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| Maybe he hates offshore wind projects because breezes mess up his hair? In any event, Trump, having lost court battles to stop offshore wind installations, has resorted to basically bribery with taxpayer dollars. |
He tried new anti-offshore wind regulations and pronouncements, only to be repeatedly shot down by the courts. So, Trump has gone straight to corruption. He's now successfully stopped an offshore wind installation with what amounts to a $1 billion bribe.
Here it is from CNN:
"The Trump administration announced it will pay nearly $1 billion to French energy giant TotalEnergies in exchange for the company abandoning plans to build offshore wind farms in the Atlantic Ocean and instead pursue fossil fuel project in the U.S."
Yes, that's 'your tax dollars not at work. Trump is using tax revenue - and a lot of it to - pay somebody to not do something.
It's not a direct raid on the treasury. Instead the Trump administration is paying back TotalEnergies for federal leases it bought during the Biden administration. So the money Biden raked in for the federal government is getting pissed away all because wind turbines are against Trump's aesthetics.
The Trump gang has already stopped approving federal permits for renewable energy projects. That move killed offshore wind projects that were in early development.
This goes against the wishes of numerous clean energy companies and several state governments. Those entities think offshore wind is a win-win: It generates badly needed electricity while also avoids the fossil fuels that contribute to ever-worsening climate change crisis.
The more recent bribe, as I insist on calling it, ries to make sure companies can't continue building under any future administration that has a friendlier attitude toward offshore wind, as CNN reports.
In any event, Trump's bribe means 4 gigawatts of electricity will not be generated for houses and businesses in the U.S.
TotalEnergies doesn't even get to decide how to spend the bribe money. To keep the Orange One happy, the company will develop a new liquified gas plant in Texas that will help export U.S. LNG overseas to Europe, per their agreement with the Trump administration.
The company will also do some oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. and shale oil projects elsewhere in the U.S.
Burn that fossil fuel, baby! 103 degrees during March in Kansas isn't nearly hot enough. Gotta get that climate really boiling.
The deal is "an outrageous misuses of taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly when they need it the most," said Ted Kelly of the Environmental Defense Fund.
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says offshore wind is "one of the most expensive" forms of energy and is only produced when wind is blowing. I guess he never heard of batteries that store electricity and keep the juice flowing until the wind blows again. Which it almost always does in the wide open ocean.
It's true offshore wind power is expensive because it's, well, offshore. But wind has no fuel costs. And CNN points out that states negotiate set power price agreements with offshore wind producers that don't fluctuate like natural gas and oil does.
As with every stunt Trump and his minions pull, I see lawsuits coming with this.
"....offshore wind experts said that no process exists for Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to return the funds it collects from leasing federally controlled waters.
'There are significant questions about under what authority Interior is doing this,' said Elizabeth Klein, who led BOEM from 2023 to 2025 during the Biden administration"
This Orange Briberymight create broader problems beyond encouraging fossil fuel consumption, which can only worsen climate change. As NPR points out:
"Industry analysts say the agreement threatens to undermine business confidence in the United States by exerting unprecedented executive power to influence the private sector,"
Back in the day, like it or not, Republicans preferred to leave business alone. Let them do their thing with a little regulation or government interference as possible. So much for that. MAGA has turned that on its head.
NPR's reporting goes on to explain that by stopping projects he doesn't like, Trump risks messing up infrastructure spending across the economy, not just in offshore wind. The uncertainty this creates could make infrastructure projects move more slowly and become expensive.
The uncertainly goes into fossil fuel plant and oil production projects, which Trump keeps telling us he loves so much.
"When you're building a power plant or thinking about oil production, you're thinking not just about the current administration, you're thinking about the next couple of decades.....And the pendulum swing is a real policy risk," said Timothy Fox of ClearView Energy Partners.
All this is one of Trump's few "skills." His chaos causes so much uncertainty that investors, companies, and just regular people don't know what the next best course of action is. Ultimately, nothing gets done.
Except Trump and his oligarch friends get ever more richer at our expense.
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