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On Friday, Ørsted’s shares were valued at 34% lower than a year ago.  This is a trend that began eight months ago when in August its share price rapidly dropped by nearly 25%.

Ørsted A/S, together with its subsidiaries, develops, constructs, owns and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, renewable hydrogen and green fuels facilities, and bioenergy plants.  It is the world’s largest offshore wind company. The Danish government is the majority shareholder, holding 50.15% of Ørsted shares.

In August 2023, it was reported that Ørsted’s share price tumbled by nearly 25% after it said it may have to write down the value of its US portfolio by nearly £2bn triggering a rapid sell-off in its shares listed in Copenhagen.  In their haste to dump the stock, investors had cut the notional value of the business by nearly £7bn by the time the market closed on 30 August 2023.

The Danish firm’s woes included soaring costs in its supply chain, echoing problems cited by Swedish rival Vattenfall, which suspended a giant British offshore wind farm project off the coast of Norfolk in July 2023.  Ørsted’s planned US windfarms were significantly smaller but its admission of concerns about its ambitions in North America were the cause of the sell-off at the end of August.

In November 2023, the company lost two of its most senior executives. Ørsted told investors that its chief financial officer, Daniel Lerup, and chief operating officer, Richard Hunter, had agreed to step down from their roles with immediate effect because the company needed “new and different capabilities” to “strengthen Ørsted’s journey into the future.”

Mads Nipper, the Ørsted chief executive, has remained in his role. “Ørsted, along with the rest of the industry, is experiencing a challenging and volatile business environment,” he said.

In February 2024, Ørsted completed its executive team “overhaul” by appointing a new chief financial officer and a new chief operating officer.

Last month, the embattled Ørsted signed an agreement with investment firm Stonepeak relating to four US onshore wind farms.  Through the agreement, Stonepeak will own the equity and receive 80% of the cash distributions associated with the projects, while Ørsted will continue to operate the portfolio of assets.

In the same week, a £58bn plan to rewire Great Britain’s electricity grid to connect up new windfarms off the coast of the northeast of Scotland to the northwest of England was announced. National Grid’s electricity system operator (“ESO”) has mapped out power “motorways” across Great Britain to allow for the biggest investment since the 1960s. The plan shows a “high-capacity electrical spine” running onshore from the north-east of Scotland through to the north-west of England, alongside a complex collection of cables stretching along coastlines.

Ørsted doesn’t appear to be directly involved with either of the Moray East project or Seagreen project, two of the largest offshore wind projects in the world.  However, it is a partner with Subsea7 in other Scottish offshore wind projects.  Subsea7 was contracted in both the Moray East project and the Seagreen project.

In March 2023, Salamander – a joint venture between Ørsted, Simply Blue Group and Subsea7 – signed an exclusivity agreement for floating wind leasing in Scottish waters. Ørsted owns an 80% stake in the project. Floating wind turbines allow for siting in deeper waters increasing access to the windiest areas. “This will help Scottish and UK governments meet their net zero targets, ahead of larger, gigawatt-scale projects expected to follow in the mid-2030s,” The Herald Scotland said.

According to Yahoo Finance, the ESO said three times as much undersea cabling would be laid than onshore infrastructure by 2035.  However, there is growing debate over the cost of decarbonising the grid and reaching net zero, as the renewables industry faces supply chain upheaval and rising costs.

(Related: UK Government’s ambitions to increase ineffective wind power generation would cost £154 billion)

Where will the UK government find the money to pay for ESO’s plan?  By increasing taxes and “green levies”?

Aside from the costs, how much disruption and destruction will be caused to marine life and the natural environment if this plan were to be carried out?

(Related: Wind farms are destroying wildlife while environmental organisations accept millions of dollars from wind energy companies and other articles about wind farms on The Exposé)

It isn’t only the UK government forging ahead with ill-thought-out, costly, ineffective and destructive plans in the name of a manufactured “climate change crisis.”

At the end of March, the US Department of Energy Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations awarded Ørsted US$100 billion in “decarbonising funding … to move energy-intensive industries toward net-zero,” according to PR Newswire.  The federal funding is to construct an e-methanol facility in Texas.

“The production of e-methanol will be critical to achieving rapid decarbonisation for the most hard-to-electrify sectors, and we are thrilled to have the US Department of Energy’s support to develop and scale this new industry,” said Melissa Peterson, Head of Onshore and P2X Americas at Ørsted.

“The US industrial and transportation sectors accounts for 65 per cent of US greenhouse gas emissions.  Ørsted is leveraging its renewable power portfolio to produce green hydrogen and e-methanol to reduce emissions from these sectors,” PR Newswire stated.

Despite all the seemingly positive announcements about Ørsted, investors have not been fooled.  Yesterday, Ørsted’s share price dropped from the 25% reported in August last year to 34% compared to a year ago.  Financial results are what investors watch rather than hopeful announcements publicised in the media.

Considering Ørsted’s latest financial results, it would seem that both the UK and the USA governments are attempting to save a failing company, and, as Ørsted is a flagship for offshore wind, a failing industry. 

In February, Ørsted released its financial statements for 2023.  As reported by Berlingske, in 2023, the company lost $ 20.2 billion. The appalling loss means that the energy company has decided not to pay dividends in 2023, 2024 and 2025.  As The Guardian reported, it also plans to axe up to 800 jobs, pull back from markets in Spain, Portugal and Norway, cut its target for developing renewable energy capacity by 2030 and its chair, Thomas Thune Andersen, will step down after almost a decade in the role.