Orsted sells onshore business for $1.7 billion after judge rules US wind project can resum
February 3, 2026
Orsted agreed to sell its European onshore business in a $1.7 billion deal, a day after a U.S. judge ruled that the renewable-energy company could resume work at its Sunrise Wind project off New York’s coast.
The Trump administration ordered a halt to construction of five U.S. offshore wind projects just before Christmas, including Orsted’s Revolution Wind and Sunrise Wind projects, citing national security risks.
A federal court last month granted a preliminary injunction that allowed work to resume at Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island, while the underlying lawsuit challenging the stop-work order proceeds, and a similar ruling has now been made allowing the immediate restart of Sunrise Wind.
Sunrise Wind is around 45% complete, with 44 of 84 monopile foundations installed and first electricity originally planned to begin as soon as October this year. The project will deliver power to nearly 600,000 New York homes once fully operational in 2027.
Orsted has been working through a major restructuring that includes a large-scale divestment program to free up funds for its most financially attractive projects, shore up its balance sheet and support a solid investment grade rating–key for ensuring access to cheaper financing in capital-intensive wind farm projects.
The company has announced large-scale job cuts as it scales back its global footprint to focus more on offshore wind markets in Europe and select regions in Asia Pacific in the face of headwinds at its U.S. projects with the Trump administration opposed to the wind energy sector.
“This is certainly good news for Orsted,” Sydbank’s head of equity research Jacob Pedersen said after the ruling.
“We still see high political risk in the U.S. and a potentially difficult path towards completion of Sunrise Wind,” he added.
Pedersen said that the halt to construction at Sunrise Wind had cost Orsted as much as $2.5 million a day, implying a total cost of just over $100 million.
Orsted said Tuesday that the 1.44 billion-euro ($1.7 billion) sale of its European onshore business to Danish investment firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners includes around 578 megawatts of operational capacity and 248 megawatts under construction as well as a development pipeline across onshore wind, solar energy, and battery storage projects in Ireland, the U.K., Germany, and Spain.
“The divestment of our European onshore platform finalizes the divestment program that we’ve laid out, and we’ve now substantially strengthened Orsted’s financial position,” Orsted Chief Financial Officer Trond Westlie said.
The deal is good evidence that Orsted is executing well on the parts of its strategy that it can influence, with the proceeds helping to boost the company’s financial strength, Pedersen said.
However, although the price of 10.7 billion Danish kroner ($1.69 billion) initially looks attractive, the divestment will result in a goodwill impairment of 1.6 billion kroner at the same time as it takes future earnings and earnings potential out of the business, Pedersen added.
Orsted has now signed deals since 2025 that have generated proceeds totaling around 46 billion Danish kroner ($7.26 billion), delivering on the company’s target of more than 35 billion kroner in proceeds during this period.
Write to Dominic Chopping at dominic.chopping@wsj.com
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