Denmark Plans To Be Coal-Free In 10 Years 332
merbs writes "Earlier this year, Denmark's leadership announced that the nation would run entirely on renewable power by 2050. Wind, solar, and biomass would be ramped up while coal and gas are phased out. Now Denmark has gone even further, and plans to end coal by 2025.
Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a shame that Denmark can't get off of natural gas sooner than coal.
Re:Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:5, Informative)
Russia has demonstrated that it is unwilling to engage in above-board transactions for their fuel exports.
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It's a shame that Denmark can't get off of natural gas sooner than coal.
Thanks to the North Sea, Denmark is a net exporter of oil and natural gas. It's actually the coal they need to import. And compared to natural gas, it's actually the coal that is considerably dirtier. I personally don't see anything wrong with their plan. Few countries are in the position they're in, they will even benefit from what's going on with Russia right now.
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Not to mention, the coal plants aren't just simply going to disappear. I really doubt Denmark is just going to dismantle them, at least in the near future - they'll surely just maintain them and keep them around for emergencies (such as an energy war with Russia or whatnot).
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Why would we want to keep them around for that contingency? The post you are replying to is correctly stating that we are self sufficient in gas and oil.
Also, if Denmark ever went to war with Russia, we would be wiped off the map in the first few hours as we are a strategic staging point for the US and allies (Basically, everyone where pointing nukes at Denmark during the cold war).
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I believe the housewives of the town are happy though. When I was a kid they were always complaining that their laundry hanging outside for drying was getting dirty by the smoke from the powerplant and the dus
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> I really doubt Denmark is just going to dismantle them
That's precisely what they did in Ontario. We got rid of all our coal plants, and started dismantling them. Actually, one was turned to biomass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeview_Generating_Station
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearn_Generating_Station
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It's a shame that Denmark can't get off of natural gas sooner than coal.
Denmark does have a little oil in at sea, being drilled up mærsk, along with some natural gas. If I'm not mistaken Denmark is self sufficient when it comes to gas and oil...
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Europe's push for renewable energy, coupled with the fact that large-scale LNG exports are due to come online from North America in the next few years means that using energy disruption, or even the threat of it, as a foreign policy weapon is going to be FAR less effective.
Re:Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily. In times gone by, town gas was produced to meet fluctuating demands (using coal) by storing in gasometers. Nothing to say this couldn't be also done with biomass gasification.
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Where are they going to get enough biomass? Farms aren't going to grow low value biomass instead of high value food.
Britain gets enough by importing wood from America [bbc.com], with plenty of subsidies to make it affordable. Everyone, except the politicians, agrees that the policy is idiotic and counterproductive.
Re:Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:4, Insightful)
So switch from one import of power to another? I think that's kinda defeating the whole point.
Re:Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:4, Informative)
Food is biomass, and according to Wikipedia, half of all food - 100 kg per person per year - is wasted. Dunno if it would be enough to cover the need, but a low-cost, low-maintenance, high-reliability gas generator could potentially have markets, at least in apartment buildings, assuming it's actually possible to build one.
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Denmark has a substantial pig farming industry.
Who run Bartertown?
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You're thinking "enough" in the context of current fossil fuel consumption, not in terms of renewable energy load balancing, which could be a much smaller slice of the pie.
Re:Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you could use grid-scale energy storage, combined with low-loss HVDC long-distance transmission. HDVC lines can be over 2000km long, bigger than an individual weather system, so a network of them can redistribute intermittent wind and solar output effectively.
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You can but that costs many billion dollars. To do a continent wide HVDC network with some limited energy storage (compared to what would ideally be needed) you're looking at many hundred billions $$$ or EUR.
Re:Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:5, Insightful)
You can but that costs many billion dollars.
So do the alternatives. Coal causes billions of dollars of damage to the environment and people's health. Nuclear costs billions of dollars to build, and in the UK we have to guarantee double the normal rate for the electricity produced during the plant's lifetime. There is a third option, which is spending billions on efficiency improvements.
No matter what we do we will end up spending that money, so the question is what do we want to spend it on.
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Europe is already planning an HVDC super-grid to cover the entire continent by 2020.
