Wind power in Denmark
Encyclopedia
Wind power
provided 18.9% of electricity production and 24.1% of generation capacity in Denmark
in 2008, Denmark was a pioneer in developing commercial wind power
during the 1970s, and today almost half of the wind turbine
s around the world are produced by Danish manufacturers such as Vestas
and Siemens Wind Power
along with many component suppliers.
grew in the 1980s, Denmark found itself with relatively high carbon dioxide emissions per capita, primarily due to the coal-fired electrical power plants
that had become the norm after the 1973
and 1979 energy crises
of the 1970s. Renewable energy
became the natural choice for Denmark, decreasing both dependence on other countries for energy and global warming pollution. Denmark adopted a target of cutting carbon emissions by 22% from 1988 levels by 2005. In 1988, two years after the Chernobyl disaster
, the Danes passed a law forbidding the construction of nuclear power plants. In the process the Danish grassroots movement had a substantial role. The Danish Anti-nuclear Movement's (OOA) smiling-sun logo "Atomkraft, Nej Tak" ("Nuclear Power, No Thanks") spread world wide, and the renewable alternatives were promoted by the Danish Organisation for Renewable Energy (OVE).
Planning of wind power was deliberately streamlined by authorities in order to minimize hurdles.
Many countries tried to subsidize green technology such as wind power, and most failed to make a viable industry. The Danish system was an exception, providing 30% of initial capital cost in the early years which was gradually reduced to zero, but still maintaining a feed-in tariff.
and WAsP. The results were validated on more than 1200 wind turbines nationwide.
Denmark is connected by transmission line to other European countries (fx Cross-Skagerrak) and therefore it does not need to install additional peak-load plant to balance its wind power. Instead, it purchases additional power from its neighbours when necessary. With some strengthening of the grid, Denmark plans to increase wind's share even further, to 50% of consumption.
Current power system data are provided by Energinet.dk
.
Today's wind power production and tomorrow's prognosis are recorded by Nord Pool Spot
.
(Palo Alto, US) and Danish utility Dong Energy
, aiming to promote mass production of electric vehicle
s and implementation of an extensive recharging and battery-swap infrastructure. This would act as storage capacity for the country's wind power generation capability. "Two million electric cars in circulation ... would provide a standby capacity around five times the size of Denmark's needs ... with smart charging systems charging batteries when the power's plentiful, and even feeding power back into the grid when necessary."
Other efforts try to match charging with wind power production, such as the Tesla Roadster
from Vindenergi.
of 24%.
In 2009, Denmark's capacity grew to 3,482 MW; most of the increase came from the 209 MW Horns Rev 2
offshore wind farm, which was inaugurated on September 17, 2009 by Crown Prince Frederik
. , Denmark's capacity stands at 3,752 MW; most of the year's increase came from the Rødsand-2 off-shore wind farm.
Wind power output reduces spot market prices in general via the merit order
effect; in 2008 this caused a net reduction of pre-tax electricity prices (balancing the increase from the feed-in law).
is preparing the Anholt Offshore Wind Farm
, the largest offshore windfarm in Denmark, near the island of Anholt
, with a capacity of 400 MW, with 111 turbines. The park will be finished in 2013, and supply about 4% of all electric energy produced in Denmark.
, Norway
, and Sweden
. The latter two have considerable hydropower
resources, which, can rapidly reduce their generation whenever wind farms are generating surplus power, saving water for later, and can export electricity to Denmark when wind power output drops. The benefit of this goes to Denmark's neighbours: when Denmark's wind farms are exporting power, it is sold at the spot market
price, which sometimes falls to near or below zero. According to the second argument, the correlation between exports and wind power is weak, and a similar correlation exists with conventional thermal plants; meanwhile, causal analysis shows that export from Denmark typically occurs as a consequence of the merit order
effect, when large thermal plants have reserve capacities at times the spot market price of electricity is high. In any case, the export price is the intermediate between the prices of the two areas, so the exporting TSO (Energinet) uses the profit to relieve tariffs. This service of timeshifting production and consumption is also found around the world in pumped-storage hydroelectricity
balancing coal and nuclear plants.
