04-02 Denmark

Cruising out of Copenhagen in 2009 was highly educational. Those offshore wind turbines in Denmark were huge and there were hundreds of them. Wind provides about 20% of the nations electrical power which makes Denmark the number one user of wind energy in the world.
Then there was Sweden moving away from fossil fuels and going nuclear. And Norway heavily reliant on hydro electric power also going green. Global warming is taken seriously in that part of the world.
These Scandinavian nations are politically social-democratic, and this essentially means their welfare states are financed by value-added taxes. Not to worry. Free education and free medicine are winners if you have three kids.
But when it comes to subsidizing industry, they are not much different from nations like Germany, Japan and the US. Call it research and development, or call it defense spending, all nations find ways of subsidizing strategic industries.
And Scandinavia subsidizes their energy sectors. Denmark is now a major exporter of wind turbines because their massive subsidies of wind power has actually paid off. And they employ something like 30,000 people.
But what is so interesting about Denmark is not their debate over eliminating fossil fuels but their debate over onshore wind turbines. Not only were they impacting people’s property values, but the noise was keeping people up at night.
Then there are the techy issues. In Ontario with hydro electric and nuclear power dominant, we do not have to worry about generating power when we do not need it. Both hydro electric power and nuclear power can be modified to regulate output. And when we have short-term electrical power surpluses we can send it into the New York State grid.
The stories from Denmark are fascinating. They may on average use wind power for 20% of their power but there are days when the winds are so strong that wind power provides 100% of their electrical power. Then there are days when the winds are so seriously strong, that they shut the turbines down. And almost everyday, surplus Danish wind power is feeding the grids of Germany, Sweden and Norway.
And of course, windy nights produce far more power than sleeping people can use, so the plan is to replace combustion engines with electric cars so that surplus wind power can be used to power batteries.
I asked a tour guide in Copenhagen if energy is cheaper in Denmark than say neighbouring Germany, and the surprise response was that Danish electrical power is the highest in Europe, not because of the cost of the power, but because of the subsidies and the taxes. Danes love to pay taxes.
Anyways, there is more to Denmark than wind turbines. How about Copenhagen’s little mermaid statue?