Renewable Energy Giant Sets an Example With $30 Billion Investment in Green Energy to Replace Fossil Fuels

Today when climate change is the major concern of the World, then leaving fossil fuels only in the ground is perhaps the best thing to do. Now that traditional power sources have tough competition with renewable energy as the technology has strengthened the latter and governments are also seeking ways to address climate change. The green energy from offshore wind farm could be a leading global shift to save this world.

Orsted, originally DONG-Danish Oil and Natural Gas Company is completely into green energy leaving oil and gas business and name as well by taking up strategic transformation and divestment process. Since 1970, it is dealing in sea-bound oil and gas rigs and coal-fired plants around Europe. This ambitious offshore wind energy developer came with a bold vision of presenting a world that runs fully on green energy.

As per Reuters, Denmark’s energy company, Orsted set the goal to become one of the future “renewable majors” with the global transition in green energy from fossil fuel by 2025 involving an investment of $30 billion. It bagged the Judges’ Choice winner award at the 2017 Real Innovation Awards for the Masters of Reinvention Award category.

For Orsted, the first step was to transform into a renewable energy operator at the time of construction of offshore wind farms. The company stopped its Coal-fired plants, sold off its oil and gas sites and by last year the remaining oil and gas business was sold to Petrochemicals producer INEOS. It reinvested billions of pounds in developing technology and construction of offshore wind farm. By 2023, the company is committed to transforming entirely into a coal-free renewable energy company.

At present, there are 24 offshore operational wind farms and four more under construction including the Taiwan Project. The 75%-85% of the total investment will go to offshore projects and balance 15%-20% to onshore projects while the remaining 0%-5% will be kept aside for Bioenergy and customer solutions. Its 99% production will be in green energy by 2025 from 64% in 2017.

In a press release, Henrik Poulsen, CEO and President of the company stated that Orsted has 11.9 GW of wind farms-offshore and onshore and combined heat and power plants that are biomass-fired. Some of them are under construction, or in production, or final investment decision made.

Target is to reach an installed capacity of 30GW and more towards 2030 provided the projects earn value for shareholders. They are even ambitious enough to raise the capacity from 11-12 GW to 15 GW in offshore wind. According to Poulsen, the increase in the global market for renewable energy by 2030 will be three times more than now.

The largest offshore wind farm of the world, Walney Extension got opened officially by Orsted in September with a 659-megawatt capacity. It consists of 87 turbines, located 19 kilometers away from the coast of Cumbria in the Irish Sea, England. It is holding the capacity to power 600,000 homes of UK with sufficient renewable energy.

With the rapid change in the technology of Offshore wind, the Walney Extension would probably lose its “world’s largest” title to yet another biggest UK-based development of the Orsted, and that is Hornsea Project One offshore wind farm with 1400 MW off the UK’s Yorkshire coast. The Hornsea wind farm is under construction and expected to start operation fully by 2020 to power adequately more than 1 million UK homes with low-carbon electricity.

Matthew Wright, the MD of Orsted in the UK says that Orsted is the only company that transformed into a global leader in offshore wind and pre-eminent in the businesses of renewable energy including onshore wind, energy storage, and solar projects from a state-owned, coal-dominated company. The operating profit of Orsted in Q4 of 2017 was 13 billion crowns (£1.58 billion). Now being the fastest-growing utility company, the aim is to become completely green running a socially responsible business and proving that one can make big money from green energy.

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About Arindom Ghosh

A professional writer, editor, blogger, copywriter, and a member of the International Association of Professional Writers and Editors, New York. He has been part of many reputed domestic and global online magazines and publications. An avid reader and a nature lover by heart, when he is not working, he is probably exploring the secrets of life.