Trump spends US$4bn on offshore wind buybacks

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The US government has paid out US$1.2bn to German energy company RWE to give up its wind power projects in the country, taking the administration's total offshore wind buyouts to nearly US$4bn. It is part of the administration’s continued efforts to divest from offshore wind.

As part of the settlement, RWE will relinquish its leases for offshore projects in New York, California and Louisiana, saying that it had already invested more than US$1bn into these projects that took “years of planning, investment and partnership with federal agencies”.

The Trump administration has long been an opponent of offshore wind, choosing to focus on fossil fuel-based energy instead.

Since March, the government has pursued several similar settlements with international energy companies, most notably with French firm TotalEnergies, which has relinquished all its offshore wind leases in the US for nearly $US1bn and agreed to reinvest in US oil and gas projects.

For RWE, the company has confirmed that it will invest nearly US$20bn in the US over the next six years to help double the country’s energy capacity to 22 GW by 2031.

The company has specifically highlighted further investments of US$900m in natural gas infrastructure and US$300m for natural gas turbine reservations.

These settlements have received great pushback from environmentalists and energy firms, with renewable energy groups, including Renewable Northwest and the Advanced Power Alliance, going so far as to sue the Pentagon over its alleged disruption of the US wind industry, which currently supports more than 100,000 jobs.

Trump has also received criticism from the Senate: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a representative from Rhode Island, recently launched an investigation into the government’s buyout of the TotalEnergies projects.

Whitehouse said that the RWE buyouts will leave Americans worse off as they will be paying for the expensive pivot toward more oil and gas production.

He said: “That’s the real story of what is going on here. And that is both a cost story because of the billions in extra costs consumers pay, and it’s a corruption story because it’s Trump’s sneaky way of getting regular families to pay off his big fossil fuel donors.”