Orsted, the large Danish renewable energy developer, said on Monday that it would issue 60 billion Danish kroner, or about $9.4 billion, in new shares to shore up its finances amid a downturn in an industry that has been exacerbated by President Trump’s resistance to wind farms.
The move caught markets by surprise, sending Orsted’s share price tumbling about 31 percent in trading in Copenhagen.
The company said it was issuing the new shares because it was unable to carry out plans to sell a portion of Sunrise Wind, a large offshore wind project it is building 30 miles off Montauk Point in New York.
Existing shareholders will have the right to buy shares proportional to their ownership. Orsted said that the Danish government, which owns 50.1 percent of the company, had agreed to subscribe to its “pro rata” share.
The planned share sale amounts to about 45 percent of Orsted’s market value on Aug. 8.
In the past, Orsted has reaped profits by initiating projects and then selling off large stakes in them to investors who want exposure to green energy.
In its announcement of issuing new shares, the company appeared to blame the Trump administration, which has adopted a skeptical approach to renewable energy and offshore wind in particular.
“Orsted and our industry are in an extraordinary situation with the adverse market development in the U.S. on top of the past years’ macroeconomic and supply chain challenges,” Rasmus Errboe, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement on Monday.
It is widely accepted in the energy industry that new projects are highly unlikely as long as Mr. Trump is in office, but Orsted’s announcement shows that there is a cloud over those already under construction as well.
Orsted, which has led the development of offshore wind farms in Europe, has stumbled badly in the United States, where it had bet heavily.
Well before Mr. Trump’s re-election in 2024, inflation and higher interest rates slashed the profitability of planned projects, forcing the company to write off large projects and cancel wind farms.
More recently, the Trump administration’s actions have raised questions about whether there would be a future for offshore wind in the United States, once considered one of the world’s most promising markets.
The Trump administration is withdrawing offshore acreage from availability for new wind farms and threatening reviews that could lead to delays or halts of those already under construction.
“The Department of the Interior is ending special treatment for unreliable energy sources, such as wind,” the administration said last month.
Such moves could hit Orsted, which is building two other wind farms off the east coast of the United States. Tariffs on imported equipment like wind turbines will also raise costs.
Orsted’s 40 billion kroner estimate of the additional funding now needed to complete Sunrise Wind seems “very high,” Deepa Venkateswaran, a utility analyst at Bernstein, a Wall Street research firm, wrote in a note to clients.
As a result, she suggested that there might be other risks lurking, including further negative developments in the United States, that “the company is being less open about.”
Stanley Reed reports on energy, the environment and the Middle East for The Times from London. He has been a journalist for more than four decades.
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