The modern wind industry, which has produced hundreds of thousands of spinning rotors that generate electricity without emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, was largely born in Denmark’s notoriously windy region called the Jutland Islands.
Nearly 50 years ago, after the oil embargo of 1973 cut off energy supplies to much of the Western world, inventors and mechanical engineers took advantage of the winds that blew across this flat land that separates the North Sea from the islands that separate it. It was here that I started comparing notes on how. Rest of Denmark. And while countless people have played a role in improving the machines that litter coastlines, plains and mountain ridges, perhaps none has been more influential than a Jutlander named Henrik Steesdal. .
As a young man of 21, he built a rudimentary machine to generate electricity for his parents’ farm. He later co-designed his revolutionary three-blade turbine that laid the foundation for what has become a multi-billion dollar global industry. With around 1,000 patents for his inventions, Mr. Stisdal is widely regarded as a true Danish pioneer in this field.
Now at 66, he’s not done yet. After decades of working for some of the wind energy giants, Steesdal has funneled his ideas into the startup that bears his name, providing clean, affordable energy and transforming climate change. I am looking for a method.
At a factory in Gibb, a small town near central Jutland, workers with welding tools prepare to build a massive tetrahedral structure that will serve as the base for a floating wind turbine designed by Stisdal. . It’s made of a tube that resembles a giant Lego toy, is partially submerged, and covers an area about two American football fields.
Nearby, engineers test a machine that looks like a stack of cafeteria trays. This is a new design of an electrolyser, a device that captures water and extracts from it hydrogen gas, a promising alternative to fossil fuels.
Another product is in development two hours north. It is an industrial oven that burns farm waste such as manure and straw to prevent its carbon content from escaping into the atmosphere and producing carbon dioxide. It’s a carbon capture practice.
“It turns out that it’s not just talk,” Stisdal said of climate change. “We promised to do something.”
Tall and outspoken, Mr. Steesdall is not afraid to experiment with the explosive gas hydrogen in his basement, betting that a suite of technologies will help slash greenhouse gas emissions. there is He also wants to ensure that Denmark and other Nordic countries remain at the forefront as investment increases in the transition from fossil fuels to other energy sources.
Stisdal is leading the way in a downturn in the Nordic renewable energy industry. The region’s main wind turbine makers, including his former employer Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, are struggling with rising costs and delays in project approvals. The worry is that Chinese manufacturers that long ago dominated solar panel manufacturing will do the same with wind.
Steesdall has leveraged a small group of investors to raise about $100 million for his company, Steesdall. His family owns about 20% of the 125-employee company. To keep his costs down and expand his reach, he intends to license most of his new products and have others develop them.
Investors say they like Steesdal’s combination of technical cleverness and focus on cutting costs. “He also has a deep understanding of the business,” said Torben Moger Pedersen, chief executive of Pension Denmark, which manages retirement benefits for 800,000 workers and is one of Steesdal’s biggest investors. “That means they can attract money like we can.”
Stisdal is looking to rediscover the creative spark that has led Jutland and Denmark to play a world-leading role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, largely from wind power, over the past half century.
In Jutland in the 1970s, many Danes experimented with wind power, partly as part of a counterculture due to the high energy costs of the 1973 oil embargo, which they despised. It was also used as an alternative to nuclear power generation.
“We wanted to go to Jutland and create a greener world,” said Eric Grove Nielsen, an early manufacturer of wind turbine blades.
Stisdal says his distaste for fossil fuels dates back to hours on a bike trip to England at the age of 19, spent hours riding through the fumes of power plants.
“It gave me a strong sense that this wasn’t right,” he said.
In the late 1970s, he and blacksmith Karl-Erik Jorgensen (who died in 1982) designed a wind turbine for a local company now called Vestas Wind Systems, then a manufacturer of cranes. Their machine was a combination of many ideas that became known as the “Danish Concept”. It was equipped with three blades and an “air brake” to prevent uncontrolled spinning, a common hazard. They also designed the device to remain directly facing the wind for maximum energy yield.
At the time, Vestas was experimenting with a less efficient two-bladed prototype. This three-blade machine of his is now the foundation of Vestas, the world’s leading turbine maker, with 2022 sales reaching his €14.5 billion (about $16 billion).
After splitting his time between university and Vestas consulting, Mr. Stisdal joined a second company in Jutland, now called Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, which would go on to become an industry giant. He has led technological advances such as monolithic casting of blades that have allowed wind turbines to evolve from relatively small farm structures to towers with blades over 300 feet long.
“He established that vision and dream and turned it into a reality,” said Steffen Poulsen, head of design of the new turbine at Siemens Gamesa.
Perhaps Stisdal’s most lasting advancement was taking the industry out to sea in 1991 through the construction of the world’s first offshore wind farm, a relatively small project in shallow water near Bindeby, Denmark. . The sheer number of offshore turbines is now a common sight along many coastlines and a major source of renewable power.
This innovation will help foster two of the world’s largest renewable energy developers in Denmark: Orsted, owner of the Windeby wind farm, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, a €19 billion private company under management Did.
“We have a very strong ecosystem and I think we will continue to be well positioned going forward,” said Orsted CEO Mads Nipper.
Since leaving Siemens Gamesa’s Chief Technology Officer, Mr. Steesdal has been looking for new ways to make a difference. One area is floating turbines that can operate in deeper waters than traditional wind farms. Floating equipment can open up a much larger ocean for wind power, but the installation cost is higher, sometimes not produced on the assembly line . Mr. Stisdal aims to change that.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is helping fund a prototype floating base designed by Steesdal to support the turbines, with the aim of leveraging the design for future projects, such as off the coast of Eureka in Northern California.
“Henrik is very focused on enabling floaters to be manufactured in a smart way,” said Torsten Smed, co-founder and senior partner at Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. The company manufactures these structures in Jutland for a planned wind farm off the coast of Scotland and uses robots and other technology to remain competitive despite Danish labor costs. are using.
Stissdal is also working with researchers at the Technical University of Denmark to develop an electrolyser that aims to cut the high cost of producing so-called green hydrogen, without emissions. Climate experts and businessmen say hydrogen will likely be needed to power heavy industries such as steel and possibly vehicles such as planes and trucks.
His electrolyser is still in the tuning stage, but Steesdal has a preliminary agreement with India-based energy giant Reliance Industries to build the equipment.
He’s also building a scaled-up version of the carbon capture device Skyclean. The device uses heat to turn agricultural waste into something like charcoal pellets, which can permanently trap carbon dioxide, preventing it from returning to the atmosphere.
Stissdal’s company, like many startups, is in the red, but he hopes to break even by next year, he said. He believes the technology he’s developing is well suited to a small country like Denmark, with a population of just under six million, so it has a good chance of success.
The product isn’t particularly high-tech or labor-intensive, he said, but relies on a hands-on approach and a well-educated workforce created by a widely accessible university system.
“In many ways they are similar to what I did as a pioneer 45 years ago,” he said.