A German power company agreed with the Trump administration to cancel offshore wind development leases, the fifth such cancellation, bringing total reimbursements owed by US taxpayers to nearly $4 billion.
RWE, like other companies that negotiated such deals, agreed to reinvest in a series of US fossil fuel projects instead. While climate advocates have lamented the loss of clean power, and Congressional Democrats have promised to investigate, the strangest thing about the deals is that the government appears to have “grossly” overpaid, a University of California researcher argued: The projects in question were not under construction and had a shaky future on economic grounds, so the leases would likely attract lower bids if auctioned today.