How will Ørsted’s $57 bn investment impact the renewable energy market?

Ørsted is a Danish company and is recognised as a global leader on the renewable energy scene, taking the prize for being the world's largest developer of offshore wind power. Though they might have been considered a domestic company a decade ago, Ørsted has shown just how to ride the tide of renewable energy.

Quanta has been in partnership with Ørsted for 10 years now, and this announcement is a sign that we’ve got many more exciting years ahead working with the renewable energy company.

Here’s a look back at how far the company has come and how its $57 bn investment will impact the renewable energy market.

How Ørsted has shifted with the times

As trailblazers in the environmental space, Ørsted envisions ‘a world that runs entirely on green energy’. Several years back, this may have seemed like an impossible dream, but times are changing, and rapidly at that. The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a Renewable Capacity Statistics report, highlighting that renewable accounted for an impressive 80% of all electricity capacity added in 2020.

Ørsted has made sure to stay ahead of the curve, and in 2017 it sold its oil and gas business, diverting the attention towards green energy. As it stands, they are responsible for installing more than 25% of the renewable energy capacity , meaning they’ve had a far greater impact than any other company worldwide.

It’s achievements like these that have helped Ørsted clinch the top spot in the rankings for the world’s most sustainable energy company three years running. But they’re not stopping there. Their CEO Mads Nipper announced, “Our aspiration is to become the world's leading green energy major by 2030.”

How will Ørsted allocate its $57 bn budget?

In a bid to become the frontrunner in green energy, Ørsted announced a $57 billion plan to be injected into renewable energy by 2027.

As the biggest developer of offshore wind farms, the Danish company is looking to diversify in order to maintain its standing in the clean energy market. This shift in focus is seeing Ørsted invest in solar energy, wind energy and green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen is considered the solution for sectors that are ‘hard-to-decarbonise’, such as aviation and shipping. So what is green hydrogen? Essentially, it’s a hydrogen fuel that is made with the use of renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. Though green hydrogen accounts for less than 1% of all hydrogen production , could it be an essential piece of the puzzle needed to solve the challenge of ever-increasing energy demands?

What does this mean for the renewable energy job market?

Proving global green energy solutions not only helps save the planet but also creates new jobs in the renewable energy subsectors. For Ørsted, these avenues include offshore wind, onshore wind, solar and storage. But it doesn’t stop there. An investment on this scale will help to boost the overall renewable energy market, meaning the benefits will trickle down to other subsectors, including energy from waste, hydro energy, tidal energy and biomass energy, to name a few.

And if that wasn’t reason enough to celebrate, this growing job market has proven to be more inclusive and have a better gender balance than fossil fuels.

Are you interested in working for a leading renewable energy company?

At Quanta, we work with life-changing industries, and we don’t use that phrase lightly. It’s no secret that the world is going green, and we’re here to help our clients find candidates who share their passion to make a difference.

Using our expertise in recruitment and our industry-specific knowledge of recruiting candidates for traditional and renewable energy companies, we created the Quanta Renewable Energy division in 2007. Fast forward to the current day, and we’ve now built a skilled recruitment team who are on hand to help candidates find renewable energy jobs in more than 25 countries across six continents.

Browse our renewable energy roles or send us your CV to hear from one of our specialist consultants.