Episode Details

Allen covers WindEurope Madrid, the ten-point Call to Action, Vestas CEO Andersen’s mission impossible warning, Siemens Gamesa’s narrowing losses, and CNC Onsite’s deals in Asia.

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Good Monday, everyone.

This past week… some big things happened in Madrid.

Fifteen thousand wind energy people from every corner of the world walked into the same room.

They came to talk. They came to listen. They came to ask for help.

And they came to warn.

The WindEurope Annual Event opened on Tuesday, the twenty-first of April, with six hundred twenty exhibitors and four hundred speakers across three days.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gave the opening address.

Fourteen national ministers stood on the stages, alongside European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera and European Commissioner for Energy Dan Jorgensen.

And the message coming out of Madrid… was a single piece of paper.

They called it the Madrid Call to Action.

Ten points. Ten things European governments need to do… right now.

Fast-track permitting, and treat wind as overriding public interest. Award at least eighty percent of wind auction bids… no more artificial scarcity. Repower aging wind farms and triple their output with fewer turbines. Multiply EU grid funding by five. Zero VAT on heat pumps and electric vehicles. And permanently cut taxes on electricity… because homegrown power should be the cheapest power.

The framing was simple.

From crisis… to confidence… in a decade.

But while the speeches were polite… the panels were not.

On Thursday afternoon, Vestas chief executive Henrik Andersen took the microphone, and he did not mince words.

Andersen called it mission impossible.

He told politicians to stop submitting wish lists for new auctions. He pointed at Denmark’s recent failed offshore auction… an auction that no developer would even bid on. And he pointed at countries trying to build a three-dimensional CSRD into the next tender.

Then he delivered the line that quieted the room.

If we don’t get this under control… we’ll be sitting here in five years… begging to keep the lights on.

Now… while the warnings were echoing through Madrid… something quieter was happening on a balance sheet