The Trump admin paid a French company $1 billion to not build offshore wind farms. Blue states are suing

Summary

• Seven blue states sued the Trump administration after it paid a French company nearly $1 billion to cancel offshore wind projects.
• The states argue the March deal violated federal law and deprived them of needed power while potentially raising electricity costs.
• Attorneys general are asking the court to strike down the agreement and vacate the lease cancellation.

AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.

A coalition of seven blue states sued the Trump administration Tuesday after it paid a French company nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money to not build offshore wind farms.

The lawsuit, led by New York attorney general Letitia James, argued that the deal struck between TotalEnergies and the Trump administration earlier this year deprived their states of much-needed power, and could raise electricity costs in the New England and mid-Atlantic regions.

In March, the Trump administration announced it would pay French energy giant TotalEnergies $928 million in taxpayer funds to reimburse the company for leases it had purchased under the Biden administration, allowing it to develop two offshore wind farms in waters near New York and North Carolina. The vast majority of that — $795 million — would have gone towards developing the New York project.

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In exchange, TotalEnergies would spend that reimbursed money on the development of a new liquified natural gas plant in Texas, helping export US LNG overseas to Europe, CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in a statement at the time.

In April, the administration announced it would spend another nearly $900 million to repay two more wind energy developers to not build projects in New York and California (the April deal is not part of the current lawsuit).

In a statement, James called the March announcement an “illegal agreement.”

“After repeatedly losing in court, this administration cooked up a sham deal to pay a foreign energy company hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to abandon offshore wind and invest in oil and gas instead,” James said.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. State attorneys general from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island argued on Tuesday the administration had violated the law when executing the March deal — failing to hold a hearing required by law to determine that keeping the offshore wind leases “would likely cause serious harm to life, property, national security, or the environment.”

The state AGs also contended the deal violated the Judgment Fund Act because it was not a payment in settlement of an “imminent lawsuit,” rather a “a contrived arrangement to satisfy the president’s personal opposition to wind energy.”

A spokesperson for the US Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Interior Department called the agreements “voluntary” and said “no one was forced to sign them.”

“These settlements were reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice, underscoring that they went through the appropriate channels,” the Interior spokesperson said in a statement. “The only thing blatantly unlawful here was the process by which these offshore wind leases were negotiated and imposed under the Biden administration.”

Offshore wind energy is personally reviled by President Donald Trump, and his administration has thrown up multiple roadblocks for offshore wind projects at every stage of their development. After the courts stymied the administration’s attempts to block construction on more mature projects, the March announcement was the first sign of a new strategy: paying to stop wind farms before they begin.

The blue state lawsuit is test of whether the courts will weigh in to halt this tactic. AGs are asking the court to strike down the agreement and vacate the lease cancellation.

“President Trump has made his opposition to offshore wind clear for years, and this action reflects a continued effort to undermine clean energy development in favor of fossil fuel interests,” Massachusetts attorney general Andrea Campbell said in a statement.