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Denmark Plans To Be Coal-Free In 10 Years
merbs writes "Earlier this year, Denmark's leadership announced that the nation would run entirely on renewable power by 2050. Wind, solar, and biomass would be ramped up while coal and gas are phased out. Now Denmark has gone even further, and plans to end coal by 2025.
Russia has demonstrated that it is unwilling to engage in above-board transactions for their fuel exports. It is in every country's national interest to reduce dependency on imports when they can neither control the supply nor rely on the supplier to operate as a business rather than as a belligerent nation. If anything, Russia's recent behavior has reinforced this for Europe, and given the Europeans incentive to get off of Russia's exports.
It's a shame that Denmark can't get off of natural gas sooner than coal.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And yes, at least a good chunk of that is actual, honest-to-god lifestyle differences, not just situational.
You know that it is those miners that allow you to have the lifestyle to which you have become accustomed?
I'm an Australian miner, and even I can recognise that coal mining needs to go. We have plenty of other things that we can dig out of the ground that are less damaging. Our dependence on coal is a disaster in the making, financially as well as environmentally.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/201...
That said, I'm fully willing to believe that wind power is cheaper than nuclear on a per-megawatt basis. What I don't believe is that wind power can reliably provide baseload power. All the studies in the world don't change one simple and indisputable fact: present-day production of wind power is miniscule compared to present-day electricity usage. Wind power has not yet proved that it can supply large quantities of power. Nobody except the most blind zealot would deny this plain fact.
Nuclear power supplies one sixth of present-day electricity usage worldwide. This is a very large amount of power compared to any other carbon-free technology. Nuclear power is not directly subject to vagaries of the weather. Even including Fukishima and Chernobyl, nuclear power is by far the safest energy source (wind power comes in a very respectable second). Available supplies of nuclear fuel will outlast the lifetime of the sun. Nuclear power is proven and it works. Wind may work, and I'm happy to give it the benefit of the doubt, but it is without question an unproven technology at large scale.
Denmark pays a whopping 41 cents per kilowatt hour.....3.5 times the avg cost in the U.S.
Do you even care about the size of your electricity bill... Mine is mainly an annoyance, it's like 10-15 USD / month.
Also note, very few people in Denmark uses electric heating as you can get hot water from centralized production into your home (not clean only for use in radiators). My parents gets their heating from a power plant 20km away.
Also buildings have strict isolation requirements, and incandescent bulbs have been banned through out EU (presumably you can still get them, but not through regular retail; I'm not sure).
Also you share a really big land border with the biggest consumer nation in the world. If you build something good in Canada you can be selling it in the US for the price of a truck shipment.
If you build something good in Australia it has a really really really long way to go before it can be consumed in the US.
There is a reason why we produce large quantities or iron ore, copper, bauxite, coal, uranium, lead, zinc, and gold. It is because the primary consumers of those are close by (China and India). Brazil is Australia's biggest competitor in the floating traded iron space and Australia wins a lot of the time because we are physically closer to China.
Another option for Australia would be to start pushing for fission power. It's vastly cleaner than fossil fuels, and will last longer, and Australia is rich in uranium so they could still have a mining industry.