After over a year of legal battles to curb offshore wind development in the United States, the Trump administration has shown it is willing to pay to stop developers from progressing on offshore wind projects.
Several of Trump’s executive orders aimed at stopping wind development have been overturned by judges who deemed them unlawful in recent months. This has led the Trump administration to pay energy companies millions of dollars to cancel in-development projects and to urge some companies to invest the money in fossil fuels instead.
Legal Battles with Wind Developers
In January 2025, Trump issued an executive order that paused approval for wind development. The Trump administration has since halted development on several offshore wind projects, causing significant delays for companies.
In 2025, the Department of the Interior (DoI) issued halt-work orders at five wind farm projects that were already under construction off the U.S. East Coast. The Pentagon has also attempted to halt wind farm approvals on federal land. However, federal judges have since overturned all of these orders.
In February, a federal judge threw out the Interior Department’s halt-work order on a multibillion-dollar wind farm off the coast of New York State. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction allowing the developer of Sunrise Wind to resume construction as the legal battle continued.
$1 Billion to TotalEnergies
In March, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced plans at the annual CERAWeek conference in Houston to pay French wind developer TotalEnergies almost $1 billion to scrap plans to develop wind farms off the U.S. East Coast.
The agreement stated that TotalEnergies would have to give up two offshore leases it had purchased off New York and North Carolina, in exchange for a $928 million reimbursement from the Interior Department, which it had paid for the leases under Joe Biden.
A statement from the DoI explained that the deal required the French firm to pledge not to develop any new U.S. offshore wind projects and, instead, to invest nearly $1 billion in the development of four trains at the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas and develop upstream conventional oil.
Burgum explained, “We’re partnering with TotalEnergies to unleash nearly $1 billion that was tied up in a lease deposit that was directed towards the prior administration’s subsidies that were pushing expensive weather-dependent offshore wind”.
Seven Democratic-controlled states, including New York, have since sued the Trump administration over the DoI agreement with TotalEnergies
$765 Million to Cancel 4 More Wind Projects
In June, the DoI announced that it planned to pay Invenergy $765 million to scrap plans to develop offshore wind farms in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The operator will be expected to surrender four leases in federal waters for offshore wind farms, planned for New York Bight, off the Central Coast of California, and in the Gulf of Maine, all of which were paused in early stages of development.
Invenergy agreed, instead, to fund the construction of at least five new natural gas-fired power plants in the Midwest, as well as geothermal projects in the Western United States.
Also in June, the Trump administration announced plans to pay Duke Energy $129 million to abandon its plans to develop an offshore wind farm off the coast of North Carolina, making it the fourth of this type of deal and echoing the agreement the Trump administration struck with TotalEnergies, as Trump aims to encourage a shift away from offshore wind to expand conventional fossil fuel projects.
The string of agreements with wind companies in recent months suggests that this may be the Trump administration’s new strategy to quash offshore wind development after seeing that a legal approach would not work.
Support and Opposition
President Trump stated at a January White House meeting, “My goal is to not let any windmill be built. They’re losers.” Meanwhile, Burgum cited concerns that offshore wind projects pose national security risks as the reason for the expensive agreements. However, the DoI has not publicly expanded on these concerns, and several federal judges have, so far, not been convinced by the Trump administration’s arguments
Meanwhile, proponents of offshore wind have widely criticized the payment agreements for the unconventional use of taxpayer money for alternative projects and for delaying the development of affordable, clean wind power. In addition, they point out that many Northeast regions were counting on wind farms to meet their rising electricity demand and could now face shortages.
Having lost several legal battles to delay offshore wind development, the Trump administration has announced several payment agreements that require energy companies to refocus their efforts on fossil fuel projects rather than renewable energy. This has helped advance Trump’s energy agenda but could deter future investment in U.S. renewable energy due to market uncertainty among investors.
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