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These are the 10 most important clean energy transition projects struggling to get off the ground
The president’s early executive orders give the once-and-future head of the Office of Management and Budget far-reaching powers.
On Trump’s EPA appointees, solar in Europe, and a new fire in California.
While wind got hammered, the fastest growing renewable energy source emerged relatively unscathed.
Rob and Jesse talk with Wharton’s Benjamin Keys, then dig into Trump’s big Day One.
The Los Angeles wildfires have killed at least 27 people, destroyed more than 17,000 structures, and displaced tens of thousands. In the next few months, the billions of costs in damage to homes and property will ripple through the state’s insurance market — and likely cause its insurer of last resort to run out of money.
Benjamin Keys has studied how natural disasters, rising sea levels, and increasing exposure to risk have driven up insurance costs nationwide. He is a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and one of the country’s top experts on climate change, home values, and insurance markets.
On this week’s episode of Shift Key, Rob and Jesse talk with Keys about how California broke its insurance market, why insurance costs are rising nationwide, and how homeowners, home buyers, and communities can protect themselves. They dive into President Donald Trump’s dizzying first day of executive actions and how they’ll affect the future of energy development. Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap, and Jesse Jenkins, a professor of energy systems engineering at Princeton University.
Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Here is an excerpt from our conversation:
Jesse Jenkins: We should have warned you ahead of time that this podcast always devolves back to the tri-state area. It’s just sort of inevitable. We saw this dynamic on the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy, where a lot of more working class-type communities that had homes there, they ended up either getting wiped out or having to leave and sell, and moving out. And what replaced them were very large houses — some of them built in a more secure way, up above the floodplain on elevated floors. But most of them, as I understand it, don’t have insurance.
So they are self insured, in the sense that people think they’re wealthy enough that they can just absorb the loss. That’s one type of self insurance. The folks who are coming off the federal flood insurance plan are probably folks who are not really self insured. They can’t diversify there. They don’t have enough wealth to absorb that risk. They’re just simply exposed now and rolling the dice.
Benjamin Keys: And for the time being, the cost of flood insurance is still subsidized. And so, you know, even if you see your rate jump by 18% and you say, wow, that’s expensive, it’s going to get substantially worse. And so it’s a huge mistake to leave that path, and have interrupted flood coverage. That’s a tough one. And you know, most of the flood policies that are out there are mandatory. Those are ones that are being required by the mortgage market that, say, if you live in a flood zone, you have to have flood insurance.
So actually, I have flood insurance on my house in Philadelphia. I live close enough to the Schuylkill River, a couple of blocks away, that — and my neighborhood did flood just a few years ago. We fortunately weren’t harmed by it, but that flood insurance policy is mandated by the mortgage market. And so that’s where most of the coverage comes from.
But when you look at the voluntary take-up of flood insurance, it’s very low.
Jenkins: Are we likely to see something similar for wildfire risk? That effectively, insurers say, we'll continue to write policies in California, but if you're in a wildfire prone area, we're not going to give you wildfire insurance, which would create a kind of similar issue.
Keys: It's possible that we could see a national wildfire program or a broader national disaster program develop. The insurance industry would love to carve out these risks, right? These are very difficult things.
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by …
Intersolar & Energy Storage North America is the premier U.S.-based conference and trade show focused on solar, energy storage, and EV charging infrastructure. To learn more, visit intersolar.us.
Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
After Trump’s executive orders took aim at wind developers, they’re mostly keeping a stoic silence.
The newly inaugurated president does not like the wind industry. Especially the offshore wind industry.
Donald Trump Monday night issued an expansive executive order targeting the sector that the industry is only just starting to digest. And while the executive order was mostly being seen as a pause or moratorium on new offshore leasing, it could have much more wide-ranging effects. It calls for the Secretary of the Interior and the Attorney General to “conduct a comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases, identifying any legal bases for such removal,” thus calling gigawatts of existing, permitted projects into doubt.
“The executive order pausing new offshore wind leasing and permitting is a blow to the American offshore wind industry and hurts the hundreds of U.S. supply chain companies and thousands of workers already building more American energy,” Liz Burdock, the chief executive officer of the Oceantic Network, an offshore wind industry group, said in a statement. “Today’s actions threaten to strand $25 billion already flowing into new ports, vessels, and manufacturing centers, and curtail future investments across our country.” Companies that have active offshore projects have been largely mum on the order. A spokesperson for Orsted, the Danish company behind the under-construction Revolution Wind project off the coast of Rhode Island and the Sunrise Wind project off the coast of Long Island, told me only that it was “in the process of reviewing it to assess the impact on our portfolio.”
A spokesperson for Equinor, which is working on the Empire Wind project, projected to start serving New York City in 2026, told me, “Equinor is committed to advancing a broad energy portfolio that supports a domestic supply chain, generates skilled jobs, and makes a lasting contribution to American energy security. We will continue to assess all policy developments and work with the Trump administration as we deliver long-term energy solutions for the growing American economy.”
Several other major offshore and onshore wind developers, including Pattern Energy, Avangrid, and NextEra either did not respond to requests for comment or would not comment on their ongoing projects in light of the order.
Trade group officials and outside experts were skeptical that the order would stop projects currently under construction like Revolution Wind, Vineyard Wind in Massachusetts, or the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project, backed by the utility Dominion. Projects like Empire and Sunrise Wind, which have started some onshore construction, may survive as well. But the Biden Administration also permitted a flurry of projects in its final year, including SouthCoast Wind, New England Wind, Atlantic Shores South, and the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, and those may now be in doubt.
“Projects with steel in the water are probably safe,” Cy McGeady, a fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me. “I’d be shocked if a project with steel in the water has its permit revoked.” But of those that haven’t yet gotten started, he cautioned, “It’s those projects that are most at risk.”
Shares of Orsted fell over 9% in the United States Tuesday after the company announced $1.7 billion in impairments due to delays on its Sunrise Wind project — not related to the executive orders. The company also said it was marking down the value of its leases off the coasts of New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware, and cited “considerably increased project costs,” as well as delays linked to transmission equipment for the wind turbines.
“Delivering the project within the updated schedule and cost is an absolute top priority for Orsted,” the company’s chief executive Mads Nipper said in a statement on the accounting changes.
The executive order comes after a dreadful few years for the offshore wind industry, which has been hammered by high costs, delays, and interest rate hikes, which led to several project cancellations even before Trump’s victory. The wind industry as a whole has seen slowing growth, thanks to difficulties building adequate transmission, exposure to high interest rates, and rising local opposition. New wind energy additions in the United States peaked in 2020 and 2021 with 14 gigawatts of added capacity, falling to just over 6 gigawatts in 2023.
The executive order also, at best, means no more new leasing for the duration of Trump’s time in office, calling into question the growth prospects of the whole offshore wind industry in the United States. Onshore wind may be on firmer ground, as many projects, especially in Texas, are not built on federal lands and do not require the full federal permitting process to be built.
“If the growth prospects are curtailed or drastically limited or at least diminished for the next four-plus years,” McGeady told me, referring to the offshore wind industry, “then it’s much harder to justify costs in the near term investment and expenditure of capital for an industry that might never launch.”
