By Jack Dini ——Bio and Archives--February 23, 2025

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President Trump has long been a supporter of traditional energy. During his campaign, he spoke negatively about electric vehicles, wind and other renewable energy sources. In his first day in office, the new president began a historic shift in US energy policy, away from green energy and back to hydrocarbon energy. (1)

On January 20, 2025, he signed five wide-ranging executive orders that radically change the United States energy and climate policy. These actions restore efforts to promote coal, natural gas, oil, hydropower, nuclear, and biofuels, while curtailing support for wind and electric vehicles. The Trump executive orders also rescinded orders issued by President Biden and closed federal departments established to promote climate change policies and green energy.

The executive order regarding offshore wind and wind projects immediately impacted the world wind industry. The US government owns all land from three miles to 200 miles offshore, so wind companies require a federal lease to build offshore systems.

Wind energy markets were shocked by Trump’s order. The stock price of Orsted, a Danish wind system supplier, dropped 17% to its lowest price in seven years. Orsted proposed to build Sunrise Wind, the largest planned US offshore wind system, to be located southeast of New York city. The company immediately took a $1.69 billion impairment charge on its US wind projects.

Wind suppliers RWE of Germany, Equinor of Norway, Renovaveis of Portugal and Vestas of Denmark also suffered stock price declines. Italy’s Prysmian announced that it would abandon a plan to build a plant in the US to make cables for offshore wind systems because solar and wind generation might not be available when needed. (1)

Wind and solar systems are intermittent, use 100 times the land area, and require at least double the transmission infrastructure compared to traditional coal, gas, or nuclear power plants. Few utilities would build wind and solar systems if not for the fear of human caused global warming. But the new executive orders make it clear that the US will no longer pursue efforts to mitigate climate change.........

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