Dutch wind-turbine manufacturer Vestas has ridden the rollercoaster of the renewables market for more than 30 years. When oil prices increased during the late-1970s oil crisis, Vestas began working on wind turbines, providing an alternative to the then-common oil-fired power plants. Manufacturing boomed in the early 1980s, but when oil prices fell, natural gas or coal replaced oil in most power plants, and wind subsidies in the US were cancelled. Vestas essentially died. It was then recreated as a new company in 1986, rising to become the world's biggest turbine manufacturer today.

The company has kept a close watch on the impacts of oil prices and the energy needs for its business, and estimated in a recent life-cycle analysis of a wind farm using their turbines that of all the input energy, 34% was oil. The bulk of the energy consumption is for materials, such as steel and concrete for the turbine and tower. But shipping is also a significant slice — enough that rising oil prices have pushed the company to shift their manufacturing. Instead of having their blades built in Europe then sending big, heavy parts to China for assembly, and then from there shipping to the US, the company is looking at consolidating its operations closer to where the turbines will be installed.

In the past two years, Vestas has closed factories in Denmark and England, and opened new factories in Colorado. From here Vestas can supply turbines to the US more cheaply, compared with shipping them in from Europe or China. “The wind business is not like sneakers or T-shirts,” Ditlev Engel, Vestas's Chief Executive, told Dow Jones in April. “The transportation costs are massive.”