Posted on 05/20/2025 4:22:32 AM PDT by MtnClimber
At this site, when I have written about countries and states seeking to be among the leaders in eliminating fossil fuels from their electricity supply, I have generally focused on the larger jurisdictions, like Germany and the UK in Europe, and California and New York in the U.S. But there is one much smaller country that puts all of those bigger ones to shame: Denmark. With a population of only about 6 million, Denmark has pushed the “renewable” electricity generation thing well beyond what others have been able to accomplish. According to its official statistics, in 2024 Denmark got some 79.5% of its electricity from what it calls “low carbon” sources. The large majority of that came from wind and solar, with only a minimal contribution from nuclear. As to nuclear, Denmark had in fact mandated phasing it out, by a law passed back in 2003.
So then, does it seem like, with just a final little push, Denmark can go over the top and reach the long-sought goal of 100% of generation from “renewables”?
In fact, according to the most recent news from Denmark, it is the opposite. Just during the past week, the lower house of Denmark’s Parliament, by a wide margin (102-8), passed a resolution reversing the nuclear phase out. This will likely lead to retaining the few remaining reactors, and then starting to build new ones. The immediate impetus for the resolution appears to have been the recent blackout in Spain and Portugal, which has been generally attributed to the lack of synchronous generation on the power grids of those countries. The statement by the Danish government announcing the Parliament’s resolution did not explicitly walk back support for the continued build-out of wind and solar generators, but said that this new pro-nuclear approach “pave[s] the way for a realistic and resilient energy model.”
Now that Denmark has recognized the need for some form of high-inertia synchronous generation to make its grid work reliably, it’s hard to see how they can avoid the next inevitable question: Do wind and solar actually serve any real function here? Or are they just a large added cost without any corresponding benefit? It can’t be long before lots of people start pressing this obvious question.
A brief history of how Denmark got to where it is can be found in this May 16 piece from World Nuclear News. Excerpt:
Belgium's federal parliament has voted by a large majority to repeal a 2003 law for the phase-out of nuclear power and banning the construction of new nuclear generating capacity. Meanwhile, the Danish parliament has approved an analysis of the potential use of nuclear, which has been banned for the past 40 years. Belgium's federal law of 31 January 2003 [has] require[d] the phase-out of all nuclear electricity generation in the country.
Under the 2003 law, several nuclear plants had been closed, although the closure of the last two had been delayed. Most recently, those last two were scheduled to close in November of this year, but now that is likely to be postponed again.
And meanwhile, up to now Denmark has been the absolute champion of building wind turbines and solar panels to supply its grid. Since the 1990s, Denmark has had a crash program to build out more and more wind and solar generators. According to Danish statistics reported at Low Carbon Power here, in 2024 Denmark got 52.3% of its electricity from wind and 10.2% from solar, for a total of 62.5% from those two sources. Here is a pie chart from Low Carbon Power showing all of the sources of Denmark’s electricity for 2024:
The “low carbon” total comes to 79.5%, after adding an additional 17% from a category they call “biofuels.” Note the leafy branch appearing in the pie chart as the symbol for the “biofuels.” Don’t be fooled. As far as I know, “biofuels” mainly means burning garbage, with some wood pellets from cutting down trees thrown into the mix. Both garbage and wood pellets contain carbon, and thus the energy from the “biofuels” comes from burning the carbon. Exactly why this is in the “low carbon” category is a mystery to me.
But with or without the biofuels, Denmark has well surpassed other de-carbonization “leaders” in getting its electricity from “renewable” sources. Compared to Denmark’s 62.5% of electricity from wind and solar in 2024, Germany in 2024 got a combined 43% of its electricity from those sources (28% wind and 15% solar), while in California the percentage from the two sources was 37.5% (12.5% wind and 25% solar). For their virtue, the Danes got to enjoy average residential electricity prices of 37.63 euro cents per kWh.
And yet, having surpassed the 60% threshold of electricity from wind and solar, Denmark has now recognized that 100% is not feasible, and wind and solar alone cannot be the only sources to power their grid. Even if the intermittency problem can be overcome, the problems of lack of sychronization and inertia cannot be solved with only wind and solar. Some amount of timed spinning generation is necessary, and nuclear is the proposed low-carbon solution. Some amount of nuclear is going to get built. Let’s assume the amount of nuclear to be built will be sufficient to supply 50% of average demand (the exact percentage is not important).
Once you have nuclear to supply half of average demand, here’s the key question: should you run it all the time, or should you turn it on and off, or ramp it up and down, as wind and solar generation may be available to meet the same demand? This is not a difficult question. Nuclear reactors are expensive, and the cost of the capital needed to build them (e.g., interest on bonds) accrues 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. To minimize the cost of capital per unit of electricity produced, you want to run your nuclear plant all the time. Yes, there is a cost of fuel involved in a nuclear plant, but it is minimal compared to the cost of capital.
