U.S. President Barack Obama's stimulus package "will kick-start the industry in the United States," Ditlev Engel, the chief executive officer and president of Vestas, said Tuesday at his company's brand-new research and development center in Arhus, Denmark.

Vestas plans to invest some $1 billion in the United States over the next two years, in a bid to become the dominating player in what observers say could be the most promising green market of the coming years.

Washington's stimulus package includes roughly $70 billion in clean energy investments and another $20 billion in tax incentives for renewable energy sources. The green sector could create as many as 1 million jobs and thus help turn around the ailing U.S. economy, Obama has said.

Several years ago this kind of government support helped create a world-leading renewable energy industry in Europe. Vestas in less than two decades developed from a small company to a world-leading technology giant.

Engel said Vestas' expansion program into North America will create 2,500 jobs in the United States; it opened a production facility in Colorado in 2008 and plans to open three more over the next few years.

Obama wants renewables to account for a quarter of the U.S. energy mix by 2025. That means America will have some catching up to do: Wind right now accounts for less than 2 percent of the energy mix, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association in Washington. In Denmark, wind has a share of 20 percent.

Vestas needs the extra market -- it just halved its growth expectations for 2009 from 40 percent to 20 percent, announcing it would lay off some 1,300 people. While the markets in Indian and China are also growing, Vestas is mainly betting on the United States to help boost its turbine business.

In China, the Danes will have to compete with roughly 70 international and domestic wind turbine makers, Engel said. Moreover, it remains unsure how Beijing will distribute the money from its economic stimulus package. The leadership there has previously warned that Chinese companies would be first in line to get commissions.

In the United States, Vestas, which employs more than 20,000 people, would be by far the biggest player. Observers say U.S. companies have missed opportunities to acquire expertise and invest in new technology and production facilities; across the Atlantic, Vestas has a significant head start.

Some of that head start comes from experience: More than 37,000 Vestas turbines are installed all over the world. The R&D facility where Engel was speaking electronically monitors 14,000 of them on a 24-hour basis. Data on the turbines is updated almost instantly and stored for long-term evaluation. Below the ground floor, in a highly secured cellar, sit some 50 servers that have accumulated 50 terabytes worth of wind turbine data -- a key expertise asset for the company.

"We call it our Fort Knox," said Finn Strom Madsen, head of Vestas' technology R&D department. "If a bomb hits this building, the data will still be there."

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