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Join us at WindEurope 2025 in Copenhagen

In 2025, the WindEurope Annual Event will once again return to Denmark as policy-makers, ministers, experts and professionals from the entire wind industry gather in Copenhagen.

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White paper: Wind energy - driving the global market

Download our white paper "Wind energy - driving the global market" and discover how wind is pushing the ambitions for a renewable energy transition.

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Wind energy, driving the global market white paper

Explore the Danish wind value chain

From R&D, installation and grid management to sustainable supply chains, Denmark covers the entire spectre of the wind industry. Discover solution providers throughout Denmark's wind value chain.

Explore the wind value chain
wind value chain

Join us at WindEurope 2025 in Copenhagen

White paper: Wind energy - driving the global market

Explore the Danish wind value chain


Denmark has made great strides in wind energy, utilizing the power of the wind to generate clean, renewable electricity for millions of people. Despite being a geographically small country, Denmark has invested heavily in both onshore and offshore wind, making the country a leading player in the global wind energy industry.

With approximately 7,000 turbines accumulating 7.2 GW across land and sea, more than half of the Danish electricity consumption is covered by the wind blowing over the country’s sea and land.

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With the full value chain represented, Denmark is home to thousands of innovative wind solutions.

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Denmark: A pioneer in offshore wind energy

Denmark is by many considered the birthplace of offshore wind energy. In 1991, Denmark made history as the first country in the world to install a commercial offshore wind park. 11 wind turbines with a combined capacity of 5 MW were installed in the shallow waters off the coast of Vindeby in the southeast of Denmark.

Though modest in size, it was the beginning of a giant leap in wind energy on a global scale. Since the early 1990s, Denmark has continued to lead the way in the development and implementation of offshore wind technology, with a number of large-scale wind farms installed in the North Sea and Baltic Sea. Wind turbines have become highly efficient and cost-effective, with the newest offshore models reaching up to 15 MW in size.

Denmark has 8,750 kilometers of coastline and is surrounded by shallow waters, which is ideal when harvesting the wind resource. Up till now, Denmark has installed 2.5 GW offshore wind, and is looking into a built-out of up to 14 GW before 2030.

One of the key factors in driving Denmark’s success in offshore wind has been a strong focus on technology development and investing in research, demonstration, and test facilities and today, Denmark is home to some of the world’s largest and most innovative offshore wind farms such as Kriegers Flak, which is the first offshore wind farm to have grid connection to two countries.

The strong Danish offshore wind ambitions also entail plans to construct the world’s firs energy island, exploiting the immense wind energy resources in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. The plans envisage the establishment of an artificial island in the North Sea that will serve as a hub for offshore wind farms supplying 3-4 GW of energy, with a long-term expansion potential of 10 GW.

The island of Bornholm will serve as the energy hub in the Baltic Sea with electrotechnical infrastructure and the possibility of green hydrogen production connected to 3 GW offshore wind farms planned off the coast of the island. Both energy islands will have grid connections to neighboring countries and are thus part of a hub-and-spoke grid that enables electricity to flow across borders and supply clean energy to the regions surround both seas.

Denmark has a strong commitment to renewable energy and environmental sustainability. The country has set ambitious targets for reducing its carbon emissions, and offshore wind has played a major role in helping it achieve these goals.

Harnessing the power of nature

Denmark’s total capacity of onshore wind equals 4,769 MW, while the national offshore wind equals 2,468 MW.

Wind turbines in Denmark test

Onshore wind: The past, present, and future of wind energy in Denmark

Onshore wind turbines have been used in Denmark for over a century, initially for agriculture and later for electricity. The Danish physicist Poul la Cour experimented with wind energy already back in the late 1800’s, but the 1970’s oil crisis truly reignited interest and kickstarted the growth in commercial wind energy in Denmark. By the early 1980’s, around 20 wind turbine manufacturers were active in Denmark, starting with wind turbines in kilowatt-sizes, but technology development has led to modern onshore wind turbines in the size of up to 7 GW.

Today, Denmark is a world leader in wind energy, with the industry employing around 33,000 people. More than 4,769 wind turbines rotate in the wind that sweeps through the fields of rural Denmark, making it a proud hallmark of the green transition and a Danish stronghold that dates back more than four decades.

As Denmark invests heavily in electrification, wind energy will play an even more critical role in the county’s future. To reach the country’s ambitious climate targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the installation of wind energy in both onshore and offshore hubs will play a big part.

