As the Danish renewable energy company ?rsted battled to restore its reputation following a bruising year, a rival across the North Sea had the company in its sights. After months of quietly buying ?rsted shares, Norway’s state-owned oil and gas giant Equinor revealed in October that it now had a 10 per cent stake, promising to be a “supportive” shareholder. 

The move was hardly unusual in Europe’s fiercely competitive energy market. At one level, it was a vote of confidence in ?rsted, whose value has fallen roughly 70 per cent since 2021 amid management mis-steps and a challenging economic backdrop. And it enabled Equinor to continue its own journey towards decarbonisation on the comparative cheap, making up for a slow start. 

But it spoke volumes that a Norwegian competitor still heavily attached to fossil fuels — the previous year, 20 per cent of Equinor’s investment was in renewables and carbon capture — was buying a chunk of ?rsted, the world’s largest offshore wind company in terms of operational capacity, which had become a proud symbol of Denmark’s transition to low-carbon energy.