Denmark Could Be Coal-Free In 11 Years

November 6th, 2014 by Jake Richardson

The coal industry must be horrified — an entire nation that wants to be coal-free by 2025? Imagine the press it will generate if Denmark can achieve this goal. The Climate and Energy Minister Rasmus Helveg Petersen said recently that Denmark is exploring how to quit burning coal for electricity, and fairly soon. Previously, the Denmark government had targeted 2030 as the time when it might be free of coal-based energy, but the time span has been shaved by five years.

“Of course, this is something we will do together with the industry. I don’t know how we can reach this goal, but I would like to find out if we, for example, can forbid using coal,” explained Petersen.

Currently, about 40% of Denmark’s energy supply is from oil and gas, with only 20% coming from coal. Wind power generates about 30%. Biogas, biomass, solar also contribute. The goal for wind power is to generate 50% of all electricity by 2020.

This looks like a real possibility, considering that Denmark has at times already generated more electricity than it consumed using wind power.

If just 20% of its electricity currently comes from coal and there are abundant wind power resources, the transition does seem very possible.

Burning coal produces toxic emissions, so the impetus to go coal-free is not only to fight climate changes. Human health is improved by reducing air pollution, so going coal-free is not only a “green” thing to do. Air pollution has been estimated to cause about 3,400 premature deaths a year in Denmark.

It is not radical in any way to want to improve air quality and at the same time fossil fuel emissions. Things will probably change very much in the next 11 years, in terms of energy production. How many electric vehicles will be on the roads around the world? Will there be other countries that are also close to kicking the coal habit?

Image Credit: De-Okin, Wiki Commons

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Tags: Coal free, Denmark, Denmark Coal Free

About the Author

Jake Richardson Hello, I have been writing online for some time, and enjoy the outdoors. If you like, you can follow me on Google Plus.

Larmion

Meanwhile, the view from Germany: http://www.renewablesinternational.net/will-danish-coal-phaseout-increase-german-coal-production/150/537/83005/

Denmark will partially replace its own native coal (which is high grade imported stuff) with extra imports from Germany (mostly highly polluting lignite).

We’re currently at a point where German utilities keep open polluting, uneconomical power plants due to high demand for German imports from its neigbours (mostly the Netherlands, but increasingly also Denmark, Poland and Austria). That’s shifting pollution rather than eliminating it.
- JamesWimberley
  
  No. Denmark runs a coal generator, producing x tons of CO2. It closes the plant, and replaces by imports. The CO2 generated by the imports depends on the generating portfolio of the exporters. It will be positive but lower than x and declining, as the neighbours also move away from coal. Besides, Denmark will certainly increase its own wind capacity, reducing the need for imports.
  - Larmion
    
    Of course there will be a net decline, but that’s simply thanks to Denmark’s increasing wind capacity (which was planned long before this promise). The coal plant closures themselves will have no effect other than moving some pollution southwards – and they were going to close soon-ish anyway due to their consistenly declining capacity factors.
    
    The reduction in emissions from electricity generation Denmark achieves in the coming years will no doubt be considerable. All I’m saying is that the closure of the remaining coal plants will contribute very little to that drop.
No way

The impressive part is not being a coal free country, there are lots of those countries. The impressive part is the transformation, going from extremely dirty electricity and heavy reliance on coal to no coal.
Hans

“Currently, about 40% of Denmark’s energy”

You probably mean electricity.
- Jan Veselý
  
  It is primary energy consumption (oil = cars). So it is about 40% renewables, 40% oil+nat. gas, 20% coal. Coincidently coal electricity makes about 40%.
  Windy Denmark has a luck to have “cousins” in Norway which is by now “the biggest battery in European grid”.
  - globi
    
    You mean, Norway is lucky that it can import Wind power from Denmark in the winter and save water (because there’s little precipitation at that time in Norway).
    
    Cold weather and low inflow decreased the Norwegian hydro reservoirs with 3.3 % from week 3 to week 4 [of January]. link
    
    [Danish] wind energy amounting to 61.7 % of total electricity use [in January]. link
    - tibi stibi
      
      european countries are lucky to work together. in spain they have a lot of sun, denmark the wind and norwegian the storage, so we can work together to get cheap, green and independend energy!
      - globi
        
        No doubt.
        And it is certainly a much wiser collaboration, than for instance buying pricey oil and gas from the Middle East and selling costly arms in return.
      - Jan Veselý
        
        They can’t French is blocking the road.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        A deal has been reached to allow more power to flow from Spain.
        
        And we’re talking about long term grid changes, not current roadblocks.
        
        I suspect France is trying to protect its market for selling surplus nuclear power. As France closes nuclear plants and has less need to dump power they will likely be more open to allowing Spain, Portugal and Morocco to sell power into the rest of Europe.
      - Larmion
        
        A deal has been reached to double the transmission capacity from Spain to France. Starting from a less than 5% of average production base, that still works out to peanuts.
        
        As for ‘dumping': France is a net importer of electricity during hours of peak demand – hours when southern European renewables do well. The main issue is that the French transmission grid isn’t exactly over dimensioned as it is and there is no will to pay for expensive upgrades that would mostly benefit Spain (as an exporter) and France’s neighbours (most of which are importers).
        
