{"id":50054,"date":"2014-11-24T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T12:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=50054"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:17","slug":"brave-little-denmark-leads-war-against-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/11\/brave-little-denmark-leads-war-against-coal\/","title":{"rendered":"Brave Little Denmark Leads War against Coal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"denmark<\/a><\/p>\n

Danish energy policies offer model even more admirable than Germany\u2019s.<\/em><\/p>\n

Germany has been credited for paving Europe\u2019s way to a renewables-led, zero-carbon future. But the world\u2019s true climate champion is Denmark, which has just set the bar another notch higher<\/a> than Germany by proposing to accelerate its phase-out of coal-fired power plants. Denmark could be coal-free by 2025 \u2014 five years ahead of schedule \u2014 and generate more than 70 percent of its energy from renewable sources.<\/p>\n

The small Nordic nation of 5.6 million strives to be completely fossil-free by 2050, including even its transportation sector. Yet in pursuing such impressive goals, Denmark could stoke Germany\u2019s prodigious coal use \u2014 the Achilles\u2019 heel of \u00a0its heralded Energiewende (clean-energy transition) \u2014 to make up for shortfalls in the Danish market. In order to make Denmark\u2019s green energy policies worth emulating, this must be avoided.<\/p>\n

Danish lessons<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is much that the rest of the world, even green Germany, can learn from Denmark\u2019s progressive energy policy, especially its determination to kick the coal habit. Denmark, for example, has been at the forefront of wind power innovation since the 1890s<\/a>, when one of its leading scientists, Poul la Cour, began testing turbines. After World War II, Danes realized that wind was one energy resource that it had in abundance and always would. (Denmark has moderate gas and oil reserves in the North Sea.) In 1956 one of la Cour\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9s invented the three-rotor turbine, which remains, in essence, the preferred model around the world.<\/p>\n

Denmark was one of the few countries that fully absorbed the lessons of the 1973 energy crisis and acted on them. Nearly 90 percent dependent on imported oil at the time, Copenhagen identified<\/a> renewable energy sources and reduced oil consumption with the aim of securing a greener, more stable energy supply. In 1985, a year before the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Denmark prohibited nuclear power and started investing heavily in renewables and in more efficient energy transmission and heating infrastructure.<\/p>\n

By the 1990s, Denmark set high-end goals for renewable energy production and climate protection, using subsidies, green taxes and a certificate program. The state offered tax exemptions to households for producing their own electricity, which prompted a wave<\/a> of backyard tinkering and small-scale wind power projects. Danes could purchase a turbine from local retailers or buy shares in community-based wind turbine cooperatives. By 2004, more than 150,000 Danes belonged to renewable energy cooperatives or owned turbines.<\/p>\n

Wind power is the cornerstone of Denmark\u2019s renewable energy production as well as a key export industry. Larger commercial wind parks with larger, more advanced turbines have gradually over taken the household model. Danish manufacturers such as Vestas and Siemens Wind Power sell turbines around the world. Today wind from the gusty coasts and hinterlands \u2014\u00a0along with a handful of other renewables \u2014account for 43 percent of Denmark\u2019s electricity and nearly a third of the country\u2019s energy needs.<\/p>\n

Denmark has Europe\u2019s highest electricity prices. But wind energy enjoys broad public support. Some 96 percent of Danes<\/a> support the government\u2019s plan to expand the wind industry, and 85 percent are tolerant of such expansions even into their residential areas.<\/p>\n

Another key component of Denmark\u2019s feat is district heat networks<\/a>, giant boilers that generate heat for entire neighborhoods and distribute it through a network of underground pipes. Most Danes don\u2019t own household boilers, as Germans tend to, but have communitywide, superefficient boilers that pipe hot water to homes in a given district. The networks capture and redistribute surplus heat from factories, power stations, public transportation systems and geothermal sources. As a result, heating is cheaper, highly efficient and low carbon.<\/p>\n

Denmark now exports both oil and renewably generated power. Since it began transition to renewables and district heating, its economy has grown by 78 percent<\/a> \u2014 rebutting claims that shifting to clean energy imperils prosperity.<\/p>\n

Truly coal free?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As much notoriety as Germany has received for its energy reforms, it is a distant, parochial second best to its northern neighbor. Since 2011, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel committed her government to going renewable after Japan\u2019s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown, Germany\u2019s coal generation and carbon emissions have risen. Unless it takes dramatic steps soon, Germany will miss its 2020 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 5 to 8 percentage<\/a> points. To be fair, Germany\u2019s self-proclaimed goal is still twice as ambitious as the target set by the European Union overall. That high mark appeared to be in sight until three years ago, when emissions began climbing again. That is not the only problem. Despite championing the Energiewende, <\/em>Germany does not have a master plan for phasing out black coal and lignite, which generates 45.5 percent<\/a> of its electricity. This has made the Energiewende an easy target for critics.<\/p>\n

Domestic politics bear part of the blame. Germany\u2019s Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, is protecting the dying coal industries in Germany \u2014 bastions of traditional center-left voters. He is blocking initiatives by his counterpart in Merkel\u2019s government, the environment minister, who wants to develop a plan for phasing out coal production and use.<\/p>\n

A recent report<\/a> by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned about \u201cirreversible and uncontrollable\u201d consequences of climate change should the global temperature rise by more than 2 degrees Celsius. This has upped the pressure on Merkel, who may now decide to enter the fray. Action from the chancellor could change the situation overnight \u2014 for example, she shut down a third of Germany\u2019s nuclear reactors after Fukushima. As her ministers clash over a common energy strategy, Merkel might pull another Fukushima-like U-turn and end Germany\u2019s sordid romance with coal.<\/p>\n

If Denmark goes through with the current proposal, it must not ditch coal in a way that simply transfers emissions from Denmark to Germany. Danish energy experts such as the Danish Energy Association\u2019s Anders Stouge say a quick exit from coal should not force Denmark to import electricity from Germany\u2019s coal-fired plants in order to compensate for energy shortfalls currently covered by domestic coal-fired power stations.<\/p>\n

But Denmark could avoid this scenario by investing more in electric car batteries and hot water reservoirs \u2014 technologies that could store surplus wind-generated power \u2014\u00a0while it replaces coal with biomass-fired power plants. It\u2019s an expensive proposition, but ultimately a coal-free Denmark would be a beacon not just for Germany and the rest of Europe but also for a world gradually coming to grips with the reality of climate change.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Paul Hockenos is a journalist living in Berlin. He has covered the transformations of the EU for over 25 years.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Danish energy policies offer model even more admirable than Germany\u2019s. A coal-free Denmark would be a beacon not just for the rest of Europe but also for a world gradually coming to grips with the reality of climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}