While news is dominated by horrible politics & war, I thought it’s good to bring some under-the-radar good news to people. Last month, I discussed how renewables now dominate electricity generation in Germany, now I turn my attention to Denmark, where wind & solar now edged closer to a two-third share, while power from burning fossil fuels dwindled to a little over a quarter of total consumption (see diagram based on data published yesterday by the Danish Energy Agency ENS).
Along with the US & Germany, Denmark was one of the pioneers in the application of wind power in the 1980s, and remained the most committed in the 1990s.
Initially, wind power development was dominated by farmers (and small developers leasing land from farmers). Then, in the mid-1990s, the government set a more ambitious goal for wind to provide 50% of domestic electricity consumption, and to achieve that, they pioneered the development of off-shore wind: turbines installed in shallow seas, which can exploit stronger & more stable winds than on land.
As in Germany, deployment was temporarily throttled by right-wing governments (in particular Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s 2001-2009 government and to a lesser degree Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s second, 2015-2019 government, the effect of which you can also see on the diagram); though, to be fair, an updated goal of complete 100% decarbonisation was first set in law by another right-wing government (Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s 2009-2011 first cabinet). The original 50% target for wind has finally been reached and even exceeded in the last two years.
Something else happened in recent years: a rapid expansion of solar power. This is the more noteworthy if you consider that Denmark gets significantly less sunlight than Bavaria (1,000 vs. 1,200 kWh/m2/year), which in turn gets significantly less than southern Spain (1,800 kWh/m2/year) or Arizona (2,200 kWh/m2/year).
The reason solar is practical in Denmark is not just the cheapness of photovoltaic cells, but something I already discussed in the story on Germany: the natural balancing between wind & solar. That is, even though both wind & solar power show strong variation (intermittency), if you have both, then their combination will have much less variability, especially when scaled to the (also variable) consumption; and that both on the daily and seasonal timescales. By last year, this effect grew really significant. As you can see on the diagram below (also based on ENS data), the combination of wind & solar was above 50% of total consumption through all months of the year, but never above 80%. Quite noteworthy for a country much smaller than Germany (or California or Texas) where a single storm can have a major effect.
Something else apparent on both the 2000-2023 and 2023 diagrams is that total domestic electricity production can be both significantly above and below consumption, and this was already true when renewables had a low share. In other words, Denmark has quite significant volumes of electricity import and export. The flows behind the net totals visible on the diagrams and the reasons for them are actually quite complex, but let’s untangle some main stories:
- Norway has abundant hydropower, while Sweden has hydro, nuclear, and lately wind, which can be cheaper than Denmark’s own fossil fuel plants.
- Back when it built nuclear plants, Sweden, like France (see in my Germany diary) tried to reduce demand variability by promoting electric heating, which, like in France, had the adverse effect of demand surges during cold spells (the times when Denmark became a net exporter). The recent expansion of wind power in Sweden reduced that effect (thanks to generally stronger winds during winter and specifically cold spells).
- Export/imports are also used for balancing intermittency, and this can be done selectively: export surplus during high winds to Germany & import from Sweden & Norway during low winds.
- At other times, the Danish power grid serves as transit for exports from Norway & Sweden to Germany.
As I discussed in the diary on Germany, there is a problem barely discussed by policymakers and general media that decarbonising intermediate & peak power is a lot more difficult than decarbonising baseload. Here I have to note that this affects the Scandinavian countries in Europe much less, because they can rely on abundant hydropower to provide intermediate & peak power.
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Below is a bonus diagram, complementing last month’s diary: the same seasonal variation over the last five years in Germany. I took the public-domain diagram from a monthly report issued by Germany’s Federal Environment Agency, but I added an English-language caption on the top right.