NEW LEVELS OF STUPID JUST DROPPED: AMERICA IS NOW PAYING BILLIONS TO MAKE WIND POWER GO AWAY
The Survival Journals — August 7, 2026
Just when you think American energy policy cannot get any stranger, somebody finds another floor below the basement.
The Trump administration has reached a $1.22-billion agreement with German energy giant RWE under which the company will surrender three offshore-wind leases in federal waters off California, New York and Louisiana.
Read that again.
The United States isn’t paying $1.22 billion to build wind turbines.
It is paying $1.22 billion as part of an agreement that gets wind projects off the drawing board.
And according to reporting on the deal, this isn’t an isolated case. It is the fifth offshore-wind exit agreement of its kind this year, bringing the government’s total commitments connected with terminating offshore-wind leases to nearly $4 billion.
That deserves a closer look.
THE HUMBOLDT PROJECT
One of the leases being surrendered is RWE’s Canopy Offshore Wind project off Humboldt County in Northern California.
RWE won the federal lease in the 2022 California offshore-wind auction and envisioned a floating wind project capable of producing as much as 1.6 gigawatts of electricity.
According to RWE’s own project materials, that was potentially enough electricity for more than 600,000 California homes.
This wasn’t a wind farm that was going to appear tomorrow morning. It was still in the development and planning stages, with construction not expected until the 2030s. Considerable environmental review, permitting, transmission development, engineering and investment still stood between a federal lease and spinning turbines.
That’s important because there is enough political exaggeration flying around already. We don’t need to add any.
But the potential project was real.
The lease was real.
The development work was real.
And now RWE is walking away.
FOLLOW THE $1.22 BILLION
Here is where the story becomes extraordinary.
Under the agreement, RWE will receive approximately $1.22 billion, roughly reflecting what it had paid for its offshore-wind lease interests.
RWE isn’t simply taking that money back to Germany and putting it in a vault.
According to reporting on the agreement, approximately $900 million is expected to go toward an LNG project in Louisiana, while roughly $300 million is associated with turbines for 15 natural-gas peaker plants in the United States.
So we have moved from:
Potential offshore wind
to
Federal reimbursement
to
New investment in natural-gas infrastructure.
That is not some accidental side effect of the policy.
That is the policy.
AND THEN COMES THE WORD “SUBSIDIES”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the administration’s approach by arguing that Americans deserve an energy system based on common sense rather than one dependent on costly subsidies and technologies that cannot meet current demand.
Fair enough. Governments absolutely should scrutinize subsidies.
But there’s an elephant standing in the room wearing a $1.22-billion price tag.
If your argument against wind power is that taxpayers shouldn’t have to prop up expensive energy choices, it is perfectly reasonable for taxpayers to ask:
What exactly do you call spending $1.22 billion in a deal designed to make offshore-wind leases disappear?
You can call it a settlement.
You can call it reimbursement.
You can call it an energy-security agreement.
You can wrap it in whatever government language you like.
The taxpayer still sees $1.22 billion.
And RWE still walks away from offshore wind while putting comparable capital into natural gas.
THIS IS BIGGER THAN ONE WIND FARM
The most troubling part isn’t Humboldt.
It’s the pattern.
The Trump administration has made its opposition to offshore wind unmistakable. Earlier agreements have involved other developers surrendering offshore-wind leases while capital is redirected toward natural gas, LNG, geothermal or other energy projects favored by the administration.
The administration’s argument is that this will produce more reliable and affordable energy.
Supporters of the policy have a legitimate point worth acknowledging: wind generation is intermittent. The wind doesn’t blow on command, and an electrical grid needs dispatchable generation, storage, transmission and other resources to keep electricity available every second of every day.
Natural gas can provide that dispatchable power.
That’s a real energy-policy debate.
But that isn’t the only question here.
The other question is whether the federal government should spend billions of dollars unwinding renewable-energy leases that the federal government itself previously auctioned.
