Poulsen is modest about his success with offshore wind. “If you had asked me in 2012 whether we could have achieved this by 2020, I would probably have found it too ambitious. Sometimes you see that the choice of strategy develops its own momentum. When it turned out to be a financial success, we continued to accelerate. “
Orsted is Shell’s neighbor in Zeeland, which, together with Eneco and Van Oord, will soon be completing the Borssele 3 & 4 wind farm. The Dutch multinational was involved in the construction of the first wind farm off the coast of Egmond aan Zee in 2007, but then withdrew from the wind industry.
Shell is now working on a comeback and will also build a wind farm off the coast of North Holland with Eneco. Poulsen is nice to the neighbor: “We made a bold choice and took a great strategic risk. Now that it all turned out well, you can ask why not everyone did that, but I can understand why companies have taken a different decision. “
It is no coincidence that the world market leader in offshore wind energy comes from Denmark and is the result of the oil crisis in the 1970s. While in the Netherlands we could roller-skate on the motorway on car-free Sundays, Denmark decided it wanted to become less dependent on foreign countries for the energy supply. This choice led to the first offshore wind farm 30 years ago. After numerous mergers of companies that make wind turbines, the largest two have; Siemens Gamesa and MHI Vestas now have huge factories in Denmark.
Look below for an impression of the wind industry in Denmark:
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