The Trump administration just cut a $1.22 billion check to a German energy company to walk away from its offshore wind leases — and if that sounds like a lot of money to kill projects that were never going to lower your power bill, it is. But it may also be the smartest energy spending Washington has done in years.

RWE U.S. Offshore announced Thursday it will relinquish leases off New York, California, and Louisiana that could have produced roughly seven gigawatts of electricity — enough for more than five million homes, according to AP News. In exchange, the company gets $1.22 billion in settlement funds. The deal brings the administration's total spend on killing offshore wind to nearly $4 billion across five agreements.

Here is why that matters for ordinary Americans: offshore wind has been sold as a clean-energy miracle, but it delivers expensive, intermittent power that relies on subsidies and slaughters wildlife. The administration concluded there was no viable path to permit these projects. RWE itself admitted as much, saying "there is no path forward to permit these projects in the US for the foreseeable future."

Rather than let the leases linger in legal limbo, the administration bought them out — and steered the money toward energy that actually works. RWE said it will invest $900 million in a Louisiana liquefied natural gas terminal and spend $300 million on natural gas turbines, developing 15 peaker plants across the country. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum welcomed the shift, saying Americans "deserve an energy system built on common sense, not one dependent on costly subsidies or technologies that can't meet our country's current demand."

The strategy was born of necessity. AP News reports that federal courts blocked Trump's attempts to kill offshore wind by executive action, forcing the administration to buy the leases back instead. Previous deals include nearly $1 billion to France's TotalEnergies, roughly $900 million to Golden State Wind and Bluepoint Wind, and $765 million to Invenergy — all contingent on fossil fuel reinvestment.

The usual suspects are furious. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, called the buybacks a "scam" and accused the administration of running "an enormous money pump, pulling billions of dollars out of consumers' pockets." New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued over the TotalEnergies deal, calling it a "sham" and an "illegal agreement." California says it intends to sue as well.

The Guardian framed the payouts as taxpayer money wasted on killing "clean energy," burying the detail that RWE itself concluded the projects were unviable. The outlet also highlighted a report from the Environmental Integrity Project finding that every operational LNG facility in the U.S. has violated federal pollution limits — legitimate reporting, but a curious standard to apply selectively to fossil fuels while ignoring the well-documented environmental and ratepayer damage from offshore wind.

The real question is not whether $4 billion is a lot of money. It is. The question is what Americans were going to pay anyway — in subsidies, rate hikes, and grid instability — to prop up an industry that cannot stand on its own. The buyouts at least redirect capital toward baseload power that runs when the wind does not.

Whether the lawsuits from wind-friendly states succeed may determine if this strategy holds — or if the courts force taxpayers to keep bankrolling the boondoggle.