The official story is that Danish electricity is green and that it is getting greener all the time. When you hear about all the wind turbines that are being built, it sounds quite reliable. We enjoy being Europe’s climate champion, leading the way with wind energy, while the rest of Europe is stuck in a fossil past.
The truth is, however, that Danish electricity is at the CO2-heavy end of the scale when European countries are ranked according to how much CO2 their electricity production emits. According to the latest and best scientific study, published in Energy Strategy Reviews last year [1], it will only be a paltry 16th place out of a possible 27 .
Denmark’s electricity production emits approx. 6 times as much CO2 per hour produced electricity as Atom-France’s. Specifically, Denmark emits 442 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity, compared to just 78 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour. The wind countries Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain score an average or below average position. Norway gets a top score with large amounts of hydropower, made possible by their mountains and rushing rivers. Next, come the nuclear countries France and Sweden. The irony is that the green countries all built their electricity systems for many decades before fundamentalist “environmental” organizations had stigmatized nuclear energy. Maybe the past wasn’t so stupid after all?
The CO2 intensity of electricity generation in a number of European countries in the year 2017. All countries that have a shade of green have a large relative capacity of either nuclear or hydropower. Wind countries such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Denmark are doing less well. The method used is the same as electricitymap.org uses, here you can see real-time CO2 intensities. The method was peer-reviewed in Energy Strategy Reviews in 2019[2].
The above source is even gracious to Denmark, as it considers the burning of biomass as almost CO2 neutral. 17% of Denmark’s electricity comes from biomass[3]. Biomass is not clean energy and has only retained its status as renewable and CO2-free due to massive lobbying.
Biomass burning emits large amounts of CO2 and toxic particles, just like coal. This is documented by more than 800 scientists, including a wide range of the world’s foremost climate scientists, and EASAC, the pan-European science collaboration[4]. In addition, it takes 6223 times as much land to produce an hour of electricity with biomass as with nuclear power[5]. Thus, biomass puts pressure on food prices and nature, as huge fertile land must be dedicated to feeding power plants rather than people and ecosystems.
Fortunately, Statistics Denmark has figures for CO2 emissions from biomass in electricity production. These figures show that Danish electricity production emitted 490 grams of CO2/KWh in 2017, which is the latest year for which data is available. You can see the development on the dark blue line in the figure below, which describes the CO2 intensity of Danish electricity production including CO2 from biomass:
The blue line shows the CO2 intensity of Danish electricity production. Calculated with figures from Statistics Denmark, see footnote for details[6]. The red line is Energinet’s official CO2 intensity for electricity consumption. Energinet counts biomass as CO2 neutral.
The red line shows the official CO2 intensity figure from Energinet, which relates to Danish electricity consumption without CO2 from biomass. There is a large and growing gap between the two numbers.
The difference exists in two conditions. Firstly, Energinet shows the CO2 intensity of our electricity consumption and not electricity production. Denmark is heavily import-dependent, and we only cover 81% of our electricity consumption with domestic production[7]. The remaining 19% comes primarily from Sweden and Norway, which produce significantly greener electricity than Denmark.
Imports, therefore, reduce the CO2 intensity of our consumption significantly. Furthermore, Energinet does not include CO2 emissions from biomass, which accounts for 17% of Denmark’s electricity production[8]. Of course, we must include the CO2 emitted when we burn the world’s forests in our power plants, as biomass burning emits large amounts of CO2 and toxic particles, just like coal.
In order to evaluate the climate-friendliness of Denmark’s energy policy, one must of course look at what Denmark itself brings to the table. We must therefore look at the 81% of our consumption produced by Denmark. The leaking of clean electricity from Norway and Sweden has nothing to do with our political decisions.
Therefore, you must of course start with Danish-produced electricity when you want to assess whether Denmark’s energy policy is green. You can see the inter-European electricity market is like an electric potluck party. Denmark brought a sluggish liver pâté food to the self-service table, and Sweden brought a delicious lasagna. Denmark deludes itself that we have the credit for the fact that there was lasagna for the potluck party because we helped eat it.
Data coming from the peer-reviewed scientific literature is always better than Energinet’s government data. Energinet must follow the definitions from the Kyoto Protocol which, under pressure from the biomass lobby, defined biomass as CO2 neutral. Nothing prevents Energinet from also making more accurate electricity production statistics, including biomass, available. It would actually have been a good style to make the Danes a little more climate-wise.
One can speculate that Energinet/Energistyrelsen fails to do this, in order to remain on good terms with strong political-economic interests that profit from the CO2-heavy status quo. The powerful lobby organizations Wind Turbine Industry, the Confederation of Danish Industry, and Danish Energy want Denmark’s green image to be maintained, as they all profit from it. Energinet/DEA’s budgets depend on politicians, and the most powerful lobby organizations influence politicians’ re-election by either supporting them directly or not criticizing them in the public debate. Powerful friends are good friends.
That is why we always hear about Denmark running on 50% wind electricity and about days when we have produced wind energy to cover 160% of our consumption. It is conveniently omitted that electricity is only 20% of total energy consumption[9]and that wind actually accounts for only 8% of total energy consumption. But the climate is not improved by branding ourselves as green, it is improved by us being green. And the numbers clearly show that we are at the coal-brown end of the scale.
