We in the US still face the issue of our heavy dependence upon imported oil. Perhaps having the UN conference on energy and climate change in Copenhagen is appropriate, because more than any of our allies, the Danes have made the most progress in addressing such issues, while their economy continues to thrive.
As this Boston Globe op ed by Charles Warburg informs us, Denmark learned its lesson from the 1973 oil embargo, at which time 90% of the country's energy needs came from oil, almost all of which was imported. The Danish government and people responded with a major push on energy conservation.
All this energy-saving doesn’t seem to interfere with Danish productivity. To the contrary: Danes use less than half as much energy per capita as the average American, yet their gross national income per capita surpasses our own by a resounding 24 percent.
I was thinking of writing about Denmark after I caught a program on my TV yesterday which explored some of things Denmark is doing. For example, they process things like straw to extract multiple things from it, including producing a fuel for power plants and producing ethanol for the waste of that processing. The cost of the ethanol is cheaper than that which we produce from corn, and they are not using a food for fuel, an approach that has had devastating effects upon food prices in parts of the world heavily dependent upon corn as a staple.
Not all of the things Denmark does are necessarily exportable to the US, at least not on the same scale. Yet in reading the article I started to imagine how many might be usable, if not always on a national scale. Consider just one paragraph of the article, that immediately before the one quoted above the fold:
New homes in Denmark today are twice as energy-efficient as their pre-embargo counterparts. Waste heat from local power plants is used to heat Denmark’s houses and offices, boosting the energy efficiency of those plants from 40 to 90 percent. And with taxes on new cars and motor fuel among the highest in Europe, alternatives to automobile travel have flourished. In Copenhagen, a third of commuters travel by bike, their trips made safe and convenient by an extensive network of well-marked bike lanes.
Denmark committed to a major effort on wind. Originally the government offered subsidies of 30% of the initial costs of wind farms to kickstart the process. These subsidies have, over time, been phased out. And yet today Denmark gets 1/5 of its electricity generated from wind. Politicians and utility executives expect that proportion to reach 50% within the next 10-20 years. Consider that for a moment. Note that this Wiki article says that by 2008 Spain and Portugal got 11% of their electricty, Germany and Ireland 7%. Then consider wind power in the US. Our own National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that we could produce 20% of our current total energy needs from win. Now? According to this Energy Information Agency 2009 outlook our current level of production is only 08.% In other words, we lag far behind some European nations in taking advantage of this carbon-free method of producing electricity.
The Danes have some advantages in taking this approach. Consider this paragraph:
To ride out the inevitable fluctuations in wind-generated electricity, Denmark relies on a nimble Northern European power market, with grid interconnections extending throughout Scandinavia and down into Germany. When turbines are spinning out more power than Danish consumers need, electricity is marketed abroad. When winds are low, power from abroad - including Norway’s superabundant hydroelectricity - flows in to meet local demand.
While our grid is interconnected with that of Canada, which also has substantial hydroelectric generation capabilities, our grid is far from nimble. We know we will need to upgrade our grid to take advantage of new technologies. Denmark is moving heavily to plug-in electric vehicles, this is cooperation with a company based in Silicon Valley, a Better Place - we have much of the technology, but as a nation we have been slow to move in the necessary direction. Certainly the 8 years during which energy policy flowed from the infamous Cheney-led task force whose members have never been fully disclosed cost this nation much time in addressing energy needs. And we have a far higher reliance on individual vehicles than do the Danes or most other European nations: our public transportation systems are often a pale imitation of what the other nations provide, and their people do less travel for work and for shopping than we do.
The things about which Al Gore warned in "An Inconvenient Truth" are happening. If you doubt it, you can read In Bolivia, Water and Ice Tell of Climate Change in today's New York Times: the glaciers around La Paz and El Alto are rapidly disappearing. The latter is a poor city of about a million people, which may be faced with insufficient water for the people to remain there.
It is not as if the issue of global warming are new. Yesterday I came across a mention (which I cannot now find) of a prediction in the 1970s of anthropogenic global warming of 1.5 - 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. That is the crisis point we are now trying to avoid, and yet some either deny it is a problem, or are stubborn in their opposition to examining what other nations are doing to addressing the crisis.
We will not be able to simply copy Denmark's approach in its entirety. But there is much we can learn from the Danish experience, including that seriously addressing energy needs and the threats of climate change can yield economic benefits in a reasonable period of time. We should not allow some of the scary tv ads about job losses keep us from acting as we must.
As individuals we need to do what we can to reduce our own energy consumption: we are, after all, among the 300 million plus Americans whose energy consumption is more than twice that of the Danes, a people whose per capita GDP is higher than our own. Remember, 24% higher than ours. We do not have to retreat to a lesser standard of living.
We do have to reduce our per capita consumption of energy. We do have to change how we produce that energy to ways that are more efficient, produce less C02. We have to use the energy we produce more efficiently.
We cannot do all of these things without a comprehensive approach led by a national government committed to such a path. The Danes were lucky. Their society had produced a government conducive to making the necessary changes. To date we have not had a government willing to make the changes we undoubtedly must.
We may not care if nations like Tuvalu sink beneath the ocean. We are somewhat selfish and shortsighted. So what if the Bolivian glaciers disappear?
But what is happening near La Paz is also happening in this nation, in Alaska and in the lower 48. Were sea levels to rise several meters it would not be just small island nations and poor people along rivers in Bangladesh who would be flooded out. It would be millions of Americans in cities such as Miami, New York, Boston, and many others located on seas and tidal estuaries.
If we act now, and act boldly, we perhaps still have time to make a difference. A difference that could begin to show even in my lifetime - I am 63 - and will certainly show in the lifetimes of the generation or two after me.
If not, many may not have the richness of life I and my contemporaries have been able to enjoy.
It is not impossible to be green and prosperous. Denmark has shown us some of what is possible. It is time that we begin to learn, to apply the knowledge we gain, and begin the process of necessary change without which we doom future generations to what could be a world of bleakness, turmoil, food and water shortages, extreme weather, and worse.
Peace.