“Climate neutrality will only work if we focus on the renewables.”
The wind energy industry has been through hard times. Anyone who still talks about “fantastic prospects” must have plenty of experience paired with a good portion of healthy optimism. Just like Jürgen Zeschky, since 1 January 2022 CEO at ENERCON, the wind turbine manufacturer in Aurich.
Life as a pensioner could be so good. Today he could read a good book. Then perhaps go for a nice long ride on his motorbike. Or what about getting that gliding licence and seeing the world from the bird’s eye view? Instead, Jürgen Zeschky can be found at his desk in a smart office on the outskirts of Aurich, working on the future of ENERCON. No sign of retirement.
It was a dream that lasted no more than eight days. “I’d just resigned from being CEO at Hoerbiger Holding in Switzerland, when on day nine of my retirement I got a call from Ostfriesland”, recalls the manager, born in 1960 in North Rhine-Westphalia. On the phone was Heiko Janssen, chairman of the board of the Aloys Wobben Foundation. The foundation set up in Aurich in 2012 by wind energy pioneer Aloys Wobben in Aurich is the sole owner of the turbine manufacturer.
Ray of hope for a whole region
Enercon is not just any old firm in Ostfriesland, but an institution whose impact extends way beyond the borders of the region. As Germany’s largest wind turbine manufacturer (market share in excess of 35 percent), since it was founded the company had installed more than 13,500 wind turbines by the end of 2021 alone, with a total output of more than 25 gigawatts. ENERCON has also been setting international standards for almost more than 40 years. The company in Aurich holds more than 45 percent of the worldwide patents in the field of wind energy technology, providing work for more than 13,000 employees throughout the entire firm.
But Aloys Wobben and his lifework created far more than just a flourishing company of international renown. For decades, ENERCON has also been the ray of hope for economic development in what is still a structurally underdeveloped region,
as well as playing a highly symbolic role in terms of future energy generation.
When politicians emphasise the significant role played by the “energy state Lower Saxony” in terms of the national energy supply, most of them are thinking about the huge wind farms spread out right across the federal state. In fact, at the end of March 2022, statistics provided by the non-profit specialist agency “Wind Energy on Land” indicated that 6,106 of the 28,204 wind turbines operating in Germany can be found in here in the state between the North Sea coast and the Harz mountains. Lower Saxony also leads the ranking in terms of capacity. 11,661 of 56,200 megawatts are installed here. The other federal states follow at a good distance.
CEO casting by phone
Back to Heiko Janssen. In autumn 2021, the chairman of the board of the Aloys Wobben Foundation was on the lookout for a suitable successor for his namesake and ENERCON CEO Momme Janssen, who had unexpectedly announced he would be leaving the company at the end of the year for personal reasons.
Given Jürgen Zeschky’s career to date, it was no great surprise that he topped the list of candidates. The holder of a doctorate in mechanical engineering had begun his career working for the compressed air specialist Mannesmann Demag before moving to a Siemens subsidiary in New Jersey/USA. In October 2004 he started working for machine manufacturer Voith Turbo, where he became CEO only three months later.
“I was just lucky that over the years I kept on coming across people who had confidence in me”, says Zeschky looking back. And his luck still hadn’t run out. In March 2012, he had his first encounter with the wind energy industry as CEA with the wind turbine manufacturer Nordex in Hamburg, but left the company again at the end of May 2015. A seven-month break was followed on 1 January 2016 by joining the Swiss company Hoerbiger Holding, where he was appointed new CEO and chairman of the board in the middle of the year.
From the Swiss mountains to the North Sea coast
To cut a long story short, Heiko Janssen’s phone call went well. And after brief discussions with the family, Jürgen Zeschky decided “to go ahead with the Ostfriesland adventure”, regardless of any plans to retire. Pleasant side effect: this brought him closer to the children and grandchildren living in Hamburg.
On 12 November 2021, the news tickers brought the announcement that the CEO casting had been brought to a successful conclusion. In his statement, Janssen referred to Zeschky as “an experienced industry insider and proven technical expertise with many years of management
experience”. That made him exactly the right man to deal with the ambitious tasks of the years ahead: “He will continue the realignment of the company with unchanged objectives and priority, working together with the ENERCON team to make a success of it.” Without doubt, the bar was set high.
Zeschky waived the need for a lengthy familiarisation period. He threw himself into the job immediately. To warrant continuity in the ongoing processes, he already got to work with his predecessor a few weeks before officially
taking office at the start of the year in order to start getting things straight, sounding out the prospects and creating the prerequisites to overcome the pending challenges.
There is no doubt that this was necessary, for the new helmsman was taking charge in Aurich in complicated circumstances for the industry. Years of positive development were followed in 2018 by a sudden end to the boom. While in 2017 wind farms with a total output of 6.6 gigawatts were built in Germany, one year later the figure was practically halved. The Grand Coalition in charge of the national government at the time changed the system of subsidies for expanding renewable energies in order to cap expenditure for the energy transition and protect the big utility companies. From then on, the construction of new wind farms was subject to nationwide tendering procedures.
Fantastic prospects ahead
Costs were another factor. Producing the wind turbine parts in Germany is (too) expensive in a global comparison. Zeschky knew “that’s something we’ve got to deal with.” ‘We’ here refers to the industry in general and ENERCON in particular. The manager also mentions a key problem: “Up to now, the risks in the industry were very unevenly distributed to the detriment almost entirely of the manufacturers”. This was never a real problem while the risks were calculable. “But what about when steel suddenly costs twice as much, or logistics systems no longer work?” Then companies like ENERCON are left carrying
the can.
But all his experience made Jürgen Zeschky confident nevertheless. In summer 2022 at the WindEnergy Hamburg, the world’s flagship fair of the wind industry, he even ventured to speak of “fantastic prospects” for the industry. His optimism came above all from the goal of climate neutrality “The only way to reach this as planned is to focus all efforts on expanding wind energy.” Wind power is expected to assume a central role in the production of green hydrogen.
At least the German government was now back on board again. An immediate energy action programme was adopted at Easter 2022. This stated among others: “The expansion of renewable energies and the grids will be accelerated by removing obstacles and streamlining the planning and approval processes.” Efforts to become independent of Russian gas and oil in clear response to the war in Ukraine also made a positive contribution to the positive expectations. “Although we could really have done without this shock”, admits Zeschky.
Homework first
However, the ENERCON boss doesn’t want to rely on politics to deal with the situation and set the right course. “First of all we have to do our homework and adjust to the new conditions.” First steps have been taken.
After struggling to cope with the downturn and its consequences, the employees are motivated again and have put the “banishment from paradise” behind them, as Zeschky describes the end of the pre-2017 boom. Now it’s a case of putting objectives in plain terms and getting on with the work involved.
That certainly does not sound like retirement any time soon.
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