Hello. Good afternoon, very welcome to this Vestas annual shareholder meeting. My name is Bert Nordberg, I greet all of you who have actually now the possibility to come here, very welcome. Also for people who is listening in on the web today here at our headquarter in Aarhus. The board and I are delighted to welcome you today and to reflect of a very challenging 2022. In my upcoming address, I think I will be discussing Vestas' performance last year and also all the opportunities that lies ahead of our business. Before this, I would like to invite Klaus for the 25th year in a row, I think. Klaus from Gorrissen Federspiel to be the conductor and to go through the formalities that we have for this meeting. Klaus, it's your call.
Thank you very much, and thank you for introducing me. I must admit I feel very old when you tell me it's 25 years. It's lovely to be here in a physical setting without having to mention COVID-19. I've been asked to give you some security messages first. If we need to evacuate, you need to go out the same way you entered, and there are people ready to guide us out. We're on the ground floor, so it probably won't be too difficult if needed. Of course, we won't need to evacuate. I first need to ensure that the meeting is convened correctly, and I have checked that already. There are some requirements that have to be met. Firstly, that the AGM needs to be organized before the end of April.
It has to be organized either in the Capital Region of Denmark or the Midtjylland region and be convened within three to five weeks. It happened the 10th of March. The convening notice has been published on the website, sent to registered shareholders who asked for it and through a company message. There have already been questions asked and answered. They're available on the website. Everything is now in order. The AGM has been convened correctly. I also have some information about the votes if needed. There are 329 who have got an access card, 346 shareholders. When we started, the 165 had arrived. 163 have arrived here today, I correct myself. 370 have already voted by postal vote. That's in accordance with the Danish legislation.
That's 3,370 who have voted by postal vote. Over 60% of the share capital is represented here today. Everything can be approved by simple majority today. There are no changes to the statutes or anything like that. I have received the numbers for all the postal votes, and I can tell you that everything on the agenda is in principle already approved by all the votes received because they have more than 75% support. I hope we won't need to have an actual vote today, but if necessary, we have the electronic means to do so.
I can also tell you that the specific numbers for the votes, postal votes, et cetera, how many are available, all that will be accessible in the minutes from the AGM, which will be available at the latest two weeks after the meeting. The two first items on the agenda will be covered as one. That's the board of directors report and the presentation of the annual report. As per usual, it will be Bert Nordberg who kicks off, and after that, the CEO, Henrik Andersen, about the accounts. After that, you can make your comments and ask questions. Bert, you have the floor.
Dear shareholders, 2022 was a turning point in the history of global energy. We begin the year of finding out our way back to the surface after the pandemic. Sorry. We brought considerable disruption to our supply chain, produce delivery, and our employees' well-being. No one could predict that Russia should invade Ukraine. Before long, the global energy landscape found itself under extreme volatility, as gas supply was very restricted energy, so all the bills skyrocketed, your energy bills. In the attempt to limit the sort of cost of living, government rushed towards emergency market interventions to lower the energy bills. For Vestas, this led to our exit from Russia, a firm exit from Russia. An ongoing battle with hostile external business environment. In 2022, inflation and supply chain disruption dented our profitability.
While the media called out windfall profits and gold rushes for the electricity suppliers, the view from the inside of the supply chain looked quite different. Needless to say, a bleak short-term outlook, however, 2022 also saw something remarkable to occur. In the face of widespread fossil fuel utilities, renewable power, and wind energy, in particular, has been granted a strategic and economic edge. Across the world, government are raising renewables targets and allowing huge investment to support renewables build out. The USA's Inflation Reduction Act and European Net-Zero Industry Act are just two example of a newly found understanding of the value held in domestically produced energy. Recent estimates state that the war has accelerated the energy transition by an astonishing five to 10 years. At the helm of this transition is Vestas.
Although we are financially challenged right now, our business is on the epicenter of a seismic shift in global energy. We continue to command the target footprint in wind energy, and we continue to be known for our unparalleled expertise. Our solutions are growing exponentially more valuable, and many of our partners and political shareholders both recognize the activities to support this. While political momentum signals an increasing bright future for the wind energy and for Vestas, the volatility in our business environment has impacted our financial performance in the past year, and we cannot be satisfied with our result. Before I hand over to Henrik Andersen, I will take through the results in more details. I take the moment to reflect on the highlights from 2022. Our revenue landed at EUR 14.5 billion.
With a decline driven by our exit from Russia and as well as project delays. We reached an EBIT margin of -8%. Our EBIT was tempered by supply chain disruption, inflation, higher warranty provisions, and offshore impairments. We secured a total order of intake of 11.2 gigawatt and increased the average selling price by 29%, landing in an average sales price, ASP, of EUR 1.07 billion per megawatt. Although our order intake in gigawatt was down 90%, its value in money increased by 3% due to strong price discipline and increases. We achieved a strong performance in services, as we have done for the last years, with 27% revenue growth and a margin, EBIT margin of 21.4%.
We achieved industry-leading progress in sustainability, where our circularity solutions for wind turbine blades marked an industry breakthrough, and we earned a second ranking at the Corporate Knights that ranked the world's best sustainability companies. Our strategy was reaffirmed with progress within core areas, business enabler and restoring profitability within the turbine segments remain the focus while building industry discipline and maturity. Returning Vestas to profitability is our highest priority, and we are working aggressively on a range of initiative to achieve this. From continuing our pricing discipline to maximize value capture, to building traction for our new products throughout the strengthening our operation to promote more efficiency, sustainability, profitability guides every activity, what we will be working on from now on.
To ensure that we continue to pave the way for our leadership in the mid and long term, we will be working to unlock the commercial value of our groundbreaking innovations. Our new blade circularity solution holds significant potential to be a strong commercial differentiator in the project bids, as well as enabler for new commercial offerings to our partners. Our newly established leadership position in onshore wind will continue to grow with introduction of the V236 prototype, which is now up and running, generating power in Østerild, Denmark. We will build on our outstanding performance in services to offer a new and innovative asset managements solution while continuing to expand our presence. Through these activities, we aim to enhance our value creation going forward and transfer this value back to you as shareholders.
