Vestas CEO Warns Europe Must 'Shed Its Naivety' as Chinese Turbines Surge

201 gigawatts. That is the cumulative capacity Vestas has installed across 36 countries, the most of any wind turbine maker on earth. The Danish manufacturer now sits on a €36 billion order backlog and just posted €446 million in quarterly operating profit, eight times the €57 million it earned a year earlier. New orders jumped from 2 gigawatts to 3.35 gigawatts.

The rebound follows a brutal stretch. Vestas posted a €1.57 billion ($1.8 billion) net loss in 2022 after Russia's invasion of Ukraine upended steel supplies and raw material costs. CEO Henrik Andersen, who joined the board in 2013 and became chief executive in 2019, says he reminds himself of that loss daily.

What keeps Andersen up at night?

Energy security. Europe imports more than half of the energy it consumes, a dependency Andersen calls a personal worry. "Europe needs to shed its naivety," he says, "and start protecting energy security the same way it does its borders."

The company is also managing cost pressure. Building a turbine has grown 30% to 40% more expensive since 2020. Steel is up more than 50%, while copper and aluminum prices have nearly doubled, according to Julio Dal Poz, a managing director at FTI Consulting's energy transition practice. Dal Poz expects the squeeze to worsen as AI data centers compete for the same materials.

How serious is the Chinese threat?

In 2025, the five biggest turbine suppliers by annual installations were, for the first time, all Chinese, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. Goldwind led the field with nearly 30 gigawatts installed, double Vestas's tally. Gerben Hieminga, an energy economist at ING, says Chinese manufacturers can undercut European prices by as much as 50%, supported by government subsidies that ran three to eight times OECD levels between 2005 and 2024.

Chinese suppliers still hold less than 3% of Europe's new turbine market. The European Commission opened a foreign subsidies investigation into Goldwind in February. The Net-Zero Industry Act targets 40% domestic manufacturing for clean technologies by 2030. A proposed Industrial Accelerator Act could add "Made in EU" procurement rules.

Andersen sees security, not price, as Europe's defense. As chair of WindEurope, he pushed the EU to classify wind farms and grids as "critical infrastructure, not just hardware." Ming Yang, a Chinese manufacturer, was blocked from building a factory in Scotland on national security grounds. "Five years ago, Chinese authorities barred Vestas from monitoring or running its own software on turbines," Andersen says. "If European software isn't welcome in China, why should Chinese software and turbines be welcome in Europe's grid?"

"If we were having this conversation five years ago, I'd be more concerned," Andersen adds. "But we're living in a different world."

Why has Vestas held its lead?

The company capped its offshore turbines at around 15 megawatts while Goldwind and others chase larger machines. "The longer the blade is, the more difficult it is to maneuver in a harbor," Andersen says. "And in most harbors, we are running out of space." Standardization has cut warranty costs by $3.5 million between the first quarters of 2024 and 2025.

Service technicians will soon wear augmented reality glasses and carry handheld devices to monitor turbines. Vestas uses AI for "wake steering," adjusting blade angles to recover lost power from upstream turbines, and predicts gearbox failures before they occur.

Andersen has reshaped the culture. Before his appointment, Vestas's motto was "Failure is not an option." He staged a mock funeral for that slogan at a leadership meeting and replaced it with "Failure is always an option." "It made the company stubborn and arrogant," he says. Javier Rodríguez Diez, Vestas's chief sales officer, adds: "Henrik made failure something to examine, not something to hide."

What's the next test?

Offshore wind. Vestas's offshore business will not turn a profit in 2026. The company is targeting 2027. A single offshore installation can cost billions and take years to permit, finance, and build.

The wider European target is 425 gigawatts of installed wind capacity by 2030, up from about 246 gigawatts today. Andersen views energy storage as the sector's next big opportunity, though he has ruled out Vestas becoming a battery manufacturer. He links Europe's ability to power AI infrastructure directly to its energy independence. "If we can't build the data centers, we will lose out on the battle of AI," he says.

The 40,000-person company has cut staff in recent rounds. "It is painful, but it is also needed," Andersen says. "The goal is for this 40,000-person company to move with the speed of a much smaller one." What Europe does with the power it generates, and how much of its supply it can control, will shape the next phase of the energy transition.