HN title (currently reads "US govt pays TotalEnergies nearly $1B to stop US offshore wind projects") is editorialized and it's unclear to me whether it's accurate. The article says:
> We're partnering with TotalEnergies to unleash nearly $1 billion that was tied up in a lease deposit that was directed towards the prior administration's subsidies
What's the deal with this lease deposit and how does "freeing it up" equate to the US govt "paying" TotalEnergies that amount?
Is this a situation where TotalEnergies put down a 1B deposit to lease the seashore from the government and the government is now canceling that agreement and giving them their money back? How does it relate to "subsidies"?
NY Times phrases it as a reimbursement to TotalEnergies for relinquishing wind leases that they paid for. The US made the reimbursement contingent on them investing in fossil fuel projects. "The deal is an extraordinary transfer of taxpayer dollars to a foreign company for the purposes of boosting the production of fossil fuels."
Total waste of $1 Bil of taxpayer dollars. If the oil and gas industry want to shut down wind projects let them pay for it.
> TotalEnergies has committed to invest approximately $1 billion—the value of its renounced offshore wind leases—in oil and natural gas and LNG production in the United States. Following their new investment, the United States will reimburse the company dollar-for-dollar, up to the amount they paid in lease purchases for offshore wind. Under this innovative agreement driven by President Donald J. Trump’s Energy Dominance Agenda, the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.
> For its part, TotalEnergies will invest $928MM, on the following projects in 2026:
The development of Train 1 to 4 of Rio Grande LNG plant in Texas;
The development of upstream conventional oil in Gulf of America and of shale gas production.
Following TotalEnergies’ $928 million in investments in affordable, reliable and secure U.S. energy projects, the United States will terminate the following leases and reimburse the company
The “nearly $1 billion” is clearly referring to “TotalEnergies's $928 million investment in two wind farm leases off the North Carolina and New York coasts.”
I think you’ve stated it too politely. :) The current HN title is a lie meant to generate outrage.
Not sure how it relates to subsidies, but it is what you said. The government is cancelling wind shore projects leased to TotalEnergies under the Biden admin for ~$930 million.
The Trump admin is paying them back with the understanding that TotalEnergies will reinvest the money into oil and gas operations in the US
They are taking money committed to a wind project and redirecting it towards burning fossil fuels - because what other lesson can we take from a global energy shock other than to increase our exposure to the next one? The company itself (France's Total) had already committed to the wind deal, so now the Trump admin is letting them off the hook, and using Trump's irrational refusal to issue licenses for wind power as the excuse for why the deal wasn't working out as originally planned.
If the government would like to pay me to also not build wind turbines, hit me up. I mean, I wasn't going to build any in the first place, but I think this makes me qualified to continue not building any.
The guy is unhinged, hellbent on denial, just to appease his base, who are going bankrupt because of his policies. Would he pay Sun as well to stop shining over the US?
The overrated and very annoying "sun", the so-called "star" that our planet goes around has been going unquestioned for too long! Many people have been asking for a long time, perhaps even before Obama, to remove the sun from the sky and replace it with our beautiful clean coal towers!
It's even stupider than that, it's not even to appease his base, it's a personal grudge. Trump sued a wind energy company to prevent them from building an off-shore wind farm in view of his golf resort in Scotland. He lost that case badly and he has been railing against wind energy specifically ever since.
So far Trump hasn't done much to prevent solar farms from being built, it's only wind turbines that he's exacting his vengeance on like some sort of modern day Don Quixote.
Perhaps they try to please the US government. A previous total CEO "maintained complicated relations with the United States". He died in a plane crash accident. Was it an accident or a murder, perhaps the current Total CEO prefers to be safe than dead.
I really want to see the legal verbiage guaranteeing this right. Like, how many mutations can covid virus get before it legally could be sprayed on patriotic Americans?
Do I have it right that the two projects that this deal kills off haven't seen any construction work yet? These aren't among the projects that the stop work orders were issued against in December, right?
My quick skim, I think you are right. This is getting them to halt new development, by buying them off with the equivalent of the subsidies the current administration cancelled.
