NYS, 6 others sue to halt Trump deal to pay firm $795M to cancel wind-farm lease

Seven states led by New York’s Attorney General on Tuesday filed suit against the Trump administration’s Department of the Interior and other federal agencies seeking to strike down a deal that paid a French energy company $795 million to withdraw from its offshore wind-farm lease and invest in fossil-fuels development instead.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks a court order vacating the lease cancellation agreement between the Interior Department and Attentive Energy, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies SA of France, while declaring the deal unlawful and requesting injunctions barring the administration from implementing it.

The suit charges that the federal agencies "failed to provide a reasoned explanation for canceling the lease, to explain their change in position; address alternative means for achieving their objections, or project a genuine justification for their actions."

They also "did not coordinate with the governors of the affected states," in violation of law, the suit said.

In a statement, the Department of the Interior said, "The only thing blatantly unlawful here was the process by which these offshore wind leases were negotiated and imposed under the Biden administration." The Department alleged, "Billions of dollars were effectively taken from the pockets of hardworking taxpayers and funneled into energy projects that were not only unreliable, but also unaffordable." 

"As the Department of War identified, there were serious national security risks that demanded immediate attention — which critics conveniently ignore," the federal agency said. "And let's be clear: these were voluntary agreements. No one was forced to sign them." 

New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement said, "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." 

The suit was filed four months after the New York Energy Research and Development Authority, which administers state green-energy plans, in February canceled a bidding request for projects in the lease area where Attentive planned to build its project. TotalEnergies itself withdrew the 3,000-megawatt Attentive project more than a year prior, after Trump was elected to office in November 2024.

In canceling the state’s request for proposals, NYSERDA cited "federal disruptions" and "market uncertainty."

The market for offshore wind power in the U.S. had been beset by a series of business problems even before Trump took office, including the impacts of higher materials costs, rising interest rates and the failure of one large manufacturer to deliver a promised 18-megawatt wind turbine for projects in the New York Bight.

Trump has made offshore wind even riskier for potential developers, issuing an executive order shortly after taking office that effectively stopped all new projects, ending subsidies that paid one-third or more of their cost, and even attempting to stop projects already under construction. Two in New York that saw temporary stop-work mandates — Sunrise Wind for Long Island and Empire Wind — won court orders and remain under construction.

The federal suit filed this week names as defendants the U.S. Department of the Interior and its secretary, Doug Burgum; the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which administers the lease program; the U.S. Department of Justice; and Attentive Energy, as well as federal agency leaders. None of the named defendants responded to requests for comment.

Attentive acquired the 84,000-acre lease in 2022, giving it access to an area that could accommodate some 2,700 megawatts of offshore wind energy.

The deal with the Trump administration was announced on March 23, saying the company had agreed to terminate its lease and receive a "reimbursement of up to $795 million," and "pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States," according to the suit.

Other states that are part of the suit include New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.