Orsted Plans $68 Billion Green Energy Spend by 2030

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Denmark's green energy major Orsted A/S (Fredericia, Denmark) has revealed plans to invest 475 billion Danish crowns (US$68 billion) in renewable energy projects by 2030.

The company has set a target to install 50 gigawatts (GW) of power capacity--mostly offshore wind--by the end of the decade. The company stated at its recent Capital Markets Day that in the two years since its last major investor briefing that "unprecedented political tailwinds had emerged" such as the incentives in the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and the Net Zero Industry Act in the European Union (EU). It believes that resulting growth potential for the renewables industry has "never been higher".

Today, Orsted operates 15.5 GW of renewable energy assets, while 4.9 GW are under construction across various green technologies. Orsted has been awarded an additional 10.6 GW and has a renewable project pipeline of roughly 114 GW.

Mads Nipper, group president and chief executive officer of Orsted, said: "Orsted has delivered strong progress since the CMD in 2021. We've completed several large projects, including the world's largest offshore wind farm, we've been awarded new capacity, and we've been able to take final investment decision (FID) on a large offshore wind project despite macroeconomic challenges. We're on track to outperform our previous EBITDA and ROCE targets for 2020-2027, confirming the significant value in our portfolio of renewable projects. Today, we confirm our target of 50-GW in 2030, one of the largest investment programmes in the green transition."

As for future projects where the company has not yet taken a final investment decision (FID), the company noted that the marketplace has been impacted by higher interest rates, inflation, and supply chain bottlenecks. It said that it may "reconfigure or exit awarded projects" where it has not yet taken FID if it finds the value creation in the projects not to be sufficient. The company is expected to make FID on the U.K.'s US$1.86 billion Hornsea 3 offshore windfarm located 160 kilometers from the Yorkshire coast later this year. It warned the U.K. government in March that it would need additional tax incentives to offset soaring costs before making FID. With a capacity of 2.8 GW, Hornsea 3 could produce enough renewable electricity to power 3.2 million U.K. homes. Combined with the existing Hornsea 1 and 2 windfarms, they will have a capacity of more than 5 GW and be the world's largest offshore wind zone. Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) Power Project Database can click here for the reports.

Orsted is also making big investments in the rapidly growing green hydrogen and green fuels sectors. The company broke ground on its first renewable hydrogen energy project in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2021. The H2RES project will have a capacity of 2 megawatts (MW) and is located at the company's Avedøre Holme site and the electrolyser will be powered by two 3.6-MW offshore wind turbines. It is also working on Europe's largest green methanol project, FlagshipONE, located in Sweden on the grounds of the biomass-fired combined heat and power plant Hörneborgsverket in Örnsköldsvik. It will be commissioned in 2025 and will produce around 50,000 tonnes of e-methanol annually designed for the shipping industry. It will be produced using renewable electricity and biogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from the plant. Subscribers to Industrial Info's GMI Chemical Processing Project Database can click here for the report.

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