Orsted’s Collapse and the Death of Offshore Wind: America’s Self-Sabotage Exports
At this point, if you still think doing business with the United States is a safe bet, you might want to check your compass — it’s spinning in circles. The once-shining beacon of innovation has turned into a black hole for progress, sucking the life out of every clean-energy dream it touches. Just ask Denmark’s Orsted — the world’s offshore wind pioneer — now forced to amputate a quarter of its workforce because the U.S. political circus couldn’t stop tripping over its own wires.
Let’s get this straight: Orsted built the offshore wind industry. These are the people who turned North Sea gusts into megawatts, who proved that green power could actually fuel economies. Denmark’s Vindeby project in 1991 was the world’s first offshore wind farm — and it was Orsted’s ancestor that made it happen. Fast forward three decades, and Orsted became a global symbol of the clean-energy future — until the future hit a brick wall called “American politics.”
The Great Green Backslide
Rising costs, post-pandemic inflation, and interest rates were already battering the sector. But what finished the job was Washington’s spectacular blend of denial, deregulation, and delusion. Donald Trump’s personal vendetta against wind turbines — because he didn’t like how they “ruined” his golf course views — has metastasized into policy. His administration not only froze key offshore wind projects on the East Coast but sent a chilling message to every investor on the planet: clean energy isn’t safe in America.
Billions of dollars were already sunk into projects like Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Empire Wind near New York. Courts had to step in just to keep construction alive. That’s not energy policy — that’s a tantrum. And it’s costing lives, jobs, and time we don’t have.
Denmark’s Nightmare Export
For Denmark, this is personal. A nation of six million that’s spent half a century perfecting the art of wind engineering — now watching its crown jewel bleed because of foreign idiocy. Orsted’s CEO Rasmus Errboe admitted the company is cutting 2,000 jobs, trimming ambition, and pulling back from new projects. Translation: the dream is shrinking.
Even Denmark’s manufacturing backbone feels the tremor. Welcon, which builds the giant towers for offshore turbines, openly says it doesn’t believe in the U.S. market anymore. “I don’t believe in the U.S. before we have a new president,” said chairman Carsten Pedersen — and he’s not wrong. His factories are booked until 2027, but he knows the future just got darker. “It’s so sad, what’s happening now,” he added. “We had a chance to make the green transition.”
He’s right. And we’re blowing it.
Europe’s Wake-Up Call
Europe’s offshore wind industry employs 370,000 people and generates 20% of the region’s electricity. It’s one of the few sectors where Europe still leads the world — for now. But even that’s under threat. Analysts at Wood Mackenzie now predict that less than half of the global offshore wind targets (excluding China) will be met by 2030. Why? Because investors are spooked, governments are stalling, and costs are skyrocketing thanks to a chain reaction of political sabotage, protectionism, and short-term greed.
This is the part where people say, “Well, that’s capitalism.” No. This is malfunction. A system so tangled in ego and bureaucracy that it’s strangling its own future.
America, the Anti-Example
Let’s stop pretending the U.S. is leading the green revolution. It’s not. It’s exporting dysfunction — spreading the gospel of gridlock, corporate capture, and fossil-fueled populism. America once sent rockets to the moon; now it sends lawsuits to stop wind turbines. This isn’t decline — it’s self-inflicted decay.
And yet, European companies keep walking into the trap — believing the “land of opportunity” still plays by rational rules. Newsflash: the empire is collapsing in real time. Infrastructure is rotting, democracy is for sale, and science is a partisan sport. Why would any serious energy company build its future there?
We’ve studied empires. We’ve read the books. It never ends well. From Rome to Britain to America, the pattern is the same: hubris, denial, decay. The fatal flaw isn’t economics or technology — it’s human beings. We build civilizations on reason, then tear them down with ego.
The Last Gust
Orsted’s fall is more than a business story. It’s a warning siren. The wind industry was supposed to be our salvation — clean, scalable, and global. Now it’s another casualty in the age of disinformation and dysfunction.
So here’s the unfiltered truth: if humanity can’t get past its addiction to short-term thinking and political theater, we won’t just lose jobs or companies. We’ll lose the future.
The winds of change were at our backs. And we turned away.
yours truly,
Adaptation-Guide
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