Formerly known as DONG, Danish energy firm Ørsted has managed to move away from fossil fuels to reinvent itself in the renewables market – and now aims to be carbon neutral by 2025
The transformation of the Danish green energy company, Ørsted, from its roots in oil and gas and coal-fired power generation to a company that today aims to be carbon neutral by 2025, both in its own operations and in the energy it generates, is impressive by any standards.
As Duncan Clark, who heads up Ørsted in the UK explains, it started out life as DONG Energy, a wholly state-owned company which was well known in the oil and gas sector. In Denmark, it provided electricity and heat from a portfolio of coal-fired power stations to supply Danish homes.
It changed its name to Ørsted in 2017 to reflect its growing international stature, its evolution away from its fossil fuel-based past, and a commitment to all future investments being in renewable energy.
Duncan Clark is Danish company Ørsted’s head of region UK
Today, Ørsted is the world’s largest developer of offshore wind energy, accounting for just under 30 per cent of the world’s installed offshore wind generation capacity. As Clark explains, the company already has the world’s largest offshore wind farm, and has developed a huge gigawatt wind farm off the Yorkshire coast. It is developing offshore wind farms that will be double this size.
“We are a renewable energy company that prides itself on taking tangible action to create a world that runs entirely on green energy,” says Clark. “Our aim is to develop and deploy market-leading green energy solutions that benefit both the planet and our customers.
“Climate change is one of the biggest threats facing the world, and we believe that the solution lies in deploying renewable energy resources on a much larger scale than anything we have seen so far. We want to revolutionise the way we power people, particularly as far as heating and transport are concerned.
“These two areas – heating and transport – rely largely on fossil fuel-derived energy, and account for some 80 per cent of energy usage in developed countries. Moving to renewables generation will have a hugely positive effect in the battle to avoid disruptive climate change.”
Clark points out that the UK is already the world leader in offshore wind generation, with more capacity installed than any other country. “Offshore wind already powers over 7.5 million UK homes a year and by 2030 the UK will be getting about a third of its electricity from offshore wind,” he comments.
Ørsted is playing a key role in building the UK’s offshore wind generation capacity.
“We have come a very long way since DONG Energy made its decision to prioritise and focus on green power,” he notes. “We have industrialised the whole process of large project delivery and we have worked hard to drive down the cost of green power.”
Getting the cost of electricity through either offshore or onshore wind generation down to competitive levels requires working very closely with supply chains, the financing side of the industry, and regulators.
While driving its own progress towards zero carbon, Ørsted is paying close attention to ensuring its supply chain partners focus on
decarbonising their own operations and processes. “It was a great source of pride to us that we were ranked as the world’s most sustainable company in 2020 so we take working with our supply chain partners to green up the whole generation process, very seriously,” Clark says.
“We set ourselves some very demanding emissions reduction targets and have worked hard on reducing the carbon intensity of the electricity that we provide. At the same time, we continue to look very carefully at the carbon footprint of all our activities.
“Our goal is to have a zero-carbon impact from our direct activities by 2025,” he adds. “Encouraging and helping our supply chain partners adopt best practice in this regard is very important for us, and our target is, by 2040, to be completely net zero, including our supply chain.”
Clark says Ørsted is hugely appreciative of the Scottish Government’s goal of becoming a net-zero carbon economy by 2045. “This has to be a multi-decade goal. It is a huge transition for any economy to make and requires concrete steps to be taken now.”
Clark argues that this is a very exciting time to be in renewable power generation. “It is now the cheap option, and building up a portfolio of renewables generation assets makes sense for most countries around the world,” he says.
“We are seeing the beginning of the next stage of the energy revolution – the creation of a hydrogen industry where renewables will generate hydrogen to be used in industry and transport. There is an emerging race between ambitious nations to take the next step and develop a clean hydrogen economy, taking the transition beyond electricity alone and to cover all our energy needs.”
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