A French energy company has paused its plans to build an offshore wind farm off New York and New Jersey for the duration of President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming term.

A French energy giant is halting a plan to build an offshore wind farm near the New York-New Jersey coastline following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory earlier this month.

TotalEnergies SE, the Paris-based oil and gas conglomerate, said it would halt the project in what industry observers say is a sign of things to come under a second Trump administration.

“Offshore wind, I have decided to put the project on pause” with Trump’s return, Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne told a conference in London on Tuesday. His comments were reported by Bloomberg News.

A French energy giant said it would pause plans to develop offshore wind farms near the New York-New Jersey coastline.
A French energy giant said it would pause plans to develop offshore wind farms near the New York-New Jersey coastline.Bloomberg via Getty Images

Pouyanne said that the company plans to revisit the project in four years, when political winds in the US could shift once again.

Total’s subsidiary, Attentive Energy, was one of six companies that committed a total of $4.37 billion in 2022 to build offshore wind farms in New York Bight — the body of water that hugs the coastline stretching from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to the Montauk Point on Long Island’s eastern tip.

The planned project is still in the early stages as the companies recently obtained leasing rights from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management — the federal agency which operates under the auspices of the Department of the Interior.

Many of the largest offshore wind companies put a brave face on the election results, pledging to work with Trump and Congress to build power projects and ignoring the incoming president’s oft-stated hostility to them.

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