I have to admit, this has been some pretty adroit footwork by the Trump team, particularly Doug Burgum at the Department of the Interior as the lead man.
Wind foes cheered when Trump signed the executive order that paused the leasing of federal land in offshore waters for big wind projects, and, in December of last year, Burgum paused construction of the five projects already underway in light of what he termed ‘national security issues.’
…I have covered most of the five affected projects repeatedly:
Vineyard Wind 1 – Located off the coast of Massachusetts, this 800-megawatt project was one of the first large-scale offshore wind farms in the U.S. It features turbines supplied by GE Vernova and was expected to power over 400,000 homes.
Revolution Wind – Situated off Rhode Island and Connecticut, this 704-megawatt farm is designed to provide clean energy to approximately 350,000 homes. Construction was reportedly 80% complete before a prior partial halt in August 2025, now fully suspended.
Sunrise Wind – Off the coast of New York, this 924-megawatt project aims to serve around 600,000 homes and includes an onshore transmission system connecting to the state’s grid.
Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) – Commercial – Positioned off Virginia’s coast, this massive 2,600-megawatt initiative is the largest offshore wind project in the U.S., capable of powering up to 660,000 homes upon completion.
Empire Wind 1 – Also off New York, this 816-megawatt farm is part of a broader development plan and was set to contribute significantly to the region’s renewable energy goals, powering over 500,000 homes.
These projects collectively represent a combined capacity of over 5,000 megawatts, enough to supply electricity to millions of households and support thousands of jobs in manufacturing, installation, and maintenance.
As you would expect, heads exploded and cries of ‘WHAT national security concerns?!’ reached the Heavens, as related lawsuits against the administration and Department of the Interior, combined with unholy screams, flew like bats out of Carlsbad at dusk.
All the uncertainty was beginning to cause, besides ulcers, upheaval in the wind-crazed states, as well. New York State’s Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) threw in the towel on planning any more offshore developments, and last week, New Jersey finally canceled the agreements it had with PJM, its regional transmission organization, to tie in power from the now-kaput offshore farms.
New Jersey Admits Defeat on Offshore Wind (at Least for Now)
Crucial transmission for future offshore wind energy in New Jersey is scrapped for now.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on Wednesday canceled the agreement it reached with PJM Interconnection in 2021 to develop wires and substations necessary to send electricity generated by offshore wind across the state. The board terminated this agreement because much of New Jersey’s expected offshore wind capacity has either been canceled by developers or indefinitely stalled by President Donald Trump, including the now-scrapped TotalEnergies projects scrubbed in a settlement with his administration.
“New Jersey is now facing a situation in which there will be no identified, large-scale in-state generation projects under active development that can make use of [the agreement] on the timeline the state and PJM initially envisioned,” the board wrote in a letter to PJM requesting termination of the agreement.
The courts stepped in, as they always do, to frustrate the plan to turn back the turbined assault on the open ocean off the US coast. In December, a federal judge had vacated Trump’s executive order blocking further development, and another judge allowed all five of the projects Burgum had halted to fire back up after deciding the Interior Secretary hadn’t shown any legitimate risk to national security.
That has also had mixed returns for wind advocates in the face of economic realities. The Vineyard Wind project, the hanging delaminated blade of fettuccine fame (which shut down Nantucket and surrounding beaches as summer started two years ago), was nearly complete, only to have one of the two major partners, General Electric, announce it was walking away from the project two weeks ago. This has left the farm in a frozen nightmare state, which no doubt provided the impetus for yet another judge’s emergency ruling that GE could not leave the partnership. GE begs to differ, so everything is in limbo, and blades on 62 of the largest turbines in the world are not whirling.
The Biden administration had also waived the cleanup bond for the companies for the first 15 years (‘proven technology’), so if they never do whirl… what happens to them?
Revolution Wind, off the Rhode Island coast, came online in March. Good luck to them and their wallets.
Revolution Wind is officially live.⚡
1,000+ workers, 2M+ hours of American labor, and enough power for 350,000 homes in New England.
This is what it looks like when America builds. pic.twitter.com/jyeNSV8et0
— American Conservation Coalition (@ACC_National) March 17, 2026
Never one to let the grass grow under his feet, Trump and his Interior Secretary have gone about finding a novel way to foil these projects that infuriate true-believers but leave them only sputtering for lack of tools to do anything about it.
The power of the purse.
They’re offering refunds to the companies that have already spent money on offshore leases, in some cases working a one-for-one trade out, spending that money onshore in oil and/or gas exploration.
The first to bite the apple at the end of March was French firm TotalEnergies, which had leases off the North Carolina and New Jersey coasts.
AU REVOIR
The Trump administration’s $1 billion payout to a French energy company to walk away from U.S. offshore wind development is a novel tactic against the industry that supporters see as creative — but opponents see as foolish and extreme.
