Logistics giant targets €3 billion in new energy revenue by 2030.
When DHL Group convened its New Energy Conference at its Global Forwarding facility at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in June, the agenda reflected the full breadth of the energy transition – from wind and battery storage to grid infrastructure and nuclear.
The case for optimism was clear. Roughly two-thirds of global energy capital expenditure now flows into renewables, Tobias Meyer, DHL Group CEO, told attendees. Battery energy storage systems are growing at around 20% per year. The International Energy Agency projects that renewable power capacity will nearly double its deployment rate between 2025 and 2030 compared to the previous five-year period.
DHL’s ambition matches that assessment. The group generated approximately €600 million in new energy logistics revenue in 2025 and is targeting €3 billion by 2030 – a fivefold increase requiring a sustained growth rate above 30% per year. To reach that number, it is investing across the board: over 1,100 front-stocking locations that can deliver spare parts to 88% of wind farms globally within a four-hour window, more than 20 EV Centers of Excellence worldwide, and a new European Battery Logistics Hub under construction in Holtum, the Netherlands, scheduled to open in early 2027.
Where the Money Is Actually Going
Against that backdrop, a presentation from the Energy Industry Council added important context for DHL’s customers and other conference attendees. Campbell Keir, President of the EIC, drew on data from its DataStream platform – a database tracking 17,000 energy projects globally with an aggregate potential capital expenditure of $70 trillion – to illustrate the gap between announcement and commitment.
“Follow the money,” was Keir’s simple advice to attendees. “When I was a CEO, I always liked to follow the money.”
The EIC’s data revealed a striking divergence. While approximately 72% of announced projects globally fall into green categories – mature renewables, hydrogen, carbon capture and related technologies – the picture looks very different when filtered by final investment decision. Oil and gas, which represents around 18% of announced projects, accounts for a far larger share of committed CapEx. Mature renewables – fixed offshore wind, onshore wind, solar, and hydro – are reaching FID at scale, but investment in non-mature technologies including hydrogen, floating offshore wind, and carbon capture has fallen sharply at the commitment stage, even where those projects have been loudly announced.
“Oil and gas projects are going gung-ho at the moment, all around the world,” Keir said.
For project cargo operators with North American customers, the message has immediate relevance. The US power transmission and distribution network – the infrastructure required to actually move renewable energy from point of generation to point of use — is receiving only about one-fifth of the investment needed to achieve electrification targets, according to EIC data. The shortfall is comparable in the UK. Without grid investment at scale, the demand signal for renewable generation assets is structurally constrained.
The conclusion is not that the energy transition is stalling. Mature renewable technologies – particularly fixed offshore wind and solar – are genuinely surging, and their logistics footprint is expanding accordingly. The more measured point is that project cargo operators should be calibrating their capacity and capability investments against where FIDs are actually happening, rather than where project announcements suggest they will.
The One-Stop-Shop Imperative
For Martyn Lawns, CEO of DHL Industrial Projects and Senior Vice President for New Energy Growth at DHL Group, the conference underscored an important shift: the complexity of new energy logistics is increasingly outrunning what a pure-play project specialist can deliver alone.
“Our large EPC customers – engineering, procurement and construction customers – do not want different interfaces within DHL,” Lawns said. “Industrial Projects essentially provides that one-stop shop, where we do the interface with the different divisions within the group to make life easier for the customer.”
The scope of that one-stop shop extends well beyond the initial heavy-lift move. The wind sector, Lawns noted, has entered a new phase: with approximately 1.3 terawatts of installed capacity globally, the industry is no longer primarily a construction story. It is increasingly an operations and maintenance story – and the logistics requirements that come with it are different in kind from the original installation work.
DHL’s response is a new service called Time Definite Plus, built on the DHL Express network, designed to deliver spare parts to remote locations, such as wind farms, within a two-hour window. The service launches across 22 countries and territories in Europe, with a global rollout planned. For EPC contractors accustomed to negotiating with separate forwarders for out-of-gauge components, air freight, express delivery and customs clearance, the integrated model reflects DHL’s strategy of offering project customers a single point of contact across the full logistics chain.