The Danish wind turbine industry is the world's largest. Around 90% of the national output is exported, and Danish companies accounted for 38% of the world turbine market
in 2003, when the industry employed some 20,000 people and had a turnover of around 3 billion euro
.
The biggest wind turbine manufacturers with production facilities in Denmark are Vestas
and Siemens Wind Power
.
The development of wind power in Denmark has been characterized by a close collaboration between publicly financed research and industry in key areas such as research and development
, certification, testing, and the preparation of standards. For example, in the 1980s, a large number of small Danish companies were developing wind turbines to sell to California, and the Danish Risø laboratory provided test facilities and certification procedures. These resulted in reliable products and the rapid expansion of the Danish turbine manufacturing industry.
commissioned the Danish think-tank CEPOS (Centre for Political Studies)
to report on electricity exports from Denmark (see above) and the economic impact of the Danish wind industry. This report states that Danes pay the highest residential electricity rates in the European Union
(partly to subsidize wind power), and that the cost of saving a ton of carbon dioxide
between 2001 and 2008 has averaged 647 DKK (€ 87, US$ 124). The report estimates that 90% of jobs were transferred from other technology industries to the wind industry, and that 10% of wind industry jobs were newly created jobs, and states that as a result, Danish GDP is 1.8 billion DKK (US$ 270 million) lower than it would have been without wind industry subsidies.
The report from CEPOS was even brought to Government level, where minister of Climate and Energy Lykke Friis discredited the work done by CEPOS and the report.
. While this could involve purchasing a turbine outright, more often families purchased shares in wind turbine cooperatives which in turn invested in community wind turbines. By 1996 there were around 2,100 such cooperatives in the country. Opinion polls show that this direct involvement has helped the popularity of wind turbines, with some 86% of Danes supporting wind energy when compared with existing fuel sources.
The role of wind turbine cooperatives is not limited to single turbines. The Middelgrunden
offshore wind farm
– with 20 turbines the world's largest offshore farm at the time it was built in 2000 – is 50% owned by the 10,000 investors in the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative, and 50% by the municipal utility company.
By 2001 over 100,000 families belonged to wind turbine cooperatives, which had installed 86% of all the wind turbines in Denmark. By 2004 over 150,000 were either members or owned turbines, and about 5,500 turbines had been installed, although with greater private sector involvement the proportion owned by cooperatives had fallen to 75%. The cooperative model has also spread to Germany and the Netherlands.
erected 11 one-megawatt, land-based wind turbines in 2000, followed by ten offshore 2.3 MW wind turbines completed in 2003. Together with other renewable energy measures, this community of 4,200 achieved fame as the largest carbon-neutral settlement on the planet.
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships....
provided 18.9% of electricity production and 24.1% of generation capacity in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
in 2008, Denmark was a pioneer in developing commercial wind power
Wind power
Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, windmills for mechanical power, windpumps for water pumping or drainage, or sails to propel ships....
during the 1970s, and today almost half of the wind turbine
Wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called a wind generator or wind charger. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or...
s around the world are produced by Danish manufacturers such as Vestas
Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines. It is the largest in the world, but due to very rapid growth of its competitors, its market share decreased from 28% in 2007 to 12.5% in 2009...
and Siemens Wind Power
Siemens Wind Power
Siemens Wind Power, or SWP, is a wind turbine manufacturer with headquarters and main production facilities established in 1980 in Brande, Denmark. SWP is wholly owned by Siemens of Germany since 2004 through the Renewable Energy division in the Siemens Energy sector...
along with many component suppliers.
History
As concerns over global warmingGlobal warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
grew in the 1980s, Denmark found itself with relatively high carbon dioxide emissions per capita, primarily due to the coal-fired electrical power plants
Fossil fuel power plant
A fossil-fuel power station is a power station that burns fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas or petroleum to produce electricity. Central station fossil-fuel power plants are designed on a large scale for continuous operation...
that had become the norm after the 1973
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC proclaimed an oil embargo. This was "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war. It lasted until March 1974. With the...
and 1979 energy crises
1979 energy crisis
The 1979 oil crisis in the United States occurred in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979 and the Ayatollah Khomeini soon became the new leader of Iran. Protests severely disrupted the Iranian oil...
of the 1970s. Renewable energy
Renewable energy
Renewable energy is energy which comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are renewable . About 16% of global final energy consumption comes from renewables, with 10% coming from traditional biomass, which is mainly used for heating, and 3.4% from...