>by buying them off with the equivalent of the subsidies the current administration cancelled
no, the billion that is being "paid" is a refund of what Total paid in for the leases. Total paid that into the US govt in anticipation of receiving returns on that investment in the form of "clean energy subsidies".
it is not clear from what is in the news story whether Total is being compensated for the would-have-been future subsidies, or whether Total simply expects to make decent profits from fossil fuels.
if one's interest is in the "clean energy" angle, then this is a "defeat". if one's interest is in reducing govt subsidies, this could be "a win", but it's not exactly clear.
These ones no construction had been started yet AFAIK.
If AI summery is to be trusted, a few other windparks got stopped that where almost done, but got completed anyway after a legal battle. Vineyard Wind 1, Coastal Virginia (CVOW), Empire Wind 1, Revolution Wind, Sunrise Wind.
Again, got it from AI, make of that what you want.
The symbolism, and the stupidity, was there though. As time has gone on it has been more clear every year how intelligent Carter's administration was and how terrible the following administration was. Investing in/promoting solar was just one of many smart moves by Carter that were attacked purely to gain political points that only harmed us in the long run.
This will not be a learned more robustly in the US until one or both of the only two (edit: major) gas turbine manufacturers in the world (GE Vernova, Siemens Energy) suffer a tail risk event causing their failure. Backlog for new gas turbines is ~7 years, as of this comment. Continued production capacity is a function of how fragile those two companies are.
Yes, but their production volume is limited (imho) compared to the two companies I mentioned. Good callout regardless. I'll have a post put together to share here enumerating and comparing.
(i track global fossil generation production capacity as a component of tracking the overall rate of global energy transition to clean energy and electrification, but some of my resources are simply an excel spreadsheet)
People laugh at this, but anthracite genuinely is cleaner than other coal in every regard save CO2 emissions. People just think it's a joke because they've come to believe that CO2 is the only coal emission worth caring about, which definitely isn't true.
No, the criticism isn't because people get caught up about CO2 -- it's because "cleaner than other coal" is a very low bar to meet to be calling something "clean" full stop.
Also "clean coal" is not a type of coal being burnt (although that does matter too) but pollution control systems added to coal plants.
Anthracite burns clean enough to use in a pizza oven. If your neighbor told you he was going to install a new furnace and offered you the choice of it burning wood pellets or anthracite, from a smell standpoint you should absolutely choose the anthracite.
Anthracite, in these regards, is very different from bituminous coal.
Undoubtedly. Doesn't change the fact that one kind of coal burns smokeless with a clean blue flame while the other will cover everything for miles in a film of soot and tar.
The smell of wood might be nice for flavor, but that's beyond the point of anthracite being clean. That particulate pollution from wood burning is severe compared to the smoke you'll get off anthracite, which is virtually nonexistent.
Regardless of how good it might be at being the cleanest dirty thing, it's not what the US trope of "clean coal" refers to anyway. Anthracite is not used in the US to generate power because it is too expensive.
"Clean coal" is like saying "a fast snail". Sure it can be faster than other snails, but even if it's twice as fast as the second fastest snail, it's still a snail and I'll still laugh when an ant runs circles around it.
It's awesome the US hasn't destabilized one of those neighbors and alienated the other one by declaring it the prospective 51st state. Soft power really is America's super power.
> The US (with Canada and Mexico) is self-sufficient with fossil fuel energy.
Oh boy can't wait for the reenactment of third reich intervening peacefully in czechoslovakia, for their own safety and wellbeing of course, and not at all for the resources they're hoarding, the filthy hoarders.
Sure, if we build out refining capacity for the next ten years. Then we're golden until we run out of the finite well of combustible dead algae. So if you think we can revitalize American manufacturing and resource processing starting now, and you're okay with those investments being worthless in a few decades, and you don't give a shit about rendering the planet significantly less habitable to human life, then yeah, we're totally self-sufficient with fossil fuels.
Or we could, you know, pull energy out of the air and sun, a strategy which will be viable until our star dies.
