Vestas chief warns EU: 'Companies like ours will leave without right support and protection'
Head of leading Danish wind turbine supplier delivers stark warning to EU over its industrial policy
Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen has warned that companies like the Danish turbine-making giant could pack up and leave Europe if the EU doesn’t offer the right support and protection, praising the US as a country that shows how it can be done.
But after seeing its share price soar to record levels during the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when oil prices were at rock bottom, Vestas, along with other renewables giants, has seen a steady slide since then.
“We need an industrial policy that allows European companies to be both global and big,” said Andersen.
“For decades, we’ve said no to mergers and consolidation in the name of competition,” he said. “Now it’s that very fragmentation that’s making Europe uncompetitive.”
“I’m going to be a little bold and say it: Europe should look at what the US has done,” said Andersen.
“Over the past decades, America has built a level of energy independence that now allows them to export energy to Europe. That didn’t happen overnight. It took two or three decades of consistent policy, but it shows that it can be done.”
Vestas has two US manufacturing facilities in Colorado specialising in blades and nacelles and employs over 5,000 people in North America, a number that has shot up in recent years.
That is not because the bill is thought to be good for wind power – it still represents an attack on sector incentives laid out in the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act – but the final form was less bad than it had appeared might be the case.
In Trump’s America, ‘less bad’ is generally as good as it gets for new legislation affecting the sector.
“We’re not afraid to invest in the US,” said Andersen. “And we don’t expect any administration – current or future – to de-prioritise energy. In fact, we’re confident they’ll keep pushing forward.”
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