As a child, Henrik Andersen would look out of the window towards the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, watching the wind turbines in the distance spin. “I really wanted to understand how they worked at that time,” he recalls. Back then, the blades were smaller and the towers were shorter; the entire setup resembled windmills more than the massive structures we see today—some of which are over 300 meters tall, with blades longer than a football field.
In his youth, Andersen bought shares of the wind power company that he saw from outside his window as a child. “It wasn’t particularly successful in those early years,” he said, followed by a dry laugh.
That company is Vestas. Today, based on cumulative installed capacity, it is the world's largest manufacturer of wind turbines, with over 201 gigawatts installed in 36 countries, surpassing any other supplier. The boy who once stood by the window pondering how the blades rotated has become the helmsman of this company decades later.
When Andersen first joined the board of directors in 2013, this Danish manufacturer was at what its chairman described as a "historical low point." The losses of Vestas nearly sextupled from 166 million euros (190 million US dollars) in 2011 to 963 million euros (1.1 billion US dollars). Andersen does not have an engineering background; his expertise lies in the Danish banking industry and facilities management. He was appointed to the board of Vestas to bring about financial discipline; in the following months, he helped cut costs by 484 million euros (554 million US dollars) and took on more frontline roles during the company's turnaround period.
In 2019, when he took on the role of CEO, Andersen said that the handover caused almost no stir: “We just continued to do our work.”
And this is not the only crisis he has to deal with. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 disrupted the steel supply, disrupted the supply chain, and pushed up costs. Vestas recorded a net loss of 1.57 billion euros (1.8 billion US dollars) that year, and Andersen says he reminds himself of that figure every day.
Since 2020, the cost of building a turbine has risen by 30% to 40%, mainly due to increasing prices of raw materials. Julio Dal Poz, the Managing Director of Energy Transformation Business at FTI Consulting, stated that the cost of steel has increased by more than 50%, and the prices of copper and aluminum have almost doubled. "As AI data centers compete with the wind power industry for the same materials, this pressure is likely to intensify further," he added.
Against this backdrop, Vestas recently posted its strongest quarter in several years: operating profit increased from 57 million euros in the same period last year to 446 million euros. New orders grew year-on-year from 2 gigawatts to 3.35 gigawatts, and the company still has an order backlog of wind turbines worth 36 billion euros.
Nevertheless, Andersen remains cautiously optimistic about the future. "We are pleased, but we haven't yet achieved our goals," he said. This quarter, nearly all new orders came from onshore wind power. The more volatile offshore wind power business is not expected to become profitable until 2026, while Vestas's target is 2027.
The cost of a single offshore project can amount to several billion euros, and it often takes several years to complete the licensing, financing, and construction before power generation can begin. Therefore, a few delays or cancellations can significantly impact performance.
Andersen indicates that such severe fluctuations can bring heavy pressure within the company. The stress and uncertainty can make employees generally feel exhausted. “This tests your resilience,” he admits, and adds that some employees left the company after 2022 because they no longer wanted to work in an industry with such strong cyclical nature. “When you’re dealing with a technology that is up to 250 meters high, it takes a lot of courage to develop a prototype and then move on to mass production. But this courage doesn’t always pay off.”
The EU has pledged to almost double its installed wind power capacity by 2030, reaching 425 gigawatts, compared to the current 246 gigawatts. This presents a considerable potential business opportunity for European turbine manufacturers. However, Chinese companies are also competing for this market share.
Vestas has also been selected for Fortune's "Change the World" list, and it ranks first among global companies in terms of the number of wind turbines it has built. However, data from the Global Wind Energy Council shows that by 2025, based on annual installation capacity, all of the top five turbine suppliers will come from China for the first time. Goldwind Science & Technology, a leading global company, has installed nearly 30 gigawatts of turbines, which is twice that of Vestas.
ING Energy economist Gerben Hieminga indicates that Chinese manufacturers can offer prices up to 50% lower than those in Europe. This is mainly due to national support. Between 2005 and 2024, Chinese enterprises received an average of 3 to 8 times more government support than enterprises in OECD countries.
The European Commission has recognized this challenge and launched an investigation into foreign subsidies related to Goldwind Science & Technology's activities in the EU wind power sector in February. The EU's 'Net Zero Industry Act' sets a goal of achieving 40% local manufacturing of clean technologies, including wind power, by 2030; a proposed 'Industrial Accelerator Act' would introduce procurement rules for 'EU-made' products, which could potentially exclude Chinese suppliers.
