Trump Pays Energy Firms £1.4B in Taxpayer Cash on Condition They Pivot from Clean Energy to Oil and Gas

The Trump administration has paid three energy companies nearly £1.4B ($1.885B) in public funds to abandon offshore wind projects and redirect capital into oil, gas, and liquefied natural gas infrastructure, a strategy that emerged after federal courts blocked repeated executive attempts to stop wind development by other means.

The deals, structured as dollar-for-dollar reimbursements of the lease fees the companies originally paid to develop their offshore wind projects, are conditioned on each firm investing equivalent sums in fossil fuel projects on US soil.

The Interior Department announced two further agreements on 27 April 2026, following a larger deal with French energy giant TotalEnergies in March, bringing the total payout across the three agreements to nearly £1.4B ($1.885B).

Three Deals, One Strategy: Paying Companies to Quit Wind After Losing in Court

The pattern begins with the Trump administration's repeated failure to halt offshore wind development through executive orders. After Trump returned to office in January 2025, the Interior Department paused construction on five major East Coast wind farms, citing national security risks. Federal judges allowed construction on all five to resume. The Day One executive order blocking new wind leases was struck down. The administration's requirement that all wind and solar projects on federal lands be personally approved by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was also stopped by the courts.

Having lost on every front in litigation, the administration announced a new approach. In March 2026, it reached an agreement with TotalEnergies, the French energy conglomerate, to cancel two offshore wind leases off the coasts of North Carolina and New York. The company had originally paid £588m ($795m) for one of those leases alone in May 2022.

Under the agreement, TotalEnergies receives a refund of approximately £739M ($1B), conditional on the company investing that amount in fossil fuel projects in the United States, specifically the Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas and expanded oil and gas activities. The company said it renounced offshore wind in the US 'considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country's interest.'

On 27 April 2026, the Interior Department announced two further deals of the same type. Bluepoint Wind, a project proposed off the coasts of New Jersey and New York and jointly owned by Ocean Winds and Global Infrastructure Partners, which is now part of asset manager BlackRock, will receive up to £565M ($765M) in reimbursed lease fees after making an equivalent investment into a US-based liquefied natural gas facility.

Golden State Wind, a floating offshore wind project proposed off California's central coast and co-owned by Ocean Winds and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, will recover £88.7M ($120M) after investing the same amount in oil, gas, or LNG projects along the Gulf Coast. Both companies have committed to pursuing no new offshore wind developments anywhere in the United States.

Interior Frames Payouts as Taxpayer Protection; Energy Law Experts Disagree

Secretary Burgum framed the arrangements as a correction of market distortions. 'The companies that bid for these offshore wind leases were basically sold a product in 2022 that was only viable when propped up by massive taxpayer subsidies,' Burgum said.

The Interior Department described the deals as promoting 'affordable, reliable energy' and said they 'provide dollar-for-dollar reimbursement for offshore wind leases that have been impractical to develop without relying on taxpayer subsidies.'

Energy law experts and environmental advocates rejected that characterisation. Kristoffer Svendsen, an energy law expert quoted by the Associated Press, said the lease buyouts appear to be a last attempt to close down as many offshore wind projects as possible after the administration's court losses, and said he was not aware of any precedent for paying energy project owners to walk away.

Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, told NPR: 'After losing again and again in court on his illegal stop-work orders, Trump has found another way to strangle offshore wind: pay them to walk away.' Heatmap News noted that several further offshore wind developers remain in a position to pursue similar payouts, and estimated the total cost to taxpayers could exceed £2.96bn ($4bn) if all eligible companies strike comparable deals.

Democrats Allege Illegal Use of Public Funds and a Clause Blocking Judicial Review

On 29 April 2026, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-CA) and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) sent a formal letter to TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyané, announcing a congressional investigation and demanding the company preserve all documents and communications related to the deal. The letter advises the CEO not to accept the £739m ($1bn) payment while the investigation proceeds.

The letter identifies four specific legal failures. First, the administration drew the £739m ($1bn) payment from the Judgment Fund, a congressional account created in 1956 to pay court-ordered judgments and settlements against the United States. There was no litigation between the government and TotalEnergies.

Second, the national security justification for cancelling the original wind leases appears to have been constructed after the Interior Department and TotalEnergies had already reached an agreement in principle, the lawmakers argue.

Third, the payment bypasses the compensation formula that Congress encoded in the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act for cancelled leases. Fourth, and most striking, Paragraph 18 of the TotalEnergies agreement attempts to bar any federal court from reviewing the deal, a provision the letter calls unconstitutional on its face.

Three deals have been locked in, billions more potentially in the pipeline, and Democratic investigators are now circling the first and largest. The question of whether these payments will survive legal scrutiny may ultimately land before the same federal courts that already stopped the administration's first attempts to kill offshore wind.