In 2022, we held 12 board meetings, 5 audit committee meetings, 5 nomination and compensation committee meetings, and 4 technology and manufacturing committee meetings. Throughout the year, there's been a high participation in all the meetings, including all members, and they allocated sufficient time to carry out their responsibility in Vestas. Over the past year, we have had a particular focus on topics such as geopolitical risks and opportunities. Our product and technology development and competitiveness and supply chain disruption, including logistical challenges and cost, has also been a focus for us. Inflation, we has also been a focus on that we've seen throughout 2022. Furthermore, we have been following on the initiative that were implemented after the cybersecurity incident that we had in November 2021.
In July, we established a digital solution as a functional area in the company represented in the executive management. The new organization bring together digital capabilities from across Vestas, anchoring our new digital strategy and enabling us to kickstart a digital transformation. We also looked into a number of sustainability-related topics, such as follow-up on our sustainability strategy, sustainability in our supply chain, and safety performance and ethical line cases. A strategy seminar was also introduced in October 2022, where the board renewed and aligned our industry and business outlook and discussed our corporate strategic priorities in light of this. We, the board, also perform an evaluation of the work and composition of every year, and our goal is to continue our ongoing development of the board efficiency and working procedures.
The evaluation process is also a tool for determining the competencies required by the Board. In addition, the evaluation serve as an input to the Nomination and Compensation Committee's work on proposing board members and new board members. As part of the yearly evaluation, the board members are asked to complete a questionnaire to make sure that the relevant issues are touched upon in the connection with the evaluation. The area covered by the evaluation may differ from year to year, depending on the development of the board work. We bring an external consultant to support the evaluation at least once every third year, most recently in 2021.
The 2022 evaluation was conducted in October and November, and as an open dialogue among members and facilitated internally by the chairs of the different committees and board, the evaluation revealed that we have a good efficiency in the board and a high level of trust along the members, and a strong level of commitment and collaboration. Furthermore, the evaluation revealed there is a good constructive dialogue with the executive management as well as the broader executive management team. Throughout the year, the executive management team has presented to the board on various topics and has led to constructive discussion. Furthermore, the members of the board expressed support for maintaining the current committee situations and the structure, which is the committees I mentioned, the Nomination Committee, the Technology and Manufacturing Committee, and Audit Committee.
The committees are well organized, and the board are well informed about the topics discussed in those committee. Diversity in the broadest sense remains a key focus for the board, and we prioritize that the board and that in our board and searches for board members. In February 2021, we established a gender distribution target of 37.5% versus 62.5% to be reached no later than 2022. In April last year, our shareholders elected 3 female and 5 male board members, and the target was reached. With the nominated candidates for 2023, the board will reach a gender distribution of 43 versus 57% among the members elected by you, the Annual General Meeting.
With the inclusion of the employee elected members, the overall composition of the board is then expected to have five females and six male board members. The board also sums up to achieve diversity in terms of nationalities. In presence, as a business, is global, after the 2022 AGM, four nationalities were represented in the board and will continue to apply after this meeting. Overall, I'm pleased to say that we have a well-organized board and committees, where all have focused on paving the way for Vestas and its journey to become a global leader in sustainable energy solutions. Before sharing what the board and I would like to prioritize for Vestas going forward, I would like to address the remuneration policy for the board and the extensive management.
The remuneration policy and the remuneration report for 2022 are available on our company website. Allow me to recap the key aspects. In 2022, the board of directors received a total remuneration of EUR 1.450893 million. It was in accordance to the remuneration approved by the shareholders' meeting in 2022. As well as the remuneration policy, the members of the board received a fixed basic annual increase of 2% from the level they had in 2021. Detailed information about the remuneration payments in 2022 is available on our remuneration report. The report will be presented for advisory vote here at Annual General Meeting accordance to the applicable law.
To ensure that Vestas remuneration promotes both strategic goals as well as long-term value creation, the sustainability, the remuneration includes both fixed remuneration, short-term incentives, and long-term incentives. To show how the policy worked and how the remuneration led to the performance, the board wants to give some highlights in 2021 and 2022. Those years, we didn't pay any short-term incentives, while the awarded performance share in the program was index 10 for 2021 and index 0 for 2022. As an example, this means that both CEO and our CFO, finance director, remuneration in those two years been more or less consisted of their basic salary in 2022.
The board discussed the need for additional action to support the retention of key talents in the company and, it's very competitive out there to keep people and to keep the best people. In that discussion led to this, decision to grant an additional alignment of so-called restricted shares for a selected group of key talents, including members of the executive management team and our CEO. More details of this can be found on the report. We are seeing remuneration as part of bringing Vestas back to a profitable company. For 2023, the board recommends that the broad remuneration for 2023 board remuneration, I mean the board fee, is unchanged and no increase for the board members.
In 2022, the board of directors continued to work closely with executive management to ensure Vestas strategy reflects the evolving renewable industry. Challenging 2022 created multiple situation where close collaboration and execution on difficult topics, including our exit from Russia and our continued customer and commercial focus. To fully leverage the opportunities ahead, the board has worked closely with the executive management team to guarantee that Vestas strategic direction is reflected on ongoing governance. After more than 10 years as chairman of this board of directors, I will be stepping down following this annual meeting. I joined Vestas as chairman back in 2012 during a period of financial turmoil.
Over the past decade, I have been, have the privilege of witnessing the wind energy role in global energy transform from a niche, highly subsidized energy source and to become the backbone of our global energy system and holds the promise of a more secure and sustainable future. During this journey, I have overseen Vestas grow from a leader in onshore wind to a global leader in sustainability energy solution, able to create value for our partners almost in every stage on every value chain. With Vestas at the forefront of the global wind energy, the perception of our industry has evolved drastically. Wind has now firmly replaced fossil fuels as the most valuable energy source that the world and that as I end my tenure, I'm proud to leave behind a clear viable pathway for Vestas to return to profitability.
As chairman, a key objective for me has been to ensure that we have the right expertise reflected in the board and to lead Vestas on the journey to become a global leader in sustainable energy solutions. We'd also need the board and extended management team up and create a long-term value anchoring our corporate values in the business and enabling a supportive, inclusive corporate culture. As our current deputy chairman and a former CEO of Vestas, having steered the company firmly away from instability once before and during the financial crisis, I have the confidence that Mr. Anders Runevad can successfully carry out the plans for the company's returning to huge profitability and continue our strong relationship with our leadership team and the CEO.
