Trump Has Once Again Paid Off Offshore Wind Developers to Quit

Current conditions: After a springy warm up, temperatures in Northeast cities such as Boston and Atlantic City are plunging back into the low 50 degrees Fahrenheit range for the rest of the week • In India, meanwhile, a northern heatwave is sending temperatures in Gujarat as high as 110 degrees today • The Pacific waters off California and Mexico are hitting record temperatures amid an historic marine heatwave.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump has convinced two more offshore wind developers to cancel projects

Last month, following a string of legal defeats over his efforts to halt construction of offshore wind turbines through regulatory fiat, President Donald Trump tried something new: Paying developers to quit. The plan worked: French energy giant TotalEnergies agreed to abandon its two offshore wind farms in exchange for $1 billion from the federal government, with the promise that it would reinvest that money in U.S. oil and gas development. Reporting by Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo later showed that the legal reasoning behind the federal government's cash offer was shaky, and that the actual text of the agreement contained no definite assurances that the company would invest any more than it was already planning to. Last week, I told you that more deals were in the works, including with another French company, the utility Engie. Now the Trump administration has confirmed the rumors.

On Monday, the Department of the Interior announced plans to spend a little under $1 billion — a combined $885 million — to recoup the leasing costs developers already paid from a proposed wind farm off New Jersey and another off California. BlackRock-owned Global Infrastructure Partners “has committed” to reinvest up to $765 million into a U.S.-based liquified natural gas project. In exchange, the Interior Department said it will cancel the firm’s lease for the Bluepoint Wind offshore project in federal waters off New Jersey and New York “and reimburse the company’s bid payment in the amount invested in the LNG project.” As part of the deal, Bluepoint Wind “has decided not to pursue any new offshore wind developments in the United States,” the agency said. Likewise, the floating wind farm developer Golden State Wind agreed to abandon its lease located in the federally designated Morro Bay Wind Energy Area located 20 miles off San Luis Obispo County. The company had hoped to build one of the first offshore wind facilities in California where the continental shelf drops off too steeply for the kinds of wind farms sited on the nation’s Atlantic coast. Under the deal, the developer can recover “approximately $120 million in lease fees after an investment has been made of an equal amount in the development of U.S. oil and gas assets, energy infrastructure, and/or LNG projects along the Gulf Coast.” As part of the agreement, Golden State has opted out of pursuing new offshore wind projects. In a statement, Michael Brown, the chief executive of Ocean Winds North America, credited for “the clarity they have provided with this decision and deal.” The 50% owner of both Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind added: “Our priority remains disciplined capital allocation and delivering reliable energy solutions that create long-term value for ratepayers, partners, and shareholders.”

2. Energy Department unfreezes $430 million for hydropower plants

The Department of Energy said Monday it will soon restart talks to pay out nearly $430 million in payments to American hydroelectric projects that were promised under a Biden-era program. The Trump administration paused the negotiations as the agency reorganized its hydro-related programs under the newly named Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright reassessed droves of investments his predecessors made into clean energy projects. The funding aims to support 293 projects at 212 facilities through a program to maintain and enhance the nation’s fleet of dams. “American hydropower is a key component of this Administration’s vision for an affordable, reliable energy system,” Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson said in a statement. “These actions will modernize our hydropower fleet, bolster our domestic workforce, and bring us closer to realizing that vision.”

The future Fall Line Fusion Power Station (Tesla Model S not included). Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Hydropower is a renewable power source conservative critics of wind and solar tend to like because it operates 24/7 and provides large-scale, long-duration energy storage through pumped-storage systems. Similarly, commercializing fusion power, the so-called holy grail of clean energy, is another technological goal the Trump administration shares with advocates of a lower-carbon future. On Tuesday morning, Commonwealth Fusion Systems became the first fusion power plant developer to apply to join a major grid operator. By submitting its paperwork to link its generators to PJM Interconnection, the largest U.S. wholesale electricity market, Commonwealth Fusion is showing it’s “on track to connect to the electricity grid in time to deliver power in the early 2030s.” The company also announced that it had named the first 400-megawatt ARC power plant it’s building in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the Fall Line Fusion Power Station. The name is a reference to the geological boundary where Virginia’s elevated Piedmont region drops to the Tidewater coastal plain, creating rapids on the James River that Virginians historically built mills on to harness the power from falling water.

