Plant-based meats, which once seemed destined to help us reduce our consumption of slaughtered cows and lower the vast ecological damage that the beef industry is inflicting on our planet, seems to have failed.

Beyond Meat, which is the only publicly traded company in this space, has seen its stock price drop from $200 per share to $0.90.

What happened is a matter of speculation, though two things are certain:

a) The beef industry tried to sue, claiming that the word “meat” meant specifically “the flesh of dead animals.”  But the courts sided against them, on the basis that there are a variety of other legitimate uses of “meat” in the contexts of “the meat of the matter,” “the meat of the avocado,” etc.

b) They then launched a g0-for-the-jugular PR campaign against the competition, spending uncountable millions of dollars in an effort to convince consumers that plant-based meat was essentially toxic.

Sadly, it appears that the campaign has been successful.  Many fast-food chains have dropped their burger options based on the products from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods.

FWIW, I remain a fan, particularly of Burger King’s “Impossible Whopper.”

Hard Times for Plant-Based Meat

Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Ørsted Installs at Sunrise Wind, Pentagon Blocks 7.5 GW

Allen covers Ørsted’s first turbine install at Sunrise Wind, Cadeler’s fleet expansion, the Pentagon’s 7.5 GW onshore backlog, and the UK’s £154B onshore wind opportunity.

Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly newsletter on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on YouTube, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary’s “Engineering with Rosie” YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!

Happy Monday, everyone.

While headlines this week captured courtrooms and bankruptcy filings and permitting backlogs, out on the open water and deep inside factory order books, the wind turbines kept getting built.

Let us start off the coast of New York. Friday morning, April seventeenth, Ørsted installed the first wind turbine generator at Sunrise Wind — a 924-megawatt project, 84 turbines when complete. This is the same Sunrise Wind that was shut down just four months ago. The same Sunrise Wind that won a preliminary injunction in February. The same Sunrise Wind the Trump Administration chose not to appeal. And now the first turbine stands above the water. Cadeler’s wind turbine installation vessel Wind Scylla is doing the work. She just finished the same job at Revolution Wind. Ørsted says first power flows to New York later this year. Commercial operation the second half of 2027. Six hundred thousand homes on the grid.

Now follow us across the Atlantic. In the Polish Baltic Sea, another Cadeler vessel just began her maiden campaign. Her name: Wind Mover. Delivered last November from Hanwha Ocean in Korea, ahead of schedule. This new M-class installation vessel now sits at the 1.2-gigawatt Baltic Power offshore wind farm, installing Vestas V236 turbines — 15 megawatts apiece. Wind Mover’s sister vessel, Wind Osprey, is moving to the United Kingdom to start work at East Anglia Three. Cadeler has doubled its fleet in twelve months. By mid-2027, twelve vessels — the largest offshore wind installation fleet in the industry.

While turbines go up on the eastern side of the Atlantic, on the western side a different kind of wait is setting in. Bloomberg reported last week that the Pentagon is sitting on a backlog of at least 30 proposed American wind farms — 7.5 gigawatts of onshore capacity. Paperwork stalled. The issue is Section 10-32, the Defense Department’s review to ensure turbines do not interfere with military radar or aviation. Jason Grumet, head of the American Clean Power Association, calls it direct obstruction. His group sent a letter to the Pentagon earlier this month. The deadline for a response was April eighth. That deadline came and went. Seven point five gigawatts, waiting.

Now turn to the United Kingdom, where the direction could not be more different. A new report commissioned by Renewable UK and written by consultants at Everoze says expanding Britain’s onshore wind supply chain between now and 2050 could add £56 billion in economic value. That is on top of another £98 billion already expected — a total of £154 billion. UK onshore capacity is set to grow from 16 gigawatts today to more than 50 gigawatts by 2050. Seventy percent of lifecycle spend already stays in the UK. The report points to blades, towers, nacelles, drivetrains, and electrical gear for substations as the highest-value opportunities.

So let us step back. One turbine above the water off Long Island. A new vessel installing 15-megawatt machines in the Polish Baltic. Seven point five gigawatts of American onshore wind held up in Washington. And £56 billion staked on British onshore.

The policy fights are loud. The legal fights are louder. But this past week, the turbines went up.

That is the state of the wind industry for the 20th of April, 2026.

Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast tomorrow.

Ørsted Installs at Sunrise Wind, Pentagon Blocks 7.5 GW

When I was in college in the 1970s, I recall hearing people say, “We’ll have solar energy when the Rockefellers own the sun.”

Nothing’s changed too much in half a century.

Big Money Still Controls Planet’s Energy