Europe’s Wind Industry Faces Uncertainty Over Trump’s Policies

In the extensive planes of the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark, near the small city of Give, a family company called Welcon has been preparing to build giant and cylindrical wind towers for a multi -million dollar project.

The project, a wind farm called Empire Wind, is being built by the Giant of Norwegian Energy Energy in the waters of Long Island, New York, but those plans were thrown to the disorder last month when the Trump administration, which ordered wind energy, ordered.

The pause surprised Carsten Pedersen, owner of Welcon with his brother Jens and the wind industry.

“It is, in my opinion, a banana republic there,” said Pedersen, referring to the chaotic bombardment of policy changes from Washington. “You cannot stop the projects” whose developers have already put years of work.

Welcon was used as a subcontractor to supply the towers for the Wind Systems Vestas project, a main wind turbine manufacturer, which is based in Aarhus in Jutland.

If Empire Wind is permanently closed, Vestas will lose a manufacturing order that probably is worth around $ 1 billion for 54 of their last turbines, which have blades almost 380 feet long. Contractors would probably receive some equinor compensation.

The wind industry is crucial to Europe’s ambitions to address climate change and improve energy security, but three months after President Trump’s second mandate, the industry executor is reevaluating its renewable energy approach.

An important question is whether the initial gust of actions of the president, as well as concerns about what can come, will derail what seemed like the beginning of an industry recovery.

The wind business shows a blow after pandemic, when the highest interest rates and inflation converted contracts and projects into the creators of losses. Industry executives have Europe to compensate for a setback in the United States.

“We see nothing that happens in the United States that endangers the perspective of the wind on the high seas in Europe,” said Rasmus Erboe, executive director of Orsted, a global winding developer based in Denmark. He added that he expected the Offshore wind to represent 20 to 25 percent of the generation of electricity from Europe by 2050 compared to approximately 4 percent in 2024, which implies that hundreds of billions of billions or dollars will be spent on new facilities.

In general, WIND provided about 20 percent of Europe’s electricity in 2024, according to Windeurope, a group of industry.

Vestas and Orsted reported positive financial results of the first quarter this week. Vestas said he had obtained a small gain or 5 million euros in the quarter, compared to a loss a year earlier, while Orsted, which had previous tasks, great songs in some planned projects in the United States, said the profits increased $ 7, to $ 7, to 47 percent, to $ 7, at $ 7, to $ 7, to $ 7, to $ 44, to $ 44, to $ 44, to $ 444 444, at $ 7, at $ 7, at $ 7, at $ 44, at $ 44, at $ 444, at $ 444.

The price of Vestas shares has dropped approximately 50 percent compared to the previous year, and Orsted’s has fallen around 40 percent at that same time.

In a sign that the economic and regulatory environment is still difficult, only in Europe, Orsted said Wednesday that it would not process with a large planned wind installation called Horsea 4 in the North Sea of ​​Britain.

Mr. Erboe blamed the growing prices of suppliers and uncertainty for the decision, which will still cost the company to 4.5 billion Krone or approximately $ 680 million to compensate the contractors and other expenses. “We have simply seen that prices have increased and also the risk in the project has increased,” he said.

Despite the risks, the wind on the high seas has great success in northern Europe. Orsted estimates that the cost of electricity of these facilities fell 70 percent from 2015 to 2020, thanks to always large turbines and other innovations. Since then, he thought, the cost of wind generation has increased by 50 percent.

A few years ago, the United States seemed a promising market for offshore wind. Now industry executives assume that new projects abroad will not begin under the Trump administration.

There are questions about whether the handful of giant projects now underway, which include two per Orsted, called revolution wind ofl Rhode Island and Sunrise Wind in Montauk, NY, will be complete.

Mr. Erboe said the thesis projects were already underway. Orsted Tok $ 180 million in cancellations on the value of these wind farms due to the impact of the 25 percent tariff imposed on steel and aluminum imported by the Trump administration.

Because it is mainly a constructor of land turbines, Vestas, which has 30 percent of the world market outside of China, is somewhat isolated from the tribulations of the wind on the high seas, a more risky and more risky industry.

Henrik Andersen, president and executive director of the company, said in an interview that through the Pandemic periods and previous international concern about China, Vestas had learned to geographically organize his MEUSPACHURING turbine. “We generally tend to shuffle things,” he said.

Vestas has factories in Colorado, where he has been producing terrestrial turbines that he sells in the United States, one of its largest markets.

Andersen said the thesis facilities had been working “seven days a week” to produce tuned turbines in the favorable conditions that prevailed the duration of the Biden administration.

Having factories, he said, reduced the effect of rates, although it is likely that some components such as generators are imported.

If factories will continue to operate at full inclination depends on whether trust returns. The orders of turbines on land in the United States have dried, at least temporarily, while developers wait for the White House to clarify the policies.

Endri Lico, the main analyst of the Wood Mackenzie consulting firm, estimates that turbine orders in the United States have fallen to their lowest level since the first quarter of 2020. “Uncertainty dominates,” he said.

Treating changes and unknowns has become the role of a wind executive. “Or of course, I don’t know what will be announced in five or six days from now on,” Andersen said.

What is true, thought, said, costs will be transmitted to customers and “tariffs will mean higher electricity prices in the United States”