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Led by New York, the attorneys general argue that the administration’s agreement to reimburse the energy giant for abandoning its offshore wind leases is illegal.
New York and six other Democratic-led states are challenging the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to pay private energy firms to abandon their U.S. offshore wind projects.
On Tuesday, the coalition of blue states sued the U.S. Department of the Interior over its March agreement with French oil giant TotalEnergies. Under the deal, TotalEnergies forfeited its lease for a large offshore wind area near New York and New Jersey. In exchange, Interior said it would “reimburse” the company for the $795 million it paid in lease fees, money that TotalEnergies promised to put toward fossil fuel projects.
At the time, former Interior employees and offshore wind experts questioned whether the department could legally carry out its unprecedented payback plan. Now, attorneys general from seven states are calling it an “unlawful” agreement that misuses taxpayer dollars. The action came after the government tried repeatedly and ultimately unsuccessfully to block construction of offshore wind farms along the East Coast.
“The Trump administration is once again trying to kill clean energy projects and destroy good-paying jobs for New Yorkers,” Letitia James, the New York attorney general, said on Tuesday in a statement.
New York is joined in the lawsuit by Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont, which claim that the lease cancellation harms the states’ economies, power grids, and climate targets. State leaders and utility regulators in the region had been anticipating a massive influx of offshore wind power from projects like TotalEnergies’ to meet their soaring electricity needs in the coming years, especially during fierce winter storms and heat waves that threaten sweeping blackouts.
“New Jersey needs more power supply,” Jennifer Davenport, the New Jersey attorney general, said in a statement to Canary Media. “The federal government’s lawless attack on clean energy development is bad for the grid, for our economy, and for ratepayers.”
In 2022, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies, called Attentive Energy, won a lease for over 84,000 acres off the coast of New York and New Jersey through a competitive federal auction, which drew the highest bids in the nation’s history. TotalEnergies said it aimed to develop over 3 gigawatts of offshore power in the large, shallow swath of ocean and provide clean electricity for more than a million homes across the two states.
The five New England states joining the lawsuit were also slated to benefit from the wind farm, since they regularly import energy from New York through a high-voltage interconnection, according to their filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Interior officially canceled Attentive Energy’s lease in April, saying it was acting in the public interest.
TotalEnergies signed an identical but separate deal with Interior this spring to cancel the $133 million lease for its planned 1-GW Carolina Long Bay wind farm near North Carolina. Another developer, Ocean Winds, has also inked agreements to relinquish offshore wind leases near California and in waters off New York and New Jersey, which totaled nearly $900 million.
This week’s lawsuit could provide a “roadmap” of sorts for other states looking to fight the Trump administration’s lease-cancellation deals, said Tony Irish, a former Interior attorney who now works for the organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
“I’ve been hoping for this day, and I’m glad that it’s here,” he said, adding that the New York–led lawsuit “brings a phenomenal array of valid claims” against the agreement with Attentive Energy.
In their suit, the attorneys general argue that the Trump administration’s arrangement violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which limits Interior’s ability to cancel offshore wind leases and requires the department to hold a hearing weighing the pros and cons. The coalition also maintains that Interior violated the Judgment Fund Act because of how it paid back TotalEnergies’ $795 million in lease fees. The fund uses taxpayer dollars to settle lawsuits and claims against federal agencies, but the two parties aren’t settling any active litigation.
The attorneys general are asking the D.C. court to strike down the agreement, vacate the lease cancellation, and stop the Trump administration from taking further steps to implement the deal.
Interior, for its part, defended its actions with the offshore wind developers.
“Let’s be clear: these were voluntary agreements,” a spokesperson said by email on Tuesday. “No one was forced to sign them. Moreover, these settlements were reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice, underscoring that they went through the appropriate channels.”
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