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The Danish government intends to increase energy generation from onshore wind and photovoltaics ahead of 2030, says Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. The statement was made during a press conference presenting a larger joint proposal on green energy. Frederiksen says:
”We now raise our ambitions even more with onshore wind additions, more solar panels and offshore wind as well as more energy islands. We want to extend renewable energy by as much as possible and in the most clever way,”
The purpose of the proposal is to accelerate Denmark’s green transition and free Denmark of Russian fossil fuels as fast as possible. The proposal also includes initatives to phase-out of natural gas, increase renewable gas and build out the district heating grid and harvest the full potential of the North Sea.
At the press conference, Minister of Climate, Energy & Utilities Dan Jørgensen says it’s ”hard to quantify” the national potential for boosting green power output by 2025. The government’s plan will require a fourfold growth of present onshore wind generation.
However, the plan leading up to 2030 will be “quite infeasible under the current ceiling for installations for onshore wind turbines – even by replacing older machines with new and more efficient models.”
Barriers must be removed to ensure availability of necessary areas, as stated by the proposal, which also notes that ”prices of both solar farms and onshore wind turbines have declined in recent years”, also providing ”more and more examples” of developments viable absent state subsidy.
The government also says adding green capacity beyond domestic requirements must be achieved at zero subsidy and without ”substantial costs” for consumers and customers.
Denmark wants to harvest the full potential of offshore wind to create green energy for Europe. A provisional estimate shows an initial demand for at least 35 GW of offshore wind from the Danish parts of the North Sea. This is approx. the same amount of offshore wind energy that was installed on a global level in 2020.
Denmark already plans to build the world’s first energy island in the North Sea. At maximum capacity, the hub will be able to power 10 million European households with clean energy from its surrounding wind farms. Another energy hub will be established on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea with a capacity of 2 GW.
Denmark’s energy island in the North Sea is one step closer to realisation following a new political agreement formed by the Danish Parliament. As a bedrock in Denmark’s Climate Act, the 10 GW North Sea energy island hub seeks to supply green electricity to millions of homes.
A key part of the new proposal is that Denmark must reduce its consumption of natural gas in order to become independent of Russia as soon as possible. Therefore, approximately 400,000 homeowners currently relying on fossil heating, will have to switch to another heat source.
The district heating grid must be expanded so that even more households can get green and cheap heat. The government’s plans to complete the last district heating projects by 2028. For homes that cannot get district heating, the goal is to replace furnaces with a green heat pump. For the remaining households, natural gas must be replaced with green gas.
Denmark plans to take on a leading role in achieving EU’s goal of reducing its dependency on Russian gas. This will be done by increasing the development of green gas, supplying green energy, green solutions, and Danish natural gas temporarily.
In the EU, Denmark will also push for higher targets for renewables and energy efficiency, as these measures are key – both in order to address the climate crisis and to make the EU fit for energy independence.
Earlier in April, Denmark and 10 other EU Member States co-signed a statement in which the countries urge the EU to speed up and increase the climate ambitions in the Fit for 55 negotiations to quit Russian fossil fuels as quickly as possible. 1
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there is an urgent need to pave the way towards a future in which the EU is independent from Russian fossil fuels. Green solutions and much more renewable energy is among the answers.
