European Wind Giant Pumps Brakes On Industrializing America’s Oceans
- April 25, 2025
Nick Pope, Daily Caller
A major foreign offshore wind developer is pausing its operations in the U.S. amid the Trump administration’s assault against the industry, Reuters reported Friday.
RWE, a German multinational energy company with a large offshore wind presence in the U.S., is stopping its offshore wind activity in American waters for now, Reuters reported. The company is pausing its operations because of the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to crack down on the industry, which benefited from large subsidies and favorable regulation under the Biden administration.
“In the U.S. … we have stopped our offshore activities for the time being,” RWE CEO Markus Krebber said in a speech released ahead of the company’s annual meeting reviewed by Reuters. “We remain cautious given the political developments.”
“We had already announced in November that we did not expect to invest in our offshore wind activities in the USA as planned. Accordingly, our project activities were largely discontinued, as communicated at the beginning of the year,” a RWE spokesperson said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The project was still under development anyway, construction had not yet begun and the company had not yet made a final investment decision. The speech at the Annual General Meeting also refers to this mentioning that we have stopped our offshore activities for the time being; there is no new status.”
RWE has rights to build offshore wind infrastructure at three sites, but the company indicated in March it had essentially wound those operations down to a bare minimum without officially pausing its operations, according to Reuters.
Notably, RWE hired Amanda Lefton, who formerly ran the Biden Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), shortly after she left the government in 2023.