By Frank Lasee
Headlines last week (NY Times, NPR, CNN) screamed that President Donald Trump was handing nearly a billion dollars to a French energy giant to cancel building offshore wind farms. The coverage was classic gotcha journalism — misleading, incomplete, and designed to fit a tired narrative. The real story is far more straightforward and sensible.
On March 23, 2026, the Department of the Interior reached a settlement with TotalEnergies. The U.S. government is refunding $928 million — the exact amount the company paid to the Biden administration in 2022 when it won two offshore wind leases off New York/New Jersey and North Carolina.
In return, TotalEnergies will cancel both leases and formally agree not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the United States. The company will instead redirect that capital into American oil, natural gas, and LNG projects.
This is not corporate welfare. It is a refund of money already paid, exchanged for killing two expensive, unreliable projects before they could burden American ratepayers. And TotalEnergies agreed to keep the money in the U.S. and use it for oil and natural gas. The headline should have read,
“Win-Win — Trump gets French company TotalEnergies to invest a billion dollars on reliable, affordable American energy instead of offshore wind.”
Offshore wind electricity is significantly more costly than natural gas. Recent Levelized Cost of Energy analyses show new offshore wind projects coming in between $100 and $140 per megawatt-hour — 50% to 150% more expensive than electricity from new natural gas combined-cycle plants, which typically deliver power for $60–$80/MWh.
That gap widens dramatically once we account for the real world.
Wind is intermittent. When the wind doesn’t blow, electricity has to come from somewhere else. Atlantic offshore wind blows about half the time, depending on location. That means either building and maintaining expensive battery storage systems or keeping backup natural gas plants on standby. Paying double rarely gets included in the rosy headlines about offshore wind — once for on-demand natural gas and again for part-time offshore wind. That’s expensive.
Trump clearly understands this basic economic reality. Why force massive investments into high-cost, weather-dependent power when unsubsidized natural gas and oil projects deliver cheaper, dispatchable electricity and stronger returns? The only reason for this stupid economic decision is climate ideology. Conventional energy still offers far better profits without the endless stream of taxpayer subsidies required to prop up offshore wind. That’s why moving this near billion dollars to more profitable, unsubsidized American natural gas is a win for the company and the U.S.
They could have taken this investment anywhere in the world, but it is staying here, adding to American energy dominance.
The biggest victory in this deal isn’t the refund itself — it’s the permanent removal of these two leases from the map. TotalEnergies has now committed not to build offshore wind anywhere in the U.S. That is a direct win for reliable, affordable electricity and a clear signal that the era of forcing expensive green mandates is ending.
Even some Democrats are starting to admit the same truth. New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul (because she wants to get re-elected) recently proposed delaying key provisions of the state’s Climate Act. Pushing back greenhouse gas reduction rules and acknowledging that the original timelines had become “costly and unattainable.”
If even deep-blue New York is quietly hitting the brakes, the rest of the country should take note. For years, they have been telling us wind and solar power are cheap and will lower our electric rates. In reality, adding them increases our electric rates — like adding a part-time, unreliable car increases your car payments, maintenance, and insurance costs without replacing your full-time, reliable car.
The mainstream media’s refusal to report this accurately is revealing. Rather than acknowledge a pragmatic decision that protects consumers from higher bills and grid instability, many outlets chose to frame the story as Trump favoring fossil fuels over “green energy” by spending taxpayer dollars buying TotalEnergies out, rather than refunding the fee they paid to sell inflated subsidized, part-time electricity.
In reality, this was a straightforward business transaction: return the lease money, cancel the projects and let the capital flow to energy sources that work.
Reliable, affordable electricity is not a partisan luxury; it is an economic and national security necessity. By refunding the original lease payments and redirecting investment away from expensive offshore wind, the Trump administration delivered a clear win-win for American families, businesses, and energy security.
This article originally appeared in The Daily Caller
Thanks for clarifying the deal. I was not going to get the real story from legacy bias media.
I did see one or two stories which did eventually get around to saying it was a refund of some sort, but they sure took their time playing it up as a giveaway first.