became the natural choice for Denmark, decreasing both dependence on other countries for energy and global warming pollution. Denmark adopted a target of cutting carbon emissions by 22% from 1988 levels by 2005. In 1988, two years after the Chernobyl disaster
Chernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
, the Danes passed a law forbidding the construction of nuclear power plants. In the process the Danish grassroots movement had a substantial role. The Danish Anti-nuclear Movement's (OOA) smiling-sun logo "Atomkraft, Nej Tak" ("Nuclear Power, No Thanks") spread world wide, and the renewable alternatives were promoted by the Danish Organisation for Renewable Energy (OVE).
Planning of wind power was deliberately streamlined by authorities in order to minimize hurdles.
Many countries tried to subsidize green technology such as wind power, and most failed to make a viable industry. The Danish system was an exception, providing 30% of initial capital cost in the early years which was gradually reduced to zero, but still maintaining a feed-in tariff.
Wind resources
Denmark has relatively modest average wind speeds in the range of 4.9–5.6 metres a second measured at 10 m height. Onshore wind resources are highest in the Western part of the country, and on the Eastern islands with coastlines facing South or West. The country has very large offshore wind resources, and large areas of sea territory with a shallow water depth of 5–15 m, where siting is most feasible. These sites offer higher wind speeds, in the range of roughly 8.5–9.0 m/s at 50 m height. There have been no major problems from wind variability, although there is a temporary problem resulting from the connection of a large bloc of wind power from offshore wind farms to a single point on a weak section of the transmission network. The wind resource over Denmark was mapped in 1999 by EMD International A/S and Risø National Laboratory. The mapping was made using a 200 m grid resolution using the models in WindPROWindPRO
WindPRO is wind energy software used to model wind farms. Users are able to design wind farms, including wind turbine layout and electrical design. Energy production, turbine noise levels, turbine wake losses, and turbine suitability can be calculated. WindPro uses wind flow modeling inputs from...
and WAsP. The results were validated on more than 1200 wind turbines nationwide.
Denmark is connected by transmission line to other European countries (fx Cross-Skagerrak) and therefore it does not need to install additional peak-load plant to balance its wind power. Instead, it purchases additional power from its neighbours when necessary. With some strengthening of the grid, Denmark plans to increase wind's share even further, to 50% of consumption.
Current power system data are provided by Energinet.dk
Energinet.dk
Energinet.dk is the Danish national transmission system operator for electricity and natural gas. It is an independent public enterprise owned by the Danish state under the Ministry of Climate and Energy...
.
Today's wind power production and tomorrow's prognosis are recorded by Nord Pool Spot
Nord Pool Spot
Nord Pool Spot runs the largest market for electrical energy in the world, measured in volume traded and in market share. It operates in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia. More than 70% of the total consumption of electrical energy in the Nordic market is traded through Nord Pool...
.
Electric-vehicle charging
A deal was announced in 2008, between Project Better PlaceProject Better Place
Better Place is a venture-backed American-Israeli company based in Palo Alto, California that aims to reduce global dependency on petroleum through the creation of a market-based transportation infrastructure that supports electric vehicles....
(Palo Alto, US) and Danish utility Dong Energy
DONG Energy
-History:The Danish state company Dansk Naturgas A/S was founded in 1972 to manage resources in the Danish sector of the North Sea. After some years, the company was renamed to Dansk Olie og Naturgas A/S . At the beginning of 2000s, DONG started to extend itself into the electricity market by...
, aiming to promote mass production of electric vehicle
Electric vehicle
An electric vehicle , also referred to as an electric drive vehicle, uses one or more electric motors or traction motors for propulsion...
s and implementation of an extensive recharging and battery-swap infrastructure. This would act as storage capacity for the country's wind power generation capability. "Two million electric cars in circulation ... would provide a standby capacity around five times the size of Denmark's needs ... with smart charging systems charging batteries when the power's plentiful, and even feeding power back into the grid when necessary."
Other efforts try to match charging with wind power production, such as the Tesla Roadster
Tesla Roadster
The Tesla Roadster is a battery electric vehicle sports car produced by the electric car firm Tesla Motors in California. The Roadster was the first highway-capable all-electric vehicle in serial production available in the United States. Since 2008 Tesla has sold 2,024 Roadsters in 30 countries...
from Vindenergi.
