Trump administration pays $1.22 billion to kill another wind power project

Aug. 7 (UPI) — The U.S. Department of the Interior will pay a German company $1.22 billion to abandon wind power projects, give up offshore wind leases and redirect money toward fossil fuels.

The deal with RWE marks the fifth deal of its kind by the Interior Department, which is offering payouts for businesses to stop renewable clean energy projects. It marks almost $4 billion in taxpayer money that the department has spent to kill offshore wind projects, The Guardian reported.

RWE announced the deal Thursday, saying it will give up leases off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana that it had acquired “with a long-term commitment to develop offshore wind capacity.”

“After careful consideration, it was determined that there was no path forward to permit these projects in the United States for the foreseeable future,” the company said in a release.

As part of the agreement, RWE will instead spend $900 million to buy a 16% stake in a liquified natural gas company in Louisiana. The company was not named. It also said it has agreed to spend $300 million to develop a pipeline of 15 natural gas peaking plants throughout the United States.

“We welcome RWE’s agreement and voluntary investment in projects that strengthen our nation’s energy security, provide dependable baseload power and help keep electricity affordable for hardworking Americans today while supporting our country’s long-term energy future,” said U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

In March, the Trump administration made a deal with French company TotalEnergies, paying it more than $1 billion to kill wind farm projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina.

In return, attorneys general from seven states sued the administration, saying the deal is illegal. New York Attorney General Leticia James said the project would have saved New Yorkers $10 billion in energy bills and brought more than 1,700 jobs to the state.

“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,” James said at the time. “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.”

President Donald Trump has called wind farms “ugly” and claimed without basis that the noise they make causes cancer.