Danish Wind Pioneer Keeps Battling Climate Change
The contemporary wind power industry, which has spawned hundreds of thousands of spinning rotors generating electricity without putting greenhouse gases into the air, was to a great extent born in a notoriously windy region of Denmark called Jutland.
It was here almost 50 years ago, after the 1973 oil embargo cut energy supplies to much of the West, that inventors and machinists began comparing notes about ways to harness the wind that sweeps across this flat expanse separating the North Sea from the islands that form the rest of Denmark. And while countless people have played a role in refining the machines that stud coastlines, plains and mountain ridges, perhaps no one has had more influence than a Jutlander named Henrik Stiesdal.
As a young man of 21, he built a rudimentary machine to generate electricity for his parents’ farm. He was later co-designer of an innovative three-bladed turbine that set the stage for what has become a multibillion-dollar global industry. His inventions have led to about a thousand patents, and Mr. Stiesdal is widely seen as a pioneer in this very Danish field.
Source: The New York Times
