This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Trump administration has directly spent $2.7 billion of taxpayer money on its crusade against wind power while pouring $1.1 billion into boosting coal, which critics say is pushing up Americans’ bills.

They say the moves are evidence that the president aims to serve fossil-fuel companies like those which donated record sums to his presidential campaign, rather than the working-class Americans to whom he pledged to lower energy bills and other costs.

“Trump is getting Americans coming and going,” said Jay Inslee, the former governor of Washington state and a Trump detractor. “He’s forcing higher power bills on them by blocking clean energy, then he’s fattening the wallets of his cronies—all with billions of our tax dollars.”

The Department of Interior has, since March, struck four deals with energy companies, paying them to cancel a total of eight offshore wind projects and pledge to invest in fossil-fuel power. The first such agreement was announced in March with the French energy company TotalEnergies, sparking a lawsuit from seven Democratic-controlled states that alleged it was an illegal use of taxpayer money.

“Coal has largely died because of economics, and so forcing it to stay afloat is not a good energy decision, and not a good economic decision.”

The latest deal with Duke Energy was announced late last month.

The president has derided wind energy as “ugly” and “disgusting,” and called efforts to slash planet-warming pollution a “scam.” Previous administrations have canceled or delayed energy projects via permitting, litigation or regulatory changes, but there is no precedent for the federal government directly paying developers to relinquish legally acquired offshore wind leases, said Jenny Rowland-Shea, senior director for conservation policy at the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress.

“They are trying to snuff out an entire form of energy,” she said. “And it’s at a time when the United States needs more energy…as people’s rates are going up for electricity, as we see data centers gobbling up more energy.”

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