Anders is not defined as an independent due to his previous position in Vestas, but we firmly believe that he has this expertise, competence, and unique knowledge about how to run a listed company in a highly important industry and carry out the board's work successfully. Overall, it's crucial that we have right board members in place to steer Vestas along its leadership journey and in compliance with good corporate governance. Yeah. The board has decided not to nominate a new candidate due to my departure. We instead recommend the re-election of the board, which is Anders Runevad, Bruce Grant, Eva [Uncertain] Berneke, so I say Eva Berneke, it's easier. Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Carl-Henric Svanberg , Kentaro Hosomi, and Lena Olving.
They're all sitting here, so I ask them to stand up so you can see who the accused are. Please sit down. I think that, since you're not elected here, but our employee representative, you're very welcome to stand up so they can see you also. Okay. Thank you very much. In this after this election, the board will consist of 11 members in total, and the members you saw here. 10 years ago, many of us working at Vestas felt we were sitting on an exciting secret, one that we needed the world to understand and soon as possible. We looked forward to the future where wind energy could thrive in a political environment that supported us and the market that rewarded what we could do today.
Since 2012, the world has better understood the urgent need for decarbonization, with the spotlight on climate breakdown growing, increasingly, it become a bright energy change. The role of wind energy has now grown, from a tool to accelerate decarbonization, also grown to the key to unlocking energy security and social resilience. At Vestas, our solution drive job creation, economic growth, environmental benefit, stretch far beyond carbon emission. While we're now closer than ever, the future we dreamed about 10 years ago is still in the distance. The mechanics of our industry is not yet to offer a healthy business environment for our entire value chain. Permitting delays are currently restricting wind and energy volumes and tampering our ability to plan for scale.
Selecting a site, obtaining permits, and establishing supportive infrastructure for a large wind project can take several years. It is critical for this process to move faster if we want to lay the groundwork for thriving wind industry. The gains to be made from reducing red tapes are significant. The International Energy Agency estimate that the renewable generation would rise by an extra 25% by 2027 if bureaucratic and finances barriers were removed. Too often we see auctions for the wind energy contracts designed to keep electricity cheap and driving the race to the bottom for suppliers. This hinders our ability to build healthy business cases and capture enough value to be able to invest in our future. Going forward, Vestas priorities will be returning to profitability and building scalability into every corner of our business.
Our goal with this is to ensure Vestas continue to thrive in this challenging business environment. As we prepare to deliver the 10 gigawatt of preferred supply agreement we already won in offshore through the V236, and our exceptional approach to installing and servicing this platform will mature. Across the business, we are adjusting and tightening our ways of working to support more responsive approach to the needs of evolving global energy landscape. As I mentioned before, we are closer than ever for the wind energy boom than we've been for decades. Vestas has been preparing for this moment where fossil fuel lose their strategic advantage and pendulum shifts towards our industry. In 2022, that moment arrived.
Every credible prediction now points toward a per-period of exceptional growth for wind industry due to kickstart as soon as one year from now. Leading this journey, Vestas and its thousands of skilled people and entire nations with us into an era of more secure, more resilient energy system. Yes, we have challenges directly ahead, but we are all the necessary ingredients to place within our organization to solve these challenges. There is never a good moment to say goodbye, but it fills me with great pride to leave behind a company that holds such a promise for the nations we support. To you, our shareholder and our future generation, I must say a big thanks for these 11 years, and I wish the company and you, our shareholder, a very prosperous future. Thank you.
Thank you, Bert. Good afternoon. For those of you who were here last year, you know that this is a highlight. Here I can speak Danish with my Jutland accent. I'm happy to see that physical attendance is on the rise as well here at our AGM. It means a lot to us to have the opportunity to meet you once a year. I can see that some of you were here last year as well. I'm sure we will have a good debate soon and continue our talk from last year. I'm not thinking of anyone in particular, even though I can see a few of our visitors from last year as well. I'm here to give you a brief report on the activities of the past year in addition to our annual report.
For those of you who have not had the time or the occasion to read it yet, I can warmly recommend it. It tells you a lot about what we are doing in the day-to-day, apart from what you hear on the news or on social media. Let me give you a brief update. Of course, we're going to take a look at our markets and how we have handled the challenges. We have seen some of the biggest changes in the past decade, not least in our commercial discipline and our relationship with our customers and how that has changed over the past year. I'm going to tell you a bit about our service business.
It's had an excellent year, also of the importance of our service business when it comes to making sure our turbines function and making sure that we produce energy. We're also going to talk about how we are very ambitious within sustainability. Here we have some way to go still. Finally, I know many of you want to hear more about offshore because, no, our offshore turbine is not finished and ready to go yet, but it is an important investment. You can go to Østerild to have a look at the prototype, when we establish it for the first time next year, it's the V236, that's going to be an important step. I would like to start with this circular diagram that you've seen a few times already in the past few years.
There's no doubt that 2022 was a very difficult year, not least with the priorities that we have. More than 28,000 employees that work for us globally have to feel safe. They have to be able to go to work safely and return home safely, no matter if they work in a factory or in an office or somewhere else in more than 80 countries where we operate. We need to operate our activities, and it's been very difficult, if not impossible, in some countries. We had to say goodbye to one country, as soon as the fifth of April last year. We exited one country.
We had to, as you know, and when you see the news tonight, you're going to hear more about that because no matter what we're accused of, some values are important to us. We're also going to take a look at our supply chains. There have been a lot of difficulties here. I know many of you have experienced the same thing. It's been difficult, whether it be a car that you have ordered, you cannot get delivery on time and so on. Spare parts have been difficult to come by, and that's why we are also saying that 2023 will still pose some challenges in this respect. When I look at my team over here, that's probably the most solution-oriented team that I know.
They have had to figure out solutions to everything from COVID restrictions to what we called, the lack of components and so on. It's tiring, but we manage, and I'm not looking at anyone in particular, Tommy Rabik. We have to say that the Russian exit that we announced last year, I said that in a big company like ours, we cannot just close down or make social media do it. We are a serious company with a management that take these decisions not easily, but we do make these tough decisions, and we have to keep our employees safe. Still, there are things that we cannot accept. I cannot defend breaking any sanctions here. I will never be doing that, you can rest assured.
