The chief executive of a beleaguered Danish wind farm developer said Tuesday that the company would move quickly to complete a $6.2 billion wind farm off Rhode Island, a day after a judge struck down President Trump’s effort to halt the project.
“We have seven turbines left to install” on the project, called Revolution Wind, Rasmus Errboe, the head of the energy company Orsted, said in an interview. He added that he expected the wind farm to begin generating some electric power “within weeks,” with completion coming later this year.
Revolution Wind is expected to power 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Orsted is building a second wind farm, called Sunrise Wind, off New York’s coast. The two offshore wind farms are among five that were halted by the Trump administration in December over national security concerns.
Those five wind farms were a major component of efforts by East Coast states to reduce carbon emissions from electric power generation. They represent a planned $25 billion investment and were expected to create 10,000 jobs.
In the interview, Mr. Errboe indicated that Orsted was trying to salvage extensive planned investments in the United States. “We are dealing with this in a diligent manner,” he said. “We take nothing for granted.”
Mr. Errboe said the company will focus on Europe, where it pioneered offshore wind and where support continues to be “very strong.”
But completing the U.S. projects is far from a sure thing. Sunrise Wind remains halted, and a hearing on the project is expected in the coming weeks, while the Trump administration could come up with new challenges to Revolution Wind.
Orsted’s share price rose almost 5 percent on Tuesday, following the court ruling. Analysts, though, warn that the problems faced by the company and the wider industry may not be over.
“Risks of further policy intervention and cost inflation remain, given the Trump administration’s concerns on offshore wind,” Jenny Ping, an analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a note to clients.
These stops and starts can bring mounting costs for wind developers, which must continue to pay installation vessels and other costs. Orsted estimates that the recent delays cost $1.44 million a day for Revolution Wind and $1.25 million for Sunrise, whose halt Orsted is also challenging in court.
The company has been badly burned in the United States, first by rising costs and more recently by Mr. Trump’s aversion to the presence of giant offshore wind turbines.
Orsted’s problems pushed it to raise $4.7 billion in a share sale last year. In November, Orsted sold 50 percent of a large wind farm called Hornsea 3 that it is building off Britain to the U.S. asset manager Apollo Global Management for around $6 billion.
Maxine Joselow and Brad Plumer contributed reporting.
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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