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Policy, not tech, spurred Danish dominance in wind energy
- moksly 6y agoI’m Danish and I’m surprised this is a study. It’s well known that a lot of our technical advantages in green energy comes from public investment (and not just money, policy) into making the change. It’s kind of how Americans put people on the moon isn’t it? Sure the private sector is important, but they’re not necessarily going to move society in the direction you want, only government can do that.
- rightbyte 6y agoI guess geography is a bigger reason than both tech and policy. Denmark probably have more coast per km2 than any other country in Europe.
- Etheryte 6y agoI would say this is somewhat misleading. It's not like other countries ran out of coast to put wind turbines on and that's the reason Denmark is ahead.
- rightbyte 6y agoYe well the turbines doesn't build them self ofcourse. I just mean that Denmark probably has the best locations to put them in the whole of Europe. Flat land and alot of see dunes. The article didn't touch that. Obvoiusly bad policies could have had them stuck at burning oil ...
- the-dude 6y agoDenmark has much more very low populated coast though. In NL we have plenty of turbines, curiously hardly on the coast.
- capableweb 6y agoNot sure about that, there are plenty of island-states in Europe that would surely have more coast per km2. Cyprus, Malta, Faroe Islands and more comes to mind.
- rightbyte 6y agoYe sure that is correct. "A lot of coast per km2 compared to other countries", then.
- Someone 6y agoWould they? Denmark isn’t a single land mass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark: “Denmark proper, which is the southernmost of the Scandinavian countries, consists of a peninsula, Jutland, and an archipelago of 443 named islands” Also, the Faroe Islands are part of the kingdom of Denmark (but if you go that way, you’ll also have to include Greenland, which has a low coastline/land area fraction) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of_coastline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of... puts Denmark at ≈150 m/km², Cyprus at ≈70, Malta at ≈700 (where does that come from? It’s only 3 islands. I would guess that’s using a different step size to measure coast length)
- capableweb 6y agoHehe, yeah, true about Faroe Islands, my mistake. Although, I'd still guess that full islands probably have more coast per km2 than half-islands (as Jutland has a tiny bit that is not coast) Worth adding is that we probably never will get a precise answer to this question, as measuring coasts is a famously hard problem where the more detailed the measuring, the longer the coast gets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
- BlueTemplar 6y agoSo, how is it measured in practice ?
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoScotland and Uk in general has vastly more potential wind energy than it could ever need, especially offshore wind in the north. It is being rapidly developed only now, as the cost of wind power in UK has plummeted
- blablabla123 6y agoIt's like in Germany, Solar got the greatest boost at a time when it was still really inefficient to use but it received government subsidies. After they stopped the subsidies growth stopped despite technical advances. The good news about this is probably that whether to use regenerative energy is an actual choice and mature enough building blocks to make the switch probably already exist.
- danaos 6y agoBut in the end it was the Chinese solar companies that reaped the money from the subsidies as they dominated the industry. This is true for all of the EU, not just Germany.
- svara 6y agoYeah, but maybe if in the end you get a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) over time curve for solar that falls off like a cliff [0] it was kind of worth it? [0] https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-now-cheaper-than-grid-electricity-in-every-chinese-city-study-finds https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-now-cheaper-than-grid-elec... (that's for China specifically, but the shape is the same everywhere.)
- BlueTemplar 6y agoInteresting, how much does the on-grid solar cost compared to off-grid ? Also, they seem to be mostly talking about cities... which already have an electrical grid !
- GuB-42 6y agoThat's also how France got its nuclear power. It is actually a similar story. The oil crisis in the late 70s and the limited availability of coal prompted both countries to invest into solutions to limit reliance on other, potentially unstable nations. Denmark went for wind power and France went for nuclear power. Originally, is was a question of national sovereignty more than it was about the environment. But now that we consider CO2 emission a little more seriously, it is a lead worth keeping, and policies are made to help.
- BlueTemplar 6y agoFYI France doesn't have any plan for fission nuclear in its future – (even reduced to 50% of current production, which seems to be the currently professed plan^W wishful thinking) – unless of course it's being for now kept as a complete secret from the general population. But we've pretty much reached the moment when new reactors have to start to be MASSIVELY built to start replacing the aging ones in a decade or so (it takes a long time to build a nuclear reactor !), so again, I doubt that there actually IS a plan out there. (A third possibility is that they are planning to keep the current reactors working waaay past their expected life duration, which is extremely reckless, and is certain to one day blow up in an international scandal, hopefully only metaphorically.)
- rjsw 6y agoEDF is building the new reactors in the UK so it is retaining experience in how to do it.
- BlueTemplar 6y agoThe clusterfuck that is Le Creusot (and in parallel Kobe Steel !) begs to differ…
- epistasis 6y agoThere's also Flamanville in France, which has been a complete disaster when it comes to construction. As well as one project in Finland. Did EDF learn anything from the two EPR that were built in China? Or was that just a pure sale of the design?
