I am the Director of Voluntary Cessation at the Department of the Interior. Last month I paid a German company $1.2 billion to build nothing. Not a turbine. Not a wire. Not one kilowatt. $1.2 billion. For the absence. The company is RWE. They held leases off California. Off Louisiana. In the New York Bight. Wind farms were going there. Now they aren't. I made sure of that. We call it voluntary. It became voluntary when I made it impossible. I write the permits. I never wrote theirs. RWE said it kindly. "No path forward to permit these projects for the foreseeable future." I am the foreseeable future. Here is the part I like. The $1.2 billion did not go to a taxpayer. It went to RWE. We paid them to leave. Then they took the check and put $900 million into a gas terminal in Louisiana. We paid a company to stop making power. They used it to make a different kind. The check bought a fuel switch. I signed it. Somewhere a set of blades is already built. They point at a different ocean now. The ports that would have raised them can go back to waiting. An analyst asked me what the country got for $1.2 billion. I said "energy security." She asked which energy. I said "the secure kind." She asked to see the kilowatts. I told her that was not her lane. She stopped asking. I do not produce power. I have never produced power. I end the projects that would. My title is Voluntary Cessation. Cessation means stop. Voluntary means I get to call it their idea. The Germans are the second. In March it was a French company. Same handshake. Leases traded for an LNG plant in Texas. There is a line forming. I take a number. I pay it to leave. We call it common sense. We call the wind a costly subsidy. I just paid $1.2 billion to end the subsidy. The payment was larger than the subsidy. I am the subsidy now. On the invoice, under deliverables, I wrote one word. None. I came in under budget. I'm up for a raise. The lights those turbines would have carried are still off. They were always going to be off. That was the product.