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> You can but that costs many billion dollars
Lots of things do. Olkiluoto 3 is currently budgeted at over $10 billion, about the same as Flamanville. To power Europe to the level we're discussing here, it would cost many hundreds of billions of dollars. Renewables plus the network would probably cost about the same. Doing the same with coal or NG would cost maybe half that, or maybe a bit less because you wouldn't need as much transmission (you can locate the plants closer to the loads).
> To do a cont
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Erm, which energy do you want to store? ... the limiting factor is mainly voltage.
And, did you ever check how big Denmark is?
High voltage lines, regardless of DC or AC can literally be as long as you want
Re:Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:5, Informative)
"Renewable" energy requires natural gas in order to compensate for fluctuating output.
That is true but not necessarily the way you think. In the long term the idea is to create substitute natural gas (SNG) [wikipedia.org] from excess energy that would otherwise go to waste using hydrogen and CO2 for example with the Sabatier reaction [wikipedia.org]. This is the same process Nasa is planning to use to produce rocket propellant on Mars. It's not a super efficient process but if you can harvest the CO2 from the atmosphere, you can still store energy that would otherwise be wasted and unlike drilling and fracking it's a closed cycle as opposed to a release of sequestered carbon. SNG it has the advantage of enabling you to recycle the existing natural gas distribution infrastructure.
Re: Breaking the stranglehold of other countries (Score:4, Interesting)
Norway has a lot of Walter power which can also be used to store Wind energy surplus. As Norway is just around the corner, this is a nobrainer. Also in Kiel north Germany they build a "heat sink" which converts wind energy surplus in heat for community heating. There system s designed to also store heat. As plus, in winter when we have a lot if wind we also need more community heating.
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Norway has a lot of Walter power
http://www.cool-chaos.com/imag... [cool-chaos.com]
Rock on bro. ;)
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"Renewable" energy requires natural gas in order to compensate for fluctuating output.
"Base load" is a marketing term for coal, there is no generation technology that matches output to the demand curve of a modern city, they all need to be balanced via gas turbines and pumping water uphill purely for economic efficiency, there's nothing to stop a nation over provisioning with generators of any kind to eliminate the need for fast switching gas turbines if the politics demands that kind of self punishment.
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Yes there is: nuclear power.
But you know... NIMBY.
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So, they will become coal-free? (Score:2)
What is the point? And what's the plan, dig out all the coal and ship it off somewhere?
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What is the point? And what's the plan, dig out all the coal and ship it off somewhere?
Coal in Denmark... Ha :) there is like no natural resources in Denmark... A little oil at sea along with some fish, I think that's about it... And wages way to high for mining to be profitable...
Re:So, they will become coal-free? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah no. I have to say citation needed. Coal demand is increasing not decreasing.
1990 coal production - 4677mt
2013 Coal production - 7823mt.
Coal mines are only shutting if they were borderline operations. Do not confuse closing a mine that is uneconomical at the current price, a price that is the result of a world wide economic down turn, with a longer term move away from coal.
ref - http://www.smh.com.au/environm... [smh.com.au]
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The vast majority of it is yes. Have a look at Hay Point, Gladstone port, & Abbot Point to get a feel for the scale of the export infrastructure.
Coal consumption in Australia is around 130mt where we export about 450mt. Australia is the largest coal exporter and makes up about a quarter of the worlds traded coal market. Of that Australia exports 80+% of its black coal and this makes up about 65% of the world trade in metallurgical coal (used for steel making), of the thermal coal Australia makes up a
Re:So, they will become coal-free? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know that it is those miners that allow you to have the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed? Like it or hate it without mining the Australian economy is in trouble in a big way. We have always been a primary industry economy, we either farm it or we dig it up. That is not going to change any time soon, we are in a shitty location to be a manufacturer, too far from anywhere. We do not have the capital or employment structures to be an effective IT startup area (see employee share scheme laws). Our population is too small to be the critical mass needed for some other type of business that I can't think of.
We are however very very good at mining, oil & gas extraction and processing. You may disagree with doing it. You may think it is raping the planet. But you reap the rewards of that industry living here.
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You know that it is those miners that allow you to have the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed?
I'm an Australian miner, and even I can recognise that coal mining needs to go. We have plenty of other things that we can dig out of the ground that are less damaging. Our dependence on coal is a disaster in the making, financially as well as environmentally.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/201... [reneweconomy.com.au]
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Canada is pretty much the same way, and we've got a smaller population then you do. What happened was the government offered large financial incentives for other industries to open up. This has pretty much worked, so we're more diversified then a industry economy or even a raw resource country.