The China Question
One of the conference’s more candid moments came during Meyer’s opening remarks, when the DHL Group CEO delivered an assessment of Europe’s competitive position. More than 80% of battery cells produced globally are now manufactured in China, Meyer noted, along with the dominant share of solar panels and, increasingly, inverters and wind components. Conventional wisdom attributes this to Chinese government subsidies and cheap labor, but Meyer was more specific.
“China is a more competitive place, and that does not only have to do with cheap labor,” he said. “It has a lot to do with innovation, with technology, and the availability of capital.”
The implication, which Meyer stated directly, is that Europe’s own policy environment – high energy costs, regulatory complexity, and what he characterized as a “highly fragmented” approach to heavy goods transport regulation that varies not just by country but by German state – has made the continent a less attractive location for manufacturing and processing of new energy input materials.
The supply chain implications are structural. The origin points for new energy components are shifting toward Asia, transit routes are lengthening, and exposure to geopolitical disruption – already elevated by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East – is increasing. DHL’s own operations illustrated the point: the company was forced to evacuate eight aircraft from its Bahrain hub days into the Middle East conflict after a drone struck the apron. The fleet has since been redeployed to continue connecting the region, but the episode underscored the operational volatility now baked into global logistics.
For US—focused operators, the eastward shift carries additional complexity. Trade policy uncertainty is already prompting some customers to consider reshoring or nearshoring production – Mexico, India and Southeast Asia are all emerging as alternative manufacturing locations – which is itself generating new project cargo flows as factories are built and equipped.
The Nuclear Renaissance
Keir’s EIC presentation also highlighted the renaissance of nuclear power – and in particular the growing pipeline of small modular reactors.
Large-scale nuclear has already returned to favor across much of the world. Sweden reversed its phase-out policy, while Japan has restarted 15 reactors since Fukushima. The pipeline of approved large-scale nuclear projects has grown substantially, supported by a new framing of energy security that goes beyond simple cost comparisons.
Small modular reactors – installations of 500 megawatts or smaller – are now generating serious investment interest. The U.K., Poland, South Africa and multiple countries across South America and the United States have approved or are advancing SMR programs. But Keir cautioned against assuming SMRs can be deployed quickly or at scale to power data centers: “Small modular reactors are still nuclear power stations, and they still require regulatory approval.”
The construction and commissioning of reactor modules, turbine components and associated civil infrastructure is precisely the kind of technically demanding, high-value cargo that specialist operators are positioned to handle. Unlike large-scale nuclear – where a handful of major projects generate enormous but infrequent demand – the SMR pipeline, if it develops as EIC data suggests, would generate a more distributed and sustained stream of project freight demand across multiple geographies.
The Sustainability Premium
The question of customer willingness to pay for sustainable logistics is one the industry has debated at length, usually in optimistic terms. The reality, as Meyer described it at the conference, is more mixed.
“On willingness to pay, we have a substantial recovery of the investments that we do in this space, but it’s not a hundred percent yet,” he said. “For the foreseeable future, we do not want to make money on decarbonization, so we always spend more than we collect from our customers.”
Take-up is strongest in aviation, where DHL now carries a 10% sustainable aviation fuel share in its own fleet – roughly three times the ratio of the next airline globally. In ocean freight, economic pressure – particularly in the automotive sector – is causing some customers to pull back from sustainability commitments made in more comfortable times. Oscar de Bok, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding, offered a more forward-looking read: many large customers have signed net-zero commitments with 2030 deadlines that felt distant when they were made and are now approaching fast. “That also helps with the willingness to buy,” he said.
The sector-specific variation matters for project cargo operators considering their own decarbonization positioning. Where customers face margin pressure – bulk commodity flows, standardized solar panel shipments – the green premium is hardest to sustain. Where cargo is complex, high-value and involves a relationship-oriented customer, the commercial case for sustainable logistics is considerably stronger.
Whether DHL reaches its €3 billion target by 2030 will depend on variables no logistics company fully controls. But the scale of its investment signals something the project cargo sector would do well to take seriously: the energy transition is generating logistics complexity that generalist and specialist operators alike will need to rethink how they serve.
Luke King attended the DHL New Energy Conference in Amsterdam in June 2026. He is the founder of the Project Cargo Professionals podcast and a contributor to AJOT.
