From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

Update August 11, 2025 Shares of Orsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, plummeted today.

Orsted shares crashed more than 25% on Monday morning, after the wind farm developer said it plans a 60 billion Danish kroner ($9.4 billion) rights issue, following a “material adverse development” in the U.S. market.

The company said this turn of events left it unable to raise funds from a planned partial divestment of its Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York.

Given the market conditions, Orsted’s board of directors decided to end the process of selling a stake in Sunrise Wind, which would have provided the “required strengthening” of its capital structure to support its investment and business development programs. Source: CNBC

Orsted had planned to sell part of its Sunrise Wind project off the coast of New York to free up capital.  However, recent adverse developments in the US offshore wind sector have made completing the partial divestment on favourable terms impossible, the company said.  This setback means Orsted will have to fully fund the construction of Sunrise Wind itself, creating an additional 40 billion kroner in financing needs. The project has already been hit by supply chain and construction delays that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in impairments. 

Gary Abernathy reports on progress securing the U.S. grid from the load of entanglements from adding wind and solar power supplies.  His Empowering America article is Climate Science is Not the Law in the U.S.  Exerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

While not everyone is on board with President Trump’s “America First” philosophy, its importance when it comes to energy is brought into sharp focus when considering where the U.S. would be if it capitulated to the whims of global organizations like the United Nations or obeyed the verdicts of world courts.

The frightening attitudes of believers in global rule were recently on display courtesy of a New York Times opinion piece headlined “Climate Science is Now the Law,” penned by three writers who are all part of something called the Center for International Environmental Law. In their article, the authors claim, “The science on climate change has long been settled. Now the law is, too.”  [See post: ICJ Issues Biased Advice on Climate Change]

At about the same time that the International Court of Overstep was issuing its decree for nations to kneel at the feet of the wind and solar gods, the Trump administration took another giant leap in its race to reverse Biden’s disastrous energy policies. On July 7, the Energy Department unveiled its “Report on Evaluating U.S. Grid Reliability and Security,” as required under President Trump’s April executive order to examine the topic.  DOE reported:

“This methodology equips DOE and its partners with a powerful tool to identify at-risk regions and guide federal interventions to prevent power outages, accelerate data center deployment, and ensure the grid keeps pace with explosive load growth driven by artificial intelligence and reindustrialization.”

Rather than follow international directives and judgments to rid itself of energy sources like natural gas, which is necessary to power technology, manufacturing and the coming AI data centers, the DOE is, fortunately, doing the exact opposite. Among the biggest DOE findings:

• • If current plant retirement schedules and incremental additions remain unchanged “most regions will face unacceptable reliability risks within five years.”
  • Radical change is necessary because otherwise, the magnitude of projected demand from AI data centers and other manufacturing “cannot be met with existing approaches to load addition and grid management.
  • The coal and gas plant retirements previously planned by 2030 “could lead to significant outages when weather conditions do not accommodate wind and solar generation.”
  • Even with plans to replace 104 gigawatts of plant retirements with 209 gigawatts of new generation by 2030, “only 22 (gigawatts) come from firm baseload generation sources,” meaning that “the model found outage risk in several regions rises more than 30-fold.” (A gigawatt is equal to 1 billion watts.)

In other words, replacing firm baseload sources like natural gas with alternative sources like wind or solar is not an apples-for-apples proposition, since “renewables” put the grid at greater risk. Establishing arbitrary end dates for our most affordable and reliable energy sources is both illogical and reckless.

On the heels of the international court’s irresponsible and (thankfully) unenforceable decree, and the DOE’s astute recommendation to do the opposite of what the court prescribed, came a story from Reuters declaring that the Trump administration’s actions to end or curtail Biden-era subsidies and credits for “renewables” are, fortunately, having an impact.  Boom fades for US clean energy as Trump guts subsidies

“Singapore-based solar panel manufacturer Bila Solar is suspending plans to double capacity at its new factory in Indianapolis. Canadian rival Heliene’s plans for a solar cell facility in Minnesota are under review. Norwegian solar wafer maker NorSun is evaluating whether to move forward with a planned factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And two fully permitted offshore wind farms in the U.S. Northeast may never get built,” the news agency reported.

These are among the major clean energy investments now in question after Republicans agreed earlier this month to quickly end U.S. subsidies for solar and wind power as part of their budget megabill, and as the White House directed agencies to tighten the rules on who can claim the incentives that remain.

The key provision in the new law is the accelerated phase-out of 30% tax credits for wind and solar projects: it requires projects to begin construction within a year or enter service by the end of 2027 to qualify for the credits. Previously the credits were available through 2032.

The policy changes have also injected fresh doubt about the fate of the nation’s pipeline of offshore wind projects, which depend heavily on tax credits to bring down costs. According to Wood Mackenzie, projects that have yet to start construction or make final investment decisions are unlikely to proceed.

Two such projects, which are fully permitted, include a 300-megawatt project by developer US Wind off the coast of Maryland and Iberdrola’s 791 MW New England Wind off the coast of Massachusetts.

Neither company responded to requests for comment.

President Trump is putting America first and leading an energy renaissance that should be in full bloom on our nation’s 250^th birthday on July 4, 2026. It’s difficult to imagine a greater Independence Day gift to the American people than freedom from the cold, dark landscape that would result from following the directives of global agencies and the rulings of international courts.

Postscript: Saving U.S. Farmland from Transmission Lines

Robert Bryce adds the canceling of transmission lines dedicated to wind and solar power in his blog article Transmission Unplugged.

From Missouri and Colorado to Germany and Spain,
high-voltage transmission projects are being stopped by
fierce local opposition, soaring costs, and permitting delays.

Invenergy neglected to mention that if the project gets built, it will saddle ratepayers with about $500 million in costs to integrate the power it will be delivering into grids on the eastern end of the line. In other words, Invenergy wants to build a merchant high-voltage transmission line and force its way onto the US electric grid. But it doesn’t want to pay any of the costs that its project will impose on the system. Furthermore, Grain Belt Express has faced fierce opposition in Missouri for more than a decade. Earlier this month, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced a civil investigation into Invenergy for its “misleading claims and a track record of dishonesty” about the project.

Last week, the Department of Energy gave Polsky some high-amperage clarity from the Trump administration when it canceled a $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express that the agency’s Loan Programs Office made last November in the waning days of the Biden administration.

The DOE said it killed the loan deal “to ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources.”