Build­ing a glob­al fu­ture

Jacob Heinricy Jensen has over 25 years of experience in health, safety, environment, and quality (HSEQ), compliance and risk management. He recently transitioned into renewable energies, working as a chief operations officer at Cadeler A/S, after having worked in the complex oil and gas industry. His motive for switching industry was to maintain the complexity in his job while contributing to a sustainable future.

In his current role Jacob is responsible for marine operations, crewing, project planning and execution, project engineering, engineering development and business development. He particularly enjoys the additional challenges presented by the activities offshore. It requires thorough planning and constant risk assessment to ensure the safety of the colleagues offshore.

He explains that “when working in a company like Cadeler where you have vessels offshore doing complex installation in close cooperation with our clients, safety is number one priority in everything we do. Our focus is to prevent incidents from happening, by continuously improving our safety culture and best practices. If an incident happens offshore, help is suddenly far away, and as a company you therefore need to ensure you can deal with whatever accident scenario you can think of.”

At the same time Jacob is proud of taking part in the energy transition and enjoys working with like-minded people, who value sustainability. He says, “Every time we install a new wind turbine is another step forward supporting the energy transition. Many of my younger colleagues especially are extremely focused on the climate agenda and committed to make changes; at Cadeler I have colleagues who would rather go by train to visit their family in France, and colleagues who deliberately only buy second-hand clothing. This mindset and the initiatives they take is remarkable and inspiring.”

When he got offered to take part in an MBA programme by his employer, he did not hesitate to take it. For Jacob’s career path the Blue MBA was the most obvious choice, especially since his prior experience is mainly in the oil and gas industry, while he was fairly new in the shipping industry.

“By choosing the Blue MBA, I expect to get much more insight into all relevant aspects of the shipping and logistics industry. Furthermore, I expect to be able to enhance my network in the maritime industry with a group of stimulating new classmates, representing various companies across the industry. Hopefully, this enhanced network in the maritime industry can also enable potential new means of cooperation across Blue Denmark [the cluster of Danish shipowners, yards, equipment manufacturers, service and repair organisations, ship designers, shipping, and logistics entities].

Cadeler, as a Danish company with Danish flagged vessels, supported the choice.

The offshore wind industry is expanding rapidly, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) is expecting the growth to continue in the upcoming years. However, to exploit the huge potential supply chains will have to be expanded. Currently 4C offshore, the leading market intelligence organization for renewable markets, even expects the demand of windfarm installation vessels to exceed the supply soon. Therefore, clients are eager to enter into early agreements, which accelerates the wind turbine installation process.

Another important factor is further support of governments. According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) so far, the offshore wind is only 2% of what is needed to reach the net zero target set by the big Cop 26 summit in November 2021 of heads of governments. If the world proceeds at the current speed the goal of net zero by 2050 is out of reach.

Despite that Jacob does not think, “that net zero by 2050 is a hopeless target. The opportunity is there. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) there is enough offshore wind resource globally to meet the world’s entire electricity demand several times over. The big challenge is to get governments globally to take the necessary bold decisions now, along with tangible programmes to ensure delivery of the capacity needed."