Capacities and production
In 2005, Denmark had installed wind capacity of 3,127 MW, which produced 23,810 TJ (6.6 TW·h) of energy, giving an actual average production of 755 MW at a capacity factorCapacity factor
The net capacity factor or load factor of a power plant is the ratio of the actual output of a power plant over a period of time and its potential output if it had operated at full nameplate capacity the entire time...
of 24%.
In 2009, Denmark's capacity grew to 3,482 MW; most of the increase came from the 209 MW Horns Rev 2
Horns Rev 2
Horns Rev 2 is an offshore wind farm located on Horns Rev in a shallow area in the eastern North Sea, about off the westernmost point of Denmark, Blåvands Huk...
offshore wind farm, which was inaugurated on September 17, 2009 by Crown Prince Frederik
Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark
Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, Count of Monpezat, is the heir apparent to the throne of Denmark. Frederik is the elder son of Queen Margrethe II and Henrik, the Prince Consort.-Name and christening:...
. , Denmark's capacity stands at 3,752 MW; most of the year's increase came from the Rødsand-2 off-shore wind farm.
Wind power output reduces spot market prices in general via the merit order
Merit Order
For other uses see Order of Merit The merit order is a way of ranking available sources of energy, especially electrical generation, in ascending order of their short-run marginal costs of production, so that those with the lowest marginal costs are the first ones to be brought online to meet...
effect; in 2008 this caused a net reduction of pre-tax electricity prices (balancing the increase from the feed-in law).
| Year | 1970 | 1971 | 1972 | 1973 | 1974 | 1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Installed wind capacity (kW) | 52 | 813 | 1,090 | |||||||
| Electricity generated (MW·h) | 120 | 240 | ||||||||
| Year | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 |
| Installed wind capacity (MW) | 2.7 | 6.3 | 10.6 | 14.3 | 19.8 | 47.0 | 72.4 | 111.9 | 190.3 | 246.7 |
| Electricity generated (GW·h) | 2 | 5 | 12 | 19 | 26 | 44 | 104 | 154 | 266 | 398 |
| Year | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |
| Installed wind capacity (MW) | 326 | 393 | 436 | 468 | 521 | 600 | 814 | 1,123 | 1,438 | 1,753 |
| Electricity generated (TW·h) | 0.57 | 0.68 | 0.83 | 0.92 | 1.06 | 1.09 | 1.19 | 1.89 | 2.76 | 3.00 |
| Year | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
| Installed wind capacity (MW) | 2,390 | 2,497 | 2,890 | 3,116 | 3,123 | 3,127 | 3,135 | 3,124 | 3,163 | 3,482 |
| Electricity generated (TW·h) | 4.22 | 4.31 | 4.86 | 5.56 | 6.58 | 6.61 | 6.11 | 7.14 | 6.98 | 6.72 |
| Wind power share in the electricity supply (%) | 12.1 | 12.2 | 13.9 | 15.8 | 18.5 | 18.5 | 16.8 | 19.7 | 19.1 | 19.3 |
| Year | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 |
| Installed wind capacity (MW) | 3,752 | 3,810 | ||||||||
| Electricity generated (TW·h) | 7.81 | |||||||||
| Wind power share in the electricity supply (%) | 21.9 | |||||||||
Future parks in Denmark
The state majority owned company DONG EnergyDONG Energy
-History:The Danish state company Dansk Naturgas A/S was founded in 1972 to manage resources in the Danish sector of the North Sea. After some years, the company was renamed to Dansk Olie og Naturgas A/S . At the beginning of 2000s, DONG started to extend itself into the electricity market by...
is preparing the Anholt Offshore Wind Farm
Anholt Offshore Wind Farm
Anholt Offshore Wind Farm is an approved Danish offshore wind power wind farm in the Kattegat, between Djursland and Anholt island. With a nameplate capacity of 400 megawatts , when built, it will be the largest offshore wind farm in Denmark...
