Denmark leads the way in green energy — to a point

If a heavy reliance on fossil fuels makes a country a climate ogre, then Denmark — with its thousands of wind turbines sprinkled on the coastlines and at sea — is living a happy fairy tale.

Viewed from the United States or Asia, Denmark is an environmental role model. The country is “what a global warming solution looks like,” wrote Frances Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a letter to the group last autumn. About one-fifth of the country’s electricity comes from wind, which wind experts say is the highest proportion of any country.

But a closer look shows that Denmark is a far cry from a clean-energy paradise.
The building of wind turbines has virtually ground to a halt since subsidies were cut back. Meanwhile, compared with others in the European Union, Danes remain above-average emitters of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. For all its wind turbines, a large proportion of the rest of Denmark’s power is generated by plants that burn imported coal.

“We are losing ground,” said Anne Grete Holmsgaard, the energy spokeswoman for the opposition Socialist People’s Party in Denmark. “It’s terrible, actually, that we’re not that green as we should be.”

The Danish experience shows how difficult it can be for countries grown rich on fossil fuels to switch to renewable energy sources like wind power. Among the hurdles are fluctuating political priorities, the high cost of putting new turbines offshore, concern about public acceptance of large wind turbines and the volatility of the wind itself.

But countries like Denmark are far ahead of the United States and others in overall use of green electricity, mostly because of government support.

International Herald Tribune