Energy developer Invenergy is joining America’s race to build next-generation geothermal — and it plans to do so with the controversial new refund the Trump administration is giving it for abandoning offshore wind projects.
On Wednesday, the Chicago-based company struck an agreement with the Trump administration to relinquish four offshore wind leases located off the coasts of California, Maine, and New York. In exchange, the U.S. Interior Department will pay Invenergy $765 million — the total value of the leases — which the firm says it will spend on both geothermal power projects and natural gas–fired power plants instead.
The megadeveloper is the third major energy firm to strike such a deal with the devoutly anti-wind Trump administration in recent months. TotalEnergies was promised nearly $1 billion to walk away from its plans to install turbines near North Carolina and in waters off New York and New Jersey. Ocean Winds later inked agreements worth nearly $900 million to relinquish offshore wind leases on the eastern and western U.S. coasts.
Some Democratic lawmakers have characterized these deals as illegal payouts meant to push firms out of the offshore wind sector, which was once the cornerstone of decarbonization plans in the Northeast but has now been decimated by the Trump administration’s repeated attacks. Seven Democratic-led states are suing to stop one of Interior’s deals with TotalEnergies.
“We have a chance to build cheap, reliable power right off our own coasts,” Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat from California, said in a Wednesday statement. “Instead this administration is paying top dollar to walk away from it, tying our energy future to the vagaries of volatile markets and handing the bill to families already paying too much.”
Invenergy defended the agreement as a way to ward off a long, protracted legal fight with an administration that’s made its position on offshore wind clear. And it frees up money for the company to invest in energy projects that it believes can be built more quickly to meet skyrocketing energy demand.
The company “will deploy additional capital into projects that can be delivered on a commercially reasonable timeline and meet customer demand while continuing to evaluate opportunities as market conditions evolve,” Daniel Runyan, Invenergy’s senior vice president for development, said in a statement.
While TotalEnergies and Ocean Winds also committed to investing in fossil fuels, Invenergy’s deal is the only one of the three that includes plans for carbon-free energy.
