In June, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont joined together to sue the US Department of the Interior over the Trump Administration’s payout of around $928 million to TotalEnergies to cancel offshore wind leases. As a condition for the deal, TotalEnergies agreed to redirect the funds into oil and gas investments instead of renewables. In late August, California launched its own lawsuit against the Trump Administration focusing on the deal between the US Department of the Interior and Golden State Wind, for $120 million. As in the case of the TotalEnergies deal, the payout was contingent on ‘a commitment to invest in fossil fuel developments.
Demand for Wind Energy
US demand for electricity is projected to increase by 20%-to-32% over the next four years, as data centers, AI usage, advanced manufacturing, and electrification of vehicles and other traditionally non-electric systems are transitioned into service. But how the US will keep up with the increasing demand on the national grid is a question. Where will the necessary terawatts come from?
According to a study by RystadEnergy, renewable energy is set to comprise 36% of global power generation by the end of 2026. According to the study, “Renewables made up over 89% of added capacity last year and will account for more than 91% in 2026, mainly from solar PV and wind. Solar, wind and battery storage are together set to bring 815 gigawatts (GW) in additions this year.”
Since the energy demand is high, and only continues to grow, the supply must grow as well. Renewable energy sources, such as wind, are rising to the challenge. According to RystadEnergy, “Manufacturing capacity of wind turbines expanded substantially during the past two decades to meet increasing demand. Growth has now stalled, with manufacturing capacity of nacelles expected to rise marginally over the next 10 years from a current level of 375 GW to 400– 420 GW per year in 2035. Blade manufacturing capacity is also expected to be stable at around 320 GW per year in the same time period.” The majority of wind turbine manufacturing is located in mainland China.
In the study, RystadEnergy says, “Wind also grows, though its role varies depending on resource quality, permitting, grid access and policy support.” In coastal states, while offshore wind is a plentiful resource, actually building the wind turbines is a struggle. Offshore wind turbines are expensive and a logistical struggle to build. In addition, there are supply chain difficulties involved. The components for turbines, as well as the various other pieces that go into building an offshore wind turbine and hooking it up to the grid, do not have an established domestic supply chain in the United States.
“Legally Questionable Sabotage”
In July of 2026, the Attorneys General of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont filed a notice of intent, planning to challenge the unlawful payoffs made to TotalEnergies by the Trump Administration. Shortly after, California followed suit. New York Attorney General Letitia James stated, “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,” and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said, “This deal is a $795 million slap in the face to every Connecticut family and business struggling with unaffordable and unsustainable energy bills. We desperately need more sources of clean, reliable energy, and this site was on track to deliver that. Instead, Donald Trump wants to throw taxpayer dollars at a company to do absolutely nothing and force us to pay premium prices on dirty energy all because of his irrational hatred of wind. We sued to get Revolution Wind back online, and we’re suing again now to stop Trump’s reckless attempts to cancel more offshore wind projects and waste taxpayer dollars.”
What is the Point?
Many of these projects were already under strain or had been actually already canceled. The New York TotalEnergies’s offshore wind project had already been put on pause since 2024, for instance, and RWE had stopped work on all of their United States based projects. In his article, Who Killed Offshore Wind, James Sallee, a professor at UC Berkley in the Economics Analysis and Policy group at the Haas School of Business and the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the Rausser College of Natural Resources, says, “The buyouts may limit how quickly offshore wind could rebound in a future economic and policy environment, but as of today it seems as though the government just spent $3.9 billion of taxpayer dollars, spent to shoot a corpse.” He also added, “The buyouts did not stop projects since the projects were not in the money or poised for development anytime soon. They did extinguish an option the companies might have held in order to possibly invest in a future with better economics and new legislation, but even then the government seems to have overpaid.”
This begs the question, what even is the purpose of these buyouts? California Attorney General Rob Bonta referred to the agreement with Golden State Wind as “blatantly unlawful,” and many experts have questioned whether the US Department of the Interior even has the legal authority to return these funds.
“The Trump Administration’s backroom buyout with Golden State Wind to stop offshore wind development in favor of gas and oil drilling is, unfortunately, a classic playbook for them to line the pockets of their Big Oil donors,” Bonta said. The Trump Administration has been trying and failing to permanently stop offshore wind projects. Despite certainly causing a decline in offshore wind, the Trump Administration has not yet been able to win a court battle when the legality of the original stop work orders was questioned. It has yet to be seen whether that trend will continue, the way that the attempts to stymie all environmentally sound practices and renewable energy projects have continued from the current administration. Regardless, none of the coastal states involved in these lawsuits intend to back down. The Chair of the California Energy Commission, David Hochschild, said, “We will not let the Trump administration’s reckless actions turn back the clock. California’s clean energy future is worth fighting for. See you in court.”