However, Kearney energy business partners Maria de Kleijn warn that such a response could backfire. "Replacing the current patchwork of rules with a set of unified EU standards might make it easier for Chinese manufacturers to develop coherent strategies, rather than harder," she said.
Currently, China's presence in Europe is still very limited. Data from the Global Wind Energy Council shows that last year, Chinese manufacturers supplied less than 3% of the new wind turbines to Europe. Dal Poz believes that Vestas still holds key advantages, including a mature supply chain, a long track record of performance, and the confidence of lenders.
Andersen predicts that security concerns will ultimately prevent Chinese wind turbine giants from conquering the European continent. “If we talked about this five years ago, I would have been more worried,” he said, “but we live in a different world now.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has ended the assumption that energy infrastructure can be isolated from geopolitics. During his tenure as chairman of WindEurope, Andersen pushed for the EU to regard wind farms and power grids as “critical infrastructure, not just hardware.”
De Kleijn indicates that wind turbines are vulnerable to cyber espionage and cyber attacks. Chinese manufacturer MingYang Smart Energy has been prevented from building a factory in Scotland for national security reasons. "Five years ago, Chinese authorities prohibited Vestas from monitoring or operating its own software on wind turbines. If European software is not welcome in China, why should Chinese software and turbines be allowed to enter the European power grid?" Andersen asks.
Europe imports more than half of the energy it consumes, and Andersen says this dependence "keeps me awake at night." He added that Europe needs to get rid of its "naivety" and "start protecting energy security just as it protects its borders."
Vestas is also adjusting its strategy to maintain its global advantage. Unlike competitors such as Goldwind Science & Technology, which focus on manufacturing larger wind turbines, Vestas sets the upper limit for its offshore models at around 15 megawatts. "The longer the blades, the harder it is to operate them in ports. And in most ports, we are running out of space," says Andersen. This allows Vestas to standardize the construction process, reduce costs, and decrease defects. "Constant reshaping means that most investments in the industry hardly generate any profit," he adds. This strategy seems to be working: compared to 2024 and the first quarter of 2025, warranty costs—i.e., the direct measure of defects that ultimately appear in the finished turbines—have been reduced by 3.5 million US dollars.
Andersen is still working on improving the efficiency of existing wind turbines. Vestas uses AI to correct "wake deflection" (where one turbine "steals" wind speed from downstream turbines), restoring the lost power generation by adjusting the blade angles, and making predictions before failures occur in the gearbox and generator. Service technicians will also see upgrades. In the future, they will no longer need to climb into wind turbines with stacks of paper manuals; instead, they will wear augmented reality glasses and carry handheld devices to monitor turbine data.
The pursuit of efficiency has also been applied to the company's workforce, and Vestas recently carried out layoffs. "It's painful, but necessary," said Andersen, "The goal is to make this company, which has 40,000 employees, function as quickly as a much smaller one."
Before taking on the role at Andersen, one of the core corporate principles of Vestas was that "failure is not an option." However, Andersen believes that this slogan has fostered a culture of denial. "It made the company stubborn and arrogant," he said, "and if a project failed, the team would refuse to let go." To symbolize the shift in direction under his leadership, Andersen held a mock funeral for the old slogan at a management meeting, accompanied by music and eulogies, and replaced it with a new motto: "Failure is always an option."
Vestas Chief Sales Officer Javier Rodr said, "We turned failure into something that needs to be examined, rather than something that needs to be hidden." He added that this attention to detail is reflected in daily operations, crisis management, and taking care of the team. When Rodr suggested a low-key celebration for his 25th year at the company, Andersen arranged a surprise party for him and even brought his two children from Spain. "He doesn't just lead from a distance," Rodr said, "he cares about the details."
Andersen believes that energy storage – which can provide continuous power even when there is no wind – will be the next big opportunity in the wind power industry. This is not a business area that Vestas plans to enter himself; Andersen has already ruled out the possibility of becoming a battery manufacturer, but he thinks that energy storage is crucial for enhancing the value of wind power.
The risks are not limited to a single company. Andersen pointed out that whether Europe can meet the growing demand for electricity, including the electricity required to operate AI data centers, depends on whether it can solve the issue of energy dependence. “If we cannot build data centers, we will be defeated in the AI competition,” he said.
How Europe makes use of the electricity it generates and to what extent it can control its own energy supply will be the next major test.
