What are the key takeaways from this In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen episode?

Key insights include: **Offshore wind cost cycle:** Offshore wind's levelized cost of electricity dropped roughly 70% between 2015 and 2020, then reversed, rising approximately 50% from 2020 to 2025 due to supply chain inflation, rising interest rates, and unstable tender frameworks. Companies that locked in contracts during the low-cost window without inflation protection faced severe write-downs. Structure contracts with cost-escalation clauses to avoid this exposure.; **US project risk management:** Ørsted received a stop-work order on a US offshore wind project that was 80% complete, effectively converting a near-finished asset into a liability with no cash flow. Errboe's self-critical lesson: exit markets faster when regulatory signals deteriorate. Build project structures that allow affordable withdrawal at any stage, rather than continuing to invest into worsening conditions.; **Capital raise under crisis:** Ørsted executed an €8 billion equity raise — the largest ever for renewables and the largest ever in the Nordics — while simultaneously managing the US stop-work order over a single weekend. The lesson: maintain investor communication infrastructure before a crisis hits, so that trust and transparency can be deployed immediately when existential decisions compress into 48-hour windows.

What did Rasmus Erbo discuss on In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen?

Rasmus Errboe, CEO of Ørsted — the world's largest offshore wind company — covers the industry's cost collapse and recovery, Ørsted's painful US exit including a stop-work order on an 80%-complete project, an €8 billion emergency capital raise, and Europe's accelerating renewable energy buildout driven by geopolitical energy dependence. Key topics include: **Offshore wind cost cycle:** Offshore wind's levelized cost of electricity dropped roughly 70% between 2015 and 2020, then reversed, rising approximately 50% from 2020 to 2025 due to supply chain inflation, rising interest rates, and unstable tender frameworks. Companies that locked in contracts during the low-cost window without inflation protection faced severe write-downs. Structure contracts with cost-escalation clauses to avoid this exposure.; **US project risk management:** Ørsted received a stop-work order on a US offshore wind project that was 80% complete, effectively converting a near-finished asset into a liability with no cash flow. Errboe's self-critical lesson: exit markets faster when regulatory signals deteriorate. Build project structures that allow affordable withdrawal at any stage, rather than continuing to invest into worsening conditions..

How long is this episode of In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen?

This episode is 49 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen

Ørsted CEO: Offshore Wind's Boom and Bust, America's Pushback and Rebuilding Trust

August 19, 2026

49 min episode · 2 min read

Rasmus Erbo

Episode

49 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Health & Wellness, Investing, Fundraising & VC

AI-Generated Summary

Published Aug 19, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Offshore wind cost cycle: Offshore wind's levelized cost of electricity dropped roughly 70% between 2015 and 2020, then reversed, rising approximately 50% from 2020 to 2025 due to supply chain inflation, rising interest rates, and unstable tender frameworks. Companies that locked in contracts during the low-cost window without inflation protection faced severe write-downs. Structure contracts with cost-escalation clauses to avoid this exposure.
✓US project risk management: Ørsted received a stop-work order on a US offshore wind project that was 80% complete, effectively converting a near-finished asset into a liability with no cash flow. Errboe's self-critical lesson: exit markets faster when regulatory signals deteriorate. Build project structures that allow affordable withdrawal at any stage, rather than continuing to invest into worsening conditions.
✓Capital raise under crisis: Ørsted executed an €8 billion equity raise — the largest ever for renewables and the largest ever in the Nordics — while simultaneously managing the US stop-work order over a single weekend. The lesson: maintain investor communication infrastructure before a crisis hits, so that trust and transparency can be deployed immediately when existential decisions compress into 48-hour windows.
✓European energy demand trajectory: Errboe projects European electricity demand will nearly double by 2050, driven by electrification and AI infrastructure, which requires electrons rather than fossil fuel molecules. Nine European governments committed in Hamburg to tender up to 300 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050. Leaders should size supply chain investments and workforce planning against this doubling scenario, not current demand baselines.
✓Turnaround leadership framework: Errboe structured his first year as CEO around four explicit priorities: setting a new strategic direction, rebuilding the leadership team, optimizing the largest capital allocation decisions, and resetting internal and external communication. He announced a 25% workforce reduction early and transparently, reasoning that clarity — even painful clarity — rebuilds organizational trust faster than delayed or softened messaging.

