department in December ordered all work to halt on five other offshore wind farms.

To justify the sweeping move, Interior officials said the Defense Department had produced a classified report that found the wind farms threatened national security. The developers of the projects and several states sued, and federal judges repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration. Several judges said they were unpersuaded by the government’s national security claims after reviewing the classified report, which has not been made public.

The Trump administration is now 0 for 5 in its efforts to stop wind farms under construction. The settlements would be the first time that it targeted wind farms that have yet to begin construction but have won leases.

Two of the offshore wind projects that the administration has tried to stop celebrated significant milestones on Friday.

Revolution Wind, off the coast of Rhode Island, announced that it had begun delivering power to New England’s electric grid. And Vineyard Wind, off the coast of Massachusetts, said that it had completed construction, with workers installing the last of 62 turbines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/climate/offshore-wind-settlements-trump.html