DAVID BLACKMON: Offshore Wind’s Mask Finally Comes Off

The green fairy tale now seems to be unraveling faster than a faulty wind turbine blade in a Nantucket storm.

On Monday, Aug. 11, 2025, Danish offshore wind giant Ørsted dropped a bombshell, notifying the market it plans a massive rights issue worth up to 60 billion Danish kroner (about $9.4 billion) to prop up its flailing offshore U.S. operations. The plan, which amounts to almost 50% of Ørsted’s market cap, is a desperation move driven by the forces of reality and President Donald Trump’s no-nonsense energy policies.

Ørsted’s stock took a nosedive in the wake of Monday’s announcement, cratering as much as 31.2% in Copenhagen trading, erasing billions in value overnight.

The panic comes as the company is scrambling to fund its Sunrise Wind project — a 924-megawatt eyesore off New York’s coast — and shore up another 8.1 gigawatts of planned capacity through 2027. Ørsted says the cash infusion is a direct response to what it delicately calls “material adverse developments” in the U.S. market.

Translated to plain English, this means Ørsted, whose normal business model would have involved selling a large minority share to investors to raise needed capital, has been unable to find any buyers as Trump’s energy policy revolution takes hold.

President Trump has made no bones about his disdain for the wind industry in general and offshore wind specifically. He promised repeatedly during his 2024 campaign to gut the offshore wind industry, citing its bogus environmental claims and visual pollution, and boy, has he delivered.