- landemva 6y agoI was also surprised a study was done to write about government policy incentives. Seems obvious. USA has a policy to subsidize corn production. This has led to a huge chemical-doused monocrop, corn syrup in most packaged food, and blending it in to gasoline fuel as "E85". None of these outcomes are particularly good.
- vangelis 6y agoCorn has a lot of political power in the US, especially in the Senate.
- epistasis 6y agoI'm not surprised a study was done at all. We need formal reports like this to catalog informal knowledge as formal knowledge, to make sure that such informal knowledge actually has basis in fact, and to quantify effects where possible. A lot of the things we believe, we believe out of tradition or hearsay. So having someone check them is a very useful function, and necessary for good decision making at the executive level.
- apexalpha 6y agoIn what sense is this informal knowdledge? Government has always steered society in the way it wants to go. That's what a government is.
- epistasis 6y agoMany government policies are completely ineffective. Some are effective. Sometimes technology change and business activities are far more important than policy. So cataloging what has happened is important.
- wombatmobile 6y ago> Sure the private sector is important, but they’re not necessarily going to move society in the direction you want, only government can do that. Are you sure? How about Intel, Apple, Spotify, TikTok, Veuve Cliquot and Tesla, for example?
- k__ 6y agoUnderstandable. The tech is not the problem, the people are. A friend of mine sells these things and you could literally gift people money to build these things on their land, but many won't do it.
- im3w1l 6y agoI guess the transaction costs are what's stopping people. Takes a non-trivial amount of time to evaluate whether it's a good idea. Might get easier after a while as social proof becomes available.
- Cancan82 6y agoIs it fear of damage or danger that would keep them from taking it for free?
- cinntaile 6y agoIt's probably a lot simpler than that. They destroy the nice scenery and the money being offered isn't enough to compensate for that.
- the-dude 6y agoIt is not just about the scenery, there is noise and light pollution as well.
- moogly 6y agoPlus often the need to build high-power transmission lines, not to mention the land depreciation after 20-25 years (the lifespan of the average wind turbine). The cost of decommissioning just one wind turbine (and you probably have at least 3-4, building fewer in one site is rarely worth it) is likely to make the land it stands on completely worthless.
- epistasis 6y ago> likely to make the land it stands on completely worthless. Sorry, what? Are they building the pylons with nuclear waste? How could land depreciate?
- wazoox 6y agoThe important idea here IMO is that "free markets" don't exist and don't drive anything. States create policies (Ideally, these policies would be entirely democratically chosen, alas that's rarely how it works). Markets appear. No market can make any meaningful decision on what to do and where to go at any time out of day to day operation. Unfortunately the EU commission (and most of our governments) seem to believe that "let the magic invisible hand of the market work, and all will be great". Not. On another note, it's fascinating to see that about 80-85% of our energy in Europe is from fossil fuels. A very large (and rapidly increasing) part of these fossil fuels are imported (because North sea is in rapid decline), often from quite unpleasant countries (Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc). But apparently noone in power seem genuinely interested in sorting out this big problem in a way that would be advantageous to the European public (not even mentioning the climate). Some actively behave like foreign agents, in fact. Go figure.
- mrmonkeyman 6y agoThey do, actually. Consumers make choices, you know. They want things. Them not caring about the environment is a very realistic and actual theme, because that is exactly what is going on. No one giving a substantial shit, only talk, no walk.
- raverbashing 6y ago> to see that about 80-85% of our energy in Europe is from fossil fuels Only if you mean total energy and not only electricity > In the EU in 2018, 40 % of the electricity consumed came from power stations burning fossil fuels and 33 % from renewable energy sources, while 26 % came from nuclear power plants. Among the renewable energy sources, the highest share of electricity consumed came from wind turbines (11 %), hydropower plants (13 %), biofuels (5 %) and solar power (4 %). https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-3b.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/infographs/energy/bloc-3...
- wazoox 6y agoOf course I mean all energy. I don't understand why everyone think only of electricity. Globalisation relies on transports, and transports rely at more than 90% on oil. Oil is the blood of our global world, and there's no credible alternative in sight (the peak, OTOH, is well in sight and could even be behind us already).
- hikerclimb 6y agoHopefully wind energy doesn’t work... and temperatures rise by 10 degrees Celsius.
- x87678r 6y agoI had uncles who worked a lot in Altamont Pass back in the 70s and 80s. That was all heavily subsidized by US and CA governments.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y agoI would have thought it was obviously Geography. It's "Dominance" is because it's a peninsula located right next to Germany, which acts as both a customer and a "ballast" to even out the production swings from wind with its massive amount of coal burning and natural gas imported from Putin.
- perfunctory 6y ago> Policy, not tech, spurred Danish dominance in wind energy Thank you, captain obvious.