Rep. Mike Levin Fights to Stop Cancellation of Offshore Wind Energy Leases That Would Lower Costs
Watch Rep. Levin’s Remarks Here
Washington, D.C.—Today, during a House Appropriations Committee markup, Rep. Mike Levin (CA-49) introduced an amendment to prevent taxpayer funds from being used by the Department of Justice (DOJ) or the Department of the Interior (DOI) to kill offshore wind energy projects and hand over billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to foreign companies. The amendment was rejected by Republicans on the Appropriations Committee.
Recently, the Trump Administration struck deals with three offshore wind companies to cancel four different wind leases: TotalEnergies off of North Carolina and New York, Bluepoint Wind off of New York and New Jersey, and Golden State Wind off of California. These projects would have provided affordable power to over three million homes, but instead the Trump Administration is paying these companies nearly $2 billion of taxpayer funds to stop the energy projects from ever being built.
Rep. Levin’s amendment would have prevented the Trump Administration from striking these shady deals. At a time of skyrocketing energy prices and risks to grid reliability, America should be adding more power to our system, not using taxpayer dollars to pay companies to abandon their energy projects. The Administration’s unchecked actions will ensure that energy prices keep rising and our grid is less reliable.
These deals are a ripoff for the American people both as electricity ratepayers and as federal taxpayers.
Read Rep. Levin’s remarks as prepared for delivery below:
I’d like to draw the Committee’s attention to the alarming use of nearly $2 billion dollars of American taxpayer funds to pay foreign owned companies to keep our constituents’ utility bills sky high.
Across the country right now, as families open their electric bills month after month, they are increasingly facing impossible decisions to pay to keep the lights on or to put food on the table.
Electricity bills have risen 34 percent over the past five years, including more than 6 percent in the past year alone, significantly outpacing inflation.
Today, nearly 80 million Americans are struggling to pay their utility bills month after month.
As electricity demand from data centers and manufacturing rises faster than new power supply can be built, we are increasingly at risk of dual crises of energy affordability and grid reliability.
A decline in grid reliability threatens national security, public health, economic competitiveness, and during heat waves and cold snaps—human lives.
Right now, we need all the energy that we can get on the grid.
And yet, the Administration has decided that instead of deploying more energy, we should provide foreign companies with billions of taxpayer dollars —without any sort of consideration from this Committee—to stop developing projects that would have helped bolster grid reliability and bring down costs.
That’s right, the Administration has circumvented the Appropriations process to pay nearly $2 billion dollars out of the Judgement fund to entice companies to walk away from their offshore wind projects in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and California, and more deals just like this could be coming.
The projects in New York and New Jersey would have powered more than two million homes.
The project in North Carolina would have powered 300,000 homes.
And the project in California would have powered 1.1 million homes.
These cancellations are a massive loss at a moment of unprecedent energy demand growth and will make our grid less reliable.
But don’t just take my word for it, the grid operators themselves in the Northeast, New York, and mid-Atlantic have all said that offshore wind helps them solve the reliability challenges they are facing now.
I want to be clear that these cancellations will also hit many of our constituents right in the pocketbooks.
Since offshore wind has a low operating cost—the wind blows for free after all—it can bid into the electricity market at the low end of the cost curve.
So, when you have offshore wind on the grid, it pushes out the higher cost resources and lowers the system-wide price of electricity.
The result of deploying more offshore wind? Lower costs for our constituents.
The offshore wind projects that have been cancelled won’t just hurt those of us from coastal states like New York, North Carolina, New Jersey, and California.
When you add offshore wind to the system in PJM, it lowers the system-wide price, including in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Tennessee. Any future cancellations in PJM will leave these states facing higher costs and a less reliable grid.
These project cancellations are a bad deal for our constituents as both taxpayers and ratepayers.
And they are a bad deal for all of us as Americans since these buyouts were likely unlawful.
I am deeply concerned by this new playbook the Administration is using to kill off energy projects that it does not like.
Regardless of what your preferred energy sources are, we all should be able to agree that no Administration should have the ability to negotiate backdoor deals with companies to abandon projects that our country needs. If you stand for “all of the above energy” you should be as incensed by these actions as I am.
My amendment would block these payouts for the next fiscal year so that we in Congress and the American people can understand the legal authority under which these deals are being struck and the full impact that these cancellations will have on grid reliability and costs for our constituents.
Thank you and I yield back.
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