        A mechanism that rewards grid upgrades in countries that would mainly serve as thoroughfare in a European grid (and thus would be paying for the good of their neighbours) is needed.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Those “peanuts” mean that the roadblock has been breached.
        
        Europe, I suspect, would be well served by moving faster with its transmission improvements. The ability to move significant amounts of power will greatly reduce the amount of overbuilding and storage otherwise needed.
      - Larmion
        
        When EU negotiators need to spend all their effort to simply convince France to accept a symbolic increase in transmission capacity, the only realistic conclusion is that nothing changed.
        
        Transmission is indeed a huge obstacle towards a greener Europe. Some net importers (Belgium principally, but also several eastern European nations and the UK to a lesser extent) are close to large net exporters like Germany or Spain but cannot import meaningful amounts of excess renewable power due to the lack of interconnects.
        
        There’s a lot of talk in the EU about large, continent-spanning electricity corridors, but the real need is for small, boring interconnects at national borders.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Something changed which is a clear sign that nothing changed…. ;o)
      - Larmion
        
        Okay, then let me rephrase: ‘the only realistic conclusion is that nothing substantially changed’.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        This is reaching silly-land.
        
        The French were blocking additional transmission from Spain. Now they aren’t. The camel’s nose is in the tent.
        
        Do you suffer from a case of “perfect or nothing”?
        
        If so, I’d suggest a large dose of “celebrate successive approximations”…..
      - Larmion
        
        No, I suffer from a case of realism. This agreement was reached under great multilateral pressure (it was a condition for Spain’s support for a European emissions deal) and still went no further than a symbolic increase in transmission capacity.
        
        The next time France will be under the same level of pressure to allow an increase in transmission capacity is years away. As such, any meaningful level of integration of Spain and Portugal in the European grid is years if not decades away.
        
        Perhaps things could improve if the French electricity market were to change dramatically, but since there are no plans for a significant short-term decrease in nuclear generation or in management of the grid that is unlikely.
    - No way
      
      *lol*… Norway has no need to save any water during the winter. They have a lot more water power than they need.
      
      And that is why wind power going to Norway is extremely cheap and water power coming from Norway is expensive.
      
      So it’s definitely Denmark that is very lucky. It would be very hard for them to quit coal without the help of Sweden and Norway. And Sweden and Norway would have no problem at all if you cut the cords to the rest of Europe.
      
      There are even more cables being connected from Norway and Sweden to be able to help more countries with their goals.
      - globi
        
        (Reuters) – Norway is on the alert for potential electricity disruption as it deals with an unprecedented low in hydro-power reservoir levels, the head of Norway’s water resources and energy agency (NVE) told Reuters. link
        
        The hydro power levels in Switzerland follow the same pattern. (Hydro power levels drop during winter time and don’t increase before spring). link
    - JamesWimberley
      
      Commenters on Spain an d France: please check your facts. The two countries agreed in 2008 to build a new 2 GW interconnector in the eastern Pyrenees, more than doubling existing capacity. It will open on 2015 (link). The reason it has taken so long is a political decision, driven by environmental concerns and prestige, to build an expensive tunnel rather than an overhead line. They will get lower maintenance costs and presumably higher reliability. But in the austerity era, I expect future expansions will take the form of overhead lines at the Atlantic end.
      - Larmion
        
        Compared to over 100GW installed capacity (as of 2011) and generation of 280TWh for Spain and 20GW/45TWh for Portugal. That’s still a very small interconnection capacity indeed, far too little to export all excess renewable energy the Iberian Peninsula produces.
      - globi
        
        It’s also important to note that Spain only gets about 20% from wind energy and has plenty of flexible hydro and natural gas resources. Spain can currently easily function without trading any electricity.
        
        Besides there’s already a submarine from Sardinia to Italy and one from the Balearic Islands to Spain. So, Spain could also bypass France and sell electricity directly to Italy, if it would build a submarine cable to Sardinia, just as Norway build a submarine cable to the Netherlands.
        
        http://www.martinsaphug.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Europe-Political-Map.png
        
        http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Blank_map_europe_Nordned_cable.svg/220px-Blank_map_europe_Nordned_cable.svg.png
        
        But building all this extra transmission at this point, would be like buying tires before buying a car.
    - Kevin McKinney
      
      I’d add that, from the comparatively little I’ve read, electrical interconnectivity isn’t the only issue; it’s a repeated complaint in the the Economist magazine that European energy policy is highly fragmented, and that this imposes high costs on the continent not only economically but politically. (A leading example of the latter would be European timidity in responding to the Ukrainian crisis, where the fear of curtailment or loss of Russian natural gas supplies serves to constrain responses.)
  - Hans
    
    I don’t think you are correct.
    
    1) Since the author uses the word “generate” he mostl likely means electricity.
    2) Denmark has some oil based power generation
    3) The numbers the author uses fit the official numbers for electricity, not for primary energy.
    
    Sorry for being a dick about this, but without using the right wording this kind of articles quickly become meaningless.
    - http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
      
      Based on the link right above that line, it seems this is about primary energy. “Denmark’s energy supply comes from…”
      
      I’ve changed the wording above so that it is similar instead of using “generated by,” which as you note implies something else.