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Canada (35m) has a larger population than Australia (23m)
Re:So, they will become coal-free? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also you share a really big land border with the biggest consumer nation in the world. If you build something good in Canada you can be selling it in the US for the price of a truck shipment.
If you build something good in Australia it has a really really really long way to go before it can be consumed in the US.
There is a reason why we produce large quantities or iron ore, copper, bauxite, coal, uranium, lead, zinc, and gold. It is because the primary consumers of those are close by (China and India). Brazil is Australia's biggest competitor in the floating traded iron space and Australia wins a lot of the time because we are physically closer to China.
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It is. But it has been incredibly subsidised by feed in tarrifs. My parents have a feed in system that pays 50c / kwh. That is more than double what they pay for electricity.
Solar is great. I want it but would have to cut down lots of old growth trees so I don't have it. It isn't however currently suitable for base load generation. It is once factor of a larger energy grid.
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Solar Thermal is very much suitable for baseload, especially in areas where there is a lot of sunshine (like here in sunny Queensland). And the technology is already operational in parts of the USA and Europe feeding power into the grid so its not like its some unproven technology that isn't ready for the real world.
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There are a couple of thermal solar plants under construction in Queensland already. Origin's plant is the largest currently. There is also a plan for a very large one not far from Townsville.
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The NIMBY response to Nuclear in Australia is HUGE. Also while we have coal power plants we are a major exporter. Even if we stopped using coal for power it would just mean more goes to the port.
The only nuclear plan in Australia is a research plant in Sydney. QLD has blanket rules against even mining Uranium due to the fear around it.
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I live in Brisbane and I have witnessed that more and more businesses close their doors with signage saying "air-conditioned, we are open, please enter" (or with automatic doors that are closed unless people are using them). A lot of businesses cant do it at all (because their door is a roller-door or some other kind of door where customers wouldn't really be able to open it to enter)
Also, if a business faces onto an indoor shopping strip instead of outside, then its generally ok for the individual business
Puts the rest of us to shame (Score:3)
Our governments, and, oops, those who elected them.
The kind of target they are going for (especially the 2050 one) is in the ballpark of the kind of target we would all have to hit to avoid a complete screw-up on this file.
Are you a betting person?
I think it's great what Denmark's doing, but it saddens me to realize that political will in the rest of the world is so far far off the mark.
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I think it's great what Denmark's doing, but it saddens me to realize that political will in the rest of the world is so far far off the mark.
The goals set fourth by the EU aren't that bad either... Just saying the only major industrialized nation with decent goals is the US.
I don't know what they are doing to burn coal now (Score:5, Informative)
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com... [shrinkthat...int.com...]
Denmark pays a whopping 41 cents per kilowatt hour.
OUCH !!!!!!!
3.5 times the avg cost in the U.S.
It really doesn't take much for other energy sources to beat that. Going out on a limb here I suspect renewables could be cheaper by just not being subject to whatever it is they do that makes their current energy sources ridiculously expensive.
Re:I don't know what they are doing to burn coal n (Score:5, Interesting)
Denmark pays a whopping 41 cents per kilowatt hour.....3.5 times the avg cost in the U.S.
Do you even care about the size of your electricity bill... Mine is mainly an annoyance, it's like 10-15 USD / month.
Also note, very few people in Denmark uses electric heating as you can get hot water from centralized production into your home (not clean only for use in radiators). My parents gets their heating from a power plant 20km away.
Also buildings have strict isolation requirements, and incandescent bulbs have been banned through out EU (presumably you can still get them, but not through regular retail; I'm not sure).
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Do you even care about the size of your electricity bill... Mine is mainly an annoyance, it's like 10-15 USD / month.
Now treble or quadruple it. Then tell me about how "insignificant" it is.
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I WANT your electricity bill... Mine is like $1000 a quarter.
Re:I don't know what they are doing to burn coal n (Score:5, Informative)
Also note, very few people in Denmark uses electric heating as you can get hot water from centralized production into your home (not clean only for use in radiators). My parents gets their heating from a power plant 20km away.
Not to nitpick, but danes refer to that centralized production as "surplus heat". The "surplus" heat is heat generated as a bi-effect from producing electricity.... - from coal. So, when the electricity all comes from wind, the danes need to find some other way to heat their houses during winter.
