ABSTRACT
On September 27, 2013, at simultaneous early-morning press conferences in Copenhagen and Tokyo, officials from Vestas, the world's largest wind-turbine manufacturer, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), one of the world's biggest industrial conglomerates, announced a ground-breaking joint venture. In 1972, a group of radical teachers set up a collective and base on a plot of farmland called Tvind in the small Western Jutland town of Ulfborg, around 100km away from the then headquarters of a small agricultural equipment manufacturer called Vestas. Influenced by Maoism and the debates around radical pedagogy, its charismatic and undisputed leader was Mogens Amdi Petersen. The group began to set up a number of Tvind schools across Denmark, which were supported by Denmark's liberal public subsidies. Interest in wind power was growing worldwide, and the company was soon manufacturing turbines for wind projects in India, backed by the Danish state-aid agency, Danida.