That’s a very different debate.
GOVERNMENT POLICY SHOULDN’T OPERATE LIKE A YO-YO
Imagine trying to make a 20- or 30-year investment decision when America’s energy policy can reverse almost completely every four years.
One administration auctions offshore-wind leases.
Companies pay hundreds of millions or billions of dollars for them.
They hire people.
They conduct surveys.
They begin environmental and engineering work.
Communities start planning infrastructure.
Then another administration arrives and decides the technology itself should effectively be pushed out of federal waters.
Then taxpayers reimburse companies for surrendering the leases.
Regardless of whether you love wind turbines or hate the sight of them, that is a terrible environment for long-term investment.
Energy infrastructure takes decades to plan, finance, permit, construct and operate.
You cannot build a serious national energy system if every presidential election threatens to tear up the previous government’s blueprint.
AND THE COURTS ARE GETTING INVOLVED
The administration’s broader campaign against wind energy has also been running into legal resistance.
In Oregon, a federal judge recently ordered the Pentagon to resume reviews of wind projects that had been frozen. Other challenges to federal actions against wind development have also moved through the courts.
That doesn’t automatically mean every offshore-wind project will—or should—be built.
Environmental impacts matter.
Marine ecosystems matter.
Fishing communities matter.
Transmission costs matter.
Ratepayers matter.
Reliability matters.
And taxpayers certainly matter.
Every energy project should have to survive serious environmental, engineering and economic scrutiny.
But there is an enormous difference between saying:
“Prove this project makes sense.”
and saying:
“We oppose this technology, so we’re willing to spend billions unwinding it.”
THE 600,000-HOME QUESTION
RWE estimated that its Humboldt project could eventually have supplied renewable electricity equivalent to the needs of more than 600,000 homes.
Would it definitely have happened?
No.
Would it have cost money to build transmission and supporting infrastructure?
Absolutely.
Would there have been environmental questions surrounding floating turbines, cables, ports and marine activity?
Of course.
Those questions deserve honest examination.
But here’s the question I cannot get past:
Why not let projects succeed or fail based on engineering, economics, environmental review and the electricity market?
Why should American taxpayers spend billions helping make one particular form of energy development disappear?
If offshore wind really cannot compete, demonstrate that through transparent economics.
If natural gas is genuinely the superior choice, show taxpayers the complete numbers—construction costs, fuel costs, transmission, reliability, environmental costs and long-term price exposure.
Put everything on the table.
Then let Americans see which option wins.
THIS IS WHAT SURVIVAL JOURNALS IS ABOUT
I started writing Survival Journals because survival isn’t only about canned food, generators and emergency plans.
A country survives through the decisions it makes today about the world its children and grandchildren will inherit.
Energy is part of that inheritance.
Debt is part of it.
Infrastructure is part of it.
Climate is part of it.
And competent government is certainly part of it.
We can debate nuclear power.
We can debate natural gas.
We can debate solar.
We can debate offshore wind.
In fact, we should debate all of them.
What we shouldn’t do is pretend that spending billions of taxpayer dollars to eliminate one energy option somehow represents the government getting out of the subsidy business.
That’s not getting government out of the market.
That’s government making a very expensive choice about which direction it wants the market to go.
And this time, American taxpayers are helping finance the U-turn.
RWE gets approximately $1.22 billion.
Its American offshore-wind ambitions disappear.
Hundreds of millions move toward LNG and gas generation.
The government’s five offshore-wind exit agreements approach $4 billion.
And somewhere in Germany, somebody has to be looking at this deal and wondering:
How did we end up getting paid more than a billion dollars to stop building something?
That may be good business for RWE.
Whether it’s good business for the American taxpayer is an entirely different question.
Welcome to another entry in the Survival Journals.
Sometimes survival means preparing for the unexpected.
And sometimes it means trying to understand how the hell the expected became this expensive.
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