Whenever we watch the news, I think we're all aware that there's a geopolitical situation that is very unbalanced at the moment. I do not have a crystal ball. I cannot tell the future. I think if anybody had asked me to tell the future 24 months ago, I would have been very much mistaken because nobody could have predicted this outcome. High inflation has also been a focus area. Electricity price rises is somewhat beneficial to us, but it also impacts where we establish our turbines. When we were here last year, I was convinced that now we had the argument that would finally make governments go into a meeting room and not come out until they had found out how to increase capacity. The opposite happened.
They started discussing how to pour out money to lighten the load of inflation instead of focusing on achieving more capacity. We need a transition to electric cars and so on, but we need more green energy in order to make that transition. We also have a lack of sites, and many shareholders have asked me, "Why does it take so long to gain an order?" I had to take a practical example because we have a practical example here from Australia. It's far away, but it's a very relevant example. The CEO of TagEnergy is called Frank Leuterd, and I know him very well. I know him very well because I have spent a surprising amount of time with him.
He has this Golden Plains project in Australia, which is about 756 megawatts out of more than 3 gigawatts. When it's fully established, it will be about 1 million households in Australia that will be supplied. In the first phase, we have 122 of our V162-6.2 MW EnVentus turbine, and we expect delivery in Q4 2023. That's not what I wanna talk about because we've been talking about this project since mid-2021. Frank has been calling me up and scolding me because he has seen so many price rises along the way, and every time he had to renegotiate his funding for this project, he had to revisit his capital market structure.
When we finally entered this agreement in Q4 last year, he said, "Why can't I get my turbine at the old price?" I said he can. He said, "Well, then I want it at the old price." I said, "Well, then we want your electricity price." He said, "No, that cannot be done." When we look at this, we are going to be looking at these graphs that show us that perhaps the turbine has become more costly, but the electricity provided by this turbine is also much more valuable. Franck is a dear friend today. We talk a lot about other projects as well. Just to get back to some of the positive aspects, I can say that this is a very good partnerships, and it's become much stronger along the way.
It took almost 18 months before we finally reached an agreement, and that just shows you the complexity of these challenges. Now we're getting to your electricity bill and your electricity consumption. Please pay attention because this is what's really going on. Politicians will claim that they can make the electricity price come down again, but they can't. If we don't produce more kilowatt hours, and we still consume the same or even more electricity for our electric cars, then we will see this image again. Yes, it has peaked, but when we talk about 500 EUR per megawatt hour, you have to add that up by 7.45 to get that in DKK per kilowatt hour.
That's what we've been illustrating over here, that the EUR 134 per MWh is exactly DKK 1 per kWh. Wouldn't it be lovely if we could get back down there? The fact is that since 2021, we have not had a balanced market and a balanced price. That imbalance was only made worse by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Last year, I said that Europe targeted additional 31 GW of wind power, and they've only achieved 17. With this crisis occurring, they wanted to establish 30 GW in 2022, but they only achieved 15. It's not good. It's actually really bad in a year where we are short on electricity. We need to see changes if this image is going to be changed. This is what's going on.
This is what you are going to see reflected on your energy bill. This is what really tells us that we need to change. Back to Vestas. Some of our shareholders I see here often. I think I've spent a lot of time in 2022 saying, "Thank you for your patience. I'm sorry we are spending your money, but I can promise you that we will claw back that money for you, but it will take some time." I'm going to illustrate that journey. We ended up with fourteen and a half billion Danish krone in revenue, but that's not the important one. The important is the next one, the EBIT margin, which is down by 8%. Every time we had sales for DKK 100, we lost DKK 13.
That was what was claimed, but that's not true because it's going to be even more valuable 100 years from now. We are going to turn around this development, but it's urgent. We lost 8% on the EBIT margin, and that means that we have a negative free cash flow of almost EUR 1 billion that we had to loan from the bank. We have done that after many years with a strong balance sheet. Now we have spent some of the capital we had at our disposal and that we didn't pay out in extraordinary dividends, even though we discussed that issue 3-4 years ago. Fortunately, we didn't do that.
About three-quarters and a billion EUR we have here. A lot of it goes into our offshore activities. We haven't really seen any revenue or any earnings from that this year, but we will get there. It has been one of the most attractive markets looking forward to the second half of this decade. Last but not least, our backlog increased from 18.1 to 19.1 billion EUR. Just briefly, we took in orders of 11.2 GW from 35 countries. Here, I have listed the most important markets because when you hear about us, about Vestas or about top management, a lot of us have spent a lot of time in the US, in Brazil, and in Australia, which are our biggest markets.
We cannot make our money staying in Denmark waiting for the orders. Therefore, we travel outside Denmark. The most important thing on this slide are the two blue illustrations at the bottom. If you go back to 2020, we had an order intake of more than 17 gigawatts. As you can see, that was like EUR 12.7 billion. As you can see now, we have an order intake of 11.9 gigawatt. We have an intake at, of 11.2 gigawatts. That's lower, but the value is EUR 11.9 billion.
That also means when we talk about capacity for the year to come, if you hear politicians say they don't have the capacity to increase production, we said during the Danish election campaign that we do have the capacity as soon as you want them. That's also one of our resources we have, that we can upscale our deliveries, both in the U.S. and Australia, and also hopefully in Denmark. The moral here is that value is more important than volume. You can also see this in this graph. This is what we call the average selling price. The average selling price is very important because we have very many orders with many different parts. In some places, we build almost the entire thing and then send the invoice to our customers. In other places, we just deliver the components.
If you look at this over time, from the end of 2019, it shows that the price per turbine has increased. In the last 4 quarters, it's an increase of more than 30% in average selling price. You can also see here that our order intake is more or less unchanged, in spite of the fact that we have a lower volume in megawatts. If you remember the Australian example, this shows why it's important to take our time to get the right price for the turbines. If you go back 8 quarters here, it's an increase of 60%, and that's also worth remembering. What's most important is that we're in an industry where our competitors came very late to this understanding.
