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BoiledCabbage 3 hours ago

So TotalEnergies agreed to invest 1 billion is offshore wind during thr last Administration. The current Administration doesn't want any investment in renewables so they attempted to block it. A judge said the attempted block was unlawful. So then immediately the admin said something new and that instead there were "national security concerns" with building wind plants - (Which doesn't pass the smell test to me at all) and the project would be held up while untangling those.

My assumption is the company started getting upset at being toyed around and having their 1 billion investment completely stalled for so long. So the admin said we'll kill the wind if you do our fossil fuels instead. So shift your investment away from wind (we kill it and pay you back for what you investws) if you instead do fossil fuels. And that's what's being done.

So previously the company was spending 1billion on wind and getting some subsidies. Now they spend 2 billion, and get paid 1 billion from the tax payer. For them it's at best a wash, though likely a loss since I haven't heard they get subsidies with the fossil fules. And the tax payer instead of paying for tax credits or low interest loans or other subsidies that were part of wind power portion of the Inflation Reduction Act instead pay a full 1 billion dollars to the company.

> The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy.

1. https://apnews.com/article/trump-offshore-wind-energy-climat...

carlosjobim 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

Sweden and Finland have also banned offshore wind farms for national security reasons.

It's not hard to understand why, if you think about it one further step than your nose.

jondea 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Could you give some sources for this? I can't seem to find anything with a cursory search, but I'd be interested in reading.

TazeTSchnitzel 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2024/11/avslag-pa...

The Swedish government is not blocking all offshore wind, but it is blocking a lot of it, specifically wind parks in areas of the Baltic Sea that could cause trouble for trying to detect Russian military activities.

I don't know what the situation looks like for Finland.

casenmgreen 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Sweden has been blocking offshore farms on the east side of country, where they would be fighting Russia. West side farms are fine.

USA hardly has the same problem, and the current admin are frankly a bunch of low-brow vicious thugs, who in my view wouldn't know a genuine security problem from a large hole in the ground.