Green energy in the press

Updated March 23, 2026 — The Trump administration has finalized a deal to pay TotalEnergies $1 billion to abandon its offshore wind leases near New York and North Carolina. This agreement serves as a reimbursement for the French company, which has committed to shifting its investments toward fossil fuel projects like liquefied natural gas and oil. While the Department of the Interior describes the move as a way to end costly subsidies for unreliable energy, critics and state governors have condemned the payout as a wasteful bribe intended to stifle the renewable energy sector. The administration maintains that prioritizing oil and gas will lower utility costs and improve national energy reliability. Conversely, environmental advocates argue that the deal undermines clean energy progress and ignores recent court rulings that favored wind developers. Consequently, TotalEnergies has pledged to halt all future wind development within the United States as part of this specific financial arrangement.