TotalEnergies and the Federal Buyout of Wind Leases
The administration’s strategy to suppress offshore wind involves direct payouts to developers to terminate legally acquired leases. In March, the Department of the Interior reached the first of several agreements with the French energy company TotalEnergies, paying to cancel offshore wind projects. This announcement sparked a lawsuit from seven Democratic-controlled states that alleged it was an illegal use of taxpayer money. The Department of the Interior has, since March, struck four deals with energy companies, paying them to cancel a total of eight offshore wind projects and pledge to invest in fossil-fuel power. The latest deal with Duke Energy was announced late last month.
White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers stated the administration is not spending taxpayer money, but rather returning the money that companies bid on offshore wind projects that are unable to be built due to national security concerns. She added that those companies are “voluntarily redirecting those returned bid amounts to energy projects that will provide affordable, reliable, and secure energy for American families and businesses.” However, critics like Jenny Rowland-Shea, senior director for conservation policy at the Center for American Progress, argue that money from energy leases on public lands and waters goes into public accounts, and that the administration is paying the companies not to produce this energy or to give taxpayers what was promised.
While curtailing wind development, the Department of Energy has aggressively moved to extend the operational life of aging coal assets. In September, the Department of Energy announced it would spend $625m to expand and extend the life of coal-fired power plants, allocating $350m to modernize coal plants, $175m to fund coal projects powering rural communities, and $50m to upgrade wastewater management systems to extend coal plants’ lifespans.
Last month, the agency also set aside up to $500m from the Defense Production Act to expand and reinvigorate the capacity of 13 coal plants, and to help build a coal export terminal in Oakland, California. A week later, the department announced an additional $3.6m to refurbish or retrofit nine existing coal plants.
In an email, energy department spokesperson Ben Dietderich said the administration is proud of its efforts to boost coal. He stated that before President Trump ended the Green New Scam, taxpayers paid for subsidies that resulted in the premature shutdown of fossil fuel plants, higher energy costs, and increased blackout risk. “It’s worth noting that states with their own anti-coal and gas policies experienced the highest price increases during that time period,” he said.
OBBBA Legislative Impacts on Clean Energy Employment
The legislative framework driving these shifts, the OBBBA, was passed into law on 4 July 2025, though the industry was anticipating changes to support structures for clean energy projects from the time of Donald Trump’s election in November. Research from E2 suggests the policy changes have resulted in a significant economic contraction within the sector. These cancellations and delays have cost a total of 124,511 five-year construction-phase jobs and 343,390 jobs annually for operations and maintenance. E2 estimates a US$91 billion hit to GDP from lost construction activity and US$55 billion of GDP growth lost annually from cancelled manufacturing plants and other operations.
Battery energy storage was the technology most affected, sustaining 35% lost capital investment and employment since January 2025. Solar followed with 25%, electric vehicles 24% and wind power 16%. The OBBBA introduced restrictions and shortened timelines for many of the federal tax supports introduced for clean energy deployment, including tighter deadlines to qualify for the 30% investment and production tax credits (ITC/PTC). The Bill also introduced complex Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) restrictions on sourcing products, financing or components from companies associated with China.
“Together, these lost direct and indirect jobs and investments tell a nationwide story of stunted progress in domestic manufacturing, clean energy production, transportation and infrastructure modernisation, and foregone economic benefits,” E2 stated in its analysis. Jenny Rowland-Shea noted that there is no precedent for the federal government directly paying developers to relinquish legally acquired offshore wind leases. They are trying to snuff out an entire form of energy, she said. “And it’s at a time when the United States needs more energy … as people’s rates are going up for electricity, as we see datacenters gobbling up more energy.”
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