Trump’s broadside against wind industry puts projects that could power millions of homes at risk
A view of the turbines at Orsted’s offshore wind farm near Nysted, Denmark, September 4, 2023.
Tom Little | Reuters
President Donald Trump promised to unleash U.S. energy dominance, but his sweeping executive order targeting wind power puts a pipeline of projects at risk that would generate enough electricity for millions of American homes.
The order Trump issued on his first day in office indefinitely paused new offshore wind leases in U.S. coastal waters and halted new permits pending the completion of a review. The order jeopardizes proposed projects on the East Coast that have not yet secured permits totaling 32 gigawatts of power, according to data from the consulting firm Aurora Energy Research.
“At the moment, it’s really hard to see how any of these projects will be able to move forward,” said Artem Abramov, head of new energies research at the consultancy Rystad. Like Aurora, Rystad estimates that around 30 gigawatts of projects on the U.S. East Coast are at risk.
Those projects, if realized, would provide enough combined power for more than 12 million homes in the U.S., according a CNBC analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration. The order is not expected to impact projects under construction totaling about 5 gigawatts, according to Aurora.
Trump has abandoned commitments made during the Biden administration to fight climate change, withdrawing the U.S. for a second time from the Paris agreement. He has focused on boosting fossil fuel production, opening U.S. coastal waters to oil and gas leasing on the same day he withdrew those waters for wind.
Trump’s order will jeopardize the efforts of states in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast to transition away from fossil fuels and decarbonize their electric grid, Abramov said. New York, New Jersey and Virginia, for example, have ambitious clean energy goals adopted at the state level. But they are too far north to rely on solar with battery for power, Abramov said.
“If you want to achieve the future where the power generation in New York or New Jersey or Virginia is completely fossil free, if that’s the ultimate goal, there are not so many alternatives to offshore wind,” Abramov said.
The order could ultimately force states to rely more on carbon-emitting natural gas, according to Rystad and Aurora. But it is virtually impossible for a state like New York to meet its climate goals and ensure an adequate energy supply, particularly downstate in the New York City metro area, without offshore wind, said Julia Hoos, who heads Aurora’s U.S. East division.
Power projects waiting in line to connect to the electric grid in downstate New York through 2027 are almost entirely wind and transmission, Hoos said.
“There is virtually no possibility to bring online new gas in the next 18 to 24 months, unless there’s a significant reform or there’s some sort of fast track to bring online that gas, so you really can run into reliability issues,” Hoos said.
But more natural gas generation will likely be built later in the decade on the back of Trump’s policies, Hoos said. Investor sentiment was already shifting toward gas before the election results due in part to the need for reliable power to meet demand from artificial intelligence data centers, Abramov said.
Immediate impact
Two weeks after Trump’s order, New Jersey decided against moving forward for now with the Atlantic Shores project, which stood to become the first offshore wind development in the state. The state utilities board cited “uncertainty driven by federal actions and permitting” and European oil major Shell pulling out of the project.
“The offshore wind industry is currently facing significant challenges, and now is the time for patience and prudence,” Gov. Phil Murphy said in a statement backing the board’s decision.
Murphy, who has set a goal to achieve 100% clean energy in New Jersey by 2035, said he hoped “the Trump Administration will partner with New Jersey to lower costs for consumers, promote energy security, and create good-paying construction and manufacturing jobs.”
Offshore wind in the U.S. “has come to a stop, more or less with immediate effect” in the wake of Trump’s order, Vestas Wind Energy Systems CEO Henrik Andersen told investors on the company’s Feb. 5 earnings call. Denmark’s Vestas is one of the world’s leaders in manufacturing and servicing wind turbines.
Industry headwinds
Trump’s order deepens the challenges of an industry that was already facing an uncertain outlook after years growth.
Wind has surged as power source in the U.S. over the past 25 years from 2.4 gigawatts of installed generating capacity to 150 gigawatts by April 2024, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. Generation from wind hit a record that month, surpassing coal-fired power. Wind currently represents about 11% of total U.S. power generation.
But the industry has struggled against supply chain bottlenecks and high interest rates. Offshore wind was already the the most expensive form of renewable energy, Abramov said. Developers in the U.S. have faced a lot of cost certainty due to the challenges of building on water as opposed to land, Hoos said.
“The industry was hoping that the cost would come down,” Abramov said. “We haven’t seen any projects in the United States which was able to achieve lower levelized cost of energy.”
The world’s largest offshore wind developer, Denmark’s Orsted, decided on Feb. 5 to ditch its goal to install up to 38 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. Orsted also slashed its investment program through the end of the decade by about 25% to range of 210 to 230 billion Danish crowns (about $29 billion to $32 billion), down from 270 billion crowns previously.
