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<\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>\u00d8rsted has taken legal action against President Donald Trump\u2019s administration in an effort to restart work on a nearly completed offshore wind project halted by the US government last month.<\/p>\n<p>The troubled Danish renewable energy company is seeking a court order that would let it finish its $1.5bn Revolution Wind project, which was meant to supply enough power for 350,000 homes in north-eastern US.<\/p>\n<p>But the US move to halt the development, driven by Trump\u2019s deep scepticism about wind power, has hit \u00d8rsted\u2019s business and sent its shares to record lows.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/stream\/f6b91fe6-54e2-4ecf-8533-e82676df543a\" data-trackable=\"link\">\u00d8rsted<\/a> said in the court filing on Thursday that the stop-work order was \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d after the company and its partners had spent billions of dollars on approvals.<\/p>\n<p>It is one of a series of orders issued by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/donald-trump\" data-trackable=\"link\">Trump<\/a> administration aimed at blocking new offshore wind projects, which the president has described as the \u201cscam of the century\u201d. <\/p>\n<p>The \u00d8rsted lawsuit comes a day before the company holds an emergency shareholder meeting in Copenhagen aimed at approving a DKr60bn ($9.4bn) rights issue to strengthen its balance sheet, which has been badly damaged by the Trump administration\u2019s repeated attacks on the industry. \u00d8rsted shares are down 38 per cent this year to DKr199 on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The Danish state and Equinor, \u00d8rsted\u2019s two-largest shareholders with 50 per cent and 10 per cent stakes respectively, have backed the rights issue, as has Norway\u2019s $2tn oil fund, which owns 3 per cent.<\/p>\n<p>Equinor has itself sued the Trump administration over a stop-work order on its own Empire Wind project. It later dropped the action after the US lifted the order as New York\u2019s governor opened up for more gas pipeline capacity.<\/p>\n<p>Norway mustered a big diplomatic push over the affair, including using Jens Stoltenberg, a former head of Nato who is now the country\u2019s finance minister. But Denmark is more exposed as it is already in a major diplomatic stand-off with the US over Trump\u2019s insistence that he can gain control over the Arctic island of Greenland from Copenhagen.<\/p>\n<aside aria-labelledby=\"aside-label\" class=\"n-content-recommended--single-story n-content-recommended--inset\" data-component=\"recommended\">\n<p class=\"n-content-recommended__title o3-type-body-highlight\">Recommended<\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser o-teaser--article o-teaser--small o-teaser--stacked o-teaser--has-image js-teaser\" data-id=\"6256b7bd-4cd4-4457-a61e-2b62fdfa0942\">\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-container js-teaser-image-container\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/6256b7bd-4cd4-4457-a61e-2b62fdfa0942\" data-trackable=\"image-link\" data-trackable-context-story-link=\"image-link\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/p>\n<div class=\"o-teaser__image-placeholder\" style=\"aspect-ratio:2290\/1288\"><\/div>\n<p><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>While \u00d8rsted executives and Danish officials have tried to work out what Trump might require to restart Revolution Wind, which is 80 per cent complete, they and the wider industry have become increasingly fearful that the US administration is ready to intensify its attacks.<\/p>\n<p>Court filings issued in the US in recent weeks show the administration is working to withdraw permits from at least two wind farm developments off the coast of Massachusetts. These are SouthCoast Wind, being developed by France\u2019s Engie and EDP Renewables, and the New England Wind 1 and 2 projects being developed by Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spain\u2019s Iberdrola.<\/p>\n<p>\u00d8rsted has a second unfinished project in the US, Sunrise Wind, and some investors worry it could also become a target. The Danish group owns a 50 per cent stake in Revolution Wind, the rest being owned by a unit of BlackRock, but it owns 100 per cent of Sunrise, and its difficulties in selling down that stake are what led to the rights issue.<\/p>\n<p>Doug Burgum, US secretary of the interior, has defended the suspension of work on Revolution Wind, citing national security concerns, including the possibility that undersea drone attacks could be launched through a wind farm. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople with bad ulterior motives against the US would launch a swarm drone attack through a wind farm. The radar gets very distorted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/575dac25-3304-4aef-b537-d4994076c22e\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free Your guide to what Trump\u2019s second term means for Washington,…\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":35536,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}