Confusion and uncertainty have reigned for the US renewable-energy industry ever since January 20, when President Donald Trump issued an unexpectedly sweeping anti-wind executive order. It seemed to prevent all federal government involvement in the permitting and public financing of all offshore and onshore wind projects, including on private onshore land. It may even have set the stage for halting projects that are under construction.

Within a single day, his administration significantly narrowed the anti-wind measure, which had clearly been rushed and ambiguous. That was not surprising, given that Trump had issued an unprecedented 350 or so executive orders since becoming president the same day the anti-wind executive order was issued.

Trump had also issued pro-oil and gas measures among the executive orders that were released within hours of his being sworn in.

The anti-wind order as issued on 'Day One' of Trump's administration froze all grants, loans and other payments from President Joe Biden's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, which is the US wind industry's main source of public money. It offers tax credits for wind projects and turbine manufacturing plants.

Still, Trump’s reversal said that the executive order would only halt incentives for electric vehicle infrastructure and climate change mitigation, though many people are likely not to trust the no-doubt rushed wording of the reversal.

More recently, on January 28 a federal judge in Washington DC halted the freeze, until the afternoon of February 3, 2025 local time.

Despite the narrowing, Trump’s anti-wind memo still specifically pauses new and renewed federal offshore wind leasing pending an environmental and economic review. The offshore pause will last until the executive order is “revoked”, said the White House.

"We're not going to do the wind thing. Big, ugly windmills. They ruin your neighbourhood," said the Republican 47^th president. He had previously promised to halt offshore wind on “Day One”.

“If you have a house that's near a windmill, guess what? Your house is worth less than half... And they're the most expensive form of energy that you can have, by far. And they're all made in China, by the way, practically all of them. And they kill your birds, and they ruin your beautiful landscapes," he said.

Many of the world's wind turbines are in fact made in China. 

Notably, solar energy had been untouched in the executive order.

Much is at risk. BloombergNEF notes that the permitted US offshore wind project pipeline is 18 GW, including nearly 5 GW of projects under construction. Iberdrola’s US subsidiary Avangrid, Ørsted and Equinor hold the most permitted offshore wind projects, it said.

The executive order has rattled the wind industry in North America, Mexico and Europe. There had been rumours that only offshore wind leasing off the US East Coast would be temporarily halted for six months, but they proved sadly wrong.

The US is the world’s second largest modern wind power market after China, and the oldest.

The American Clean Power Association (ACP)’s CEO Jason Grumet quickly slammed the anti-wind order.

“ACP strongly opposes blanket measures to halt or impede development of domestic wind energy on federal lands and waters. The contradiction between the energy-focused executive orders is stark: while on one hand the administration seeks to reduce bureaucracy and unleash energy production, on the other it increases bureaucratic barriers, undermining domestic energy development and harming American businesses and workers.

“The possibility that the federal government could seek to actively oppose energy production by American companies on private land is at odds with our nation’s character as well as our national interests,” continued Grumet.

There are bound to be legal challenges to parts of the anti-wind order, though it is not yet clear on what grounds.

Senior executives of some major companies involved in renewables are – in public at least – dismissing the significance of Trump’s action, saying that their market will grow because the energy transition is unstoppable.

According to CNBC, Joe Kaeser, chairman of the supervisory board of Europe-oriented Siemens Energy, said he saw Trump’s anti-wind move as a “slight plus” for the German company. The company’s shares indeed rose slightly after Trump was sworn in.

“We need to see what’s behind all the executive orders and the policies. So far, I believe there are many areas where actually Siemens Energy benefits a lot,” he told CNBC at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meet in Davos. Siemens Energy is involved in gas turbines and other hydrocarbon equipment, as well as the manufacture of wind turbines.

For his part Ignacio Galán, executive chairman of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, told CNBC that electrification will go ahead anyway. He noted increased global demand of electricity for energy-hungry data centres especially because of AI.

In contract, the pure-play wind and solar developer Orsted saw its shares dipping 4.4% first thing on January 22. It had announced – the same day as Trump’s executive order – an $1.7bn impairment charge on US projects. Danish turbine manufacturer Vestas’ stock fell about 7% that same day.

According to the headline of a note from BloombergNEF, the strategic research group, US offshore wind is “down but not out”.

This is presumably because the energy source is the cheapest according to financial group Lazard. Domestic wind installations are expected to continue to grow, albeit more slowly in the US during the next four years while Trump is in office, Denmark-based global wind analyst Shashi Barla told NewsBase recently.

Trump has famously taken a particular dislike to wind power. The start of his public comments against wind coincided with his unsuccessful opposition to an offshore wind being built near his private coastal golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The UK Supreme Court in London had dismissed Trump’s objection in 2015.

Other weapons in the pro-oil president’s anti-wind arsenal could include trimming wind-oriented budgets at the US Bureau of Offshore Energy Management (BOEM), which oversees energy development in federal waters, Barla had told NewsBase just before the inauguration.

Trump could also appoint supporters to head government divisions that oversee and regulate wind power, impose heavy taxes on wind projects that are currently under execution to render them economically unviable, prompting other developers to hold back their plans, and just generally incentivise the oil and gas sector to make offshore wind unattractive for investors.

As Trump’s inauguration loomed, Barla noted that wind stocks had plummeted on both sides of the Atlantic the day after Trump was elected on November 5.