The facts
California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the California Energy Commission filed suit Sept. 22 over a federal agreement announced in June to pay Invenergy to abandon its Morro Bay offshore-wind lease. The state says the Department of the Interior will reallocate more than $111 million in federal taxpayer funds and Invenergy affiliates must invest the same amount in out-of-state fossil-fuel or geothermal projects. California argues the deal is unlawful and would harm its clean-energy investments and jobs; those are allegations in its lawsuit. AP reported that New York and other states also sued over the Invenergy deal.
The photo is an archival image of Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island, not Morro Bay.
Our take
The plan’s map is almost offensively neat: wipe out an offshore wind lease by Morro Bay, then require affiliates to invest the same amount in fossil fuel or geothermal somewhere else. California says the arrangement threatens its ports and clean-energy jobs. The court has not ruled on the lawsuit.
California calls the buyout unlawful. If the money moves the way the state describes, the wind lease gets dumped, federal cash pays to make it happen, and a matching investment heads outside California. Washington has given the energy money a forwarding address and told the coast to fuck off.
