Denmark's "Community" Approach to Renewable Energy

Longtime 2GreenEnergy supporter Aedan Kernan commented on my piece bemoaning the U.S. government’s failing to respond to the will of the people, and clinging onto a de facto energy policy that is rooted in fossil fuels. Aedan lives in the eastern part of England, Norwich as I recall, and carries with him a deep understanding of the “energy ethos” of that entire region of the world. Here’s an article he wrote on Denmark’s approach to energy, including an explanation of how it’s possible that the country is making such rapid progress in the direction of wind energy (by 2020, 50% of Denmark’s electricity will be supplied by wind, and Denmark’s Parliament has agreed a route to 100% renewable energy by 2050).

How is all this possible? According to Professor Frede Hvelplund of Aalborg University Local, a big part of the answer is community ownership. A key part of the strategy is the dismantling of the idea of the concentrated ownership of power generation assets. Those living near wind farms, for instance, are given significant incentives to invest in them; conversely, those not living nearby are discouraged from investing.

That’s an interesting twist on the whole concept of distributed generation, where we break away from the 20th Century energy paradigm in which large, centralized utility monopolies, not necessarily functioning in the customers’ best interests, are balanced out (or even replaced by) numerous smaller points of energy generation, closer to the load, and focused more on the needs of the surrounding community.