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Also note, very few people in Denmark uses electric heating as you can get hot water from centralized production into your home (not clean only for use in radiators). My parents gets their heating from a power plant 20km away.
Not to nitpick, but danes refer to that centralized production as "surplus heat". The "surplus" heat is heat generated as a bi-effect from producing electricity.... - from coal. So, when the electricity all comes from wind, the danes need to find some other way to heat their houses during winter.
It also comes from trash burning, but yes. There are issues to be solved for sure.
Re:I don't know what they are doing to burn coal n (Score:5, Informative)
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com... [shrinkthat...int.com...]
Denmark pays a whopping 41 cents per kilowatt hour.
OUCH !!!!!!!
3.5 times the avg cost in the U.S.
It really doesn't take much for other energy sources to beat that. Going out on a limb here I suspect renewables could be cheaper by just not being subject to whatever it is they do that makes their current energy sources ridiculously expensive.
As with many things i Denmark, most of this is taxes (approx. 75%). The rest is the actual cost of producing the energy.
The coal-based plants in Denmark are very efficient and they produce many tons of acid and all sorts of chemicals from the emissions from the plants, before letting it out into the atmosphere.
As a side-story, the government recently cancelled a very popular funding-arrangment that made it very popular to install a local (6KW) solar plan on your roof. The ones who installed it in time, now have free electricity.
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Going out on a limb here I suspect renewables could be cheaper by just not being subject to whatever it is they do that makes their current energy sources ridiculously expensive.
What might make their current energy sources expensive? Going out on a limb here, but I'd guess it's raising taxes directly on the fuel to pay for its external environmental & military & health costs, rather than sweeping those costs under general taxation as we do here in the US...
Re:I don't know what they are doing to burn coal n (Score:4, Insightful)
No we are paying 36 Ãre/kwh, which is around 6 cents, the rest is taxes, transmission and other fucking bullshit stuff. (Which basically means, you can save close to 0 by switching providers, as the main part of your electricity bill is fixed).
circular politics (Score:2)
Danes: Hey, we can do this because the people in California are doi
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The Danes are probably looking to Sweden who has been doing this for years. Though in Sweden it only works because they buy coal-fueled power from Denmark during the peak hours.
Not sure who is planning this nonsense in Denmark now. We already have 33% wind power, but due to the issues with peak-power it will be hard to get above 66% and even that will require massive extra capacity.
Local energy makes perfect sense (Score:2)
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They have little or no coal in Denmark so it makes perfect sense to be less dependant on imports.
Denmark has fairly little biomass per capita, so they'll be highly dependent on wood imports from Sweden and Finland if they're going to phase out coal with biomass. Sweden already burns most if the leftover biomass that is left once the trees have been turned into planks and paper, which pretty much leaves Finland to supply Denmark.
Burning biomass is an extremely inefficient and stupid way of producing power unless you live in an extremely sparsely populated country with lots of woodland, which pretty much
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Sorry kid but petty arse licking politics for the sake of it bores me.
Imports from Norway and Sweden ? (Score:2)
This Danish goal, getting rid of coal plants by 2025, may not be hard to achieve, as they can import electricity, using sub-sea HVDC, from Norway, which has plenty of hydro, or by importing it from Sweden, which has plenty of nuclear and hydro. Running all of the country on wind power is a mirage. Where does the power come from when the wind doesn't blow, which may happen from time to time ?
Re:This is the future (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry I must have misread something. I saw no part that mentioned being more efficient or lowering energy usage.
Its just more morally acceptable to waste the same amount of power if it is 'green' power.
Re:This is the future (Score:5, Interesting)
And yes, at least a good chunk of that is actual, honest-to-god lifestyle differences [denmark.dk], not just situational.
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Re:This is the future (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Good idea beyond the "renewable" fad (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't bother to provide a source but I will: New wind and solar plants generate cheaper low-carbon electricity than the latest nuclear reactors, a study shows, indicating they will lead a global push for green energy. [bloomberg.com] There are lot of different factors that make this claim debatable, but even if wind is still somewhat more than nuclear, it's not "very expensive" which was the point.
