Accelerating offshore wind development with deep industry insights: An interview with Rikke Nørgaard, Aegir Insights

Company name: Aegir Insights

Solution: An industry-leading intelligence software powered by data science to help renewable energy players make smarter decisions about offshore wind projects.

Year founded: 2020

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

By 2022, renewable energy accounted for approximately 23% of all energy consumption in the EU, up from 16.7% in 2013. However, to produce enough renewable energy to hit decarbonization targets and stay competitive in a growing market, important decision-makers in the space - developers, governments and investors - need more guidance. 

Using a combination of data science, industry experience and AI technology, the team at Aegir Insights has built a software & intelligence platform that provides offshore wind players with the insights they need to make smarter and faster decisions. From spatial data like the depth of a seabed and analysis of local grid infrastructure, all the way to cost forecasting for the latest renewable energy innovations, Aegir Insights delivers essential information to clients in less than one second. 

We spoke to Rikke Nørgaard, Co-Founder of Aegir Insights, about how the company is driving the renewable energy transition with its decision-making software.

Why did you found Aegir Insights?

I had been working in the broader energy sector for 13 years and my co-founder Scott for 20 years when we founded Aegir Insights. During our time working with leading developers in the space, we gained a lot of knowledge about how to commercially develop large infrastructure projects that have the potential to boost the green energy transition. 

However, despite the sector's impressive growth in some areas, we soon realised that, unlike other mature industries such as oil and gas, there were no established standards of how to assess opportunities in the sector, meaning businesses would miss out on potential profit.

Identifying this gap in the market, Scott and I decided to leverage our understanding of the sector to found Aegir Insights.

How is Aegir Insights transforming the renewable energy industry?

The growth of the offshore wind industry is reliant on the actions of multiple players: Renewable developers and their investors are important, but governments are also a key part of the puzzle, as renewable energy is a very regulatory-driven industry. 

Our software serves all these decision-makers, providing them with tailored insights to help them make data-driven decisions about the offshore wind industry. We help developers reduce costs, which can be hard to navigate given the renewable industry’s current cost volatility. And for governments that use our software, we provide full business case data to help them decide where to develop offshore wind projects. By helping these important stakeholders make decisions about offshore wind projects faster, we are helping accelerate investment in the renewable energy transition. 

What makes Aegir Insights’ software unique compared to similar solutions on the market?

While much of the data we use is widely available consolidated data, our value lies in interpreting this in a useful way for end users. Our experts combine the consolidated and structured data that is enriched with our own industry expertise, enabling us to simulate a full offshore wind project business case from start to end in less than one second. For comparison, this would take other renewable software solution providers weeks or months, and they would most likely focus on only one part of the business case, whereas we take a holistic approach. 

No other company offers as vast a range of insights as we do, nor do they present them with the same level of structure and supporting expertise, giving our clients a competitive edge. The time and resources we save our users also leads to considerable cost savings.

What is the emissions reduction potential of your solution?

Although the amount of emissions we will save depends on how many clients we have and the scale of the projects they are delivering, a preliminary avoided emissions assessment by Climentum finds that we have an annual savings potential of 125,000 tCO2e in 2031, growing to over 400,000 tCO2e in 2034.

What are the biggest challenges on your growth journey?

Since our software is really one-of-a-kind, customers are sometimes hesitant to use our data to inform big investment decisions. Communicating the reliability of our platform, which is built upon a combination of desktop research, sources within governments and leading developers and our own expert assessment, will help customers realize the benefits we can offer them.

We are also determined to maintain the company’s DNA during our current period of rapid growth. As we hire new team members, we stay committed to hiring curious and solution-oriented go-getters. This is the core of what makes Aegir Insights, so we want to keep this energy as we grow.

How did you come into contact with Climentum?

We were aware of Climentum Capital’s expertise for a while before officially joining forces, as we both share a Nordic focus with an international outlook and the fund’s Article 9 format appealed to us. 

The team is hugely important in helping us grow and overcome common bottlenecks in growth companies. They are well-positioned to advise us on the growth journey ahead  and connect us with opportunities in the market. We like working with them because they combine a strong investor profile with a significant Danish presence and trust us to navigate and be experts in our sector.

What’s next for Aegir Insights?

We are already working hard on building the next generation of our web platform, to offer additional features such as simulating price-competitive auctions, streamlined project and portfolio analysis, and broadening functionality to evaluate opportunities. We aim to become the gold standard for offshore wind decision-making

 From next year, the focus is scaling. We expect to see a radical uptake by our client base and plan to reach new client groups. We will then have to decide whether to commit to expanding our offshore wind offerings or to spread into other renewables.