Just liberal media being liberal media…suffering from TDS and bolstering the “Great Lie” for as long as possible.
There was no giveaway, as the leftist MEDIA would have you believe with their slanted reported.
During the disastrous Biden era, the French had paid about $1 billion to the US to buy a federal lease to put up a few thousand MW of offshore windmills.
Trump renegotiated the deal.
He told the French, you will be in litigation for years to get your money back, or you can immediately invest it in power plants for AI data centers
The French eagerly took the deal
HIGH COST/kWh OF W/S SYSTEMS FOISTED ONTO A BRAINWASHED PUBLIC
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-cost-kwh-of-w-s-systems-foisted-onto-a-brainwashed-public-1
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People are brainwashed to love wind and solar. They do not know by how much they screw themselves by voting for the elites who push them onto everyone.
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If owned/controlled by European governments and companies, would be a serious disadvantage for the US regarding environmental impact, national security, economic competitiveness, and sovereignty
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Western countries cajoling Third World countries into Wind/Solar and loaning them high-interest money to do so, will forever re-establish a neo-colonial-style bondage on those recently free countries.
What is generally not known, the more weather-dependent W/S systems, the less efficient the traditional generators, as they inefficiently (more CO2/kWh) counteract the increasingly larger ups and downs of W/S output. See URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
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W/S systems add great cost to the overall delivery of electricity to users; the more W/S systems, the higher the cost/kWh, as proven by the UK and Germany, with the highest electricity rates in Europe, and near-zero, real-growth GDP.
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At about 30% W/S, the entire system hits an increasingly thicker concrete wall, operationally and cost wise.
The UK and Germany are hitting the wall more hours each day.
The cost of electricity delivered to users increased with each additional W/S/B system
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Nuclear, gas, coal and reservoir hydro plants are the only rational way forward.
Ignore CO2, because greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is essential for: 1) increased green flora to increase fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to:
1) increase command/control by governments, and
2) enable the moneyed elites to become more powerful and richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people, already for at least 40 years. Extremely biased CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, NBC ABC, CBS come to mind.
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Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt:
1) Federal and state tax credits, up to 50% (Community tax credit 10%; Federal tax credit of 30%; State tax credit; other incentives up to 10%),
2) 5-y Accelerated Depreciation to write off of the entire project,
3) Loan interest deduction
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Utilities forced to pay at least:
15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixed offshore wind systems
18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
10 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from larger solar systems
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Excluded costs, at a future 30% W/S annual penetration on the grid, based on UK and German experience:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement to connect far-flung W/S systems, about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to quickly counteract W/S variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, which means more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to provide electricity during 1) low-wind periods, 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar periods during mornings, evenings, at night, snow/ice on panels, which means more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– Pay W/S system Owners for electricity they could have produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Importing electricity at high prices, when W/S output is low, 1 c/kWh
– Exporting electricity at low prices, when W/S output is high, 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly on land and at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
Total ADDER 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 11 c/kWh
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Offshore wind full cost of electricity FCOE = 30 c/kWh + 11 c/kWh = 41 c/kWh, no subsidies
Offshore wind full cost of electricity FCOE = 15 c/kWh + 11 c/kWh = 26 c/kWh, 50% subsidies
The 11 c/kWh is for various measures required by wind; power plant-to-landfill cost basis.
This compares with 7 c/kWh + 3 c/kWh = 10 c/kWh from existing gas, coal, nuclear, large reservoir hydro plants.
Some of these values increase, due to inflation, and exponentially increase as more W/S systems are added to the grid.
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The economic/financial insanity and environmental damage is off the charts.
Europe has near-zero, real-growth GDP. Its economy has been tied into knots by inane people.
In case of New York State, it signed contracts at 15.5 c/kWh for variable, intermittent, grid-destabilizing crappy offshore wind electricity
The other 11 c/kWh will be indirectly, on-the-sly, charged to ratepayers, taxpayers and to government debt.
THERE IS NEVER ANY FREE LUNCH, PER ECONOMICS 101
NYState has enough natural to last 100 years. All it has to do is start fracking, like in Pennsylvania.
