{"id":124738,"date":"2025-09-06T17:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T17:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/124738\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T17:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T17:39:07","slug":"trump-style-executive-capitalism-is-killing-the-offshore-wind-industry-and-could-wreck-other-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/124738\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump-style executive capitalism is killing the offshore wind industry and could wreck other businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee talks about the importance of the Revolution Wind offshore wind farm to the state’s economy and energy future during a news conference last month.Jennifer McDermott\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Donald Trump is busy rewriting the rules of American-style, hands-off capitalism, and it\u2019s starting to look like a state-managed or, more accurately, Trump-managed system.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has bought a 10-per-cent stake in Intel, demanded a \u201cgolden share\u201d in U.S. Steel \u2013 allowing the government (actually, the White House) to veto major corporate decisions \u2013 and is taking a 15-per-cent cut of Nvidia\u2019s and AMD\u2019s revenue from AI chips sold in China. <\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t stop there, and Denmark\u2019s Orsted is a case in point. Orsted, the biggest and most successful offshore wind-power company, has been gutted by Mr. Trump<\/a>, sending it into deep crisis. The latest blow came in August, when the President ordered it to cease construction of the US$1.5-billion Revolution Wind project off Rhode Island. <\/p>\n

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Never mind that Revolution was 80-per-cent complete, had all the required permits, broad political support in New England and would have supplied clean energy from its 65 turbines to some 350,000 homes starting next year. It was still deep-sixed. <\/p>\n

The Trump administration cited \u201csecurity\u201d issues for the stop-work order, though it never said what they were. Was he worried that fighter jets would crash into the enormous swirling blades? Maybe it was retribution. Mr. Trump wants to own Greenland, which is controlled by Denmark, and Denmark is not selling. Punishing Orsted is punishing the state of Denmark, since it owns 50 per cent of the company. <\/p>\n

What is known is that Mr. Trump has no interest in clean energy, especially wind power. He once sued the Scottish government to try to stop the construction of a wind farm within eyeshot of one of his golf courses. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not allowing any windmills to go up,\u201d he said at a cabinet meeting last month. \u201cThey\u2019re ugly, they don\u2019t work, they kill your birds. They\u2019re bad for the environment. And if you look at them from a house, your house is worth less than 50 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Partly right: They are ugly, they do kill birds and they almost certainly crunch the value of nearby houses. But they are an important part of the clean-energy mix pretty much everywhere. The voracious electricity appetites of data, AI and bitcoin-mining centres mean that wind, along with solar and nuclear, has a bright future. Except in Trumpland. He\u2019s the leading proponent of the \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d philosophy. <\/p>\n

Orsted\u2019s Revolution is not the only offshore wind project to walk the plank. The White House is trying to kill five other projects off the U.S. East Coast through stop-work orders and by yanking permits. Orsted is suing the Trump administration and seeking a court order that would allow it to finish the Revolution site.<\/p>\n

Before Mr. Trump came along, Orsted was a superstar company, one that had undergone Europe\u2019s most successful black-to-green transition. As late as 2009, when Denmark hosted the COP25 climate summit, Orsted, Denmark\u2019s main power producer, was mostly burning coal to keep the lights on. Wallowing in sooty black guilt, it embarked on a campaign to shutter its coal burners and reinvent itself as an offshore wind player. <\/p>\n

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It became a stock market darling; in 2021 it had a market value of more than US$95-billion and embarked on a campaign to become America\u2019s first offshore wind developer. Seemingly endless growth captured investors\u2019 imaginations. <\/p>\n

In the U.S., Orsted got off to a good start, then ran into trouble during the pandemic, when inflation took off, interest rates rose and global supply chains broke down. In 2023 it abandoned two projects off the New Jersey coast and took a write-down of about US$4-billion. It also abandoned a few European projects.<\/p>\n

But it remained committed to the Revolution project. Despite the setbacks, then-president Joe Biden\u2019s lavish support for renewable energy gave the company the hope that the U.S. market would be rewarding. <\/p>\n

Then came Mr. Trump. Within hours of entering the White House for the second time, he announced, \u201cWe are not going to do the wind thing,\u201d then signed a flurry of executive orders that unwound Mr. Biden\u2019s infrastructure funding, putting hundreds of billions of dollars of projects at risk \u2013 everything from battery plants for electric vehicles to offshore wind developments.<\/p>\n

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Still, Orsted pushed on, believing that its permits, support from New England governors, the appeal of clean energy and the U.S. legal system would keep Revolution alive \u2013 after all, a contract was a contract. The company was wrong. Mr. Trump turned into a one-man wrecking machine. Orsted shares are down more than 50 per cent in the past year, and the company is seeking salvation in a US$9.4-billion rights issue, backed by the Danish state and Equinor, formerly Statoil, Norway\u2019s oil and gas giant. <\/p>\n

The U.S. offshore wind industry and much of the rest of the country\u2019s clean-energy business face an existential crisis. What bank would lend money to any project that could be brought to its knees by the Trump White House at any time, with no explanation? And if Mr. Trump can wreck one industry that puts him in a bad mood, why not others? Trump-managed capitalism is the opposite of the free and fair market. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee talks about the importance of the Revolution Wind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,45,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-124738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}