We understood it early on. That means that our competitors will lose money for a longer period of time than we did. It's still an uncomfortable feeling and a very bad feeling when you meet your shareholders. I mean, it's not great to be at the top of the special education classes. When we lose 13% on the turbines, we need to fix it in the selling price. I can promise you on behalf of all of us here that we are very focused on that and getting back to profitability. There's our service business, and I have to say they do an incredible job. We have more than 10,000 colleagues who have overcome the challenges of keeping the turbines going.
We can't always succeed because we weren't always able to get the co-components to the sites, but we do everything we can because we know electricity is important, no matter where it's used. They've done a wonderful job. Our head of service, Christian, is here. As you have seen, since 2018, we have more or less doubled our service business, which is pretty good. This is something people tend to forget as we have lost so much money selling turbines. We have to remember, we are investing in the service business, and we can build on that, and it will benefit us for very many years to come because our contracts are typically both 20 and 30 years in duration. We will benefit from that for very many AGMs from now. Thank you to all our colleagues in services.
We were the most sustainable business in the world last year. We are in second place. That means somebody is chasing us, but we're also chasing first place again. We are a very sustainable company. We have achieved things we thought we would achieve by 2040, but we are achieving it probably by 2025. We are now able to reuse our blades, which is an amazing thing because it means we have turbines that are 100% reusable. We are definitely in contention for first place next year. I will finish by talking a bit about our strategy. The important thing here is down here in the right-hand corner, which shows it works.
We contribute with more than 80 turbines, and we are avoiding more than 220 million tons of CO2 per year. In Denmark, it's about 60 million tons. We have achieved about 3.5 times the replacements of CO2 through our turbines. It truly works. Our core business is development. We develop projects which we share with our customers. It's not. Of course, we are selling our turbines as Vestas turbines with Vestas service contracts. We are onshore, we are offshore. I hope you will visit Østerild to see the wind turbine there. It's an offshore wind turbine, but in time it will be offshore. There's our service business where we still invest, and it's a pleasure to see the progress we are making in service. We also have the so-called enablers.
I don't know how to say that in Danish, I have to admit. I'm sort of saying it's sort of the additional support services. We invest in new technologies like in Modvion, which is Swedish. We're also investing in electrolysis projects in Australia. These are global things which we think will be developed into actual technologies, and we think these enablers may become a sort of fifth leg. We're moving up to the core business. That's how development joined early on, and maybe some of these enablers will move up to the top bracket. Of course, we have our wonderful partners and customers. We could fill a lot of slides with that. I'm sure you've heard of Casa dos Ventos in Brazil and Maersk, et cetera. Casa dos Ventos is really a pleasure.
It's an old partner for us, who are working with us in Brazil, and they've realized that our turbines are the best also in Brazil. We have, of course, India, NG, Maersk, ZF. Now we have another photo of this offshore turbine, which produced its first kilowatt hour in December. For those of you who have seen the pictures, it's an impressive picture to see that. I hope I wasn't behind it when they drove the blades along the road because it takes time. It has a swept area of about six European football pitches, that says quite a lot that one turbine can produce the energy for about 20,000 households. I think we could need some more of these.
Just to go a bit back in history here, this is what it looked like when we transported our V100 in the yellow frame, and then the green frame, the V136, and the blue frame, the V236. It does block traffic a bit, but it has some very positive effects. Don't worry, we will not be putting these up onshore. We were producing them close to harbors and ports. I will quickly just say a bit about decarbonization, because we are heading in the right direction, but it's moving too slow. Wind electricity is about 1% of total energy consumption and supply globally. It's about 20% of the energy we have, and so the 80% is fossil fuels and other sources, and we need to move away from that.
We are working a lot on this also in Denmark. It's the population that does it because they vote for the right politicians, they use electric cars, and it makes a huge difference. We have electric cars, which is like 2 gigawatts, but we haven't put up these 2 gigawatts wind turbines. You can see our targets. Every government that's elected, they increase the targets, but they forget that targets isn't the same as actually achieving them. The problem in this graph is what we didn't do in the EU last year is the difference between the 30 and the 15. Those 15 gigawatts are missing this year, and that's why the electricity prices are still high. Instead of producing 30 this year, we need to do 45 because we're still low for last year.
I'm sure some of the shareholders will also remind me that I owe you EUR 1.6 billion from last year, I haven't forgotten that. I'm just saying that we need to remind each other that this is doesn't just happen. We need to work hard, and we are more direct in some of these debates also politically, because postponing difficult decisions doesn't help. We need to take the difficult decisions. There are the long-term financial targets. You've heard about them. We want to outgrow the market, but we will not grow at the cost of revenue. We also want an EBIT margin above 10%. We believe we can achieve that by 2025. When that's back at 10%, we will have a free cash flow that is positive and also a return on capital, 20% over the cycle.
We believe in that, but we need to develop the industry, make it very disciplined. There are competitors that have been losing money for much longer period of time than we have, and we need to turn that around. We need to be market leaders also when it comes to using each other's capacity. We need to develop with the customers, use our turbines and our solutions. And also use our turbines for a longer period of time. We need to develop turbines that don't need to be fully refurbished. Of course, we need to look at our assessment of risk. That means that by 2025 we'll be back at a 10% EBIT margin. First, we need to get back in black figures in 2023, and I very much expect to deliver that at IGM next year.
Our outlook for 2023 is looking good, I won't give you any details before the beginning of May when we come with the numbers for the Q1. We expect a revenue of between EUR 14 billion and EUR 15.5 billion, an EBIT margin of 2%-3%, which is probably a bit low. Remember, service grew by 27% last year. Our EBIT margin will be between -2% and +3%, and we have a mantra which most of the colleagues here today will recognize. We fight to get back in black. Black on the bottom line. We need to have four quarters for this to be clear. We look at the progress quarter by quarter, we need to get back in black. Total investments, EUR 1 billion.
Of course, that's still directed at our new plants very much, such as Korea, but also other places in Europe. Of course, it's still Anders who gets to spend some of that money in investments. We are in a changeable world. We only know what we know today. There are uncertainties which are greater than normally. We'll do our best to abate those. Last but not least, you have seen us do a divestment, which has given us an income, and that will be part of this EBIT. Money is useful when you're around zero. With that, I just want to thank you all very much. I think this picture is the best way to say thank you because it shows our chairman. This was the day we saw the new V236.
