Interview with Nils de Baar

Nils de Baar, President NCE, will participate as a panelist at the WindEnergy Hamburg 2024 fair. He is looking forward to sharing insights on industry trends and engaging in meaningful discussions with fellow experts.

Nils, what will be the key take-aways for the visitors at the WindEnergy Hamburg at the Vestas booth?

We will show them that Vestas is the leading provider of sustainable energy solutions with wind energy at its core. They will see us as the best partner for wind projects across the entire value chain through our key differentiators, including technology leadership, unparalleled global reach, scale and service footprint. At our stand, we are presenting our latest product range and highlighting our role as the world's most sustainable energy company. But we will also be active and take the opportunity to demand continuation and action from political stakeholders: “Targets, declarations and goals are not wind farms”.

Vestas has been advocating for a while to stop the race for ever larger turbine and instead to focus on standardisation and the need to speed up deployment. Can you elaborate on this?

Sure. Our industry has been breaking down technology barriers since the modern wind turbine concept appeared in the late 1970's and it fills me and my colleagues with pride to be part of such an industry. However, to now accelerate the energy transition and to reach our Net Zero goals our industry innovation capabilities need to focus on efficiency and speed of deployment. This does not mean that we don’t innovate anymore, far from it, but our focus goes into the preparation for commercial installation and industrialisation.

Producing bigger components requires us and our suppliers to invest in new tools, new moulds, new trucks, cranes, and vessels. Vessels so large, that they potentially don’t fit into existing harbours.

Instead, what we want is to offer predictable and reliable world-class quality turbines that we can industrialise and localise at a global scale. And to allow each product a longer life cycle is the best way of doing it.

What is the status of the development of the V236-15.0 MW offshore turbine before your first installations?

The installation of the prototype turbine was completed in December 2022 where the turbine also

successfully produced its first kWh of power. The prototype is currently undergoing an extensive test and verification programme to ensure reliability before full type certification. Across the entire Vestas value chain, we are getting ready to deliver on commercial projects with serial production is ramping up on our offshore factories in 2024. Vestas has been successfully installing a V236-15.0 MW turbine in Thyborøn in Denmark that will help us in our final verification campaign before we begin serial production and installation of the first offshore projects featuring the V236-15.0 MW turbine.

Why is the WindEnergy Hamburg relevant for Vestas?

It is the biggest and most important wind business platform for exchanging news and views, building networks and closing major deals in our region, Northern & Central Europe. In NCE, Vestas holds a significant presence and market share in the onshore and offshore wind market with a current installed base of 61.9 GW and 45.3 GW under service. Within the region, Germany is the largest and most active onshore wind market with a current Vestas installed base of more than 17.8 GW of onshore wind projects. In Europe, Vestas has historically signed deals for offshore projects in Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands with a total capacity above 15 GW.

In several  markets, the volume tied up in permitting is extremely high. What would you like the EU to do in terms of policies to boost the wind industry?

Permitting bottlenecks remain one of the biggest barriers for the expansion of wind energy in Europe. Last year 80 GW of wind energy projects were stuck in permitting procedures across Europe according to WindEurope. But we are moving in the right direction with EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED III) which should help speed up permitting for new and repowered wind projects further, the EU Wind Power Action Plan, the European Wind Charter also signed by 26 member states and the Net Zero Industry Act. The implementation of the European policy will help drive scale.

Vestas has taken an important step forward to reduce CO2e emissions by launching, in cooperation with ArcelorMittal, a low emission steel offering that significantly reduces lifetime CO2e emissions from the production of wind turbine towers. What is the status on the commercial offering of the low emission steel?

Making the world a more sustainable place lies at the very core of what we do every day. To come up with solutions to further decrease the footprint of our turbines is therefore very important to us, and our low-emission steel is offering is a great step. And we’ve got two offshore wind projects where low emission-steel will be used. The Baltic Power offshore wind farm in Poland was the first project to have placed a firm order for Vestas’ low-emission steel. And in June 2024, Vestas signed a conditional agreement to supply 112 V236 offshore wind turbines for the Nordlicht 1 and 2 projects in Germany with Vattenfall and BASF, with 56 of these turbines using low-emission steel for the top sections, reducing the towers' overall carbon footprint by 16%.