Offshore wind firm that took Trump payout hits a milestone in Europe

The developer Ocean Winds cut controversial deals with the Trump administration last week to abandon two U.S. offshore wind developments. But across the Atlantic, it’s making big strides — especially with floating wind. 

On Monday, Ocean Winds said its 30-megawatt project in the south of France has started delivering power to the country’s grid. The wind farm includes three turbines on floating foundations, and its activation represents a key step forward for nascent wind technologies that can generate power in deeper waters than structures anchored to the seafloor.

“The start of electricity production for [the project] is an important milestone for France’s energy sovereignty and for floating wind more broadly,” Marc Hirt, Ocean Winds’ country manager for France, said in a statement.

Ocean Winds is a joint venture of the French energy firm Engie and the Portuguese developer EDP Renewables. The entity is operating or building nearly 4 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity in the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, and it is developing an additional 13 GW worldwide.

But in the U.S., Ocean Winds’ ambitions shrank dramatically last week, after the company reached two legally questionable agreements with the Department of the Interior.

The developer and its financial partners agreed to relinquish their leases for Golden State Wind, a floating project off the coast of California, and for Bluepoint Wind, a fixed-bottom wind farm near New Jersey and New York. Ocean Winds owns 50% of the projects, with Global Infrastructure Partners and CPP Investments owning the other halves of the California and New York ventures, respectively. (Ocean Winds’ third U.S. project, SouthCoast Wind near Massachusetts, was not included in the deal.)

In exchange, the Trump administration says it will reimburse the companies nearly $900 million, which they have promised to invest in U.S. liquefied natural gas facilities and other fossil-fuel projects. The arrangement mirrors a nearly $1 billion deal struck by TotalEnergies in March that saw the French oil giant walk away from 4 GW of planned offshore wind projects near New York and North Carolina.

The Trump administration has waged unrelenting attacks on offshore wind since taking power more than a year ago, citing unspecified threats to national security and unfounded concerns about whales’ well-being. But the projects that have survived along the U.S. East Coast are expected to be a crucial electricity source for energy-hungry states. The utility building Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, which is more than 75% complete, said the 2.6-GW project could save its customers $5 billion in fuel costs over its first 10 years of operation.

Still, President Donald Trump’s grudge against offshore wind has made it all but impossible to pursue new installations — pushing some developers to try to take the money and run.

“We welcome the opportunity to engage constructively with the administration on this agreement and acknowledge the clarity they have provided with this decision and deal,” Michael Brown, CEO of Ocean Winds North America, said in the Interior Department’s press release last week. 

The lease-refund agreements are drawing scrutiny from Democratic lawmakers, state regulators, and former Interior officials, who argue that there is no legal basis for the government to return the funds or direct companies how to spend them. 

Most recently, on Monday, the California Energy Commission said it is investigating the Trump administration’s deal regarding Golden State Wind. The commission issued a subpoena to Brown seeking documents about what it argued were ​“backroom deals” involving taxpayer dollars.

The Golden State Wind project had called for installing 2 GW of floating turbines — enough to power about 1.1 million homes — in the deep waters off California’s central coast. Proponents say the technology will play a vital role in achieving California’s long-term goal of getting 100% of its power from renewable and zero-carbon sources by 2045.

In certain geographies, floating wind farms might be the best or only way to generate electricity offshore, experts say. But the projects represent a relatively tiny slice of the global offshore wind market today, in large part because bobbing turbines are generally more expensive and complicated to install than their fixed-bottom counterparts, and the supply chain and port facilities needed to assemble projects’ components are still being developed. 

Despite abandoning its California project, Ocean Winds says it’s pushing ahead with floating wind globally. Along with its 30-MW project in France and an existing 25-MW installation in Portugal, the developer is planning a 250-MW wind farm in the French Mediterranean and gigawatts’ worth of floating projects in the U.K. and South Korea.

The first-power milestone in France ​“reinforces our track record of turning ambition into operational assets, even in the most demanding contexts,” Craig Windram, CEO of Ocean Winds, said this week. That might be true of demanding marine environments, if not political ones.