Orsted’s Sunrise Wind and Revolution wind projects that are under construction offshore New York and New England respectively should not be impacted by Trump’s order, CEO Rasmus Errboe told investors the company’s company’s Feb. 6 earnings call. Future developments, however, may be at risk.
“We are fully committed to moving them forward and deliver on our commitments,” Errboe said. “We do not expect that the executive order will have any implications on assets under construction, but of course for assets under development, it’s potentially a different situation.”
The order also should not impact Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, the largest such project under construction in the U.S. at 2.6 gigawatts of power, Dominion Energy CEO Robert Blue told investors on the utility’s Feb. 12 earning call.
“Stopping it would be the most inflationary action that could be taken with respect to energy in Virginia,” Blue said. “It’s needed to power that growing data center market we’ve been talking about, critical to continuing U.S. superiority in AI and technology.”
Looking for clarity
The wind industry lobby group American Clean Power in a Jan. 20 statement described Trump’s order as a blanket measure that will jeopardize domestic energy development and harm American businesses and workers. The president’s order contradicts the administration’s goal to reduce bureaucracy and unleash energy production, ACP CEO Jason Grumet said in the statement.
The ACP is now trying to get clarity from the Trump administration on how the executive order will be implemented, said Frank Macchiarola, the group’s chief advocacy officer. It’s unclear, for example, when the review of permit and lease practices will be complete, Macchiarola said.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department simply said the department is implementing Trump’s executive order when asked for comment on a detailed list of questions. When asked when the review of permit and lease practices will be complete, the spokesperson said any estimate would be hypothetical.
The wind industry is committed to working with the Trump administration, supports the president’s push for energy dominance agenda and is making the case that renewables have a key role to play in that agenda as the largest new source of electricity in the U.S., Macchiarola said.
“When past administrations have chosen to stifle American energy development that has been almost universally viewed as a mistake,” Macchiarola said.
Onshore wind permitting has also been halted pending the review, but the part of the industry is unlikely to face a substantial impact, Rystad’s Abramov said. Wind farms onshore are almost entirely built on private rather than federal land, he said. The market is also already saturated and adding capacity is largely dependent on building out more energy storage first, the analyst said.
Offshore wind, however, is a much less mature market in the U.S. and was viewed as major growth opportunity for the industry, Abramov said. But that appears to changing rapidly.
“They don’t see the U.S. as a market for continuous offshore wind expansion as long as this order is in place,” the analyst said.
— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.
Tesla’s Chairwoman Robyn Denholm complains that everyone is talking about the high-profile departures at the automaker, but no one is talking about the people they are hiring.
Can she name one? Literally, name just one.
At Electrek, we have been closely reporting on the talent exodus at Tesla.
The issue has been ongoing for a few years, but it clearly accelerated following a significant wave of layoffs in April 2024.
To name a few:
- Omead Afshar, Vice President of Sales and Manufacturing for North America and Europe, departed in June 2025. Afshar was a close confidante of CEO Elon Musk and was instrumental in the ramp-up of Gigafactory Texas.
- Milan Kovac, head of the Optimus humanoid robot program, announced his departure in June 2025.
- Drew Baglino, Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering, left the company in April 2025. A long-time Tesla veteran, Baglino was a key figure in the development of Tesla’s battery and powertrain technology.
- Rohan Patel, Vice President of Public Policy and Business Development, also departed in April 2025. Patel was the face of Tesla’s government relations and policy efforts.
- Rebecca Tinucci, Senior Director of the Supercharger business, left in April 2025. Tinucci oversaw the significant expansion of Tesla’s global charging network.
- David Lau, Vice President of Software Engineering, departed in April 2025. Lau played a crucial role in the development of Tesla’s vehicle software and its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features.
- Troy Jones, Vice President of North American Sales and Service, left in July 2025. Jones was a long-serving executive responsible for a significant portion of Tesla’s sales and delivery operations.
- Pete Bannon, Vice President of Hardware Engineering, who was involved in the development of Tesla’s custom chips, including the Dojo supercomputer, left in August 2025.
Recently, the Financial Times released a report highlighting the talent exodus at Tesla and Chairwoman, Robyn Denholm, complained that the media only focuses on the departures and not the people “joining” Tesla, which she described as “still a magnet for talent”:
“There are always headlines about people leaving, but I don’t see the headlines about people joining. Our bench strength is outstanding . . . we actually develop people really well at Tesla and we are still a magnet for talent.”
However, she couldn’t name a single one.
To be clear, we primarily report on higher-profile and senior-level departures (directors and above), but we track all of them.