The Interior Department announced Monday that TotalEnergies agreed to what is essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in a liquefied natural gas export terminal in Texas and other fossil fuel projects instead. The department hailed it as an “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant so that the “American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.”
The tactical shift comes after federal courts have thwarted President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop offshore wind through executive action.
While climate cultists spazzed, wind foes were beside themselves after years of tilting at windmills alone.
…Robin Shaffer, president of the anti-offshore wind group Protect Our Coast New Jersey, applauded what he called “out of the box” thinking. Shaffer said after losing in the courts, the administration needed a way to take back leases that never should have been issued because of the harm offshore wind development causes to the marine environment.
“The Trump administration has been relentlessly creative in its efforts to stop offshore wind development in the U.S.,” he said.
On Monday, Burgum and his checkbook struck the wind whiners again. Two more walkaways.
The Trump administration announced two more payouts Monday for energy companies to walk away from U.S. offshore wind projects under development.
Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind have agreed to end their offshore wind leases in exchange for reimbursements totaling nearly $900 million. Both companies have decided not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the United States, the Interior Department announced Monday.
Bluepoint Wind is an offshore wind project in the early stages of development off the coasts of New Jersey and New York, while Golden State Wind is a floating offshore wind project proposed off California’s central coast.
And the money isn’t ‘gone’ – it’s simply being redirected.
…Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind were slated to be major offshore wind projects, each capable of powering more than 1 million homes when complete and helping the states of New Jersey, New York and California meet their clean energy goals. If the projects were to ever move forward, a developer would have to buy new leases. But under the Trump administration, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has rescinded all designated wind energy areas in federal waters.
Bluepoint Wind is a partnership between Ocean Winds and Global Infrastructure Partners. Global Infrastructure Partners, a part of investment giant BlackRock, has committed to invest up to $765 million into a U.S.-based liquefied natural gas facility. Interior said it would cancel the offshore wind lease and reimburse the company for the amount invested in the LNG project.
Golden State Wind is a joint venture by Ocean Winds and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Under its agreement, Golden State Wind can recover about $120 million in lease fees after the same amount is invested in oil and gas assets, infrastructure or projects along the Gulf Coast, Interior said.
As Burgum said,
…“Now that hardworking Americans are no longer footing the bill for expensive, unreliable, intermittent energy projects, companies are once again investing in affordable, reliable, secure energy infrastructure,” Burgum said in a statement. “We welcome each of the projects’ willingness to actually support baseload power and lower utility bills for American families.”
Okay. It’s nice not to be Britain.
A reminder of what wind power actually looks like…
We have 32 GW installed, hence the size of the scale on the y-axis
Over the weekend output fell to 0.6 GW – this happened overnight when demand was low but when solar output was zero – so functionally we had no wind or solar… pic.twitter.com/H9wV3SmEGa
— Kathryn Porter (@KathrynPorter26) April 27, 2026
Which is precisely the cycle the American cultists are begging for.
Spend £billions on renewables
Then spend £billions to fix the problems caused by renewables
Then spend £billions supporting consumers who can’t afford the previous £billions
Genius 🙄🤔
— Kathryn Porter (@KathrynPorter26) April 27, 2026
From which we have been, if even only momentarily spared.
I wanted to share this video with you all this morning, too. See if you thought the same thing I did about it.
The tone is quite triumphant in nature – the eternal story of man vs the elements – as these intrepid wind construction types battle towering heights, snow, ice, and wind to build these tremendous turbine towers across the spine of a Norwegian mountain range.
And it is pretty cool to watch – I mean, I think those guys are crazy up there, but I’ll bet it pays great.
But what struck me on the subtitles was the fact that the conditions were so harsh, they had to shut down construction over the winter, and I thought, well…huh.
If conditions were so harsh that they had to shut down while building it…how will those same conditions affect the farm’s CONTINUOUS operation? pic.twitter.com/YCa8JMW9W4
— tree hugging sister 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) April 28, 2026
And for all the magnificent scenery and soaring rhetoric about carbon footsies and such, they were getting beaten up pretty badly in the comments, with legit questions…
Where does the electricity for a million homes come from when the wind drops or is too much?
How many gallons of oil does it take to lubricate each windmill?
What is the carbon footprint of each installation?
Why not just get rid of windmills and use Gas Power instead?— Ian Harper (@CheetsHarper) April 26, 2026
…and some pretty legit everyday stats from similar mountainous terrain.
All that government money comes from taxpayers and is supplemented with spiraling electric bills by ratepayers on the back end when their desperate to virtue-signal governors cut bad deals in the name of the cult.
Whatever Doug Burgum swings deal-wise to keep these abominations out of the coastal waters of the United States is worth the cost in itself. But the fact that they are turning into a reinvestment in the same power generation industry, only on the baseline, reliable side, is nothing but a win-win for everyone.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy HotAir’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical Left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
