How Siemens Gamesa Became a Global Wind Power Leader
Siemens Gamesa, a leader in the renewable energy industry, operates with the aim of providing the world's best offshore and onshore wind turbines and services.
Headquartered in Zamudio, Spain — just outside Bilbao — Siemens Gamesa was first incorporated in 1976 and was founded to work on the management of industrial projects and technology for emerging businesses.
Siemens then merged its wind business with Gamesa in 2017, forming a world-leading wind power provider with an unrivalled global presence. This placed Siemens Gamesa in an excellent position as one of the world’s leading and largest wind power providers, and in an attractive growth market.
Siemens Gamesa: An energy leader
Regarded as a pioneer in wind power and the wider renewables space for five decades, Siemens Gamesa is driven to propel the energy transition and enable a sustainable world, as well as empower customers, people and partners to work toward a feature led by green energy.
Jochen Eickholt, Siemens Gamesa's CEO, said it is “part of our strategy to divest non-core activities and to focus on our core businesses: design, manufacturing, installation and maintenance of wind turbines”.
He came into post in 2022 and joined the Siemens Energy executive board in January 2020, a position that was responsible for the Power Generation and Industrial Applications businesses.
His wider Siemens career spans more than 20 years, with the now top dog previously holding a number of senior management positions including CEO of Siemens Mobility and Chairman and Managing Partner of the Siemens Portfolio Companies.
Siemens Gamesa’s modern-day success is somewhat founded on parent company Siemens’ longstanding history. Spanning back more than 175 years, Siemens’s operations have seen it at the forefront of history-defining moments. It played a major role in the early years of electricity, and continues to be a huge player in this space, having earmarked €650m (US$693m) to be solely invested in its own decarbonisation, aiming to be the world's first major industrial company to achieve a net-zero carbon footprint by 2030.
Siemens Gamesa: Power pioneers harnessing the strong winds of change
Boasting an extensive wind power offering, the company is determined to continue playing a crucial role in pushing onshore wind even further into the mainstream of energy sources in the coming decades by driving innovation and offering technology to help wind reach new heights.
It established the world’s first offshore wind power plant in 1991 — Vindeby in Denmark — and continues to be a large player in both the onshore and offshore spaces. As a market leader in connecting offshore wind to the grid, Siemens has 6.5GW connected to date and a further 4.5GW under construction.
Offshore, Siemens Gamesa is scaling up the use of wind turbines as it works to meet climate challenges. Being the global market leader in offshore wind turbines, it is fully committed to being part of the solution and leveraging its market-leading experience and knowledge in doing so. The company is well-known for its SG 14.0-222 wind turbine, the largest variant based on the Siemens D7 Platform, as well as being the largest wind turbine in the world.
The company firmly believes this is an integral next step to meeting climate challenges, as it boasts a capacity of up to 15MW with Power Boost. This is because wind power is undeniably more sustainable than conventional energy sources.
“Wind energy is a major factor across societies: not only in the fight against climate change, but it is becoming an ever more important contributor to economic and employment growth,” Jochen added. “Europe’s wind industry faces various challenges that are keeping its players from living up to their full potential.
“There are strong reasons to support the expansion of renewables, and energy security is one of the most powerful ones, especially in Europe. Before the next crisis hits and our electricity bills return to alarming peaks, before we regret not having moved faster, we all need to pull in the same direction: our customers and suppliers, policymakers, investors and society at large. That is how we can overcome our industry’s biggest challenges.
“The good news is that we are on the right path. But we must pick up the pace.”
*******************
Make sure you check out the latest edition of Energy Digital Magazine and also sign up to our global conference series - Sustainability LIVE 2024.
*******************
Energy Digital is a BizClik brand.
