Senate Democrats have been threatening to blow up permitting negotiations on Capitol Hill if the Trump administration committed “further mischief” by attacking solar and wind energy.
But what some critics denounced Monday as a “completely nonsensical” billion-dollar corporate bailout against two offshore wind projects has not risen to that level — at least not yet.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said an Interior Department agreement to pay TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to cancel their offshore wind leases was “not good” but stopped short of again declaring the permitting negotiations off.
“If stupid stuff like that continues to pile up, there is a point,” he said. “It could in accumulation with other things have adverse consequences [on permitting talks].”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Monday — at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston — announced a plan that effectively redirects investment in wind projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina to oil and gas development in Texas.
Whitehouse and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, halted talks on a long-desired permitting package after Interior moved to block construction of five other offshore wind projects late last year.
Whitehouse says the Total announcement is different. He called it a “crappy transaction” but not against the law like he says last year’s stop-work orders were.
“It’s one that uses basically taxpayer money to allow the fossil fuel industry to buy out its competition so it can sell more product, but it’s not per se illegal,” Whitehouse said.
The administration cited national security concerns for wanting to halt the five offshore wind projects. It has not appealed rulings allowing them to continue but underlying litigation continues.
When it comes to the Total deal, Burgum said the company’s offshore wind projects were not in the national interest. The French energy giant appeared to agree.
“Considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest, we have decided to renounce offshore wind development in the United States, in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees,” CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in a statement.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said she was optimistic the Total development would not derail bipartisan discussions.
“It’s not the equivalent to what had happened before … when [the Interior Department] stopped projects that were fully permitted,” Capito said Monday.
Nick Loris, president of policy for C3 Solutions, an energy consulting firm, said lawmakers staying the course may bode well for a broad permitting law becoming a reality.
“It feels like we’re at a point where both sides are seeing the forest for the trees,” Loris said. But he added: “Granted, it’s still fragile and there’s a long way to go.”
‘Colossal waste’
Democrats — and some Republicans — have been lining up to question the Total wind deal with the administration ever since The New York Times reported last week it was under consideration.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the plan a “corrupt giveaway to the fossil fuel industry.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) called it “stupid.” “If I’m getting the facts straight, we are using American taxpayer dollars to pay a French corporation a billion dollars to reduce the amount of electricity available to us,” he said.
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), ranking member on the House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, on Monday called the move “indefensible.”
“At the exact moment energy prices are skyrocketing, the Trump Administration is paying to cancel new domestic sources of energy production,” she said in a statement. “It’s completely nonsensical.”
Reps. Andrew Garbarino and Nicole Malliotakis, both New York Republicans who are moderates on environmental issues, last week scoffed at the plan. “It sounds like a colossal waste of taxpayer money,” said Malliotakis.
Defending the announcement Monday, Burgum in a statement said, “Offshore wind is one of the most expensive, unreliable, environmentally disruptive, and subsidy-dependent schemes ever forced on American ratepayers and taxpayers.”
But Sara Chieffo, senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters, said, “The Trump administration is taking $1 billion of our taxpayer money to stop affordable clean energy from coming online and to expand dirty, expensive, and volatile fossil fuels.”
Tom Pyle, president of right-leaning American Energy Alliance, said the deal didn’t amount to much. “Since Total agreed it, and it was projects that had already been halted voluntarily, I don’t know that it’s really relevant,” he said.
Pavan Acharya and Andy Picon contributed reporting.
