Seven northeastern states filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Trump administration over a nearly $1 billion deal that ended a French energy company's offshore wind development off the East Coast, according to ABC News.
In March, the U.S. Department of the Interior reached a $928 million agreement with TotalEnergies to halt construction of wind farms and redirect the investment into domestic fossil fuel projects. The Interior Department described the deal as a way to lower energy costs and strengthen national energy security.
Attorneys general in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The coalition alleges the Trump administration illegally used nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money to terminate the wind development and that the deal violates the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which restricts the Interior Department's ability to cancel offshore wind leases.
"The Trump administration is once again trying to kill clean energy projects and destroy good-paying jobs for New Yorkers," New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the coalition, said in a statement.
TotalEnergies' leases would have allowed the company to build large offshore wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina. The filing asks a court to strike down the agreement entirely.
Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the U.S. Department of the Interior and Secretary Doug Burgum, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Acting Director Matthew Giocona, and the U.S. Department of Justice and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department pushed back hard. "The only thing blatantly unlawful here was the process by which these offshore wind leases were negotiated and imposed under the Biden administration," the spokesperson told ABC News. "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 spokesperson said.
The department also said there were serious national security risks that demanded immediate attention.
Wind power currently accounts for about 10 percent of all electricity generated in the United States, according to the Department of Energy. There are more than 75,000 wind turbines operating across the country, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The federal government holds broader authority over offshore wind than onshore projects because offshore installations sit in federal waters.