NYState should use that gas in low-capital-cost, 60%-efficient CCGT power plants, which would produce plentiful, steady electricity at 6 c/kWh, regardless of the weather.
But before all that, the present government must be ousted or euthanized/lobotomized.
The French likely will invest all of that lease money they paid in power plants for AI data centers.
That investment in 60%-efficient, gas fired CCGT power plants will start providing them with returns as soon as those plants are up and running, instead of waiting for many years to get approvals from the Trump government and then from the Vance government.
As I recall, all this was in the original announcement.
Somehow (TDS ?) people with journalism degrees missed it.
Reading comprehension must have been dropped from the curriculum.
Journalism has become “Parrot the Narrative” vacuous echo chambers that believe publishing the same lie over and over will make it true.
Omission of relevant information from reporting isn’t lying, but it should be treated as such.
it is false witness
It’s what’s known as “a sin of omission “
It seems that the author is just as economical with the truth as they claim NPR to be. The 2nd paragraph of the NPR story says
“TotalEnergies has agreed to what’s essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday.”
But later clarifies that statement by saying:
“After it makes those investments, TotalEnergies will be reimbursed, up to the amount paid in lease purchases for offshore wind, according to the DOI.”
Which means that if TotalEnergies invested 1 million in the US the DOI would pay the remained, i.e. 979 million. Which is a very different thing from the claim that
“TotalEnergies agreed to keep the money in the U.S. and use it for oil and natural gas. “
1…The money will remain in the USA.
2…Useless wind turbines have been cancelled.
3…The money will now be used for oil and gas.
Sounds like exactly what Trump organised.
That sounds like a wish and a prayer rather than some insight.
Levelized cost of electricity is the average price electricity generators receive for their product at the point of generation. It represents a fraction the cost of electricity at your wall plug. The wall plug price must include the cost of distribution, of line losses during transmission, frequency and voltage control, regulatory compliance, system maintenance and other factors. It is a number of interest only to generators, not users. It should never be used when writing about the cost of electricity to users but is by those who are intentionally or ignorantly trying to deceive us.
I find it interesting that the LCOE has increased for wind. Past LCOE figures were lower and used to ‘prove’ that wind is cheap, omitting all the real costs of running wind in a grid system.
Costs must have skyrocketed, not surprisingly really but how is the wind sector going to claim financial superiority now?
“If even deep-blue New York is quietly hitting the brakes, the rest of the country should take note.”
Still zero sign of Wokeachusetts taking note. I predict it will be the last place on the planet to do so- even after the UK and Australia. The state is run by Climate Mullahs. 🙂
It’s not a certainty that New York is now hitting the brakes. If the downstate New York communists have their way, New York will be pursuing Net Zero on the original Climate Act schedule with no concern about emerging problems and issues.
Which, if that’s how things turn out this year, means that a sudden deceleration in the Climate Act’s original schedule will happen only when New York crashes head on into the Net Zero energy wall.
Upstate NY should be another state. It has little in common with NYC. And by that I mean everything west of Albany. The Albany NPR is extremely out of their minds so a new state wouldn’t want that city.
And…BONUS…Since, if you care about CO2 emissions, these offshore wind projects produce more net CO2 than would be produced if they were never built, cancellation actually REDUCES the dreaded CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
President doing congresses job again.
“The U.S. federal government manages its budget through a complex process, with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) preparing the President’s budget, while Congress holds ultimate constitutional authority to approve spending.”
“Congress holds ultimate constitutional authority to approve spending.”
How long has it been?
Trump is first and foremost a businessman. A “politician” – no way. He went bankrupt twice, or was it three times, and ‘came back’. This was a pure business deal, and it looks as if everyone “won”.
He had a about 5 – 10 businesses (out of 500) that went bankrupt. Bankruptcy allows a company to restructure and back out of contracts that were not viable. He never had to “start over”. He himself has never declared bankruptcy. Other than that detail, your statement is correct – i.e., the first two sentences were fully correct.
Thanks for the update. (Ex-CA? Can’t say I blame you. The wife and I became Arizona residents in 2013.)