Two European energy companies are offering a practical model for how fossil-fuel businesses can adapt to clean power, and their combined experience reveals both the scale of what’s possible and the difficulty of pulling it off. Danish firm Ørsted and Spanish company Moeve have each undergone deep structural changes, reconceiving their identities as organizations rather than stopping at changes to their product mix.
Of the two, Ørsted has made the more sweeping transformation, having operated as DONG Energy until 2017 when fossil fuels still made up 85% of its generation. That figure has since inverted entirely, with renewables now accounting for more than 99% of output after the company exited gas, coal and oil.
Commissioning offshore wind’s earliest commercial development off the Danish coast in 1991 gave Ørsted a two-decade head start on the technology.
Its portfolio is now approaching 18.3 gigawatts of capacity, a base large enough to cover the annual electricity needs of around 31 million people. Operational emissions per unit of output fell over 98% over that period. Profits grew throughout.
Moeve, which traded as Cepsa until recently, has taken a different but equally decisive route. Having already offloaded the majority of its upstream oil assets, the company is directing up to $9 billion into a strategy built around biofuels and green hydrogen ahead of 2030.
Its flagship effort, the Andalusian Green Hydrogen Valley, is the largest development of its kind on the continent, paired with a southern European facility producing diesel and aviation fuel derived from renewable sources, targeting sectors that electricity alone struggles to decarbonize.
Acquiring capital was the most persistent obstacle, since lenders and investors require confidence in long-term returns before committing at scale. Ørsted’s experience as a public company showed how cost pressures across supply chains, volatile borrowing conditions and shifting markets can erode that confidence.
Moeve drew on backing from private shareholders Carlyle and Mubadala to underwrite its strategy, while still contending with constrained grid access, evolving regulation and permitting delays.
For both companies, cultivating the right partnerships proved just as consequential as locking in funding. Ørsted struck a deal with steelmaker Dillinger for turbine foundations built with lower-carbon steel and is developing offshore electric charging for its vessel fleet.
Moeve took a procurement-led approach, contracting ultra-efficient tankers through the First Movers Coalition capable of running on fuels with a significantly lower carbon footprint, using purchasing power to build demand for technology that lacks a mature commercial base.
What both companies demonstrate is that a genuine transition demands leadership prepared to commit before the commercial case is fully proven, capital patient enough to hold through the difficult middle years, and partners willing to build new supply chains from scratch. Ørsted and Moeve both made their decisive moves early, and that is precisely what made the scale they have reached since look achievable.
With other entities like GeoSolar Technologies Inc. operating as renewable firms from the get-go, the future of the energy transition is taking hold in different ways, and it is just a matter of time before all sectors see their use of fossil fuels dwindle as the years go by.
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