This is the blade at its root where it's attached to the housing. As you saw Bert earlier, he's not a tiny man, but he looks quite small here. With that, I just want to say, on behalf of the executive team and all employees, a great thank you to you, Bert.
Thank you very much. That was the report of the board of directors and the presentation of the annual report 2022. Now you will have a chance to comment or ask questions. Please approach this gentleman up here and give us your name. I have four speakers on the list, so there's no rush. First of all, we will hear from Mr. Claus Wiinblad from ATP. The floor is yours.
Thank you for the floor. My name is Claus Wiinblad, I'm from ATP. Thank you for this report from our chairman and CEO. Thank you for presenting the annual report for 2022. As we have heard, there's no doubt that 2022 was a very challenging year for Vestas. As it seems now, 2023 will be equally challenging with higher prices and costs and higher warranty provisions. All of this dents the revenue. Input cost and disruptions in the supply chains are, to a large extent, external problems. The higher warranty provisions that are increasing is an even bigger problem, which is more of an internal character in Vestas. Looking at the wind turbine sector as a whole, it's not just Vestas who is struggling with challenges. Your competitors are just as challenged as Vestas is when it comes to earning money.
That gives rise to a more general remark, which is that it's very worrying that such an important part of the supply chain, which is going to support the green transition, is so financially challenged. That is, in fact, a challenge to the entire green transition, as I see it. However, there are positive notes. We saw the increased prices on turbines, and Vestas' efforts to achieve higher prices is crucial here. It's important that Vestas, as market leader, maintains this effort to achieve higher prices. That is the key to improved revenue in the long term. In these times of inflation, it seems strange to pitch for higher prices, but it is, in fact, crucial in order to get out of these financial challenges.
With a project pipeline of 32 gigawatts, your development business starts to play a bigger role in your overall business, even if it is still a small part. It's a potential for value creation investors, and that's interesting. That leads me to the following question. What is your expectation to this business area, and to what extent will that be a significant driver for value creation in the company? I would like to add to that an encouragement to increase transparency when it comes to your development business so that we, your investors, gain a better understanding of this area as it develops. We've heard, we are also going to say goodbye to Bert Nordberg after more than 10 years as chairman.
I would like to extend a warm thank you to Bert for the good cooperation and for a good and constructive dialogue over the years. Looking back in history, Vestas was in a very challenging situation back in 2012. Without a strong effort and a strong contribution from your side, the very existence of Vestas could have been in jeopardy had it not been for you. In spite of the challenges we've heard of today, Vestas is in a much stronger position today than it was 10 years ago. Finally, a bit of statistics. In 2012, Vestas had a market cap of below DKK 10 billion , almost at DKK 6 or 7 billion during the course of 2012. Today, they have a market cap of almost DKK 200 billion . That contribution is something I would like to thank you for.
I would also like to welcome Anders Runevad as the new incoming chairman of the board. With those words, I would like to wish you the best of luck to all of Vestas and all of your employees with the challenging time ahead in 2023. Thank you for the floor.
Thank you very much, Claus Wiinblad. There were a few concrete questions. I believe it's the CEO first.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Claus. Just briefly, of course, when a business area like development is becoming one of our core areas, it's because it's growing, and I'm glad to hear your input about it. We have said that we measure our order intake from the development business in whole gigawatts, and we would like to approach 3-5 gigawatts per year. That is what we work on.
That's a good It's a good starting point to have a pipeline of 32 gigawatts. But it's also important to note that some of these projects will not be realized because of interventions from investors. But some of them will come to fruition and be constructed, but it could happen in a time span of anywhere between one to five or six years, because these approval procedures can be long. But we do believe firmly in this, in this process, and that is why we have been investing in Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which also gains capital from global investors. There's no exclusivity here, but it is located 20 minutes from Vestas' offices in Copenhagen, so that's very convenient. And you ask for transparency, Klaus, and this year we've actually started sharing information about this as a structured business area.
I can understand that you want to know more as an investor, but giving out knowledge when there are very few competitors is not always something that has a great upside to you as a shareholder as well. If you want to invest in the green transition, you are always welcome to co-invest in these ventures. We will make an effort to report in this area because it is an area that's very important to us. I'm sure we will have a more close dialogue about this one to one. Thank you.
Apart from answering the question, the CEO also took the occasion to try to sell some more turbines. The next speaker is Søren Svendsen from the Danish Shareholders Association. Yeah.
Thank you for giving me the floor, and thank you for the report from Bert Nordberg and Henrik Andersen. I'm here on behalf of the Danish Shareholders Association, which looks after the interests of shareholders. We do that by keeping an eye on companies and on the company boards and looking at their results. We do that at AGMs as this one today. Firstly, I would like to say a deep thank you to Bert Nordberg for your incredible efforts for Vestas.
When you became Chair, Vestas was going into a deep crisis because of an incompetent board of directors and incompetent executive management. I would comment on what Claus Wiinblad just said, that the share price, maybe not today, but the share price otherwise, it was down around DKK 25 back then, but that's before Bert Nordberg started working on it. I mean, but if we had to recalculate, it was probably more like DKK 5 back in the day when you took over. You started working hard to get things back on track. You looked very much at routines and business procedures, and you hired Anders Runevad as CEO. Now, there were two Swedish industrial experts at the head of Vestas, people who know a lot about industry of scale.
The two of you introduced a lot of things, among them a module principle, which made production more flexible and efficient, and which is a very important competition parameter compared to other producers of turbines. At the last AGM, I expressed my hope that Anders Runevad would take over as chairman after you when the time came. I just want to interject that I didn't say anything about it happening soon, but I understand it's now happening. To Anders Runevad, I would like to say, I hope you will feel comfortable in this role and that you feel welcome, and that you will stay as many years as Bert Nordberg and make just as great a difference as he did. With Runevad as chairman and Henrik Andersen as CEO, I feel confident for Vestas looking to the future.
I particularly feel optimistic when I look at the order intake in the last few days of the Q1, because that was very impressive. We also needed that order intake because the numbers for 2022 were far from impressive. It was a very sad annual report. The greatest comfort, however, is that other turbine producers like Siemens, GE, and the smaller Nordex, they had even more disastrous results. I expect that the other competitors will need to increase prices to make ends meet. Vestas is the largest company, and you've taken the lead, and it seems to me that the others are following, even though it seems to be reluctantly. The share market was worried about the sales price increases for a long period of time. They feared that it would cost Vestas orders.