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3. Exclusive: Carbon credit trading giant Xpansiv inks a deal to unlock more precise, time-stamped electricity data

Xpansiv, the startup that manages a global exchange for trading carbon credits and renewable energy credits, has signed a deal to bring credits with precise data that allows buyers to match clean electricity consumption to generation on an hour-by-hour basis. The partnership with the software platform Granular Energy, which I can exclusively report for this newsletter, will allow buyers and sellers to access “high-integrity, time-stamped energy data with registry-issued energy attribute certificates through a single platform” for the first time. The push comes amid growing calls for tighter rules and more transparency to avoid greenwashing carbon credits as voluntary programs such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol draw scrutiny and the European Union’s world-first carbon tariff enters its fifth month of operation. “This integrated solution makes granular renewable energy more accessible and easier to manage for independent power producers, utilities, traders, brokers, and corporate buyers,” Russell Karas, Xpansiv’s senior vice president of strategic market solutions, told me in a statement.

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4. Republicans signal support for permitting reform on clean energy

Earlier this month, I told you that SunZia, the nation’s largest renewable energy project ever, had come online. The behemoth project, which included 3.5 gigawatts of wind turbines in New Mexico and 550 miles of transmission lines to funnel the electricity to Arizona’s fast-growing population centers, took just three years to build once construction began in 2023. But “the permitting process took nearly 17 years — almost six times as long,” in a sign of how “a broken permitting system has choked the infrastructure growth that underwrites American strength.” You’d be mistaken for thinking these words came from someone like Senator Martin Heinrich, the New Mexico Democrat and climate hawk who long championed SunZia and more transmission lines to bring renewables online, but told Heatmap’s Jael Holzman last December that he wouldn’t vote for anything that failed to boost renewables. But their author is actually Senator Tom Cotton, the right-wing firebrand Republican from Arkansas. In a Monday op-ed in The Washington Post, Cotton argued that the U.S. “needs more electricity to support data centers, modern manufacturing, defense infrastructure, and economic growth,” in addition to more “domestic access to critical minerals” and processing plants and “a stronger industrial base.” To make that happen, “the country first needs straightforward, enforceable permitting standards and fast, efficient construction,” he wrote. He called for overhauling landmark laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act and establishing “a single agency” to “oversee permitting reviews with firm deadlines and a clear, coordinated decision process.”

The push comes as Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives propose restoring tax credits for wind, solar, and other clean energy technologies that were curtailed by One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The American Energy Dominance Act, introduced Thursday, would remove the accelerated deadlines that Trump’s landmark legislation last year placed on the renewable energy production tax credit, known as 45Y, and the 48E investment tax credits. It would, according to Utility Dive, also make similar changes to the 45V clean hydrogen production credit.

5. New York weakens heat protections for ratepayers facing utility shutoffs

Last month, New York utility executives gathered at a luxury hotel in Miami and boasted about banding together to influence a new state policy that would limit when power companies can turn off customers’ electricity during heat waves because of unpaid bills. A day later, Albany unveiled the policy. Ratepayers in New York City in particular “lost meaningful safeguards,” Laurie Wheelock, the head of the watchdog Public Utility Law Project, told The New York Times. Under its previous agreement with the state, ConEdison, the utility that serves the five boroughs and Westchester, was barred from terminating service for non-payment the day before a 90-degree forecast, the day of, and two days after. The new policy prohibits shutoffs only on the day of the forecast.

Meanwhile, in Seattle, residents of King County are bracing for a double-digit rate hike on sewage service. Following years of modest increases, the Seattle Times reported, county officials proposed a 12.75% spike in sewer rates for next year as the municipality looks for ways to pay for $14 billion in infrastructure upgrades over the next decade. The problem? The famously rainy cultural and financial capital of the Pacific Northwest is facing worsening floods from atmospheric rivers.

THE KICKER

In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Governor Josh Shapiro is taking yet another step to deal with ballooning electricity costs in PJM Interconnection. In a Monday afternoon post on X, he said he’s appointing a new special counsel for energy affordability to be “our newest watchdog to hold utility companies accountable when they try to jack up Pennsylvanians’ energy bills.” The Democrat, widely considered a top contender for his party’s presidential nomination in 2028, said the appointment “will support our efforts to lower costs and put money back in your pockets.”