Published: May 21, 2026 | Updated: May 23, 2026
Within a span of two months, TotalEnergies has announced its exit from offshore wind projects in two major markets — the United States in March and Germany in May 2026. Read alongside Mitsubishi Corporation’s withdrawal from Japan’s Round 1 in August 2025, a pattern emerges across three markets in less than ten months. The “Mitsubishi shock” was not a Japan-specific event. It was an early signal of a structural reset now visible across multiple markets.
Two Withdrawals in Two Months
On March 23, 2026, TotalEnergies signed an agreement with the US Interior Department formalizing its exit from US offshore wind development. Total had paid approximately $928 million in lease fees for two sites (OCS-A 0545 and OCS-A 0538). Under the arrangement, Total will first invest the equivalent amount in US oil, gas, and LNG production, after which the US government will reimburse the company dollar-for-dollar. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the decision around national security concerns related to drone warfare, but the underlying driver was cost.
On May 18, NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung published a joint investigation revealing that TotalEnergies also plans to withdraw from German offshore wind leases covering a combined 7.5 GW of capacity. Total had won these sites through 2023 and 2024 auctions, including a 1 GW award in June 2024 (jointly with EnBW) under zero-subsidy terms. The company cited slow grid expansion and a deteriorating economic environment as the reasons for withdrawal.
The Common Thread: Zero-Subsidy Auctions Under Stress
What links these withdrawals is the auction model itself. Germany’s recent tenders required developers to bid without state support contracts — the so-called zero-subsidy model. Total’s US leases similarly placed the cost risk on the developer. In Japan, Round 1 was awarded under feed-in tariff terms set at a moment of lower input costs, and once yen depreciation, material inflation, and rising interest rates compounded, the economics broke down.
Three different auction regimes, three different markets, three different reasons cited in press releases — and three withdrawals across two major project finance-capable players in under ten months. What these have in common is timing: auction awards made between 2022 and 2025 are being tested against a cost environment that emerged only after 2024.
Policy Responses Are Converging
Germany’s response is direct. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has announced that 2026 offshore auctions will move to Contracts for Difference (CfD), an explicit acknowledgment that zero-subsidy designs have reached their limit. Japan is taking a different but related path: METI is considering a “price adjustment scheme” that would allow a one-time post-auction adjustment of the FIP reference price to reflect construction-period inflation. GWEC’s November 2025 white paper went further, recommending a shift toward two-sided CfDs or FIT.
Whether Japan eventually moves to CfD or stays with FIP+adjustment, the direction of travel — toward more developer risk protection — is similar to what is happening in Europe. The convergence is not coincidental.
Implications for the Japan Market
The Japanese discussion around the Mitsubishi withdrawal has focused heavily on Japan-specific factors: yen weakness, the Round 1 price cap mechanism, the lack of supply chain depth, complex marine conditions. All of these are real.
The Total withdrawals indicate that similar pressures are present in markets with stronger supply chains and stronger currencies. This suggests that the discussion around offshore wind viability — in Japan and elsewhere — is increasingly converging on questions of auction design and pre-FID risk allocation, rather than country-specific operating conditions.
How these European lessons are absorbed into the design of Round 4 — and into the re-tender conditions for the three withdrawn zones from Round 1 (Noshiro-Mitane-Oga, Yurihonjo, and Choshi) — will shape outcomes of the next phase of Japan’s offshore wind market.
Sources: US Department of the Interior and TotalEnergies announcements (Mar 23, 2026); NDR / Süddeutsche Zeitung joint investigation via tagesschau.de and Clean Energy Wire (May 18, 2026); Nikkei Business (May 19, 2026); GWEC White Paper (Nov 2025); Mitsubishi Corporation press release (Aug 27, 2025).
Japan’s offshore wind market cannot be understood through a single lens. A cross-cutting view—integrating policy, investment behavior, cost structures, and execution capability—is consolidated in our pillar article.
👉 Japan Offshore Wind Market Analysis (Pillar)