Utopia Talk / Politics / The art of the deal

Rugian rank	Tue Mar 24 09:36:08 The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy. TotalEnergies has agreed to what’s essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday. President Donald Trump’s administration has tried to halt offshore wind construction, but federal judges repeatedly overturned those orders. The Interior Department hailed the “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant and said, “the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.″ Environmental groups denounced the deal as an alternate way to block wind projects, with one group calling it a “billion-dollar bribe” to kill clean energy. TotalEnergies had already paused its two projects after Trump was elected. The company pledged to not develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States. CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in a statement that TotalEnegeries renounced offshore wind development in the United States in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees, “considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest.” Pouyanné said the refunded lease fees will finance the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in Texas and the development of its oil and gas activities, calling it a “more efficient use of capital” in the U.S. After it makes those investments, TotalEnergies will be reimbursed, up to the amount paid in lease purchases for offshore wind, according to the DOI. “We welcome TotalEnergies’ commitment to developing projects that produce dependable, affordable power to lower Americans’ monthly bills,’' Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Trump was “using a pay-not-to-play scheme” to pressure the French company not to build offshore wind, calling it “an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars.” Hochul said she remains committed to moving forward with an “all-of-the-above approach” that includes renewables, nuclear power and other energy sources. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, said this is “a terrible deal for the people of North Carolina and our country.” “Our state has the offshore wind potential to power millions of homes with renewable American-made energy. It’s ludicrous and wasteful that the Trump administration is spending $1 billion in taxpayer money to pay off a company to stop it from investing private dollars to create the clean energy we need,” Stein said in a statement. TotalEnergies purchased a lease for its Carolina Long Bay project in 2022 for about $133 million. It aimed to generate more than 1 gigawatt there, enough to power about 300,000 homes. It purchased the lease off New York and New Jersey, also in 2022, for $795 million. This was planned as a larger project, with the potential to generate 3 gigawatts of clean energy to power nearly one million homes. TotalEnergies is involved in major offshore wind projects in Europe and Asia. https://ap...2eeeacc5d09730d4e20a95d7df7de1
jergul rank	Tue Mar 24 09:38:55 I dont see anything wrong with this deal. Enlighten me as to what the problem is.
Rugian rank	Tue Mar 24 09:40:41 All of this because the UK just had to build a wind farm next to his Aberdeenshire golf course. Congrats morons. You owned the orange man and killed the entire US wind industry in the process.
jergul rank	Tue Mar 24 09:43:08 Well, in detail it looks like the company still keeps the leases, but cannot development them in the current environment. Hence the "pledge" not to. So it is getting a billion dollar subsidy to build and LNG plant and deferring on developing offshore wind (which is not a mature industry, so there are arguments for waiting until maturity drives down costs anyway).
Rugian rank	Tue Mar 24 09:43:20 jergul rank Tue Mar 24 09:38:55 I dont see anything wrong with this deal. Enlighten me as to what the problem is. ----- Paying energy companies NOT to build energy facilities because POTUS has a personal hatred for wind farms ia a bit of a counterproductive exercise.
jergul rank	Tue Mar 24 09:45:46 In detail though is is just a subsidy to build something else is it not? That is quite normal.
jergul rank	Tue Mar 24 09:47:37 The wind build was on pause anyway. Too risky for god knows what stumbling blocks the Federal Government could throw in the way. There was always sticks. This is just a carrot too.
Rugian rank	Tue Mar 24 10:00:49 "The wind build was on pause anyway." Yes let's dig into that: "November 26, 2024 TotalEnergies, the French energy giant, has announced a halt to its offshore wind project off the coast of New York following the U.S. election victory of Donald Trump. The development was confirmed by the company’s CEO, Patrick Pouyanne, during the Energy Intelligence Forum on Tuesday. Pouyanne cited the political shift in the U.S. as a key reason for the decision. “In offshore wind, I decided to put the project on pause because all the offshore wind projects are in Democratic states,” he said. He added that the company would reassess the project after four years, referring to the duration of the upcoming administration. Despite the pause, Pouyanne expressed optimism about revisiting the project in the future, noting, “The advantage is that it’s only for four years.”" https://ww...gies-us-offshore-wind-project/
Rugian rank	Tue Mar 24 10:05:37 I dont blame the company for this. They correctly foresaw that the new administration would make their wind projects an absolute nightmare through funding cuts, regulatory hurdles, and lawsuits, and bailed on them when they were offered a payout. The government is the one acting stupid here. Both for killing what were I assume viable energy projects, and for sending the message that such projects are subject to the whims of arbitrary changes in policy by every new administration that make planning beyond a four-year timeframe impossible.
jergul rank	Tue Mar 24 11:02:46 Well, more correctly, that projects have to get completed in a 4 year window that the political climate may provide. The company retains that option. As to the subsidy for the LNG plant. 1 billion seems like a lot. The company would probably have accepted less to break ground. So so 1 billion instead of 443 million or whatever.
Paramount rank	Tue Mar 24 14:18:26 ” I dont see anything wrong with this deal. Enlighten me as to what the problem is.” He should bomb the shit out of the French company, not give them $1 billion.
williamthebastard rank	Tue Mar 24 14:36:36 Dont look up. According to all climate science, this kind of stuff is absolutely lethal, but the science illiterates have done such an aggressive job of scaring everyone into silence that nobody talks about the most damaging of all the incredibly damaging things the rightwing is inflicting on us and our children.
Seb rank	Tue Mar 24 17:06:35 This is hilarious.
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