Government pays company to cancel wind farm
Government pays company to cancel wind farm, and this is the fifth time since March 2026. RWE, a German utility, agreed to a settlement of 1.22 billion dollars with the Department of the Interior. In exchange, RWE handed back 3 offshore wind leases it had already won and already spent money developing, one off New York, one off California and one off Louisiana. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the federal agency that manages those leases, shows in its own lease table that all 3 are now relinquished. RWE says it had invested more than 1 billion dollars in the leases and the 3 projects before agreeing to walk away.
The 2 uses RWE names, 900 million dollars for the Louisiana LNG stake and 300 million dollars for the turbine reservation, add up to 1.2 billion dollars, 20 million dollars less than the settlement total of 1.22 billion dollars.
Show the numbers
| Total settlement | 1,220 |
| Louisiana LNG stake | 900 |
| Turbine reservation | 300 |
Where the settlement money goes
RWE says 900 million dollars of the settlement buys an indirect 16% stake in the Louisiana LNG Project, a facility that turns natural gas into liquid fuel for export. A separate 300 million dollar turbine reservation agreement, RWE says, secures future power plant turbines, though RWE does not name the fuel those turbines will burn in that sentence. RWE names 2 uses for the settlement money. Add them together and they total 1.2 billion dollars, 20 million dollars less than the settlement full amount of 1.22 billion dollars, a gap the release does not explain.
After careful consideration, it was determined there is no path forward to permit these projects in the U.S. for the foreseeable future.
RWE, in the press release announcing the settlement. Source 2.
The fifth deal in a series
This is not the first time the administration has paid a developer to give up offshore wind leases. In March 2026 the government reached its first such deal, with TotalEnergies, paying near 1 billion dollars for the surrender of 2 leases in North Carolina and New York. The RWE settlement is the fifth agreement of this kind. Across all 5 deals, TechCrunch counts 3.93 billion dollars paid so far for 12 abandoned leases.
Americans deserve an energy system built on common sense, not one dependent on costly subsidies or technologies that can't meet our country's current demand.
Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior, quoted by Reason. Source 4.
RWE is not leaving offshore wind, just the United States
RWE is not stepping away from offshore wind everywhere. TechCrunch reports that RWE bought 6.9 gigawatts of capacity in a recent auction in the United Kingdom, the same year it agreed to cancel its 3 United States leases. RWE also says it plans to invest about 17 billion euros in the United States over the next 6 years, growing its current 13 gigawatts of capacity across 27 states to 22 gigawatts by 2031. In 2025 RWE Americas commissioned 2 gigawatts of new power generation capacity.
Not the same wave as 2023 and 2024
Offshore wind projects were already being cancelled before 2026, for different reasons. The federal energy statistics agency reported 7,200 megawatts of United States offshore wind capacity as of May 2024, of which 2,400 megawatts had been cancelled since December 2023, leaving 4,800 megawatts still active. Developers then blamed rising interest rates, high inflation and delays in the supply chain. The 2026 cancellations have a different cause. A change in federal policy, not project economics, is what is now paying RWE and TotalEnergies to walk away.
Figures are from the federal energy statistics agency as of May 2024, before the 2026 policy driven cancellations began.
Show the numbers
| Total capacity reported | 7,200 |
| Cancelled since December 2023 | 2,400 |
| Still active | 4,800 |