Alberta tar sands have hundreds of years worth of reserves. They're also expensive and incredibly dirty to extract and emit significantly more CO2 during processing than a light oil well will. (The tar is usually melted by heating with natural gas).
I'm quite confident cheap renewable alternatives will make the tar sands inviable far before they run out.
Some good news though, with the war in Iran the spiking oil price means that Albertan executives can ramp up operations and stay quite profitable! Push the price to 200/barrel and we'll just strip mine the entire province after airlifting out Calgary and Edmonton.
I do find the slow Sovietization of America funny, both mentally and economically. The year is 2050, autarky on energy has been established, the markets cut off, politics in the hands of erratic and geriatric leaders. Americans proudly drive 30 year old Fords the way people used to drive Ladas, while China exports green energy, cars and infrastructure to the world.
The US is unable to implement export controls so consuming less than it creates doesnt mean theres enough since producers will export if international prices are better
I'm investing in property in places that will allow me to get permanent residency without jumping through too many hoops.
You theoretically lose yield compared to the S&P average - but if you're hedging your bets against the US possibly going to shit - the S&P is unlikely to perform as well as its historic average IFF that scenario unfolds.
Seems like a better hedge than gold, but my crystal ball isn't working.
Pay may be numerically less in the eu, but rather than me trying to convince you, try on youtube: 'why I left the USA for europe'.
There are very many.!
Lol thats trivial if you actually know history and politics a tiny bit - Switzerland. 800 years of most free citizens in the world (lost that armed part but still valid for whole Europe with maybe Finland having similar numbers).
Salaries in tech sector still give you higher overall quality of life than most of US can ever offer. Then you have - extremely beautiful nature at your doorstep, more top notch destinations like Italy and France just at the border, very low criminality compared to US, very good free healthcare, very good free education including top notch public universities, very well functioning social programs. One doesn't have to be ashamed their taxes go to killing innocent civilians half around the world (although at this point US population including folks here seems fine with that). And so on and on and on.
Also, you don't spend your whole active life getting it and (almost) burning out for that, 40h/week and then you can live your life and chase dreams and passions.
Swiss people are quite rude and unaccepting of foreigners, even foreigners who grow up there. I don't think they have room for Americans wishing to leave.
Americans have a twisted outlook because despite muh racism USA has allowed more foreigners in than any other country, a quite sizeable chunk of them via overstay or illegal immigration, so we think we could do the same thing and just as an average person up and move somewhere else because we see that it can be done and most of the time it is at least possible to get away with it unless you have bad luck or do something stupid.
Argentina and Brazil are about the only other countries where you can almost get away with this and legalize your existence (Argentina in particular has constitution that says essentially if you survive 2 years, you are basically citizen) , although most of Africa wouldn't bother to enforce it (South Africa in particular has almost as much illegal immigration per capita as USA although with a wide band of possible error in estimates, and they can't meaningfully enforce it).
Otherwise you need investments (usually 50k+), permanent pension, top-tier education, a professional job offer, cultural/family ties, or connections with the political apparatus. Switzerland in particular is on extreme hard mode for a non-EU citizen to get citizenship.
Quite a few swiss residents would be happy to have this (or at least some more cost control).
There's mandatory health insurance with preexisting condition coverage, but it's not free (tho it's partially tax supported, depending on location and income).
I know this US government is fully-committed to fossil fuels and about as rabidly anti-renewables as can be, but I'm still shocked to see things like this. And I'm fully aware of Trump's Scotland experience and how that contributed or directly led to this, but, still, shocked. And then I'm also shocked because I know that at least half, if not a good bit more, of US citizens are in agreement with this strategy. Not sure how I can still be shocked but here I am.
And I say that not as some rabid renewables person. Just the insane binary thinking, regardless of the dollars and cronyism at work. There's zero room for nuance, which I guess is my biggest complaint about the world at large.
Aside: people who think climate change will be the death of us all, and sooner than later, I get it, and I fully appreciate you pushing for a cleaner and more livable world. At this point I'm just going to sit in the corner and hope you, and China, figure it out and then it spreads quickly to the rest of the world, which I think at this point is pretty much a foregone conclusion barring a nuclear war (will refrain from commenting about how the likelihood of that has ticked up the past couple of weeks in an area teeming with (sarcastically shocked this time!) fossil fuels).
