Show notes
This week, we discuss Siemens Gamesa's MASSIVE 21 MW turbine prototype, Vestas and Siemens Gamesa layoffs in Europe, trade relations between the US and EU in 2025, and the proper out-of-office email etiquette.
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Allen Hall: If you want to know why Siemens Gamesa is betting big on a 21 megawatt offshore turbine while others scale back, what Norway's 25 billion oil and gas investment means for renewables, and how manufacturing challenges are reshaping European wind energy, stick around. Plus, we've got big news about Wind Energy O& M Australia and a chance to win an exclusive Uptime Podcast mug in our first ever listener survey.
I'm Allen Hall, and this is the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast.
You're listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by BuildTurbines. com. Learn, train, and be a part of the clean energy revolution. Visit buildturbines. com today. Now here's your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
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Allen Hall: There's a dynamic story in international trade relations happening at the moment where the president elect of the United States has issued a statement regarding US EU trade dynamics and through a social media post U. S. leadership has called for a European Union to address its trade deficit with the United States through increased purchases.
Of all things, American oil and gas. Now this threat comes in to light with all the tariff discussions that have been happening over the last several weeks. And the EU and the U. S. I think privately behind closed doors have been talking and trying to tap this down a little bit. But this comes in light of, Joel, that Norway is busy drilling away also, that they plan to spend about 25 billion dollars in 2025 drilling a number of holes, looking for more oil and gas, which I assume are headed right to the EU.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, absolutely. I think the thing about this that we have to understand is we're, this is a wind energy podcast, so we're into renewable energy. We want we're looking for energy transition. I think the thing that we all need to understand is that the energy transition is not going to be a flick of a switch, right?
We're oil and gas is in literally everything that you touch every day. Like the mouse, my computer, my cell phone, my coffee cup, like petroleum products are in everything. So until we find out. different source for that, those products, it's not going to go away. So with that being said, the, you also have to understand that it's going to play a huge factor on global economics because like we're talking here, EU in the U S and you have Norway, there.
So Norway being the, one of the largest natural gas producers in the world, I think they're number four behind like the U S Russia and Qatar, however you want to say it. But we saw this in the last few years, the economics and the political geopolitical strife play out in Eastern Europe with the, the conflict we're having over there.
And then we had this last Presidential campaign series over here in the United States. One of the big things that president elect Trump said was drill, baby drill. We're going to continue to push the United States on what we can do for output for natural gas and oil, which we've hit records year after year in the last few years.
So it's a way to balance the books globally, right? So if we want to if the U S wants to flex muscle this is a way to do it, definitely force, force some of our trade partners to take some oil and gas.
Allen Hall: Does this change the dynamic though in terms of renewable energy in Northern Europe or greater EU?
Joel Saxum: I don't think so as of yet. I think people will continue to push for renewable energy projects. They're just not happening quick enough, right? You can't, there's only so many goods, like spots for wind farms, say like in Germany that have been cited for their wind farms are built there, they're in operation.
So you're seeing, instead of all kinds of new field, like we have in the United States, a hundred, 120 turbine wind sites that just not being built. So you still have this gap where the thirst for natural gas for heating and power is very. It's going to continue to happen. I don't think it'll change in the near term a whole lot.
I think you still have, in my opinion, we still have 10, 20 years left of the same kind of hydrocarbon thirst that we have right now.
Allen Hall: Phil, is there going to be a big push in terms of growth in the EU to grab more oil and gas exploration while
Phil Totaro: they can? But let's keep a couple of things in mind with this conversation.
One is that the trade imbalance between the U. S. and Europe is roughly only about 200 billion. Obviously that's a lot of money, but in the grand scheme of things I don't know why. This is coming up as a topic when that's something that could, it could be closed by them buying more, liquefied natural gas from the U.
S., which is what they're obviously trying to accomplish. But I don't know why this is a big thing. And in the meantime, Europe has bigger issues with having Norway basically replacing, Norway's drilling, replacing Russian gas supply when they could also be investing equally as heavily into, repowering repowering in Spain, repowering in France, repowering in Germany.
And Portugal although that's already happening a little bit but, they're just not doing what they could be doing to take advantage of renewable energy as power source as opposed to continuing to operate on an oil and gas based infrastructure.
Allen Hall: It just seems like there's a limited amount of growth in oil and gas in Europe.
I know there's, they're trying to deal obviously with a lack of resources coming further from the east, but that won't last that long. It doesn't seem like it with all the electricity generation that's happening. Off the coast of the United Kingdom and other places. There's going to be a lot of electricity feeding Europe here shortly.
It doesn't seem like it would be the right time necessarily to put a bunch of money into oil and gas, but Equinor, being one of the players here, is doing it, in which is. Odd also because Equinor is what, the second largest stakeholder in Orsted, which is the renewable energy leader in Europe for the most part.
There is, there's a lot of dynamics happening here. Do you think that this is going to over the next couple of months as the new administration comes in, do you think this is going to tamper down or is this just going to get elevated even more and more as the discusses about trade deficits and tariffs pick up?
I think it'll ramp up.