Denmark targets 100% renewable electricity by 2050

Thanks to a steady policy commitment to clean energy, Denmark’s grid is more reliable than most European countries despite its high percentage of wind power.

Troels Gregersen, Nordics energy expert at PA Consulting Group said: “The system operator and the whole energy system are constantly being developed to accommodate the fact that we are going away from fossil centralized production capacity to renewables.”

Energy transition started in the 1970s in Denmark with the oil shocks, and the country has dedicated to include low-carbon energy in its grid to acquire energy independence, thanks to national energy planning.

Justin Gerdes, author of the e-book Quitting Carbon: How Denmark Is Leading the Clean Energy Transition and Winning the Race to the Low-Carbon Future said: “Some of the planning utilities are just starting to do here in the U.S. what the Danish grid operator has been doing for decades now.”

Denmark is now a global wind power leader, with 42 per cent of its energy from wind, and an international record by producing 140 per cent of its electricity demand on July 9 and 10 of this year.

Energinet.dk is Denmark’s grid operator and it controls and plans the supply and generation of electricity for the country, thanks notably to advanced day-ahead weather forecasting, enabling the coordination of various small energy cooperatives.

Read full story: Climate Action Programme