(Bloomberg) -- Shares in some of Europe’s biggest wind power companies fell Wednesday after President-elect Donald Trump said he aimed to have no new windmills in the US after taking office.
The comments are the latest in a long line of anti-wind power messages by Trump, who fought against a wind farm off the coast of his Scottish golf course and has falsely claimed the machines cause cancer. It’s a potentially worrying sign for wind power investors who hope a second Trump administration would leave intact parts of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that support the sector.
“We are going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built,” Trump said during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday.
Shares of Danish turbine maker Vestas Wind Systems A/S fell as much as 7.3% Wednesday, while offshore wind developer Orsted A/S dropped 7.7% to the lowest level in over a year. German turbine maker Nordex SE fell as much as 8.3%. The stocks of clean energy companies plummeted following Trump’s election victory.
“While the anti-wind rhetoric is not new, the headlines have clearly spooked investors,” Martin Wilkie, an analyst at Citigroup Inc., said in a note. “The market already expects new offshore permitting to end, and the incremental focus will be on onshore, on authorizations for renewable energy projects and grid links on federal land.”
While Trump has long opposed wind power, the sector expanded significantly during this first term in office, thanks in part to federal tax credits. In his comments Tuesday, the president elect criticized “massive subsidies” he said that the technology gets from the US government.
It’s already expected that Trump will create a significant obstacle for offshore wind developers, who require permission from the federal government to start construction. He said during the presidential campaign that he would target the offshore wind industry with an executive action on his first day in office.
The political opposition at the federal level of the US compounds challenges already faced by the wind power industry due to rising costs in recent years. That’s been particularly acute for projects planned off the coast of the US, where a number of wind farm plans have been scrapped or delayed due to rising prices.
(Updates prices in fourth paragraph, adds analyst comment in fifth)
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.