And going green makes sense from a financial perspective too. Through years of working with standardization of production and processes, technology development design optimization and cross-industrial collaboration, the wind industry has succeeded in driving down the cost of wind energy. As a result, both onshore and offshore wind energy are now the cheapest sources of energy in Denmark, outperforming any fossil fuel.

Embracing the winds of change

Since Denmark first embarked on its journey to invest in harnessing the power of wind a lot has happened. By 2030, Denmark anticipates reaching a 60 per cent wind power share.

Explore the Danish wind value chain

Dive into our digital visualisation of Denmark’s green wind value chain, and discover companies and organizations that specialise in wind-related technology, research, and innovation.

Discover the Danish wind value chain

Discover solution providers across the wind value chain

From R&D, installation and grid management to sustainable supply chains, Denmark covers the full spectrum of the wind industry. Discover cross-sectoral solutions across the entire Danish wind value chain in the digital visualisation below.

Discover the full wind value chain at greenvaluechains.com

 

Discover solutions across the wind value chain

solutions

Offshore wind

+11

The gateway to offshore wind energy in Northern Europe

15 March 2023
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change is becoming an increasingly pressing issue. Offshore wind energy plays a key role in this by providing a clean, renewable energy source, which has been a major part of Denmark’s and Europe’s energy supply. However, the risi

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partners

Combined heat and power production

+20

Ørsted

25 January 2009
The Ørsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy. Ørsted develops, constructs, and operates offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, renewable hydrogen and green fuels facilities, and bioenergy plants.

partners

Wind energy

+13

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP)

25 November 2022
Founded in 2012, CIP today is the world’s largest dedicated fund manager within greenfield renewable energy investments and a global leader in offshore wind. The funds managed by CIP focus on investments in offshore- and onshore wind, solar PV, biomass and energy-from-waste, transmission and distribution, reserve capacity and storage, Power-to-X and advanced bioenergy.

partners

Wind energy

+8

Siemens Gamesa

25 January 2022
Siemens Gamesa is one of the world’s leading wind turbine suppliers who operate within both onshore and offshore wind as well as world-class maintenance.

partners

Offshore wind

+3

Vattenfall

13 August 2019
One of Europe's biggest producers and distributors of electricity and heat.

partners

Bioenergy

+36

Port Esbjerg

9 September 2021
Port Esbjerg is the North Sea’s leading port for offshore wind, base to the Danish offshore industry and an international hub for multimodal transport with six regular RoRo liner services.

partners

Offshore wind

+6

Odense Port

8 November 2022
Odense Port is one of Europes leading manufacturing ports within offshore wind. We have facilitated the production and load out of main components for 1.400+ offshore wind turbines.

partners

Buildings

+25

Port of Aalborg

17 November 2021
Port of Aalborg is more than a traditional port, transport hub and business park. We work with partnerships and collaboration. Sustainability and green transition. Symbioses and synergies. Knowledge and growth. Innovation and development. Transport and logistics. Local and global. Job creation and prosperity.... That is why, we dare to call Port of Aalborg "gate to great".

partners

Offshore wind

+3

Semco Maritime

11 February 2013

partners

Bioenergy

+11

Danish Energy Export

9 July 2014
Danish Energy Export creates your platform to the global energy industry.

partners

District energy

+12

Danish Energy Agency

15 April 2009
The Danish Energy Agency engages nationally and internationally in the production, supply and consumption of energy - with efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.
wind white paper

White paper: Wind energy - driving the global market

Approximately 4,800 turbines with a combined effect of 6.9 GW are installed in Denmark today with most of them onshore. The 6.2 GW constitute more than a third of the overall Danish production capacity. The large-scale wind energy integration is made possible by a well-developed transmission infrastructure, capable of handling the fluctuating wind energy resource. The Danish electricity grid is connected to the neighbouring countries, enabling the import and export of energy during peak periods.

This white paper takes you through all the elements of the success story of wind energy in Denmark. From the starting point and what we now consider small-scale wind turbines to the projects and technologies that push the bar and the ambitions for wind energy as a source of renewable energy.


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Offshore wind
Onshore wind
Operations and maintenance
Wind energy
Wind farm planning and development
Wind research and development
Wind test and demonstration
Wind turbine installation
Wind turbine manufacturing and components
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