This might surprise you, but only a minority of eligible voters vote. So while it looks like 50% of people believe this is a good strategy and we should do it based on the percentage of people who voted for Trump, in reality a minority of people in the US believe this is good. The problem is that few of those people vote.
So in all seriousness, if we could get a significant fraction of the young people who are negatively impacted by these policies to actually vote against the people enacting them we could see real change. But if we keep telling them everyone believes in this stuff and your vote doesn't count and so on then nobody will do anything about it until it's too late and we're shooting at or throwing rocks at each other.
> if we keep telling them everyone believes in this stuff and your vote doesn't count and so on
I don’t know if you can fix lazy. Turning out new voters basically happens once a generation. The rest tell themselves tales that their vote could never matter, and in doing that, subtly endorse the status quo.
This is kind of why I ultimately find cynicism to inherently lazy. This is coming from a very cynical (and often lazy) person.
It takes no effort to be cynical, I can tell myself "everything sucks and I shouldn't care because nothing matters anyway" and justify not doing anything I want. I can justify not voting, I can justify not helping someone if I see them struggling on the street, I can justify not even improving myself.
In the last couple years I have been trying my best to override my cynical tendencies because ultimately I think that they are bad for me. I vote in every election I am able to because even if it's infinitesimal, I at least tried to do something to avoid whom I deem bad people getting into office.
Agree. And look, being cynical and just minding your own matters is fine. It means the system is working well enough for that person that doing anything isn’t actually worth it. But those people are also electorally—and more broadly, politically—irrelevant. So if you’re trying to do something, betting on them tends to be a losing pitch.
I relate to the feeling. I am extremely cynical. I fully believe the world is fucked and we are in for a very turbulent 50-100 years. I still work to improve myself and the world because WTF else are you going to do? At least doing something feels better than doing nothing.
Your comment is extremely reductionist and reverses causality for a large number of voters. Both political parties have multi-decade track records of aggressively supporting pro-corporate political agendas at the expense of their constituency. So in light of literal decades of watching prospects decline regardless of which party is currently in power many voters (correctly) conclude that their vote will not lead to meaningful change.
> in reality a minority of people in the US believe this is good.
I'm not convinced. The reason why many of these people don't vote is because they don't think Trump is that bad. They probably don't agree with everything, but that's true no matter who is in office.
I'm always gobsmacked when Trump says things like, "We need to get rid of all the wind turbines! They are killing all the birds! Look at the foot of any tower and you'll see nothing but dead birds!"
Is there a single person who things Trump gives a single damn about the birds? It is obviously just a pretext.
Wind turbines are also miniscule compared to issues like pollution, land use, windows, and cats. Also you can track migration and turn them off at key times if it's a huge issue (this is part of the motivation for research I'm going to do later as part of my master's dealing with tracking hawk flocks via weather radar).
Wind turbines are an issue but approximately 0% of the 30% decline in US birds since the 1970s
Edit: to be specific to Trump, funding for bird conservation has been an issue under his administrations and he's weakened things like migratory bird treaty act. Obviously he doesn't care about birds and the bird community is very frustrated with him
Never thought about it, but that's a great point and comparison. From quick Google search: 365 million and 988 million birds die every year from window collisions (that's US alone). Windmills/turbines: 140,000 and 679,000. Then if you do per windmill vs. per building obviously the windmills are going to "win," but it's the absolute that would seem to matter in this case.
As you said, that has nothing to do with the actual preference for fossils vs. turbines, but a great point nonetheless.
> "TotalEnergies CEO Pouyanné said offshore wind was 'not the most affordable way to produce electricity' in the US, which he identified as being natural gas-fired power plants. [...] So it was a win-win dialog," he said."
Pouyanné is only 62 years old. If, as I hope, there are criminal trials in the future for those responsible for recklessly endangering life on this planet, then I hope that he is still alive and that statements like this form part of the prosecution. Unfortunately Trump will almost certainly be long dead by then.
