Orsted Wins Tax Fight, Vestas Breaks Onshore Height Record

Wind Energy News Flash September 14, 2026

Happy Monday, everyone.

Wind turbines… are supposed to be a threat to national security. At least… that is what some people say. But the militaries that actually operate near them? They are turning those turbines into weapons of defense. Hold that thought.

First… let us go to Germany. In the little town of Winnberg… Vestas just set a record. The tallest onshore wind turbine ever built. An Enventus one-seventy-two… seven-point-two megawatts… sitting on a hub height of one hundred ninety-nine meters. That is taller than a sixty-story building. The tower is a concrete hybrid. A second turbine is planned for next year. Vestas says the height lets the machine reach stronger and steadier winds… which means more energy and more value. Simple idea. Build taller. Capture more.

Now stay in Germany… but head north to the Baltic Sea. Skyborn Renewables just closed financing on the Gennaker offshore wind farm. Three billion euros. Nine hundred seventy-six megawatts. Sixty-three turbines. When it is running… Gennaker will produce three-point-eight terawatt-hours a year. Enough to power one million German homes. Sixteen commercial banks and the European Investment Bank put up the money. And Gennaker already has power purchase agreements with Uniper and Amazon. Commercial operations start in twenty twenty-eight.

Now… speaking of the European Investment Bank. The EIB just signed a deal with Danske Bank out of Copenhagen. A two hundred fifty million euro guarantee. Here is why that matters. Before a wind turbine maker can build a single machine… it needs a bank guarantee for the buyer. No guarantee… no production. No turbines. No wind farm. This deal lets Danske Bank issue up to five hundred million euros in guarantees to European wind manufacturers. It is the first deal of its kind in the Nordic region under the EU’s twenty twenty-three Wind Power Package. The EIB is backing all of this through a six-point-five billion euro wind program… aimed at building thirty-two gigawatts of new capacity.

Now cross the English Channel. Ørsted… the Danish offshore wind giant… just won a tax fight. Back in twenty twenty… Danish tax authorities claimed six-point-six billion Danish crowns in taxes… about one billion dollars… on two British wind farms. Walney Extension in the Irish Sea. Hornsea One in the North Sea. Ørsted said those projects were built, owned, and operated by British subsidiaries. They already paid UK tax. An advisory commission under the EU Arbitration Convention just ruled in Ørsted’s favor. The projects have genuine purpose in Britain. They are taxable there. Ørsted says the ruling will mean a minor adjustment in Denmark… largely offset by tax reductions in the UK. And Ørsted expects similar cases to be resolved on the same legal principles.

Now head across the Atlantic. Danish service company Global Wind Service… GWS for short… just opened a business unit in Canada. GWS has been in the United States since twenty seventeen. They helped build Block Island. Vineyard Wind One. South Fork. Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind.

And finally… a quiet deal in Denmark. Polytech… a Danish wind industry supplier… just bought Dansk Gummi Industri. A family-owned company. Founded in nineteen fifteen. Four generations of the same family. Brothers Peter and Christian Thomsen decided it was time to let someone else take the company forward. Dansk Gummi makes transport solutions for moving blades, towers, and nacelles. Polytech now has four hundred sixty employees. CEO Rene Balle says the deal helps Polytech expand beyond wind and into other industries.

Now… back to where we started. National security and wind turbines. Defense experts across Europe say the threat is real… but manageable. Yes… spinning blades create false radar returns. But modern phased-array radar can see right through them. The Trump administration itself quietly ordered four hundred thirty-eight million dollars in phased-array radar from Collins Aerospace… a company that markets wind farm radar mitigation as a core feature. And here is the twist. Poland now requires defense sensors on every offshore wind farm. Its first Baltic project sits two hundred kilometers south of Kaliningrad… a Russian military outpost. Sweden’s SAAB tested radar on Ørsted’s Hornsea One wind farm in twenty twenty-one… and extended surveillance beyond the reach of ground-based systems. The UK ordered eleven of those radar units. Belgium and the Netherlands are doing the same thing. They are not treating wind farms as obstacles. They are turning them into forward surveillance platforms. As one former Danish special forces commander put it… you are changing the battlefield. But it is a change to your advantage if you use it as a tactical lever.

Here is the takeaway for the week. The supply chain bottleneck is not turbines or steel. It is guarantees. The EIB-Danske Bank deal tells you where the real friction lives. Manufacturers cannot start work without bank paper. If you are an operator waiting on turbine deliveries… this is the deal that moves your timeline. And if you are still hearing that offshore wind is a security threat… the people who actually defend coastlines are building their radar networks on top of turbines. The threat narrative is not just outdated. It is backwards.

And that is the state of the wind industry for the 14th of September 2026. Join us for the Uptime Wind Energy podcast tomorrow.