It was like the catch-up effect, that suddenly the orders started pouring in here at the end of March, which was a very impressive order intake. Finally, there are two circumstances that must give you a tail wind. It's energy security and the climate agenda, both are very high on the political agenda. You mentioned that we should look, we should see the news this evening with a problem with the Finnish company, Fortum. Some believe that it will be something that can cost Vestas EUR 1.5 billion, I can't really believe that. I think there's support from all of Europe that we don't cooperate with Russia, I'll be interested in seeing more about that. Thank you for the floor.
Thank you, Søren Svendsen. There were many comments and commendations, no questions, I think. Are there any comments from the pet table? No. The next speaker is Mr. Bjorn Hansen.
Good afternoon. My name is Bjorn Hansen. I was here last year. I got some very good answers from the CEO. I can see that Anders Runevad is here, but also our chairman. We haven't given him enough praise. We've heard praise for two of them, but who of the two? We need one woman, and that is Marika. She's a CFO in Maersk, so she's done well. I also believe that you have such a good CFO as her, then we have a promising future in this company. We still believe in it. We believe in the prospects. It's been difficult times. I've spent the night in Southern Jutland because I know a guy who has a Vestas turbine. He has a lot of turbines. He was among the first in Eastern Germany. He was a pioneer there.
He also has turbines in Texas, and he knows the Swedish threesome, and he said, "Without them, Vestas would have gone bankrupt," because the other guy really didn't know his business. These two gentlemen and the young lady, Marita, deserve a lot of praise and a big thank you. I haven't heard you speak Swedish today, dear Chairman. At least. I brought a small gift for you. In the USA, we had a great Dane, William Esk Knutson. He was a general lieutenant during the Second World War, and he was summoned by Roosevelt, and he was tasked with armament. Instead of being the CEO of General Motors, he had also been in Ford, and he was a bicycle engineer from Copenhagen, believe it or not. Where are you, Helle? Helle is also from that very same area.
It's remarkable that you have such talented people and that they can have such a brilliant career abroad. William S. Knutson was given many different tasks. He always worked best with Swedes and with Swiss people and with Germans that would also work in the more technical arena. A few years ago, I visited Linköping in Sweden, and there was a great Swede called Ivar Kreuger. He's the match king. Unfortunately, he went bankrupt due to the SEB Bank. I'm not going to mention the family, but perhaps the Swedes know who I'm talking about. This book that I will give you, They Lit a Fire. It's in Swedish, so I hope you haven't forgotten your Swedish. Congratulations. Thank you for that first applause, but it should be for the chairman. I also thought about his spouse.
This is something that people would stop you for, but this is something I did with the Swedes. It's the best in the world, and they still got it. Now they've been acquired by Rexam in the U.S., but they know about industry and craftsmanship in Sweden. I'm going to give you one. In Denmark, as in Sweden, they know how to breed these beautiful flowers. This is for your wife. Then she can use it as a planter. Perhaps she can grow radishes in it afterwards. That leads me to the chairman of the AGM. It's his 25th wedding anniversary. Please have a seat. We are not serving dinner yet. Congratulations. That leads me to Henrik. Of course, we need to see the financial result first before handing out prizes. Henrik, you're onto something, and I really like your report today.
We still believe in you. One more thing, you cannot do business without trust. I think you win people's trust by having these AGMs. You also win people's trust by speaking in the local Jutland accent. I really like it, Henrik. I have a question for you. You talk so much about turbines. In an airplane factory in the U.S., I learned about turbines. They would go at 10 to 12 thousand rotations. That was back in 1968 when I saw the first jumbo jet in Seattle. It hadn't been put into operation yet, and they produced turbines. But turbines here, is that the wind turbine tower, or is it the blades, or what is it? Because to sell turbines, if you are pioneers here, you really have to make an effort against your competitors in that market. Then there's the funding.
I don't know how you fund your operations country by country, but I would like to hear more about that. I don't know if Helle Thorning left, but I think you should put a lot more pressure on the politicians, because politicians are standing in the way because they're in the municipal councils, and they don't want the wind turbines in their backyards. They are elected mayors, and then they are obstructing business.
As my boss used to say, "Bjorn Hansen, they found oil in Alaska. What do we do?" "Well, that will take a few years," I said. "No, we'll build the pipelines now to be first in the game." Who got the orders quite right. You have a leading position. You just need to start making money on your service contracts. These turbines or, well, wind turbines, I think you can really get ahead here. Congratulations with your results so far, and thank you for the floor.
Thank you very much, and thank you for that gift on the occasion of my 25th wedding anniversary. I'm very happily married. I've met you a few times already, Bjorn Hansen. There are a few questions here. Henrik, first of all, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much. I'm always pleased to see you, Bjorn. I'm always pleased when my troublemaker, my favorite troublemaker is here. I don't know if you wanna call them wind turbines or windmills or whatever you wanna call them. I'm sure we know what we're talking about.
If you have a look around the entrance out here, you can see the different models that we have. We are not going into any other industries, that's for sure. About country by country funding, we are not going to help anybody being better competitors country by country. We tell you where we take orders with which customers, but in an industry with only three real competitors, we don't want to give out too much information. It is in the interest of the shareholders. It's difficult to understand that sometimes perhaps you run the risk of sounding arrogant when we don't want to answer questions, but it is to the benefit of ourselves and the shareholders to keep our cards close to our chest sometime. As you can see, time is running.
It's 5 to 6. Soon you will be able to smell the food. If I had to solve all of the issues with local politics, I don't think I would have enough time today. We just have to make sure that we put pressure on the politicians that we elect to make sure that they don't just set up very fluffy targets for 2040, and talking about a climate act and increasing targets to 80%. That is, it's nonsense if you can't even put up the sufficient turbines. I hope I will get a prize from you, Bjorn, once you see the results. Thank you.
It's Mr. Henk Enterhout from the Netherlands. If you would please come up here.
Henk Enterhout.
Yeah. We can hand out the papers afterwards, but please come up here. You're welcome to speak in English.