It is a big problem that Denmark’s electricity is so dirty because electricity should be the cornerstone of the entire green transition. Electric cars, heat pumps, and all the other solutions are not climate-friendly if they run on dirty electricity. If we electrified the rest of the energy system with the current electricity mix, it would result in CO2 emissions roughly equivalent to burning Russian fossil gas, which, according to the IPCC, emits 490 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of power produced. But even worse is that Denmark only produces enough electricity to cover 81% of its own consumption. In fact, we do not have enough power to make this transition.
Climate policy without nuclear power is a climate hazard
Denmark needs huge amounts of CO2-free power to implement the green transition that we and the planet crave. Many people’s knee-jerk reaction would be that “Then we have to get started building more wind turbines”. The problem with this is that wind turbines and solar cells, due to their low energy density, simply cannot deliver enough electricity fast enough:
The figure shows how much power production per capita grew during the ten-year periods when the respective states built most of the energy sources shown[10]. When Sweden built the most nuclear power, it gave more than 4 times as much power per capita as when Denmark built the most wind power. The study was conducted by some of the world’s leading climate scientists, including James Hansen, who is known in the United States as “The Father of Climate Change Awareness” after he was the first to put climate change on the congressional agenda. A large number of analyses have been carried out that make exactly the same findings as the one shown.
Furthermore, analyses show that countries with a lot of nuclear or hydropower are significantly ahead of the rest of the world’s countries when it comes to electrifying their energy systems with clean energy:
The figure may be a little tricky to understand, but the essence is: Countries that have a lot of hydropower or nuclear power get a larger share of their total energy consumption from electricity. The Y-axes (vertical axes) show what percentage of countries’ energy consumption comes from electricity. And on the X-axis (horizontal axis) you see how much electricity the countries produce with different sources. Every dot on the figure is a country. You see that when countries produce nuclear power and water power, the share of electricity in the countries’ energy consumption increases. This can be seen by the fact that the dots on the far right of the atom and hydrographs are also located at the very top of the Y-axis. You also see that solar and wind energy have no effect on electrification[11].
There is a reason why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends that countries also build nuclear energy. We will not be able to save the climate if we can only use renewable energy.
With wind energy, we can only be climate warriors as the wind blows, with nuclear power we can fight CO2 24/7. As shown above, nuclear power has already demonstrated its ability to knock CO2 emissions from countries’ electricity production to the very bottom. When you raise your eyes and look at the total energy consumption, Atom-France gets 49% from clean energy sources, compared to just 8% in Denmark. At Denmark’s current pace, it takes 192 years to reach a 100% fossil-free society. It would take just 30 years if we built nuclear power at the pace France did from 1979-89[12].
Nuclear power has proven its worth. Nevertheless, Denmark insists on a large-scale climate experiment with unstable energy sources, relying on the hope that storage solutions will emerge, that we will all drastically reduce our energy consumption, and that we will wait to wash clothes until the windy days.
Nuclear power is the world’s safest source of energy, with fewer deaths per hour of energy produced than even solar and wind[13]. Nuclear power leaves a uniquely light imprint on nature, with 10 times less raw material consumption and 976 times less land consumption than wind energy. We even get huge amounts of clean energy to drive human progress, which is completely linked to access to cheap energy. The world was rapidly moving away from fossils in the 1970s[14], but the nuclear transition was derailed by fear. It’s not okay for nuclear-anxious Mom and Dad to deny an open-minded youth the most effective climate tool. We need to go back to the future, we need nuclear power.
References:
- Energy Strategy ReviewsVolume 26, November 2019, 100367: “Real-time carbon accounting method for the European electricity markets” ↑
- Energy Strategy ReviewsVolume 26, November 2019, 100367: “Real-time carbon accounting method for the European electricity markets” ↑
- Danish Energy Agency: Energy statistics 2018. ↑
- The Guardian2017: “EU must not burn the World’s forests for renewable energy”
Vox 2019: “Europe’s renewable energy policy is built on burning American trees”.
EASAC 2018: “Commentary on Forest Bioenergy and Carbon Neutrality”. Notat baseret på en omfattende rapport. ↑ - US National Library of Medicine: Energy Sprawl Is the Largest Driver of Land Use Change in United States. ↑
- CO2 from electricity generation is divided by total electricity production. Codes in the statbank are
: Electricity production: “ENE1HT 350010 Electricity supply”.
CO2 from electricity generation: “GREENHOUSE” Subcode “350010 Electricity supply”.
Energinet numbers: ↑ - Danish Energy Agency: Energy Statistics 2018, page 13: Net exports of electricity by country. ↑
- Danish Energy Agency: Energy statistics 2018. Denmark produced 19005 PJ of electricity with biomass out of a total electricity production of 109350 PJ, which corresponds to 17.4%. ↑
- Det Internationale Energiagentur: Denmark Total Final Consumption (TFC). ↑
- Science: “China-U.S. cooperation to advance nuclear power”, Science. 05 Aug 2016: Vol. 353, Issue 6299, pp. 547-548 ↑
- Grant Chalmers2019:” Correlations between low-carbon generation and electrification”. ↑
- International Energy Agency: Denmark Total Primary Energy Supply.
Calculation of growth rate appears in:↑ - Our World in Data: “What are the safest sources of energy?” ↑
- Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute“Nuclear Power Learning and Deployment Rates; Disruption and Global Benefits Forgone”. Energies 2017, 10(12), 2169 ↑