The Trump Administration has announced a new agreement with a French energy firm that will allow it to back out of costly wind-energy commitments made during the Biden era.
Instead, $1 billion will go toward developing more reliable and cost-effective oil and natural gas projects.
The White House has agreed to pay TotalEnergies$1 billion to shelve East Coast wind farm projects that it condemned as “costly,” with the French energy giant’s investment set to be diverted into U.S. LNG production instead.The U.S.′ Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Monday what it said was “a landmark agreement” with TotalEnergies for the company “to redirect capital from expensive, unreliable offshore wind leases toward affordable, reliable natural gas projects that will provide secure energy for hardworking Americans.”
TotalEnergies has committed to invest approximately $1 billion — the value of its renounced offshore wind leases — in oil and natural gas and LNG production in the U.S., the DOI said in a statement.Following the new investment, the department said the U.S. will reimburse the company dollar-for-dollar, up to the amount they paid in lease purchases for offshore wind.
Offshore wind projects in New York and the Carolinas will be shuttered in favor of those in Texas and the Gulf of America.
As part of the agreement, TotalEnergies will invest $928 million in the development of a liquefied natural gas plant in Brownsville, Texas, as well as shale gas production and upstream conventional oil in the Gulf of America.In turn, the U.S. will terminate wind farm leases in the Carolina Long Bay Area and in the New York Bight area. Both of these leases were granted to TotalEnergies by the Biden administration in 2022. The U.S. will be reimbursing TotalEnergies for these investments.According to the department, these reinvestments “directly advance the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to lower costs for American families, increase baseload and grid reliability, and help maintain global leadership in artificial intelligence.”..”Offshore wind is one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers,” Burgum told Fox News Digital.
Burgum is quite right to say “environmentally disruptive”. We have chronicled concerns and reports about the impacts of marine life on behemoth offshore wind projects.
However, it must be noted that killing whales is not the only adverse environmental impact. A recent investigation, featured on the Watts Up With That website, asserts that over half a million balsa hardwood trees are being illegally logged in the Amazon rainforest for use in wind turbines.
Given what is known about annual balsa production, the scale of illegal logging and the demands of wind turbine manufactures, it is not difficult to arrive at a possible Amazon forest yearly loss of over half a million trees.Most commercial balsa is exported by Ecuador and it has produced approximately 500,000 cubic metres annually in recent years, or about 80,000 metric tonnes. Around 55% of production is thought to end up in wind turbines and each group of three requires about 10.5m3 a set. Each set requires about 40 trees so annual balsa consumption for wind turbines equates to 1,047,619.Balsa is a relatively fast growing tropical wood and until the soaring demand from turbines kicked in, it was harvested in sustainable plantations. But since the turn of the decade, this sustainable harvest cannot keep up with demand. In a damning survey, the Environment Investigation Agency (EIA) found that exports were boosted by up to 50% following illegal logging in virgin rainforest.
By unwinding Biden-era offshore wind boondoggles and redirecting capital to proven oil and natural gas production, the Trump administration is not only protecting ratepayers and grid reliability but also sparing whales, coastal communities, and even Amazonian forests from the collateral damage of virtue-signaling energy policy.
This policy should be rebranded “The Real Green Deal”!
Perhaps the most remarkable part of this “landmark agreement” is not that TotalEnergies is walking away from East Coast wind, but that American taxpayers are finally getting a reprieve from being forced to underwrite an industry that cannot stand on its own without massive subsidies, regulatory favoritism, and environmental double standards.
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