Tracking Trump’s Wasteful Offshore Wind Buyouts
The Trump administration has waged a relentless and costly battle against offshore wind. Having had its previous attempts to shut down projects with stop work orders and remitting permits shot down in court, the administration has switched to a new tactic: paying developers to abandon their projects.
The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) has paid off energy companies to walk away from offshore wind commitments saying that the new agreements would “resolve the unaddressed national security concerns at both projects.” The claim lacks credibility as the projects were approved in coordination with the U.S. Department of Defense.
Below is a running tally of the impacts of those buyouts.
(Current as of: August 6, 2026)
Impacts of Trump Administration OSW Buyouts
$3.9 Billion The amount of taxpayer money the administration has spent on these buyouts
21.15 GW The amount of energy that would have been produced by the abandoned projects
57,679 Jobs The number jobs impacted projects were projected to have created*
*Job Creation Lost
In securing their leases, some—but not all—of the developers had announced how many jobs they expected the development of those lease areas to create. Additionally, job creation estimates have been included in a number of publicly available documents on the leases. The current total of lost job creation based on those announcements and publicly available documents is 57,679.
This includes: