Posted on December 2, 2024
The French company argued that it would wait “four years” for another president more favorable to wind turbines. The wind farm was approved as part of the Biden administration’s green policy, which the president-elect pledged to reevaluate.
TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne announced that the company would put “on hold” its project to develop an offshore wind farm off the coast of New York. The reason is the return of Donald Trump, he said at an industry conference in London covered by Bloomberg.
The French energy multinational bought the rights to install wind turbines in the area in an auction that raised $4.4 billion. At the time, in October last year, the auction was celebrated by Democrats as a milestone in President Joe Biden’s green campaign. The president promised that the United States would be 100% reliant on renewable energy by 2035.
The tide turned with Trump’s victory. During his campaign, he spoke out against offshore wind farms. He even promised during a speech that he would issue an executive order to ban them: “We’re going to make sure that ends on Day 1.” The president-elect claimed that they are the “most expensive energy there is” and that they “ruin the environment,” emphasizing reports of the risk they pose to wildlife.
Dubbed Attentive Energy, the wind farm was to occupy 85,000 acres of seabed more than 42 miles off the coast of Seaside Heights, N.J. Total Energies says it would have had the potential to generate 3,000 megawatts, enough to power 1.4 million homes. The project was in its early stages.
Pouyanne said that this was not the end of the project, but that he would take it up again when another president, someone more sympathetic to the cause, takes over the White House. “I told my team, we will see the project in New York in four years,” he said, according to Bloomberg. “But the advantage is that it is only for four years.”
