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US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

lemonde.fr

251–260 of 411 posts

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do the thing that we used to explain to children what they do. The whole thing demonstrably does not exist Something misfunctioning doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. A massive economy, industry and war machine are still here. Pretending that doesn’t exist because it doesn’t work the way we like is an expression of exasperation, not a description of reality.

>A massive economy, industry and war machine are still here Those things are exactly what destroyed the nation. The military industrial complex and the billionaires who removed the teeth from institutions that used to prevent the accumulation of power (see also: antitrust litigation against Standard Oil). Those entities are now in complete control and democracy is nothing but a sham, a clown show between two faces of…

> Those things are exactly what destroyed the nation

You're confusing the destruction of the dream of a nation with the desrtruction of the nation per se. The Roman Republic's fall was the destructionn of a dream. Those who thought they were witnessing the destruction of a nation, on the other hand, were dead wrong.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

another option is not to shit on all countires who do have resources driving the prices up for everyone.

This is an article about paying private industry to not build wind capacity.

I don't agree with redirecting towards fossil fuels instead of wind power, but its not really paying TotalEnergies "for not building wind capacity", its more like changing what was ordered on behalf of the population: first the wind power capacity was ordered, then it was stalled and blocked, and now this president and TotalEnergies have agreed to change the order to another type of meal (investing in fossil fuel facilities within the US).

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#253
post #98
post #71

HN title (currently reads "US govt pays TotalEnergies nearly $1B to stop US offshore wind projects") is editorialized and it's unclear to me whether it's accurate. The article says: > We're partnering with TotalEnergies to unleash nearly $1 billion that was tied up in a lease deposit that was directed towards the prior administration's subsidies What's the deal with this lease deposit and how does "freeing it up" equ…

You could go to the source and see[1]. > TotalEnergies has committed to invest approximately $1 billion—the value of its renounced offshore wind leases—in oil and natural gas and LNG production in the United States. Following their new investment, the United States will reimburse the company dollar-for-dollar, up to the amount they paid in lease purchases for offshore wind. Under this innovative agreement driven by P…

I know it's par for the course, but I'm constantly surprised to see how editorialised official communications from the US government are.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please list the more serious and stable country if America collapses. I’ll wait. On a serious note; I’m looking at my billion dollar neighbors and they all just are citizens everywhere now. No allegiance to anything but their own pleasure.

Please list the more serious and stable country if America collapses. Uh, anywhere that hasn't collapsed?

Where wouldn't collapse if America collapsed?

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#255

The guy is unhinged, hellbent on denial, just to appease his base, who are going bankrupt because of his policies. Would he pay Sun as well to stop shining over the US?

It's even stupider than that, it's not even to appease his base, it's a personal grudge. Trump sued a wind energy company to prevent them from building an off-shore wind farm in view of his golf resort in Scotland. He lost that case badly and he has been railing against wind energy specifically ever since. So far Trump hasn't done much to prevent solar farms from being built, it's only wind turbines that he's exactin…

He is a bit Don Quixote. I like it!

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#256
post #65

Serious question, but not entirely related to the topic - how are “smart” people in the US preparing for the next 20-30 years? - Assume everything will be fine and America will remain a global economic superpower. - Plan an exit to a more serious, stable country. - Some option in the middle of the two to hedge your bets?

My partner is keeping her foreign citizenship. Just in case.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#257
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol thats trivial if you actually know history and politics a tiny bit - Switzerland. 800 years of most free citizens in the world (lost that armed part but still valid for whole Europe with maybe Finland having similar numbers). Salaries in tech sector still give you higher overall quality of life than most of US can ever offer. Then you have - extremely beautiful nature at your doorstep, more top notch destinations…

[flagged]

Wouldn’t banking just relocate? I assume the Swiss were working mostly in Pounds Sterling 100 years ago. Presumably they’ll be mostly in Euros and Chinese Yuan in 50. US is chunky but highly replaceable. It’s not like our banking sector is particularly sophisticated.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC those were solar hot water heaters. More of a curiosity than something legitimately powering the white house.

The symbolism, and the stupidity, was there though. As time has gone on it has been more clear every year how intelligent Carter's administration was and how terrible the following administration was. Investing in/promoting solar was just one of many smart moves by Carter that were attacked purely to gain political points that only harmed us in the long run.

Carter was too good for America, in the sense that he was actually a good person (sidenote is he still alive?).

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#259
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swiss people are quite rude and unaccepting of foreigners, even foreigners who grow up there. I don't think they have room for Americans wishing to leave.

Americans have a twisted outlook because despite muh racism USA has allowed more foreigners in than any other country, a quite sizeable chunk of them via overstay or illegal immigration, so we think we could do the same thing and just as an average person up and move somewhere else because we see that it can be done and most of the time it is at least possible to get away with it unless you have bad luck or do someth…

Other than the unauthorized category (see e.g. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findi... for estimates), it's pretty hard to get established legally in the USA too, and the criteria are similar to what you cite for Switzerland. By the numbers (https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R42866#_Toc181884259), the majority of legal immigrants are family of people who are already citizens. The other big group is employment-related. Immigration for other reasons (specific diversity groups & asylees/refugees) is comparatively small.

American citizens generally do not think that they can just walk into another country and settle there, because you can't do that in the USA. A big part of what got Trump elected was that people just about everywhere, except the left wing of the political spectrum, were concerned about the scale of unauthorized immigration during the Biden administration. That does include a huge amount of asylum seekers under various programs, but even just CBP parolees at the southwest border totaled over 1.1 million July 2023 - July 2024 and that is a shitton of people (https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-...).

Also the USA has a literally 250 year tradition of people moving here (and an equally long tradition of fretting over how the "wrong" people are moving here). The entire history of the country is: people moved here and never stopped moving here, and along the way most of the native population were killed or exterminated by disease. You make it sound like some ill-founded 20th century liberalism run amok.

If anything, modern Europeans are too accustomed to people not migrating around. But it's worth remembering just how much migration (within and from without) had to happen before the modern European socio-ethnic layout emerged.

Re: US and TotalEnergies reach 'nearly $1B' deal to end offshore wind projects

#260
post #248

This really seems like a nothing burger. The $1B were a refund. Net exchange ~$0. Building out fossile fuel production shifts oil revenue from various dictatorships around the world to the US in this case. That's a good thing. I wish we in Europe produced more gas ourselves instead of being highly dependent on other countries. This does not mean higher gas demand, which is what matters for CO2 reduction.

I would argue it’s a waste of resources. Fossil fuels will be phased out over the next 50 years. If China is an indicator it can be done quite a bit faster than you’d think.

It’s already questionable to build fossil fuel capacity at today’s prices. In 10 years it won’t make any financial sense. In 20 you’d be laughed out of the room.

Why waste money on a dying technology? It’d be like mining bitcoin

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