NEW YORK — One of Europe’s most fossil fuel-intensive energy companies transformed completely in little more than a decade by doubling down on offshore wind.
Ørsted, formerly DONG Energy, for Danish Oil and Natural Gas, started aggressively building wind farms off the coast of Denmark, the U.K. and Germany in 2008 — a time when offshore wind was a curiosity.
The company sold off the North Sea oil and gas assets on which it had built its identity to focus on clean energy, becoming Ørsted.
Fast forward 15 years and China, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan and Denmark have some 62 nuclear plants’ worth of wind power spinning or under construction offshore. Ørsted is one of the biggest developers.
CEO Mads Nipper called Ørsted the “Tesla of offshore wind” because it didn’t invent wind turbines or copper cable or substations, just like the electric car company didn’t invent batteries or electric motors. But they both proved something was scalable when few believed it.
Currently Ørsted is building offshore wind farms along the East Coast of the U.S., in Europe and Taiwan. It’s trying to create a market globally for green hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels. And it aims to build 50 gigawatts of clean energy generation by 2030.
Nipper spoke with The Associated Press about the industry. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: They say soon we’ll have clean energy supermajors, the way we’ve had oil majors. Do you consider Ørsted to be a clean energy supermajor?
A: Not yet. But we will be. There are no clean energy supermajors. If there was one, it’s us. But there aren’t any yet. It would be arrogant to say that we are a supermajor yet… We invest, depending on the year, $6, $7 billion a year purely into renewable energy, which makes us comfortably one of the top players.
Q: How has the war in Ukraine affected Ørsted’s business and the offshore wind sector in general?
A: It has not affected our offshore business, I would say. If indirectly, then tragically or ironically, actually positively, because it’s dawning very clearly to Europe that energy independence, and therefore energy security, and not being dependent on Russia for energy supplies, is not just a matter of climate policy — it’s very much security policy as well. So if anything, especially European governments are extremely determined to make renewable energy ambitions come through… We are looking at Ukraine. We are actually in dialog with the Danish…
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