Interchange Recharged3 Jun 2025

It’s turbulent times for the wind sector in the US, but the outlook is better across the pond. What can the US learn from Europe?

Nearly 150 days into President Trump’s second term, the outlook for wind energy in the United States - particularly offshore wind - is increasingly bleak. Trump had pledged to end offshore wind development, and now the House Ways and Means Committee is proposing a phase-out of tax credits for renewables by 2031 - a move that would severely impact an already struggling wind sector (over on our sister podcast Energy Gang, we discuss the bill and what it means for renewables – check out that episode once you’re finished here).

Only three offshore wind projects have come online in US waters, with 4 GW currently under construction. In 2024, total wind installations reached a ten-year low at just 5.2 GW. By contrast, Europe has surged ahead, having built 35 GW of offshore wind capacity - ten times the US total – emphasising the stark differences in policy and financing frameworks.

Still, there are glimmers of hope: President Trump recently lifted a stop-work order on a $5 billion offshore wind farm off the coast of New York, following lobbying from Governor Kathy Hochul. The project, led by Norwegian company Equinor, is expected to power 500,000 homes by 2027. However, with developer confidence sinking, experts warn that the stop-start nature of US policy continues to undermine long-term momentum in the sector.

To forecast the next few years for wind in the US, host Sylvia Leyva Martinez – principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie – is joined by analyst Stephen Maldonado. They explore the policy and technology that’s holding back deployment of offshore wind in the US.

Plus, looking across the Atlantic to Europe, Sylvia talks to WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson, about the financing frameworks for wind in Europe.

Sylvia, Stephen and Giles talk through the lessons for developers and financers: with uncertainty around tax credits and shifting policies, there may be a shift in resources to more advanced projects, putting early-stage ones on hold. Repowering old wind turbines is an option too; Giles explains how. And making use of domestic supply chain strengths is key – compared to solar, wind has more domestic supply chain support.

Follow the show wherever you’re listening to it now, and tell us what you think, we’re on X and Bluesky @interchangeshow

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(349)

Bigger turbines, bigger consequences: how wind is rethinking risk, insurance, and predictive maintenance

Wind remains fundamentally healthy: electricity demand is rising, decarbonised power is still needed, and both Europe and the US continue to pull new projects forward, albeit for different reasons. Bu...

14 Jul 45min

As racks scale, power must change: The AC-to-DC rethink inside AI factories

As AI systems scale, the infrastructure challenge is no longer just about chips, models, and software performance. It is increasingly about the physical systems that allow computation to happen at all...

30 Jun 33min

Handing back the mic: Six months of data center reality, from Bragawatts to behind-the-meter, and the questions still open

A year ago the data centre conversation was about scale. Increasingly it is about what happens when the announcements meet the physical grid. New capacity is being announced at roughly 435 megawatts a...

16 Jun 43min

The grid's missing operating system: Why a $100,000 AI controller could defer trillions in hardware and why utilities won't buy it

The energy transition conversation focuses on what connects to the grid. Far less attention goes to whether anyone is coordinating what those assets do once connected. AI training runs swing hundreds ...

2 Jun 43min

The grid's immune system is retiring: Synchronous condensers, AI data centers and the physics gap that software alone can't close

As coal and gas plants retire, the energy transition conversation focuses on replacing their generation capacity. What gets far less attention is the loss of the physical properties those machines pro...

19 Mai 1h 2min

Beyond combustion: Long Island's first hydrogen-powered linear generator and the fuel-flexible answer to the dispatchable emissions-free resource problem

Utilities are under pressure to deliver generation that is dispatchable, affordable, and clean enough to satisfy increasingly stringent environmental rules, notoriously hard to do in one asset. As ren...

5 Mai 39min

The electrolyzer reckoning: Can disciplined product development deliver on green hydrogen's promise before the survivors run out of runway?

Empty gigawatt factories, product recalls, participation rates that never materialised, and a policy environment that has now stripped the green premium entirely. The electrolyzer industry has had a b...

21 Apr 1h

Flexibility as a service: Can Octopus's acquisition of Uplight finally make US residential VPPs work?

Millions of enrolled devices, 60 utilities, and the participation rate gap that's been embarrassing the US market for a decade. US residential virtual power plants have been a promising idea that's co...

7 Apr 45min