This week two competing wind power firms have announced plans for stock exchange listing and to raise new cash, including PG Gyllenhammar’s Arise.

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The race to build new wind power stations intensified this week as both O2 Vind and Arise Windpower eye massive capital hike through stock exchange listing.

The Swedish center-right government aims to have a output of renewable energy amounting to 50 percent of energy needs by 2020. Today around 20 percent of Sweden's current energy production comes from renewable sources. Last week Sweden’s enterprise minister Maud Olofsson said that some 2,000 new wind power stations would be constructed across the country in the next ten years.

Although wind power is widely said to be one of tomorrow's most important energy sources it's still hard to raise money for needful investments.

"Since the financial crisis began it's been very difficult to obtain financing for wind power projects. That has led many companies to go other ways than talking to their banks, making the equity market a good solution”, Jacob Pedersen, senior aviation analyst at Danish Sydbank, told The Swedish Wire.

“Stock market listings are still a symptom of difficulties obtaining financing. Broadly speaking, financing has been a huge problem for wind power companies”. 

Thursday Arise Windpower, that sells green electricity produced by its own land-based wind turbines, announced its intention to list the company on the Stockholm stock exchange, Nasdaq OMX, and to raise 550 million kronor ($76 million) in a new issue.

“We face a large-scale development with 300 large wind power stations and we need a lot of capital in excess of loans and self-generated cash flow”, said the company's Chairman Pehr G Gyllenhammar, known for his 24 years as CEO and chairman of Volvo between 1970 and 1994.

The announcement came just three days after its competitor O2 Vind AB, that builds wind farms and sells electricity produced by wind power, said it had applied for a listing in Stockholm and looks to raise up to 1.150 million kronor ($160 million) in a new issue. In addition, the wind power company has entered into loan agreements of a total of 2.4 billion kronor with a Nordic bank consortium consisting of SEB, Swedbank and DnB NOR.

“Wind power is profitable and our aim is to double the current level of wind power in Sweden by 2015”, Johan Ihrfelt, founder and chief executive officer of O2, said.

For the government green energy is not only the source of preference from an environmental perspective; it’s also expected to be one of the key issues ahead of September's general election.

"Sweden has extremely good prospects for rapidly increasing the production of renewable energy, especially from the burning of biofuels, cogeneration plants and windpower," enterprise minister Maud Olofsson wrote in a newspaper column.

Last summer Arise Windpower signed a 187-million-dollar contract with General Electrics in a deal where GE’s most advanced ecomagination-certified wind turbine technology would make its Nordic debut.

“The future of wind power is about scale, project efficiency and making use of leading technology. Our agreements with GE Energy give us access to the latest wind turbine technology available,” Pehr G. Gyllenhammar said at the time.