Re:Good idea beyond the "renewable" fad (Score:4, Interesting)
That said, I'm fully willing to believe that wind power is cheaper than nuclear on a per-megawatt basis. What I don't believe is that wind power can reliably provide baseload power. All the studies in the world don't change one simple and indisputable fact: present-day production of wind power is miniscule compared to present-day electricity usage. Wind power has not yet proved that it can supply large quantities of power. Nobody except the most blind zealot would deny this plain fact.
Nuclear power supplies one sixth of present-day electricity usage worldwide. This is a very large amount of power compared to any other carbon-free technology. Nuclear power is not directly subject to vagaries of the weather. Even including Fukishima and Chernobyl, nuclear power is by far the safest energy source [forbes.com] (wind power comes in a very respectable second). Available supplies of nuclear fuel will outlast the lifetime of the sun [stanford.edu]. Nuclear power is proven and it works. Wind may work, and I'm happy to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it is without question an unproven technology at large scale.
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Wind power has not yet proved that it can supply large quantities of power. Nobody except the most blind zealot would deny this plain fact. .
Wind power supplies 41% of Denmark's electricity consumption. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... [wikipedia.org]
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No it is not.
You are bad in math. 1/6th is roughly 18%
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2. Renewable energy does not equal wind energy. It also includes solar and hydro energy. I do not believe wind alone can answer our power needs.
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Denmark already produces a nice deal of its base load via wind. Germany is about to replace the base load nuclear plants with wind.
Instead of fear mongering and hanging in Angst yourself I suggest to read up a bit.
Hint: learn what base load is, it is not what you believe it is.
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Are you really so out of touch with reality (Score:2)
You can't be that out of touch with reality (Score:4, Informative)
It's mainstream now with real advantages and disadvantages, has been for years. Live with the reality instead of attacking it as a political symbol.
Show me a country that runs on 100% gasoline, 100% hydro, 100% whatever - oh wait, such a request is incredibly fucking stupid and ignores the problems of monocultures. How about a sensible discussion instead of the political wank of being a useful idiot attacking what you see as "green" political symbols?
Who the fuck fed you that bullshit? The peaking power is not nuclear for a start, there's base load coal at places like Cordemais, there's hydro and there's even tidal hydro at Le Havre that's been running since the 1960s! What an utterly stupid and pathetic bluff - I'm really insulted that you have some much contempt for the people who read your comments that you tried it.
I really don't get why people decide they want to shed 100 points of IQ if there is a political barrow to push.
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Here is an alternate source [wikipedia.org] for comparison. Notice that offshore wind is 2.1 times as expensive as coal.
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Wind is neither very expensive nor environmentally damaging.
You need to read up.
Look at "bird and bat deaths".
Also look at land use issues. Problems with soil erosion on wind farms.
Need I go on?
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Why should the soil erosion on a wind farm be any different from an ordinary farm?
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WInd is unreliable and takes up loads of space.
Yes, but still... It'll be a while before we run out of ocean :)
The only wind turbines build on land in Denmark are for testing and development...
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Ocean no, shoreline yes. Especially shoreline where no one influental enough to block development happens to live. Windmills suffer considerably from NIMBY. All renewables do, due to the vast areas required by them.
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Windmills suffer considerably from NIMBY
So does coal and nuclear. No-one wants to live near those either.
Off shore wind, far enough out that no-one can complain, is getting cheaper all the time. In the UK it's already reached parity with nuclear, not sure about Denmark. Sure, there are challenges, just like there are with nuclear and cleaner coal.
If you are going to shoot down renewables because they are expensive or need some investment then you had better do the same with coal and nuclear, and get ready for the lights to go out.
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Wind does not really take up space nor is it unreliable.
It is not dispatch able, that is something different!
Hint: look at some photos of wind farms and you realize: they are on farm lands and the crops just grow fine underneath them!
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Wind and Solar are the cheapest energy sources since years. ...
Nuclear never was cheaper than coal anyway
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Good idea beyond the "renewable" fad
Renewable will have to become a lot more than a fad, and sooner rather than later, I think. Not because I think the Apocalypse is nigh or anything like that, but because it takes time for this new technology to mature, and the benefits, once it is mature, are going to be immense. It will of course be painful to some - all change is - but isn't it better to go through those changes voluntarily and being able to control the pace, than being forced because we are choking in our own filth?
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That's Norway. This story's about Denmark.
http://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik... [www.dst.dk]