Orsted pledges to halve emissions by 2032

Danish renewable developer Orsted has pledged to halve its carbon dioxide emissions, including indirect emissions from its supply chain, by 2032.

The company has also vowed to completely electrify its vehicle fleet by 2025.

“With our energy generation and other in-house operational activities well on track to become virtually carbon free, we now take the next major step in our decarbonisation strategy and announce a new target that covers the indirect carbon emissions related to our business,” said Orsted chief executive and president Henrik Poulson.

“By 2032, we want to reduce our scope 3 emissions by 50 per cent, compared to 2018. These carbon emissions primarily relate to the sale of natural gas and fossil-based power in our customer business, and to the goods and services we source for construction of wind farms.”

“To meet the target, we will gradually reduce our natural gas sourcing portfolios, which today make up more than 80 per cent of our total scope 3 emissions,” he added.

“Furthermore, we will reinforce our engagement with our suppliers to reduce the emissions from the goods and services we source, in particular related to the construction of our wind farms, which make up the largest emissions source in our supply chain.”

Orsted made the announcement in its financial results for the first half of 2019. The company reported a 2 per cent rise in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to 8.75 billion krone (£1.08 billion). EBITDA from its offshore wind business increased by 4 per cent to 7.3 billion krone (£0.9 billion).

The company attributed the growth in profits to the ramp up of generation at a number of new windfarms including the Walney Extension and Hornsea One projects in the UK.

Nevertheless, the firm said it was “not fully satisfied” with the results as output could have been higher were it not for a series of curtailments and outages. They included a programme of cable repairs at the London Array offshore windfarm and cable and export system outages at the Race Bank, West of Duddon Sands, and Burbo Bank installations.

Orsted also gave an update on the construction of the Hornsea One project, which is set to become the world’s largest offshore windfarm once completed towards the end of this year.

It has now installed 131 of the 174 turbines that will make up the windfarm. The first began generating power in February.

The company said its sister project, Hornsea Two, is currently scheduled for completion in 2022.