Story 4: Seven States Sue Trump Administration Over Offshore Wind Settlement

Paul Gerke:
Story four this week, Julia Jacobo from ABC News: Seven States Sue Trump Administration Over Nearly $1 Billion Deal to Halt Offshore Wind Farms.

Another lawsuit involving offshore wind and the Trump administration. Perhaps, Mike Casey, one reaps what one sows.

Mike Casey:
Yeah, seven northeastern states filed a lawsuit on Tuesday, accusing the Trump administration of illegally using nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money to kill offshore wind deals off the East Coast.

The deal, struck in March, had the Interior Department paying TotalEnergies $928 million to halt construction of offshore wind farms off New York and North Carolina and to redirect that investment into fossil fuels.

The lawsuit alleges $795 million in reimbursement was drawn from the Judgment Fund, which states say was an unlawful use of those funds.

The filing also accuses the deal of violating the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which restricts Interior's ability to cancel offshore wind leases.

The Interior Department pushed back, saying the only thing "blatantly unlawful" was how the Biden administration negotiated the original leases and that the settlements were reviewed and approved by the Justice Department.

The department also cited serious national security risks from the projects, though they have never been able to say what these security risks are.

Paul, your thoughts?

Paul Gerke:
My thoughts are too numerous for a roughly 15-minute show, so I'll stick to two key talking points.

The administration framed the deal as lowering energy costs and strengthening energy security. States have argued it does the opposite, depriving them of, in some cases, gigawatts of power that they were counting on in their long-term plans.

And as we've talked about on this show a few times, TotalEnergies is not the first wind developer this administration has paid to walk away.

We've talked about previous large sums of money, and it feels almost like a mob thing, Mike, where it's like, "Here, just take this money and go away from this project that was about to help millions of people."

It likely won't be the last, unfortunately.

We can't talk about it anymore, though, because Ben Storrow is tired of waiting.

Mike, our last story.

Story 5: Ready to Cave? How Liberal Governors Warmed to Trump's Pipelines

Mike Casey:
And who's not a mobster is Ben Storrow. He and Scott Waldman are reporters for E&E News, and they wrote a story, Ready to Cave? How Liberal Governors Warmed to Trump's Pipelines.

Hey Ben, welcome to the show. Really like having you. Thank you for putting up with us and our pre-show antics. There are many and annoying.

But hey, we want people to read this story. If they haven't had a chance yet, what's the big bottom-line takeaway?

Ben Storrow:
The takeaway is that the governors really in southern New England—what we're talking about, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island—have been putting out a lot of signals saying that they're open to considering pipelines.

The big question that remains is what exactly that looks like, whether we're talking about greenfield projects or whether we're talking about expansions. The size, there's a lot of unknowns.

But just the mere rhetoric and political signaling is a really big shift, particularly in Massachusetts, where Governor Healey had really tried to stake herself out as a pipeline opponent in the past.

Paul Gerke:
Ben, from what you were able to gather, are these pipelines really necessary? Is there a big demand or otherwise a need here other than the Trump administration's demand that that's how we get even on whatever was negotiated here?

Ben Storrow:
I mean, this is a longstanding debate in New England.

It's a region that burns a lot of natural gas, both for electricity and for heating.

I think there's two things outside of the politics that have really changed.

One is just the pace of development for offshore wind and the transmission project in Maine linking the region to Canada. It took a decade.

We have two offshore wind projects serving New England that are probably going to come online this year, but it just took so long.

I think the region is looking around, and it has previously used oil and LNG as backup because of this limited pipeline capacity.

So the question I think a lot of people in the region are asking is if you can't do offshore wind, if it takes so long to do these transmission projects, maybe we do want to do natural gas.

The other thing that is a big sea change is electricity demand.

Most of it in New England isn't due to things like data centers. Power is too expensive in New England to really have a lot of data center development.

