The Trump administration has reached a deal with the German energy company RWE to cancel offshore wind leases and redirect funds to fossil fuel investments. This agreement is worth over $1.2 billion dollars. These funds are being drawn from the Department of the Interior which, in turn, is utilizing taxpayer dollars. Wind turbine projects will be cancelled near New York, California and Louisiana.
As part of the agreement, RWE has agreed to spend $900 million to acquire a 16 percent stake in a Louisiana liquified natural gas (LNG) project helmed by the Australian company Woodside Energy. That company has been known to be fans of President Trump’s agenda, once saying that the “administration is supportive of our industry” and that “it’s very clear that the Trump administration understands the role that affordable energy plays in national prosperity.”
Incidentally, Woodside Energy’s Chief Operating Officer Daniel Kalms has also lately been referring to the body of water that connects to Louisiana as the Gulf of America. This kind of thing is typically done for an audience of one.
RWE has also signed an agreement worth $300 million under which it will develop a pipeline of 15 natural gas peaker plants throughout the country. The company originally purchased the New York lease under the Biden administration for around $1.1 billion and the California and Louisiana leases for around $163 million. Accounting for inflation, it looks like RWE will make a bit of coin here.
“The settlement resolves RWE US Offshore’s legal claims and provides $1.22 billion in settlement funds,” the company said in a statement, adding that the deal would let it “direct resources toward energy projects that can be advanced with certainty.” Interior secretary Doug Burgham boasted that the administration appreciates the company’s “voluntary investment in projects that strengthen our nation’s energy security.”
$4 BILLION. That’s how much the Trump Administration has now spent paying companies to cancel offshore wind projects that would have lowered your electric bill.
Yes, you heard that right: they are PAYING to keep more energy off the grid and your bills higher.
The latest…
— Rep. Mike Levin (@RepMikeLevin) August 7, 2026
This is actually the fifth deal the administration has struck with energy companies in which it has offered payouts in exchange for abandoning renewable energy projects. All told, the government has spent around $4 billion of taxpayer money to kill green energy projects.
Trump has also spent around $1.1 billion to boost coal-based energy projects, which critics have said was for “fattening the wallets of his cronies.” It’s also worth noting that LNG plants, of the type RWE will now be investing in, have a spotty record when it comes to environmental damage. A report released at the tail-end of last year by the Environmental Integrity Project found that every fully operational LNG facility in the US had violated federal pollution limits. These violations included the discharge of illegal amounts of dangerous substances into waterways.
Why is Trump waging war on green energy? Well, the administration has long offered support to the fossil fuel industry. However, anyone that’s followed the president knows that he has an almost pathological hatred of wind turbines. He’s been railing against them for years, typically referring to them as windmills.
He has claimed multiple times that they cause cancer and that they are “driving the whales crazy” and killing them “in numbers never seen before.” He has also exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of battery storage when saying things like “if it doesn’t blow, you can forget about television for that night.”
Where does this hatred stem from? It all seems to have started with a court battle in Scotland, when a wind turbine farm was built off the coast of one of his golf courses. He lost that court battle, so now we all have to use only fossil fuels until the end of time.