Just for example, here are a dozen people at important but not senior roles at Tesla who departed over the last month but were never reported:
Basil Sobchak
- Time at Tesla: 10 years, 6 months
- General Role: Vehicle Service Lead
Patrick Barr
- Time at Tesla: 8 years, 7 months
- General Role: Facilities Maintenance Lead
Luke Sanders
- Time at Tesla: 7 years, 1 month
- General Role: Production Management (Model Y – Fremont)
Indra K Vijay
- Time at Tesla: 6 years, 1 month
- General Role: Software Engineering Management
Logan Roy
- Time at Tesla: 5 years, 3 months
- General Role: Mechanical Engineering (Battery Structures)
Lexi Hayden
- Time at Tesla: 4 years, 4 months
- General Role: Technical Program Management (Semi Validation)
Francisco Fernández
- Time at Tesla: 4 years, 3 months
- General Role: Supply Chain Management
Andrew Wells
- Time at Tesla: 3 years, 8 months
- General Role: Construction Management (Gigafactory Texas)
Aleksi V.
- Time at Tesla: 3 years, 3 months
- General Role: Production Management (Drive Unit & Battery)
Page Bailey
- Time at Tesla: 2 years, 1 month
- General Role: Engineering (Production & Components)
Sam Thorpe
- Time at Tesla: 2 years, 1 month
- General Role: Technical Program Management (Lithium Refinery)
Harika Kasula
- Time at Tesla: 1 year, 7 months
- General Role: Manufacturing Controls Engineering (Cybertruck)
However, we cannot produce the same thing about new hires, not only for the last month, but for the last year.
With all the departures, Tesla almost exclusively promotes internally to fill the position, and the vast majority of new hires are at the intern and junior levels.
There is one part of Denholm’s statement that is accurate: Tesla is still able to attract talent, but only from recent graduates, and even then, there’s room to worry.
In 2020, Tesla ranked number one in places where engineering students want to work.
Tesla has now slipped into 9th place this year, according to Universum:
This is obviously still good, but it is on a pronounced downtrend.
Electrek’s Take
Look, turnover in large companies is absolutely normal, but the story is much bigger than that.
First off, Denholm remains a joke. She is complaining about the media not reporting on new Tesla hires, but the company hasn’t announced any new hires in years, and I literally can’t find any.
If she is going to claim that, she should at least name a few. Is she capable of doing that, or is her entire job about trying to secure increasingly more ridiculous compensation packages for Elon Musk?
On the other hand, I can find dozens of critical veteran Tesla employees leaving over the last year and hundreds of experienced employees.
The talent exodus is real, and the fact that Tesla’s chairwoman is dismissing it should be worrying.
We are referring to many of the individuals responsible for the company’s success, who are being replaced by juniors and interns.
Now, I’m the first to admit that this is not all bad. Fresh eyes and young talent can do a lot, but it doesn’t dismiss the fact that there’s a talent exodus at Tesla.
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Kia plans to introduce a new electric vehicle, codenamed CB, to its growing lineup. The new EV is part of an agreement that Kia reached with its union this week.
Kia agrees to build a new EV in Korea
While many automakers are scaling back, Kia is doubling down on electric vehicles, batteries, and other EV technology.
After reaching an agreement with its labor union on Tuesday, we are learning Kia has another EV in the pipeline, and it’s not the EV2, EV3, EV4, EV5, EV6, or EV9. So, what is the “secret” new electric car?
Okay, so it’s not exactly a secret, at least not anymore, but more of a new development. According to local sources (via KEDGlobal), little is known about the model. Since it’s still in the early stages of development, Kia has yet to determine exactly how big it will be or what segment it will launch.
Kia will begin producing the new EV, codenamed CB, at its Hwaseong Plant 2 in South Korea by 2030. The electric vehicle was just one of several new projects Kia agreed to with its labor union.
The company also confirmed plans to begin building its second electric van, the PV7, at its dedicated Hwaseong EVO plant, starting in 2027. Kia currently produces the mid-size PV5 van at the facility, marking the first model in its Platform Beyond Vehicle (PBV) lineup.
The PV7 will measure 5.9 meters in length, slightly longer than the PV5, which is up to 4.7 meters (Long Wheelbase version).
Kia’s agreement comes as the company looks to take a lead in electrification over the next few years. It also outlined plans to advance battery packs, power electronics (PE) modules, and other core EV components to help establish a domestic supply chain.
In Europe, Kia plans to nearly triple EV production within the next two years. Kia’s CEO, Ho Sun Song, told Automotive News Europe earlier this month that the company plans to build about 100,000 EV2 models, its smallest electric car, at its Zilina plant in Slovakia in 2027.
