After Donald Trump’s US election win, French energy giant TotalEnergies has hit the pause button on Attentive Energy, its planned offshore wind farm off the New York coast.
“Offshore wind, I have decided to put the [Attentive Energy] project on pause” with Trump’s return, said Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne on Tuesday at an energy conference in London. “I said to my team, the project in New York, we’ll see that in four years. But the advantage is it’s only for four years.”
Total’s offshore wind project is Attentive Energy, which is an 84,332-acre area around 54 miles from its nearest point to New York and 42 miles from its nearest point to New Jersey. Attentive Energy has the potential to generate 3,000 MW of clean energy to power nearly 1 million homes.
The company won the rights to develop Attentive Energy in a record-setting auction in 2022 and planned to bring it online in the early 2030s. But the project is currently in a very early phase, and it’s not permitted. It hasn’t filed a construction and operations plan with the US Department of the Interior, and that review process can take at least three years, which would be particularly challenging, if not impossible, under an administration that openly opposes the offshore wind industry.
Trump is a vocal critic of offshore wind and has repeatedly vowed on the campaign trail to target the industry with an executive order on his first day in office. His plans are vague but probably relate to lease sales and permitting. He’s also chosen pro-fossil fuel fracking executive Chris Wright as secretary of energy.
However, Trump won’t be able to cancel offshore wind farms that are fully permitted and are at more advanced construction stages.
Total is retaining Attentive Energy’s lease so it can resume work on the offshore wind project after Trump’s term ends under a more environmentally friendly administration.
Read more: The US’s largest offshore wind farm is on budget and on time
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