On April 27, 2026, the Trump administration announced two new payouts totaling nearly $900 million to energy companies that have agreed to walk away from federally-leased offshore wind projects. Bluepoint Wind, an early-stage development off the coasts of New Jersey and New York, and Golden State Wind, a floating offshore wind project off the California coast, will receive the funds in exchange for ending their leases. The Washington Times first reported the deals.
The payouts come after a federal judge in December vacated Trump's executive order blocking offshore wind energy projects, ruling the order unlawful. The judge sided with state attorneys general from 17 states and Washington, D.C. who challenged the order. Unable to use executive action to block the projects, the administration is now using federal money to pay developers to drop them voluntarily — a maneuver that achieves the policy outcome the court rejected, at significant taxpayer expense.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the deals as cost-savings: the offshore wind projects 'made more financial sense' under the Biden administration, which offered tax credits the Republican-controlled Congress eliminated last summer. The framing is incomplete. The federal government is now paying nearly $900 million to cancel projects that would have produced electricity at private expense, in exchange for those projects not being built. The math of the comparison — tax credits that would have flowed to operating projects vs. lump-sum payouts to cancel projects entirely — favors the Biden approach by a substantial margin.
This is the second wave of cancellation payouts. The Trump administration previously paid Equinor to walk away from the Empire Wind project off New York. Five U.S. East Coast offshore wind projects are paused under separate Interior orders citing 'national security' concerns. The pattern across the administration is consistent: when courts block direct executive action against renewable energy, federal money is redirected to achieve the same outcome via private contract.
On June 17, 2026, the Interior Department added a fourth round, agreeing to pay Invenergy $765 million (a refund of what the company paid for its leases, drawn from the Treasury's Judgment Fund) to surrender four offshore wind leases off New York, California, and Maine. Invenergy said it would redirect the money to natural-gas plants and geothermal projects. The deal pushed the administration's total payouts to cancel offshore wind past $2.5 billion.
Related entries: The Interior Department Is Paying Energy Companies Billions to Cancel Offshore Wind Projects and Invest in Fossil Fuels Instead.