By Nichola Groom
June 2 (Reuters) – Seven U.S. states led by New York sued the Trump administration and a French energy firm on Tuesday for canceling a major offshore wind lease off the coast of New York in exchange for a pledge by the company to invest instead in fossil fuel projects.
The lawsuit in the Washington, D.C., federal court challenges a March 23 decision by the U.S. Department of the Interior to cancel a lease by a subsidiary of France’s TotalEnergies, “reimburse” $795 million to the company, and extract a pledge from the company not to develop new offshore wind projects in the United States.
Total also agreed to spend nearly $1 billion on a Texas LNG plant and on U.S. oil and gas drilling.
The deal represented a new strategy in the administration’s wide-ranging effort to stop development of U.S. offshore wind projects, which President Donald Trump has said he finds ugly and expensive. His administration has sought to increase domestic fossil fuel production and scrapped policies that support clean energy development.
According to the complaint, the states allege the administration failed to follow proper administrative processes and misused a government fund reserved for legal settlements even though there was no litigation between the parties.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the lawsuit.
An Interior Department spokesperson said the agreement was voluntary and went through appropriate procedural channels.
“The only thing blatantly unlawful here was the process by which these offshore wind leases were negotiated and imposed by the Biden administration,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “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.”
The project, known as Attentive Energy, would have generated enough power for 1.3 million homes in New York and New Jersey, the states alleged. Both states are relying on offshore wind development to meet soaring energy needs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
In addition to New York, the suing states include New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.
“This pay-not-to-play scheme pressuring a foreign company to forego planned offshore wind projects in America in favor of gas and oil drilling is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars that hurts our ability to meet our energy needs, create good jobs, and help secure American energy independence while reducing emissions,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement.
TotalEnergies did not respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Nichola Groom in Los Angeles; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Rod Nickel)
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