Kia expects to build an additional over 80,000 EV4 models, its first electric hatch, at the facility by 2027. Combined with EV4 Fastback, or the sedan version, which is produced in South Korea, Song said that “the EV4’s combined global production is expected to reach approximately 100,000 units.”
The first EV4 rolled off the assembly line at the Zilina plant in August, marking a milestone as the first electric vehicle Kia built in Europe.
Kia is already gaining traction in the region. Through August, Kia sold 71,179 electric vehicles in Europe, marking a 56% increase compared to the same period in 2024.
The EV3 has been Kia’s biggest hit, ranking as its second-best-selling vehicle behind the Sportage. It’s the seventh top-selling EV in Europe, behind the Tesla Model Y, Model 3, and Volkswagen’s ID.3, ID.4, and ID.7. Through the first eight months of the year, Kia sold over 45,000 EV3s in Europe.
With the EV4 and EV5 rolling out and the EV2 set to launch in 2026, Kia expects to gain an even bigger share of the market.
Electrek’s Take
Kia already offers, or plans to offer, an electric vehicle in nearly every segment with the EV2, EV3, EV4 (hatchback and sedan), EV5, EV6, and EV9.
The new EV, codenamed CB, could be an even smaller EV1 entry-level model as Kia doubles down on affordability. On the other hand, it could also be a possible EV7 or EV8, something to sit in between the EV6 and the three-row EV9.
Since it’s still in the early stages of development, it could be just about anything: an electric pickup, off-roader, luxury car, etc.
What do you think (or hope) it will be? We should learn more about it as it gets closer to launch. Stay tuned.
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When most folks think of electric trikes, they picture big cargo haulers or mobility-style cruisers with two wheels in the back and a basket full of groceries. But there’s another category of three-wheeled electric bikes that’s more fun, more niche, and undeniably cooler: sidecar e-bikes.
Yep, they actually exist. And they’re awesome.
Sidecar electric bikes are just what they sound like: an electric bike with a third wheel off to the side, usually supporting a passenger-sized pod or platform. They’re the bicycle version of the old-school sidecar motorcycles.
Unlike traditional trikes, where the third wheel adds stability or cargo capacity behind the rider (or occasionally in front of the rider in the case of “tadpole” trikes), sidecar e-bikes carry their payload beside you, often evoking that vintage motorcycle vibe. They’re rare, quirky, and a guaranteed head-turner.
So why don’t we see more of them?
For starters, sidecar e-bikes are usually custom-built or smaller-batch productions, which means they come with a higher price tag than your typical two-wheeler or three-wheeler. And while they can definitely carry a kid, a dog, or even big cargo, they’re not quite as nimble or efficient as your average e-bike.
While there are retail options like the Mod Easy Sidecar e-bike (which the Austin, Texas-based company modified below as part of a promotion with a local distillery), the number of retail sidecar e-bike options pales in comparison to traditional electric trikes.
But what they lack in practicality, they make up for in pure fun. There’s just something inherently joyful about cruising around town with your doggo (or kiddo) riding shotgun in a sidecar. It turns a boring commute into a joyride and transforms everyday errands into rolling adventures. I’ve test-ridden a few over the years, and every time I do, I feel like I’m starring in my own two-wheeled road trip movie.
From a usability standpoint, sidecar e-bikes offer a unique middle ground between a cargo bike and a passenger trike. You get added capacity, sure, but you also get separation – whether that’s space for a wiggly toddler, a hyper dog, or just a bag of ice you don’t want melting on your lap. They also provide a lower center of gravity than a rear-mounted child seat or rack, which can make for a smoother, more balanced ride, especially when turning.
But despite that separation, they can actually be more fun to ride together. Parents can keep an eye on their kids in the sidecar instead of being blind to whatever they’re doing in the back of the trike. The same goes for a pup, which the owner can watch to see if they’re having a good time or ready to arrive at the dog park already.
Many models even offer the ability to remove the sidecar entirely, converting back into a typical two-wheeled e-bike, a neat trick not found on most other e-trikes.
But there are drawbacks. The first major one is the higher price than a typical e-trike due to the lower volume production.
Storage can be awkward, too, since the added width makes it tough to fit through tight doorways or narrow bike paths. Handling also takes some getting used to, since the asymmetrical design can pull a bit to one side, especially during acceleration or on uneven pavement.
Still, for those looking to stand out and haul their precious cargo with style, sidecar e-bikes are an underappreciated gem in the micromobility world. They’re not for everyone, but that’s kind of the point. If you want a bike that puts smiles before specs, you might just be a sidecar kind of person.
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