What It Covers

Rasmus Errboe, CEO of Ørsted — the world's largest offshore wind company — covers the industry's cost collapse and recovery, Ørsted's painful US exit including a stop-work order on an 80%-complete project, an €8 billion emergency capital raise, and Europe's accelerating renewable energy buildout driven by geopolitical energy dependence.

Key Questions Answered

•Offshore wind cost cycle: Offshore wind's levelized cost of electricity dropped roughly 70% between 2015 and 2020, then reversed, rising approximately 50% from 2020 to 2025 due to supply chain inflation, rising interest rates, and unstable tender frameworks. Companies that locked in contracts during the low-cost window without inflation protection faced severe write-downs. Structure contracts with cost-escalation clauses to avoid this exposure.
•US project risk management: Ørsted received a stop-work order on a US offshore wind project that was 80% complete, effectively converting a near-finished asset into a liability with no cash flow. Errboe's self-critical lesson: exit markets faster when regulatory signals deteriorate. Build project structures that allow affordable withdrawal at any stage, rather than continuing to invest into worsening conditions.
•Capital raise under crisis: Ørsted executed an €8 billion equity raise — the largest ever for renewables and the largest ever in the Nordics — while simultaneously managing the US stop-work order over a single weekend. The lesson: maintain investor communication infrastructure before a crisis hits, so that trust and transparency can be deployed immediately when existential decisions compress into 48-hour windows.
•European energy demand trajectory: Errboe projects European electricity demand will nearly double by 2050, driven by electrification and AI infrastructure, which requires electrons rather than fossil fuel molecules. Nine European governments committed in Hamburg to tender up to 300 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050. Leaders should size supply chain investments and workforce planning against this doubling scenario, not current demand baselines.
•Turnaround leadership framework: Errboe structured his first year as CEO around four explicit priorities: setting a new strategic direction, rebuilding the leadership team, optimizing the largest capital allocation decisions, and resetting internal and external communication. He announced a 25% workforce reduction early and transparently, reasoning that clarity — even painful clarity — rebuilds organizational trust faster than delayed or softened messaging.

Notable Moment

On a Friday evening watching television with his son, Errboe ignored an initial call from Ørsted's general counsel, only responding after a follow-up text warned him to call back immediately. Within ten minutes, a one-page government order halted construction on a nearly finished US wind farm.

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Episode Transcript

And then, and then I get a phone call from, from our general counsel, that I have worked with for for a decade. And to be honest, I I sort of I I I look at the phone and then actually put it put it down again because he had called me. And he rang again? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Then he sent me a text and said, Rasmus, you should probably just give me a call. And then, within less than ten minutes, we received what is called sort of a a stop work order, which is effectively a one pager that orders you to stop the construction of a project in The US, that at the time was 80% done. That was pretty extreme, unexpected. Hi, everybody. I'm Niklas Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. And today, I'm joined live from Oslo by Rasmus Erbo, the CEO of Osted, the largest offshore wind company in the world. Osted used to be a Danish oil and gas company, sold its fossil fuel business, and rebuilt itself around offshore wind. Warm welcome, Rasmus. Thank you very much, Nicolai. I'm very happy to be here. Now, just tell me about the start. So, like, thirty five years ago, you built some turbines off the Danish coast. How come? Yeah. So, so first of all, I've been with the company for fourteen years or so, so I cannot take credit for the entire journey. But but you are right that roughly thirty five years ago, the first offshore wind turbine in the world was set up in Denmark in a place called Vinnybru. And why did an oil and gas company start to build wind turbines? Erste is, is basically founded as a merger, if you will, in 2006. So this happened this was only part part of the company back in, back back in the days. But, what what what happened from from 2006 and onwards was that that that was the start of this journey from being a fossil, intensive company into becoming the global leader of offshore wind today. So that is really where the transformation started. But it took a long time before wind power generally took off, right? Why why was that technology so expensive for such a long time? Yeah. Even today, offshore wind is still, in many ways you can say, a niche industry. If you look at it in the totality of the energy system in Europe, I think there is today 38 gigawatts or something installed, in, Europe. So so it of course, it it takes time when you build up an industry. But especially from the years from 2015 to 2020, those were years where we were really starting to see the, sort of, the invasion and industrialization starting to happen, and also costs starting to come down. How come Denmark became the kind of superpower here, which you were until China took over? But you were very big and …

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