Stormmakaren Trump ger Ørsted hård motvind i USA

Orsted is suffering from Donald Trump’s grudge against “windmills”

Foul winds keep blowing Orsted’s way. On August 22nd Donald Trump’s administration ordered the offshore-wind developer to stop work on its $4bn Revolution Wind project off the coast of New England. The development, which is part-owned by BlackRock, an American investment titan, is roughly four-fifths completed, with all licences and approvals in hand.

Less than two weeks earlier the Danish wind giant had announced it would seek to raise $9bn in equity to shore up its finances in response to “material adverse developments” in America. Mr Trump has long held a grudge against “windmills”; he once sued the Scottish government in a failed effort to stop the development of a wind farm within view of one of his golf courses. In April the president ordered a stop to an offshore-wind project led by Equinor, a Norwegian energy giant (the order was later lifted). In July he signed into law his “One Big Beautiful Bill”, gutting subsidies for the industry. All that has weighed heavily on project valuations in America.

Mr Trump’s return to office comes atop a difficult few years for Orsted, which has also been hit by rising interest rates and supply-chain troubles. Its market value has fallen by roughly 85% from its peak in 2021, to around DKr 80bn ($12.5bn; see chart). This month S&P Global, a rating agency, downgraded the company’s debts to BBB-, one notch above junk status. Yet despite the stormy weather, there is no need for Orsted’s investors to panic.

This week the company’s bosses were busy drumming up support in Frankfurt and London for its share offering. Alexander Flotre of Rystad Energy, a research firm, is confident that this will go ahead more or less as planned, given that Orsted has the support of big banks such as JPMorgan Chase as well as the Danish government, which holds a majority stake in the formerly state-run business and plans to take part in the process. A prospectus will be published after an extraordinary general meeting on September 5th.

Orsted’s financial position is not yet a cause for alarm. Its annualised return on capital employed was a relatively healthy 7.5% in the first half of 2025, rising to 12.3% once accounting impairments and costs related to project cancellations are excluded. Analysts expect it to generate an operating profit (before depreciation and amortisation) of DKr 28bn this year, about as much as in 2024 and enough to comfortably service the company’s DKr 66bn pile of net debt.

And despite its troubles in America, Orsted has a number of promising projects under way in Britain, Germany, Poland and Taiwan that are expected to start operating this decade. In July it signed a 20-year deal with TSMC, the world’s biggest chip manufacturer, which will purchase all the power from a 920-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Taiwan.

To fund its future growth, Orsted will continue selling off assets, a process it calls “farming down”. In October it offloaded a stake in four offshore wind farms in Britain to Brookfield, a Canadian asset manager, and it is in the process of selling its onshore wind and solar assets in Europe. The company has said that it expects to raise $5.5bn through such sales this year and next.

Although more expensive than onshore wind or solar, the cost of offshore wind has plunged over the past decade, making it increasingly competitive as a source of energy. Beyond America’s shores, fairer winds await.

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