TIDMORSTED 
 
 
   On Ørsted's Capital Markets Day, the company announced its new 
commitment to either reuse, recycle, or recover all of the wind turbine 
blades in Ørsted's global portfolio of onshore and offshore wind 
farms upon decommissioning. The commitment comes as a part of 
Ørsted's new company strategy which includes an ambition to expand 
its leading sustainability position and as part of the work towards 
achieving a carbon-neutral footprint by 2040. 
 
   "We want to help create a world that runs entirely on green energy, and 
we want to do it in a sustainable way. That includes moving towards more 
circular models where we reuse resources and save energy, thereby 
reducing carbon emissions. That is a big challenge, but we look forward 
to working on this challenge together with our supply chain," says Mads 
Nipper, CEO of Ørsted. 
 
   Today, between 85 % and 95 % of a wind turbine can be recycled, but 
recycling of wind turbine blades remains a challenge, as the blades are 
designed to be lightweight, yet durable, making them challenging to 
break apart. Consequently, most decommissioned blades are landfilled 
today. Should the challenge with recycling blades take longer to solve 
than anticipated, Ørsted will not use landfilling for 
decommissioned wind turbine blades, but will instead temporarily store 
the blades. 
 
   In the coming decade, wind turbines will be deployed at an unprecedented 
pace, delivering clean renewable energy to industries and to several 
hundreds of million people, making it even more important to 
decommission the blades in a sustainable way. 
 
   Ørsted has so far constructed 7.5 GW of offshore wind and 1.7 GW of 
onshore wind. Up until now, Ørsted has only decommissioned the 
offshore wind farm Vindeby in Denmark where the blades from the 11 wind 
turbines were all reused. With Ørsted's new strategic ambition of 
installing 30 GW of offshore wind and 17.5 GW of onshore energy 
production, including onshore wind, by 2030, Ørsted has a clear 
responsibility to help find solutions to the challenge of recycling 
blades. 
 
   "Already today, power produced from offshore wind has 99 % lower life 
cycle emissions than coal-fired power. Our ambition is to offer our 
customers carbon-neutral renewable energy solutions with responsible use 
of resources, seen from a life cycle perspective. This requires 
decarbonising our supply chain, and it involves moving to more circular 
models of resource use in the wind turbine supply chain," says Mads 
Nipper. 
 
   "I hope that our commitment will inspire others which will help to bring 
scale to the market for recycling solutions of wind turbine blades, 
thereby accelerating the cost-out journey of the alternatives to 
landfilling, and help boost the already ongoing innovation in the wind 
energy supply chain on how to design to avoid waste." 
 
   Ørsted is already contributing to advance the technologies that can 
recycle wind turbine blades in a sustainable way as a founding partner 
of the cross-sector DecomBlades consortium consisting of wind industry 
companies and research institutions. The consortium seeks to investigate 
and develop solutions to recycle the composite material in wind turbine 
blades. The consortium recently received a three-year funding from 
Innovation Fund Denmark for its work. 
 
   "No one has all the solutions to how to move towards more circular 
models. We need collaboration across companies and research institutions 
to find the answers which the DecomBlades project is an important 
example of," says Mads Nipper. 
 
   For further information, please contact: 
 
   Media Relations 
 
   Michael Korsgaard 
 
   + 45 99 55 94 25 
 
   mikon@orsted.dk 
 
   Investor Relations 
 
   Allan Bødskov Andersen 
 
   + 45 99 55 79 96 
 
   ir@orsted.dk 
 
   About Ørsted 
 
   The Ørsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy. 
Ørsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind 
farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, and bioenergy plants, and 
provides energy products to its customers. Ørsted ranks as the 
world's most sustainable energy company in Corporate Knights' 2021 index 
of the Global 100 most sustainable corporations in the world and is 
recognised on the CDP Climate Change A List as a global leader on 
climate action. Headquartered in Denmark, Ørsted employs 6,311 
people. Ørsted's shares are listed on Nasdaq Copenhagen (Orsted). 
In 2020, the group's revenue was DKK 52.6 billion (EUR 7.1 billion). 
Visit orsted.com or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and 
Twitter. 
 
   Attachment 
 
 
   -- EN_sustain decom_press release_FINAL 
      https://ml-eu.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/d2ccb6cf-e155-4bf0-bfe8-fff2d8682b5a

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-03-21 0215ET