Ørsted has taken legal action against US president Donald Trump’s administration in an effort to restart work on a nearly completed offshore wind project halted by the US government last month.
The troubled Danish renewable energy company is seeking a court order that would let it finish its $1.5 billion (€1.3 billion) Revolution Wind project, which was meant to supply enough power for 350,000 homes in north-eastern US.
But the US move to halt the development, driven by Mr Trump’s deep scepticism about wind power, has hit Ørsted’s business and sent its shares to record lows.
Ørsted said in the court filing on Thursday that the stop-work order was “arbitrary and capricious” after the company and its partners had spent billions of dollars on approvals.
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It is one of a series of orders issued by the Trump administration aimed at blocking new offshore wind projects, which the president has described as the “scam of the century”.
The Ørsted lawsuit comes a day before the company holds an emergency shareholder meeting in Copenhagen aimed at approving a 60 billion Danish krone (€8 billion) rights issue to strengthen its balance sheet, which has been badly damaged by the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on the industry. Ørsted shares are down 38 per cent this year to DKr199 on Thursday.
The Danish state and Equinor, Ørsted’s two-largest shareholders with 50 per cent and 10 per cent stakes respectively, have backed the rights issue, as has Norway’s $2 trillion oil fund, which owns 3 per cent.
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Equinor has itself sued the Trump administration over a stop-work order on its own Empire Wind project. It later dropped the action after the US lifted the order as New York’s governor opened up for more gas pipeline capacity.
Norway mustered a big diplomatic push over the affair, including using Jens Stoltenberg, a former head of Nato who is now the country’s finance minister.
But Denmark is more exposed as it is already in a major diplomatic stand-off with the US over Trump’s insistence that he can gain control over the Arctic island of Greenland from Copenhagen.
While Ørsted executives and Danish officials have tried to work out what Trump might require to restart Revolution Wind, which is 80 per cent complete, they and the wider industry have become increasingly fearful that the US administration is ready to intensify its attacks.
Court filings issued in the US in recent weeks show the administration is working to withdraw permits from at least two wind farm developments off the coast of Massachusetts.
These are SouthCoast Wind, being developed by France’s Engie and EDP Renewables, and the New England Wind 1 and 2 projects being developed by Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spain’s Iberdrola.
Ørsted has a second unfinished project in the US, Sunrise Wind, and some investors worry it could also become a target. The Danish group owns a 50 per cent stake in Revolution Wind, the rest being owned by a unit of BlackRock, but it owns 100 per cent of Sunrise, and its difficulties in selling down that stake are what led to the rights issue.
Doug Burgum, US secretary of the interior, has defended the suspension of work on Revolution Wind, citing national security concerns, including the possibility that undersea drone attacks could be launched through a wind farm.
“People with bad ulterior motives against the US would launch a swarm drone attack through a wind farm. The radar gets very distorted,” he said. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
