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Denmark To Double Wind Power By 2020, Be Fossil Fuel-Free By 2050

This article is more than 10 years old.

Copenhagen, Denmark – On March 29, the U.S. Senate failed, again, to repeal billions in oil-industry tax breaks. The vote was only the latest in a long series of missed opportunities under which U.S. lawmakers could have hastened the country’s transition away from fossil fuels. The week before, with comity unthinkable in Congress, the Danish Parliament agreed to an energy plan that will double, to 50%, the share of the nation’s electricity coming from wind. The Danish Energy Agreement, announced March 22, also puts Denmark on a path to be fossil fuel-free by 2050.

“It has been a long, long process,” Martin Lidegaard, Minister for Climate, Energy, and Building, told me in an interview at his office overlooking Christiansborg Palace, home to the Danish Parliament, in Copenhagen’s city center.

The process began, he said, when Denmark established the Commission on Climate Change, an interdisciplinary team of 10 scientists, in March 2008. After that commission released its report, the former center-right government released its Energy Strategy 2050 (PDF) – “which was quite ambitious itself,” said Lidegaard. Negotiations on that plan stalled, however, as national elections were approaching. The election, in September 2011, brought a center-left government to power for the first time since 2001.

The new government, under Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, floated its energy proposal in November 2011. “The new government took the energy strategy from the old government and we made it a little more ambitious,” said Lidegaard. The resulting Danish Energy Agreement (summary, PDF) passed with near consensus in Parliament (171 of 179 members, representing seven of eight parties). For the agreement to take effect, Lidegaard said, Parliament must pass five laws this year. The government wants to have the new framework made clear by 2013.

In our conversation, Lidegaard highlighted some of the major components of the Danish Energy Agreement.

Energy efficiency

In the plan, said Lidegaard, “You have probably the world’s most ambitious energy efficiency target, which, if you ask me, is even more important than the wind [target].” He noted that since 1980 Denmark has grown its economy yet held energy consumption steady. “Now, we want to do even better. We want to have an increase in growth, but decrease energy consumption”— to decouple economic growth from energy use, I offered. “Not only decouple but decrease,” he said. The agreement calls for a 12% reduction of gross energy consumption by 2020.

“That’s going to be a very difficult challenge, but we are convinced not just that it is doable but also that it is a very good idea to do it. And there’s a very good business case to do it.”

The business case

Lidegaard mentioned some numbers that have been absent, he said, in early media coverage of the energy agreement. “In 2020, the bill, for Danish society will be 3.5 billion kroner [$627 million] in extra investments in energy efficiency and renewables.”

“What should also be mentioned,” he said, “is that we will gain 6 billion kroner [$1.07 billion] because of less import of coal, oil, and gas simply because we are more energy efficient and produce more energy ourselves.”

“Of course I can’t guarantee that it will be the same households or industries that pay the bill and reap the gains. It depends on your behavior. Will you invest in energy savings? Will you take advantage of some of the support schemes? We want to have a push for more efficient behavior.”

“You could put it another way,” Lidegaard said. “It has a cost, to invest in this future – but there is also a cost not to do it.”

Business sector buy-in

Lidegaard said the energy agreement passed with the full support of the business sector. “A transformation of the size we want is simply not possible if we don’t get private investors with us. One of the things I am most happy about is that we have gained all the support we need from industry.”

“What they have told us, though, is that we need to get regulation in place so they can start to invest. My ambition is that we will have most of the framework, most of the laws, clear before summer so the private sector can start investments in wind mills, in biogas, in energy efficiency,” he said.

Smart grid and regional “super grid”

Another fundamental element of the energy agreement is the development of a smart grid in Denmark. The plan calls for a comprehensive strategy for the rollout of the Danish smart grid to be released by the end of the year. The road map will be clear in two to three months, Lidegaard said, and the core strategy completed by Christmas. The strategy is to include three parts: ensure strong transmission connections with neighboring countries; ensure the rollout of smart meters to all households and industries in Denmark; and establish dynamic tariffs which can help to match energy consumption to periods of plentiful renewable energy production.

“We need to have all of this in place before we double our wind energy, before we double our biogas,” he said.

Lidegaard also said he hopes in the coming years to advance a “new vision for the whole North Sea region” to develop a “super grid” – new transmission connections to the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Norway – and large offshore wind farms, with costs shared by participating countries.

Coal to biomass transition

The new energy plan includes incentives to encourage large-scale power plants to convert from coal to biomass. “What we do is basically put up an economic framework that should make it more attractive to make that transition,” said Lidegaard. Put another way, he said, “According to the largest energy company in Denmark, DONG Energy, their plan is to, this decade, shift from 15% biomass and 85% coal, to doing it vice versa. That’s a good picture of where we would like to go.”

Wave power demonstrations and synergy with offshore wind

The Danish Energy Agreement commits funding for wave energy research and demonstration projects – the latter will receive 25 million DKK ($4.5 million). “We have to recognize that this is a technology that needs a lot of investment and a lot of experiments to be able to commission a station,” said Lidegaard. “On the other hand, we see some possibilities in combining offshore wind with wave power.”

“At the offshore wind farms, we have the grid already established. There might be some potential in combining the connections.” He noted, too, that waves are fluctuating as the wind. “There might be some synergies in combining these two.”

New on- and offshore wind power

In order for Denmark to double the share of wind electricity feeding the grid by 2020, the government plans to build 2 gigawatts (GW) of new on- and offshore wind farms. Two large offshore wind farms will be erected by 2020: 600 megawatts (MW) at Kriegers Flak, between Denmark and Germany, 400 MW at Horns Rev off the west coast of Jutland. A further 500 MW of new projects will be built offshore by 2020. Onshore, the government wants to add a 500MW to the grid by re-powering the country’s best wind energy sites. Thirteen-hundred MW of older, inefficient turbines will be replaced by 1,800 MW of new, more powerful turbines.