By Ron Bousso
LONDON (Reuters) – Shell’s head of renewables in the Americas Amanda Dasch will leave the company to join Danish offshore wind giant Orsted in January as head of its U.S. operations.
The departure of the veteran executive comes shortly after Shell announced it will halt investments in new offshore wind projects as CEO Wael Sawan focuses on higher margin operations.
Dasch joined Shell nearly 20 years ago and has worked most of her career there in the upstream oil and gas division. Since 2022 she led Shell’s offshore wind development in North America and renewables in South America.
She will join Orsted on Jan. 13, the Danish company said in a statement on Monday.
Orsted, the world’s top offshore wind developer whose market capitalisation briefly exceeded Shell’s in the aftermath of the COVID outbreak in 2020, has seen a dramatic reversal in fortunes in recent years due to supply chain cost inflation and technical issues.
The company booked billions in impairments due to project cancellations and delays in U.S. projects in recent years.
Orsted today has 11 gigawatts of projects in Americas, it said.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Amanda to our leadership team and to draw from her 20+ years of energy experience in the U.S. to guide and advance our plans to build an American energy industry across technologies, including offshore and onshore wind, solar, and battery storage,” Orsted deputy CEO Rasmus Errboe said in a statement.
(Reporting by Ron Bousso, Editing by Louise Heavens)