But because of electrification, ISO New England is projecting gradual electricity demand growth, which is a really big shift for a region which, because of energy efficiency and rooftop solar, had been seeing demand go down.

So I think that's sort of the underlying dynamics, and then you add in Trump and the whole political dynamic, and I think that's how you get to where we are today.

Mike Casey:
Ben, did you find in your reporting there's an interest, a company that would particularly benefit from these pipelines, or is it a cast of many?

Ben Storrow:
I think the two central players are Enbridge, who are the operators of the Algonquin pipeline.

They've definitely been active. We've reported that they met with the White House. They're clearly talking with the governors as well.

What they're targeting is about a 10% expansion of New England's largest existing pipeline.

The sense that I get from people is that if there's a project that's going to be done, it would probably be that one.

The other project that's out there that I've encountered a lot of skepticism about from people in New England is the Constitution Pipeline in New York, running from Pennsylvania to just outside of Albany.

You would need some additional investment to get that gas into New England.

It's interesting because that project gets pitched as a project to bring gas to New England. It actually wouldn't. You would need additional investment.

I think the political lift makes that harder.

We can't say at this point where the governors or the companies or the administration are going to end up, but that's the sense I've gotten from talking to people so far.

Paul Gerke:
Ben, if we've got time for one more, has anything from these liberal governors been floated as sort of an exchange for opening up conversations about these pipelines?

We've heard stories about maybe advancing some of their own clean energy goals by sort of caving on this issue.

Ben Storrow:
It's funny that's a really funny question because in the wake of this piece, I've been asked multiple times by people that exact question.

And it is obviously one of the questions that I've had.

Clearly last year, in the case of Connecticut, when Revolution Wind got stopped, Governor Lamont was having those types of conversations with the Trump administration.

To answer your question in brief, I don't know.

I think the other thing that's interesting and that I've picked up on within the clean energy community and the environmental community in New England is, if the governors are going to engage with Trump on this, why aren't they asking for the moon?

Give us our offshore wind. Give us our transmission projects. That's what we want.

If you want your pipeline, a lot of people wanted to know whether they're pushing for that deal.

I have no indication really that they are.

That doesn't mean anything, but it is one of the big questions out there.

Paul Gerke:
I'm an everyman. I ask the people's questions, Mike Casey.

Thank you, Ben. I appreciate that.

Cleantecher of the Week

Mike Casey:
Good you came down off Mount Olympus to live amongst the people where you belong.

But, Your Highness, we do have to go to our Cleantecher of the Week.

Paul Gerke:
All right, stick around for just a second, Ben.

Our Cleantecher of the Week is Kevin Dauphin. He runs a group of veterans involved in cleantech. He's got .50 caliber shell casings that he uses as lobbying swag.

Mike's over there nodding.

Congrats to Kevin Dauphin, our Cleantecher of the Week.

Mike Casey:
It's cool. I saw them. These things are so cool. On the side they say, "Energy security is national security."

They're super cool.

Anyway, I want to give him a shout out. He's a buddy of mine.

We also want to thank Alex Petersen and Clare Quirin for helping gather these stories.

Paul Gerke:
Yeah, appreciate you guys accommodating our schedules this week too with Mike out on assignment.

Where are you again, Mike?

Mike Casey:
I'm in Houston at Clean Power.

Paul Gerke:
Clean Power. Go say hi to Mike if you're out there and he's still around. If you're listening to this later, he's probably not.

But anyway, you'll find us back right here next week on This Week in Clean Tech.

You won't see Ben, but one more shoutout to him for joining this week's episode.

Please subscribe, leave a little feedback, share a story suggestion if you enjoyed the last 15 minutes or so.

You can read all the articles we talk about every week. They're linked in the episode description as well as in the post where this thing lives on Factorthis.com.

Until next time, be good people.

Mike Casey:
And if you come back, I'll make sure Paul's better behaved. How's that for a deal?

All right. Great story. Thank you all. See you next week.