Vattenfall AB

So once you had Canadian companies being sued under NAFTA, once you had the threat of TTIP, which people have maybe forgotten about now, but was at one point a big threat to kind of bring ISDS to Europe.

And then more recently with kind of climate responsive legislation, you have like RWE suing the Netherlands, Vattenfall suing Germany.

The amount of media attention, the number of sort of left liberal paper articles about this, NGO coverage has absolutely boomed.

But the majority of the rulings, the majority of the huge payouts have been made by Global South States since the early 90s.

Listen, I've known that founder, Alberto Mendez, for many, many years.

He used to be formerly with Vattenfall.

I think he was on the board of Vattenfall at one point in time.

And he stepped out of his nice, secure

job to try and revolutionize the distribution grid.

And yeah, it's been a lot of fun with BMW and looking forward to continuing work with them in the future.

So our guest today, Alberto Mendez Rebolo.

As you said, he had an incredible corporate career, Siemens Gamesa, Vattenfall, big organization.

Um, this time the Danish government brought in two-sided contracts for difference, CFDs, to get the sites over the line, which is a very conscious effort to get the pipeline moving again, essentially.

Um, Vattenfall was the big winner, picking up both sites, North Sea Central for 504 Danish krone per megawatt hour, which is about $76 per megawatt hour, and Hesseler for 542 Danish krone per megawatt hour, which is about $81 per megawatt hour.

And both of those were on 20-year contracts.

Now, based on these results, what do you think the implications are for future offshore wind leasing rounds, both in Denmark and across Europe more broadly?

Um, targets and tendering timelines are all well and good, they're setting out ambition and goals, but ultimately it's what's behind that, the revenue visibility, the, the grid connection, the permitting risk, and of course the costing side of all of that on the government's part, um, which ultimately determines the bankability of these projects and whether they can be built and how quickly they can be built.

Now, final question before we move on.

Uh, what are the implications of Vattenfall being awarded the rights to both sites? In particular, does this raise any concerns around market concentration?

So there are risks to having one developer pick up multiple sites in a tender, um, which is something we've seen elsewhere, in fact.

And, you know, we count many of the big energy companies as users of our software.

You know, whether that's RWE, NG, Vattenfall.

And, you know, we've got a really good suite of customers that's ever-growing, and it's a really exciting time to be part of our own company.

And part of that decision-making at the time, which clearly makes sense, all things to some degree make sense when you have the benefit of hindsight.

With few disruptions to the energy sector at home, Travel Club AAA said U.S. retail gasoline prices were the highest ever for August 21 because of market pressure from the war in the Middle East.

The Danish Energy Agency has awarded contracts for two offshore wind farms in Danish waters to Sweden's Vattenfall and two subsidiaries.

The company has been awarded the Hesselo and North Sea OneMid offshore wind projects in the latest Danish offshore wind tender.

The awards mark a strong return for Denmark's offshore wind sector, which stalled after the government's 2024 tenders received no bids.

And the UK Energy Secretary Minister called that request irresponsible.

Meanwhile, up in Denmark, Vattenfall has just won two offshore wind farms and will not say whether it will buy European turbines.

Danish suppliers are not taking that quietly.

So the Scotland question about the Mingyang factory is at least being discussed again with the new prime minister in the UK.