By the numbers: 

- 9.8 gigawatts: the amount of energy produced by wind turbines

- 9.4 gigawatts: how much energy will be produced by wind turbines now either under construction or awarded

Once Denmark’s flagship oil and natural gas producer, Ørsted has eliminated nearly all of its carbon emissions and become a global wind power behemoth in mere decades. What’s more – the transition buoyed its bottom line, showing that the new energy economy is about opportunity, not compromise. 

In 2009, Ørsted’s coal assets plummeted. But the company had recently added wind to its fossil fuel-heavy portfolio. It pivoted quickly, building offshore wind farms on Denmark’s shallow sea shelves and committing to: switch from 85% fossil fuels and 15% renewables to 85% renewables and 15% fossil fuels by 2040, a goal they met in 2019. Today, Ørsted is the world’s largest wind producer by capacity, and that growth has fueled its financial success. Ørsted’s initial public offering, valued at $15 billion, was Europe’s largest in 2016. According to Ørsted, it’s on track to phase out coal in 2024 and to reduce the intensity of its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 98% the following year. 

Now Ørsted wants to decrease the emissions used to produce one of the world’s most important pieces of technology: the semiconductor chips that power our smartphones. It recently built the largest wind farm in the Asia-Pacific region and connected it to the Taiwanese grid. By 2025, it will power the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company—the largest chip manufacturer in the world—and take a huge step towards reducing the emissions of a technology that powers the global economy.