An offshore wind company said Thursday that it reached a $1.2 billion settlement with the Trump administration to walk away from projects under development off New York, California and Louisiana. This latest agreement brings the total amount spent on such settlements to nearly $4 billion. <\/p>\n
RWE U.S. Offshore said its leases represented years of planning, investment and partnership with federal agencies, but it determined there was no path forward to permit the projects for the foreseeable future. In exchange for $1.22 billion, RWE is relinquishing the wind power leases that could have provided about seven gigawatts of power, enough for more than 5 million homes. It does not have any remaining U.S. offshore wind leases.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump, who often talks about his hatred of wind power, has said his goal is to not let any \u201cwindmills\u201d be built. The Republican administration has been buying back offshore wind leases<\/a> from energy companies as it seeks to discourage the expansion of wind energy<\/a> in favor of fossil fuels. Offshore wind produces electricity cleanly. Oil, coal and natural gas emit carbon pollution when burned.<\/p>\n RWE announced it is investing $900 million in a liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana and spending $300 million on natural gas turbines. The company is developing 15 natural gas projects across the United States. RWE is headquartered in Germany.<\/p>\n The administration adopted this strategy after federal courts thwarted Trump\u2019s efforts<\/a> to stop offshore wind development through executive action. Roughly $3.9 billion has been spent. States that are losing offshore wind energy<\/a> are suing. California intends to sue<\/a>.<\/p>\n Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said Thursday that Americans \u201cdeserve an energy system built on common sense, not one dependent on costly subsidies or technologies that can\u2019t meet our country\u2019s current demand.\u201d He said he welcomes RWE\u2019s agreement and voluntary investment in projects that strengthen the nation\u2019s energy security, provide dependable baseload power and help keep electricity affordable. <\/p>\n But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said the lease buybacks are effectively bribing companies to step away from clean energy that can displace more expensive fossil fuel plants, which in turn will raise costs for consumers.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are creating this enormous money pump, pulling billions of dollars out of consumers\u2019 pockets,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the real story of what is going on here. And that is both a cost story because of the billions in extra costs consumers pay, and it\u2019s a corruption story because it\u2019s Trump\u2019s sneaky way of getting regular families to pay off his big fossil fuel donors. There\u2019s method here, and it\u2019s a real scam.\u201d <\/p>\n Under the first agreement announced in March, French company TotalEnergies is getting nearly $1 billion<\/a> \u2014 essentially a refund of its two offshore wind leases \u2014 if it invests the money in fossil fuels instead. Golden State Wind and Bluepoint Wind<\/a> agreed in April to end their leases in exchange for reimbursements totaling nearly $900 million, provided it invests equally in fossil fuels. Chicago-based Invenergy agreed in June<\/a> to end its four offshore wind leases that were very early in development in exchange for reimbursements of lease fees totaling $765 million.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n The Associated Press\u2019 climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP\u2019s standards<\/a> for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An offshore wind company said Thursday that it reached a $1.2 billion settlement with the Trump administration to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":957376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,276,10106,69,98171,10102,57,330,361,353,405,403,80,866,395171,125198,61,67,370,132,68,93],"class_list":["post-985091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-california","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-donald-trump","tag-doug-burgum","tag-energy-industry","tag-general-news","tag-government-programs","tag-la-state-wire","tag-louisiana","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-politics","tag-renewable-energy","tag-rwe-ag","tag-sheldon-whitehouse","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117050038640440989","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/957376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}