(The Center Square) – New York has filed another lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming the federal government is trying to “illegally” pay off a French company to abandon a pair of offshore wind projects.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, alleges that after a string of court losses in “its crusade against wind energy” the Trump administration struck a deal with TotalEnergies to cancel two offshore wind leases and pay the company nearly $1 billion in taxpayer dollars. In exchange, the company agreed to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in oil and gas projects and pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects, the lawsuit claims.
“This pay-not-to-play scheme pressuring a foreign company to forego planned offshore wind projects in America in favor of gas and oil drilling is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars that hurts our ability to meet our energy needs, create good jobs, and help secure American energy independence while reducing emissions,” Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement.
Hochul said the project would have delivered clean energy directly to New York City, powering more than 700,000 New York homes and generating billions of dollars in benefits. Another project scuttled by the Trump administration’s deal with TotalEnergies would have been located off New Jersey’s coastline, she said.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who filed the legal challenge, called the deal “blatantly unlawful” and asked the federal courts to strike it down.
“The Trump administration is once again trying to kill clean energy projects and destroy good-paying jobs for New Yorkers,” James said in a statement. “After repeatedly losing in court, this administration cooked up a sham deal to pay a foreign energy company hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to abandon offshore wind and invest in oil and gas instead.”
“We are fighting back to stop this illegal agreement that threatens to erase over a thousand union jobs and cheat millions of New Yorkers out of clean, affordable energy,” she added.
There was no immediate comment from the Department of Justice about the legal challenge, which was filed with attorneys general from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
President Donald Trump has vowed to end federal support for offshore wind and other clean energy projects as he focuses on boosting fossil fuel production as part of broader efforts to improve the nation’s energy independence.
Trump directed the U.S. Department of Transportation in September to cancel $679 million in federal funding for a dozen infrastructure projects that would support New England Wind and other projects, saying the plans “were not aligned with the goals and priorities of the administration.”
In December, the Interior Department halted federal leases for Sunrise and four other large-scale offshore wind projects under construction off New York’s coastline, including the Empire Wind 1 project and Sunrise Wind. Those projects have now been allowed to resume construction following federal court rulings.
The federal agency has also pulled the plug on New Jersey’s offshore wind projects and clawed back a $12.6 million federal grant for Maine to build the nation’s first offshore wind turbine research project.
