The New York Times reports:

The Trump administration will pay energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to abandon their plans to build two wind farms off the U.S. coast, the Interior Department said Monday, in a repeat of a tactic the government used to cancel other offshore wind leases last month.

The firms will forfeit their leases in federal waters for the two wind farms, one of which would have been built off New York and New Jersey and the other off California. The government will reimburse the companies a combined $885 million, the amount they paid for the leases under the Biden administration.

In exchange, the companies have pledged to invest that money in oil and gas projects, including liquefied natural gas facilities along the Gulf Coast.

The deals are modeled after a similar agreement last month with the French energy giant TotalEnergies. TotalEnergies forfeited its leases for two wind projects planned off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, while committing to a range of fossil-fuel investments.

The agreements are extraordinary transfers of taxpayer dollars to private companies for the purposes of throttling offshore wind power, a source of clean energy that Mr. Trump has disparaged for decades. The president has claimed falsely that offshore wind turbines do not work and that they are killing whales.

The administration has pursued a shifting strategy for stifling the country’s nascent offshore wind industry. In December, Interior ordered a halt to construction of five wind farms off the East Coast, but federal judges have struck down those moves. By dealing directly with developers, the administration may be able to avoid legal challenges. [Continue reading…]