, the largest offshore windfarm in Denmark, near the island of Anholt
Anholt (Denmark)
Anholt is a Danish island in the Kattegat, midway between Jutland and Sweden, with 171 permanent residents as of 1 January 2010. It is seven miles long and about four miles wide at its widest and covers an area of 21,75 km². Anholt is part of Norddjurs municipality in Region Midtjylland...
, with a capacity of 400 MW, with 111 turbines. The park will be finished in 2013, and supply about 4% of all electric energy produced in Denmark.
Electricity exports from Denmark
Annual wind power production is currently equal to about 19–20% of electricity consumed in Denmark. The proportion of this that is actually consumed in Denmark has been disputed, with claims of up to 40% of wind power being exported, countered by claims that only 1% was exported. According to the first argument, power in excess of immediate demand is exported to GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. The latter two have considerable hydropower
Hydropower
Hydropower, hydraulic power, hydrokinetic power or water power is power that is derived from the force or energy of falling water, which may be harnessed for useful purposes. Since ancient times, hydropower has been used for irrigation and the operation of various mechanical devices, such as...
resources, which, can rapidly reduce their generation whenever wind farms are generating surplus power, saving water for later, and can export electricity to Denmark when wind power output drops. The benefit of this goes to Denmark's neighbours: when Denmark's wind farms are exporting power, it is sold at the spot market
Spot market
The spot market or cash market is a public financial market, in which financial instruments or commodities are traded for immediate delivery. It contrasts with a futures market in which delivery is due at a later date...
price, which sometimes falls to near or below zero. According to the second argument, the correlation between exports and wind power is weak, and a similar correlation exists with conventional thermal plants; meanwhile, causal analysis shows that export from Denmark typically occurs as a consequence of the merit order
Merit Order
For other uses see Order of Merit The merit order is a way of ranking available sources of energy, especially electrical generation, in ascending order of their short-run marginal costs of production, so that those with the lowest marginal costs are the first ones to be brought online to meet...
effect, when large thermal plants have reserve capacities at times the spot market price of electricity is high. In any case, the export price is the intermediate between the prices of the two areas, so the exporting TSO (Energinet) uses the profit to relieve tariffs. This service of timeshifting production and consumption is also found around the world in pumped-storage hydroelectricity
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity
Pumped-storage hydroelectricity is a type of hydroelectric power generation used by some power plants for load balancing. The method stores energy in the form of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost off-peak electric power is used to run the pumps...
balancing coal and nuclear plants.
Wind turbine industry
Market share
Market share is the percentage of a market accounted for by a specific entity. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 67 percent responded that they found the "dollar market share" metric very useful, while 61% found "unit market share" very useful.Marketers need to be able to...
in 2003, when the industry employed some 20,000 people and had a turnover of around 3 billion euro
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
.
The biggest wind turbine manufacturers with production facilities in Denmark are Vestas
Vestas
Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines. It is the largest in the world, but due to very rapid growth of its competitors, its market share decreased from 28% in 2007 to 12.5% in 2009...
and Siemens Wind Power
Siemens Wind Power
Siemens Wind Power, or SWP, is a wind turbine manufacturer with headquarters and main production facilities established in 1980 in Brande, Denmark. SWP is wholly owned by Siemens of Germany since 2004 through the Renewable Energy division in the Siemens Energy sector...
.
The development of wind power in Denmark has been characterized by a close collaboration between publicly financed research and industry in key areas such as research and development
Research and development
The phrase research and development , according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, refers to "creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of...
, certification, testing, and the preparation of standards. For example, in the 1980s, a large number of small Danish companies were developing wind turbines to sell to California, and the Danish Risø laboratory provided test facilities and certification procedures. These resulted in reliable products and the rapid expansion of the Danish turbine manufacturing industry.
Critics of Danish wind economics
In 2009, the Institute for Energy ResearchInstitute for Energy Research
The Institute for Energy Research , is a Houston, Texas-based company that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets....
commissioned the Danish think-tank CEPOS (Centre for Political Studies)
CEPOS
The Danish Centre for Political Studies, also known as CEPOS, is an independent research institution recognized under the Danish state, which works as a classical liberal/free-market conservative think-tank in Denmark.-History:...
to report on electricity exports from Denmark (see above) and the economic impact of the Danish wind industry. This report states that Danes pay the highest residential electricity rates in the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
(partly to subsidize wind power), and that the cost of saving a ton of carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom...
between 2001 and 2008 has averaged 647 DKK (€ 87, US$ 124). The report estimates that 90% of jobs were transferred from other technology industries to the wind industry, and that 10% of wind industry jobs were newly created jobs, and states that as a result, Danish GDP is 1.8 billion DKK (US$ 270 million) lower than it would have been without wind industry subsidies.
