Denmark's Road Map for Fossil Fuel Independence by 2050

Last year, the Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy found that Denmark can remove fossil fuels entirely from its energy system-including transport-by 2050 without introducing nuclear energy or carbon capture and storage. In response, the Danish government immediately adopted the goal of becoming independent of fossil fuels by 2050. Removal of fossil fuels would bring Denmark in line with the EU policy goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95 percent by 2050. This report represents the first, comprehensive national analysis for achieving independence from fossil fuels. While the report's recommendations are specific to the current Danish situation, the approach used in the analyses is generic and can be of use to other nations. Perhaps the most striking finding of all is that the overall cost of achieving fossil fuel independence is only marginally more (on the order of 0.5 percent of GDP in 2050) than predicted total energy-related expenditure in a "business-as-usual" scenario. This near equivalence in cost is due primarily to expected increases in the price of fossil fuels. 

The Danish Commission on Climate Change Policy reported in 2010 that Denmark could be independent of fossil fuels by 2050 with a concomitant greenhouse gas emission reduction on the order of 80 percent compared to 1990 emissions. The commission defined independence from fossil fuels as no use of fossil fuels for energy in Denmark. Import of energy based on fossil fuels was allowed but the total amount of renewable energy produced in Denmark must, as a yearly average, be at least equal to Danish energy demands. According to data from 2009, the most recent available, renewable energy sources supply 18 percent of gross energy production in Denmark, with biomass being, by far, the largest contributor.1 Approximately 3 percent of the gross energy supply comes from wind, while approximately 20 percent of the electricity is produced from wind power. Nevertheless, the commission concluded that it is realistic to assume that 100 percent of Denmark's energy needs in 2050 can be covered by electricity generated from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and wave. The commission's relatively optimistic assessment is based on an assumption of significant technological development with respect to both electric vehicles and "smart grids" (energy systems that can defer some degree of energy demand to periods when excess energy is produced).

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Three Strikes and You're Hot: Time for Obama to Say No to the Fossil Fuel Wish List

By Bill McKibben

In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades -- those seem so nineteenth century. The earth is flat, or so I remember somebody saying.

But those nostalgic for an earlier day, take heart. The Obama administration is making its biggest decisions yet on our energy future and those decisions are intimately tied to this continent's geography. Remember those old maps from your high-school textbooks that showed each state and province's prime economic activities? A sheaf of wheat for farm country? A little steel mill for manufacturing? These days in North America what you want to look for are the pickaxes that mean mining, and the derricks that stand for oil.

There's a pickaxe in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, one of the world's richest deposits of coal. If we're going to have any hope of slowing climate change, that coal -- and so all that future carbon dioxide -- needs to stay in the ground.  In precisely the way we hope Brazil guards the Amazon rainforest, that massive sponge for carbon dioxide absorption, we need to stand sentinel over all that coal.

Doing so, however, would cost someone some money.  At current prices the value of that coal may be in the trillions, and that kind of money creates immense pressure. Earlier this year, President Obama signed off on the project, opening a huge chunk of federal land to coal mining.  It holds an estimated 750 million tons worth of burnable coal. That's the equivalent of opening 300 new coal-fired power plants. In other words, we're talking about staggering amounts of new CO2 heading into the atmosphere to further heat the planet.

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