Orsted, the Danish renewable energy developer, said on Thursday that it would cut about 2,000 jobs, or around 25 percent of its work force, over the next two years.
The move was the latest sign of the diminished prospects for offshore wind, a low-emissions technology that Orsted helped pioneer.
“We’ll be saying goodbye to many skilled and valued colleagues,” Rasmus Errboe, Orsted’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Not long ago, Orsted looked on its way to becoming a global giant in the renewable energy industry, with a portfolio that includes high-profile projects in the United States. Now, the company suggested that it would dial back those aspirations and hunker down in its home base of Europe.
Offshore wind farms, which cost billions of dollars to build, have lost some of their luster. The sector is under attack by President Trump, while adverse economic developments, including inflation and high interest rates, have eroded profitability.
Mr. Errboe said that Orsted would be finishing up its construction projects in the coming years and so “we’ll need fewer employees.”
Deepa Venkateswaran, a utility analyst at Bernstein, the Wall Street research firm, said that the last couple of years had “changed everything for them.”
The Trump administration has actively opposed efforts to construct wind farms off the East Coast of the United States, ordering a halt earlier this year to one of Orsted’s projects, called Revolution Wind. The $6.2 billion development off Rhode Island was 80 percent completed at the time of Mr. Trump’s order, Orsted said.
Although a federal judge said last month that Revolution Wind could proceed, Orsted’s future in the United States, including a large wind farm it is building off New York, called Sunrise Wind, now looks uncertain.
Rather than lining up future developments, Orsted is doing what it can to survive. It recently raised more than $9 billion from shareholders, including the Danish government, which owns just over 50 percent of the company’s shares.
Orsted employs around 8,000 people around the world, and it expects that number to fall to around 6,000 by the end of 2027. The company said the reductions would occur through attrition, sales of business units, outsourcing and redundancies.
About 500 people will be laid off in the current quarter, Orsted said.
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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