American oil and coal industry behind CEPOS report
The report from Danish think tank CEPOS was later heavily criticised. Firstly Danish paper Ingeniøren discovered that the report was ordered and paid by the American oil and coal lobby . Later Danish researchers and professors from all Technical Universities in Denmark in a joint effort wrote a response to the report correcting it in a large amount of false allegations.The report from CEPOS was even brought to Government level, where minister of Climate and Energy Lykke Friis discredited the work done by CEPOS and the report.
Wind turbine cooperatives
To encourage investment in wind power, families were offered a tax exemption for generating their own electricity within their own or an adjoining communeMunicipalities of Denmark
This is a list of Municipalities of Denmark.-Region Hovedstaden:* Albertslund Municipality* Allerød Municipality* Ballerup Municipality* Bornholm Regional Municipality* Brøndby Municipality* Copenhagen Municipality* Dragør Municipality* Egedal Municipality...
. While this could involve purchasing a turbine outright, more often families purchased shares in wind turbine cooperatives which in turn invested in community wind turbines. By 1996 there were around 2,100 such cooperatives in the country. Opinion polls show that this direct involvement has helped the popularity of wind turbines, with some 86% of Danes supporting wind energy when compared with existing fuel sources.
The role of wind turbine cooperatives is not limited to single turbines. The Middelgrunden
Middelgrunden
Middelgrunden is an offshore wind farm in the Øresund 3.5 kmoutside Copenhagen, Denmark. When it was built in 2000, it was the world's largest offshore farm, with 20 turbines and a capacity of 40 MW...
offshore wind farm
Wind farm
A wind farm is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electric power. A large wind farm may consist of several hundred individual wind turbines, and cover an extended area of hundreds of square miles, but the land between the turbines may be used for agricultural or other...
– with 20 turbines the world's largest offshore farm at the time it was built in 2000 – is 50% owned by the 10,000 investors in the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Cooperative, and 50% by the municipal utility company.
By 2001 over 100,000 families belonged to wind turbine cooperatives, which had installed 86% of all the wind turbines in Denmark. By 2004 over 150,000 were either members or owned turbines, and about 5,500 turbines had been installed, although with greater private sector involvement the proportion owned by cooperatives had fallen to 75%. The cooperative model has also spread to Germany and the Netherlands.
Samsø Island
The island of SamsøSamsø
Samsø is a Danish island in the Kattegat off the Jutland Peninsula. Samsø is located in Samsø municipality. The community has 4,300 inhabitants called Samsingers and is 114 km² in area. Due to its central location, the island was used during the Viking Age as a meeting place...
erected 11 one-megawatt, land-based wind turbines in 2000, followed by ten offshore 2.3 MW wind turbines completed in 2003. Together with other renewable energy measures, this community of 4,200 achieved fame as the largest carbon-neutral settlement on the planet.
See also
- Energy in DenmarkEnergy in DenmarkEnergy in Denmark describes energy and electricity production. consumption and import and export in Denmark. Energy policy of Denmark will describe the politics of Denmark related to energy more in detail...
- List of offshore wind farms in Denmark
- Hydrogen energy plant in DenmarkHydrogen energy plant in DenmarkDenmark's first full-scale wind-Hydrogen energy plant and testing facility, the Lolland Hydrogen Community, began operation in May 2007. It is also the European Union's first full-scale Hydrogen Community Demonstration facility for residential Fuel Cell Combined Heat and Power .Located in the city...
- Danish Organisation for Renewable Energy (OVE)
- Nordic energy marketNordic energy marketNordic energy market is a common market for energy in Nordic countries. It is one of the first free energy markets in Europe and is traded in NASDAQ OMX Commodities Europe and Nord Pool Spot. In 2003, the largest market shares were as follows: Vattenfall 17%, Fortum 14.1%, Statkraft 8.9%, E.on...