W
ith its lively waterfront, tree-lined canal, and red-brick
buildings topped by steep gunmetal-gray roofs, Aarhus
looks like just another coastal city in Northern Europe.
But get closer, and what comes into focus is a place
central to the continent’s remarkable shift to renewable energy.
Down by the docks, at a facility nestled among huge oil tanks that
reek of the past, the world’s biggest wind-turbine maker tests parts
for these gargantuan machines of the future. Meanwhile, in offices
all across Denmark’s second-largest city, fast-growing cadres of
energy traders are making big bucks from the volatility that wind
and solar power generate.
This didn’t happen by accident. What would ultimately
become Vestas Wind Systems A/S started as a blacksmith shop in
1898 on the western edge of Jutland, a windswept peninsula sand-
wiched between the North Sea and southern Sweden. Until the
1970s the company’s products ranged from milk coolers to steel
window frames. As Denmark, a net energy importer, was stung by
that decade’s oil crises, Vestas turned its hand to alternative energy.
Early turbine prototypes—including one that looked like a giant
egg whisk—were developed in secret. After several decades build-
ing up its wind- turbine business, the company moved its headquar-
ters to Aarhus, Jutland’s biggest city.
Today wind regularly meets more than half of Denmark’s
demand for power. As the country’s reliance on wind has grown,
Aarhus and surrounding towns have become a renewable energy
melting pot—of manufacturers and suppliers, traders and analysts,
specialist lawyers and academics. China’s largest maker of wind
turbines, Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., has aDenmark’s Windy CityDENMARKGERMANYNorth Sea SWEDENAarhusCopenhagenLemVOLUME 28 / ISSUE 4 77