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The Trump administration will pay USD 1 billion to a French company to walk away from two US offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy. TotalEnergies has agreed to what's essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday. President Donald Trump's administration has tried to halt offshore wind construction, but federal judges repeatedly overturned those orders. The Interior Department hailed the "innovative agreement" with the French energy giant and said, "the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry". Environmental groups denounced the deal as an alternate way to block wind projects, with one group calling it a "billion-dollar bribe" to kill clean energy. "After losing again a
French energy giant TotalEnergies, which had in past years taken stakes in two Adani group listed firms, on Friday said it has not performed any re-evaluation of its holdings because of volatility in stock prices following allegations of fraud. In a statement, the French firm said its investment in Adani group entities were undertaken in full compliance with the Indian laws and its own internal governance processes. The company has a 37.4 per cent stake in Adani Total Gas Ltd and a 20 per cent holding in Adani Green Energy Ltd.