Posted on May 6, 2026
The developer Ocean Winds cut controversial deals with the Trump administration last week to abandon two U.S. offshore wind developments. But across the Atlantic, it’s making big strides — especially with floating wind.
On Monday, Ocean Winds said its 30-megawatt project in the south of France has started delivering power to the country’s grid. The wind farm includes three turbines on floating foundations, and its activation represents a key step forward for nascent wind technologies that can generate power in deeper waters than structures anchored to the seafloor.
“The start of electricity production for [the project] is an important milestone for France’s energy sovereignty and for floating wind more broadly,” Marc Hirt, Ocean Winds’ country manager for France, said in a statement.
Ocean Winds is a joint venture of the French energy firm Engie and the Portuguese developer EDP Renewables. The entity is operating or building nearly 4 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, and it is developing an additional 13 GW worldwide.
But in the U.S., Ocean Winds’ ambitions shrank dramatically last week, after the company reached two legally questionable agreements with the Department of the Interior.
The developer and its financial partners agreed to relinquish their leases for Golden State Wind, a floating project off the coast of California, and for Bluepoint Wind, a fixed-bottom wind farm near New Jersey and New York. Ocean Winds owns 50% of the projects, with Global Infrastructure Partners and CPP Investments owning the other halves of the California and New York ventures, respectively. (Ocean Winds’ third U.S. project, SouthCoast Wind near Massachusetts, was not included in the deal.)
In exchange, the Trump administration says it will reimburse the companies nearly $900 million, which they have promised to invest in U.S. liquefied natural gas facilities and other fossil-fuel projects. The arrangement mirrors a nearly $1 billion deal struck by TotalEnergies in March that saw the French oil giant walk away from 4 GW of planned offshore wind projects near New York and North Carolina.
The Trump administration has waged unrelenting attacks on offshore wind since taking power more than a year ago, citing unspecified threats to national security and unfounded concerns about whales’ well-being. But the projects that have survived along the U.S. East Coast are expected to be a crucial electricity source for energy-hungry states. The utility building Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, which is more than 75% complete, said the 2.6-GW project could save its customers $5 billion in fuel costs over its first 10 years of operation.
