Ten Eco-Friendly Companies

7 A Mighty Wind

Vestas Wind Systems: Leading the market in installing wind turbines, a business that could grow tenfold to $80 billion by 2010

Vestas Wind Systems CEO Ditlev Engel loves to talk about the weather. His company is the world's leading maker of those sleek, whirring steel windmills dotting landscapes in Europe and increasingly in the United States. Breezes come and go, Engel likes to explain, but from one year to the next, the volume of wind in a place is highly predictable. And in Vestas' native Denmark, those winds create 20 percent of its electricity, compared with 0.5 percent in the United States. "If only the rest of the world could be like Denmark," he says.

His wish could pay off. Corin Millais, CEO of the European Wind Energy Associa--tion, forecasts that the global market will surge tenfold to $80 billion by 2010. Wind currently enjoys tax credits and subsidies that make its price competitive with natural-gas-generated electricity. As wind power evolves and the price falls, it soon may not even need government help.

Vestas boasts a 34 percent share of the market, with revenues this year that should reach $4 billion, twice what they were in 2003. Engel is building a factory in China, which will eventually supply the United States. It will open a new tech center in Denmark in 2007, followed by another R&D center in Asia.

Wind farms in the United States are rushing to secure supplies of mills before the most recent federal tax credit expires in 2008. Last month, in the first big order for 2006, Vestas won a contract to supply Horizon Wind with 127 mills for the Wild Horse project in Washington state. The U.S. Department of Energy wants 6 percent of electricity to come from wind by 2020. The European Union plans to get 33 percent of its electricity from renewable energy, up from 12.9 percent.