America's $4 Billion Wind Retreat Is a Bet on Permanently Cheap Gas

The strangest part of America's latest offshore-wind retreat is not that several projects have been cancelled. Some were early-stage, expensive and increasingly difficult to permit. Weak projects should be allowed to fail. The strange part is that the U.S. government is paying companies to abandon one energy technology and directing their capital toward another. Between March and August, the Department of the Interior reached a series of agreements worth approximately $3.9 billion with TotalEnergies, Bluepoint Wind, Golden State Wind, Invenergy,…