The turbines were never built. The contract, however, cost nearly $800 million to kill — and New York wants to know who authorized that.
The state filed suit against the Trump administration this week, targeting a $795 million payment made to French energy giant TotalEnergies as compensation for canceling a planned offshore wind farm off the New York coast. The lawsuit, reported by The New York Times on June 2, argues the payout is illegal — a nine-figure settlement handed over without the congressional or regulatory sign-off the state says is required.
The offshore wind project had been part of New York's broader push to meet its own clean energy benchmarks, and its cancellation was already a significant setback. The size of the cancellation fee — $795 million to a foreign energy company — is what turned a policy reversal into a legal fight. State attorneys contend the federal government simply cannot write that check on its own authority.
The case lands in a crowded docket of state-versus-federal energy disputes that have picked up considerably since early 2025. New York is not the only state that had been counting on offshore wind capacity currently in various stages of cancellation or legal limbo, but it is the one now testing whether the payout mechanism itself can be challenged in court.
No trial date has been set. The $795 million figure is not in dispute — the question is whether the administration had the legal standing to spend it.