Thank you. Well, my name is Henk Enterhout. I'm coming from Holland, and I am a little bit nervous to speak for so many people. Dear members of the supervisory board and board of directors, I would like to exercise my rights as a shareholder to express my concerns about at the annual Vestas shareholders meeting. I have been a shareholder for many years, and I'm following all the Vestas developments. I'm also owner of Vestas wind turbines in Holland, and I have experience for more than 20 years with the Vestas V52, V80, V90, and V136. I'm convinced of the high quality of the Vestas products. However, I am very dissatisfied with the service of the Vestas organization.
The service has been very poor for the last 10 years. It cost us a lot of money for the downtime of the wind turbines. When I, as a Vestas customer, want to discuss my experience with the Vestas service organization, with Vestas management, we receive a letter from Vestas of the law department stating that Vestas is not liable for anything. In this way, the Vestas service performance remains very poor. There seem to be no interest at Vestas in the customer satisfaction. As customer, it leaves to me the choice to buy Vestas products without Vestas services and taking the services from third-party maintenance, not because they are cheaper, but they are better. I have to pay to buy wind turbine from other suppliers, for example, Nordex.
As a shareholder, I can't be satisfied with Vestas as long as its service is poor. After all, service and wind power is the business with the highest return. We have seen that on the figures here. If Vestas management is interested in service problems of the service organization in the Netherlands, you are welcome to visit our office. I made the effort to come to Denmark, and I'm willing to give you our inside files for the Vestas organization. Thank you.
Thank you to Mr. Henk Enterhout, and it's up to Henrik Andersen.
No, no. No, no, don't run. Henk, stay here. Come back. I couldn't do that in Dutch. That concerns us. I'm also concerned that you had to travel all the way to Denmark, because that means you can't keep an eye on your turbines back home. Here is my card. You didn't have to travel that long to get my details. I now have your mail. Christian is the head of service. You will have a visit.
Thank you very much. I like the product, I want to have a good service.
Don't ever try to buy that Nordex thing.
Well, it seems like that was a happy ending. Does anybody else want the floor to the report? Nobody else is on the list. This is your last chance before you get too hungry with all the nice smells here. Nobody else wants the floor at this time, I'll sum up where we are. Item one, the director's report. That's not something we vote about, it's just discussed. As nobody else has asked for the floor, the report is noted. Point two, the presentation and adoption of the annual report. I've heard no comments, I conclude that it's adopted with the simple majority needed. Item three, resolution for the allocation of the result of the year. The board of directors proposes no dividend be paid out for 2022. That's not something that can be changed by the AGM, that's also approved.
Item 4, presentation and advisory vote on the remuneration report. Advisory vote sounds strange, but that's what the legislation says. If a remuneration report is not adopted, it doesn't mean that you have to pay back the wages from the year before, but you have to explain next year what you've done. I haven't heard any comments on this. I consider the remuneration report adopted. Item five, approval of the board of directors' remuneration. We've heard an unchanged remuneration compared to 2022, with a basic remuneration of just over DKK 455,000 , where the Chair receives three times the basic remuneration and the Deputy Chair two times the basic. No comments for that. That's also approved. Six, election of the members of the board of directors.
From the articles of association, it says that there are five to 10 elected by the AGM. Add to that, the employee elected, currently the board has eight members: Anders Runevad, Bruce Grant, Eva Sjöstedt-Bernike, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Karl-Henrik Sundström, Kentaro Hosomi, and Lena Olving. As mentioned, the chairman is not willing to accept reelection, the board proposes election of the seven remaining members. I haven't seen any other candidates. It is probably also difficult to run today and also be elected. I consider the proposal from the board of directors as approved. Congratulations to the seven who continue. The next item on the agenda is item seven, appointment of auditor. Here, the board of directors proposes reappointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
This does not usually give rise to any competing candidates from the AGM. I think I can congratulate PricewaterhouseCoopers with another year. The next item is item eight, proposals from the board of directors. Here we have a standard proposal, as we see in all listed companies, that we authorize the company to acquire treasury shares up to an aggregate of 10% of the company share capital at the time of the authorization. There's also a limit to how much the price can exceed from the price listed on Nasdaq. You can ask for this authorization up till five years. This is business as usual. I will consider this proposal adopted.
The next item is the authorization of the chair of the meeting with the right of substitution to file and register the adopted resolutions, and we don't have much to register, so I'm sure that I'm given that authorization. That leads me to any other business. Here, you can take the floor if you should wish so. Mr. Bjorn Hansen want to take the floor again. We have a webcast, so you have to come up here so that people can see and hear who is speaking. Well, this is to the new chairman of the board. Many of the people I invest on behalf of are asking for a summary in Danish. I brought this one from the company DFDS, and I can tell you more about that if you want. When we're in Sweden, it's in Swedish. When we're in Germany, it's German first, then English.
Hapag-Lloyd have in 5 languages. We hope that we will receive a summary like this one from you as well. Don't get the A.P. Møller - Mærsk sickness. It's not good. A lot of people will leave you if you don't publish anything in Danish. Finally, how to draw up an IT plan. I don't know if Helle Thorning-Schmidt left, but if casework takes more than 60 days, you can make use of your right to have the process accelerated. I would like to extend a thank you to you, Henrik. I hope that you could make processing times even shorter so that it doesn't become all words and no action.
Thank you for the floor. I take that as a piece of good advice to the new Chairman of the Board. I don't think there are any additional comments here. Does anyone else wish to take the floor? Otherwise, I will give the floor to the coming Chairman of the Board, Anders Runevad, the floor is yours. Thank you, and thank you for coming today.
I only have a small speech to finish this meeting. Thank you, Bert. This is your last AGM, as we heard. Of course, so far it's been like an early Christmas for you, and it's, we have 1 more gift. My mother used to say that even good things comes to an end, and I think it's very true. You have truly been provided a good leadership for the shareholders of Vestas, for the employees, for our customers, and for us in the board. We wish you all the best in the future. We hope that we stay as peace in your heart, and every time you see a wind turbine, you think about us. On behalf of the board, a very big thank you to Bert. Thank you very much. Yeah. Very kind. That works.
I think with that, there are no more comments from the room. The food is beckoning, and it's ready for you. As Chairman of the Board, Chairman of the AGM, I would also very much like to thank the Chairman of the Board, Bert Nordberg, for the many years we have worked together. Thank you for that. Have a good evening, everyone.