Blowing a big opportunity?

The Economist as usual sets you thinking. Renewable energy could well add a few years of life to mother earth, but the firms that ar promoting it are already facing the rough winds.

A Danish firm leads the wind-turbine world. Yet it lost money last year .

You would think it hard to be the world leader in an industry roaring ahead with government backing and subsidised customers—and still to lose money. Yet Vestas Wind Systems, a Danish wind-turbine maker, did that last year. It is a cautionary tale—and not just for Vestas.
Pushed by fears of global warming and by rising energy prices, wind power is on a roll: worldwide, installed capacity rose by some 8,000MW last year, to nearly 48,000MW, one-third of that in Germany. Of that new 8,000MW, Vestas, with 26 years in wind turbines and over 26,000 of them installed, put in 35%. It has 9,500 employees, and a turnover, aided last year by the takeover of its closest Danish rival, of euro2.6 billion ($3.2 billion then), double the figure in 2001. Yet from euro390m pre-tax profit in that year it slid into two years of tiny profits and then, in 2004, into a euro50m loss.