It wasn’t so long ago that Orsted was being held up as an example of how oil and gas companies should handle the transition to clean energy. In 2009 the then-DONG (Danish Oil and Natural Gas) announced that it was going to turn around it business so that instead of earning 85 per cent of its money from oil and gas it was going to earn 85 per cent of it from renewables. It was an early mover in offshore wind – and, at least for some years, shareholders were richly rewarded. The share price marched upwards from around £19 in 2014 to a peak at £100 in early 2021. Increasing your money fivefold and saving the planet at the same time – you can hardly argue with that.
The economics of building wind farms has changed
Except that the bubble in renewables didn’t last. Fast forward three years and Orsted has wiped out almost all its share price gains of the past decade. In
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