Theses wind farms have not even started construction yet. Once Don Quixote is out of office, some future administration undoubtedly will start wind farm construction.
Trump wrecks the global energy economy and his next move is to increase our dependence on it? They don't make enough dimensions for the type of chess this brainiac is playing.
Kidnapping the leader of a sovereign nation to put them on show trial and plotting to steal the country's natural resources. Blockading and strangling an island country to the point of economic collapse. Opining out loud about annexing their northern neighbours. The list goes on and on..
None of the institutions function, or do the thing that we used to explain to children what they do. The whole thing demonstrably does not exist. You're welcome to describe my view with whatever pejorative you prefer.
> do the thing that we used to explain to children what they do. The whole thing demonstrably does not exist
Something misfunctioning doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. A massive economy, industry and war machine are still here. Pretending that doesn’t exist because it doesn’t work the way we like is an expression of exasperation, not a description of reality.
This level of doomerism is absurd. Of course the US will survive this administration. I blame the news for making every breathe by whichever opposition seem like the next WWIII.
The land will be there. (most of) people will be there. What parent probably meant is losing everything good and positive United States of America represented in past 80+ years, internally and globally.
That is gone my friend, with the wind like a sulfuric fart, for good. US is becoming a global terrorist and enemy #2 of free world and certainly whole Europe (right after its biggest and only 'friend', russia which coincidentally keeps trying to make you a thing of the past). This comes from somebody who strongly believed in your role in global hegemony despite your numerous well documented fuckups in the past. All on the whims of one visibly mentally sick man, with absolutely nobody standing up to him despite nobody really believing in any of that bullshit. No principles, just plain greed and firm fuck-the-rest approach. Right now, if Europe needs a strong big ally it will be #1 China, and then... nothing.
The fact you voted him in, and he still has massive support, and there has been 0 overthrow attempts of the biggest traitor to US in its history tells me and everybody else in the world many things, but nothing positive. Even if next election, if they will happen, will have 98% win of the democracts with that ridiculous unfair and undemocratic system of yours, it won't change a permanent shift that started and keeps happening. US has no real allies, in same vein russia or China has no real allies.
Empires rise and fall, inevitably, there was never a reason to think US would be an exception.
This seems like a good thing considering the “TotalEnergies CEO Pouyanné said offshore wind was "not the most affordable way to produce electricity" in the US, which he identified as being natural gas-fired power plants.”
Not sure why we’re building offshore wind plants when land based gas plants provide cheaper energy. We need to be reducing the cost of living for working people and not raising it. Our goal should be to reduce people’s cost of living and we should align our actions towards those goals.
Does the offshore wind energy costs include externalities of fabricating, assembling, shipping, installing, maintaining and decommissioning the turbines? Does it also include bird losses and whale harms?
Wind and solar are consistently the cheapest forms of new energy generation. Pouyanné knows that. He is being a politician here, saying what he knows will play well with the current administration. When in Rome...
We should not be distracting ourselves with offshore wind technology and should instead be focusing on expanding cheap power generation (gas, coal) and pushing for new nuclear builds and more fusion research to address environmental concerns.
In 2026 utilities will install 86 GW of new generation, of which only 6 GW will be natural gas. The other 80 GW will all be solar, wind and battery storage. Utilities are doing this because of economics. Environment is secondary. Even oil and gas rich Texas has been aggressively adding solar, wind and battery.
I believe this has a lot to do with Coastal Radar IIRC. I believe that fact will be lost in the myriad of identify politics and finger point which the comment section is about to delve into.
This was a known risk for decades on every coastal wind project, and would have been a part of the earliest risk assessments for this project. The people building these projects are generally not as stupid as the administration trying to tear them down.
IIRC it does not. There has been some discussions by folks around it, but so far no evidence has pointed to it being a primary motivation.
The evidence we do have is that republicans have had a party vendetta against clean energy for decades, and their current leader has had a personal vendetta specifically against wind turbines, also for decades.