Instead of running your new nuclear plant at full capacity all the time, you could choose to have it ramp up and down as intermittent wind and solar generation are randomly available. Assume that (like Denmark) you have sufficient wind and solar generation to supply 62.5% of demand. This means that your new nuclear plant, operating in backup mode, will only be selling power 38.5% of the time. But the bondholders who financed it must be paid 100% of the time. After some (relatively small) adjustments for costs of fuel and operations, the bottom line is that the cost per unit of electricity from your new nuclear plant will be close to triple what the cost per unit would have been if you had chosen to run the plant all of the time. But if you run the nuclear plant all the time, you don’t need the wind and the solar. They are just a useless extra cost.
The real world cost calculations would be somewhat more complex than what I have outlined, but not much. The fact is that once you have nuclear plants to cover a given level of electricity demand, wind and solar generators serve no useful function.
It shouldn’t take the Danes too long to figure this out. I will enjoy watching the process unfold.
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Just use nuclear to charge the batteries for peak demand.
The new generation designs leave almost no waste. What waste is generated can be reused repeatedly until something nearly inert is left.
Manhattan Contrarian ping
“Don’t be fooled. As far as I know, “biofuels” mainly means burning garbage, with some wood pellets from cutting down trees thrown into the mix.”
I think it’s primarily wood pellets from forests being cut down in Estonia and other Eastern European countries.
Talk about DECEPTION!
“For their virtue, the Danes got to enjoy average residential electricity prices of 37.63 euro cents per kWh.”
Roughly 3 times the average price in the US, by the way.
“Just use nuclear to charge the batteries for peak demand.”
Or use pumped storage (of water, of course) for the same, as is widely done in the US...if you don’t want a little battery cell issue taking out the entire system.
Nuclear actually makes sense. It produces large amounts of electricity and is reliable unlike wind and solar. Its also much cheaper in the long run. Not that I believe in Gaia worship, but it also produces no carbon emissions. Its also a source that is directly under the control of the national government in any country - ie they don’t have imports of fuel anybody could cut off and they don’t need to worry about price spikes for energy.
That is a very good article. Thanks for posting.
It is taking the world a LONG time to wake up to reality of the folly of “renewables.”
The author asked a couple of key questions:
1. “Do wind and solar actually serve any real function here?”
2. “Are they just a large added cost without any corresponding benefit?”
Yes, they allow government and uneducated boobs to convince themselves “we are doing SOMETHING to solve the climate crisis and save the earth.” They get to feel smug and pat themselves on the back.
The author discussed the overall system reliability and why conventional generation is required for reliable, low cost power. He did not touch on the looming environment disasters of “renewables” at the end of their 20-30 year lives or the ridiculous and staggering amounts of scarce materials needed to build them.
You have to see cost to consumers for each. In the USA, gas is still the best way to go.
I think it's primarily wood pellets from forests being cut down in Estonia and other Eastern European countries.
Talk about DECEPTION!
That significant fraction with the vague title of Net Imports. Wanna bet there is a large portion of that that is either coal or nuclear? Deception indeed.
Problems with this article:
Nukes are very hard to turn On and OFF.
They are the ultimate Base Power.
And Batteries are extremally expensive.
There are a couple plants like that here in NH.
They burn the chipped up branches/tops of trees.
When you log the forest the sawmills only take the logs.
The top of the trees gets chipped up and blown into a van.
It gets burned at these plants to make electricity.
Similar to our trash gets burned to make electricity.
Northern Europe produces a lot of timber. Nordic Spruce, Scots Pine, even Douglas Fir and Larch. The first two have been planted all over Scandanavia, the Baltics, Germany, Austria, Check, Slovakia, Romania, Poland, and RUSSIA.
Some of the best Nordic Spruce comes out of western Russia. Up until the war my company bought from Russian sawmills. All the sawmills in Germany, Sweden, Poland were buying Russian timber because it was cheaper and better quality than the timber growing in their own countries.
Today we are still buying lumber from Germany, Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Sweden, Finland, etc. We are not buying any Russian lumber currently.
We are also buying OSB from Ireland and Poland.
Generally, all of these products are brought into ports along the east coast. From as far north as Boston all the way to Houston.
A trader two seats away from me just bought 20 trucks of 2x4-16’s #2 Nordic Spruce from Germany. They will come into the port of Baltimore in July.
I know, the normal approach would be to use Nuclear for base load and natural gas turbine or combined cycle natural gas turbine for variable peak load generation.
I follow this guy out of MA on YouTube who calls his channel Undecided with Mike Ferrel. He reviews all sorts of “green Energy” systems.
Everything from solar panels to sea wave generators.
Recently, he did an episode on these wave powered generators being experimented on in the Baltic or North Sea. They have buoys that bob up and down generating power.
I found this to be interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1pxV7Nro34
FYI, this guy Mike Ferrel walks the walk too. He built a super insulated house somewhere in MA. It has a geothermal heating/cooling system, solar panels, etc. It was built in a factory up here in SW NH. Where they build these super insulated houses.
Makes sense. Doesn’t really get more green than nuclear power.
Historically, coal and nukes were the base load power sources and hydro and gas for the peaks.
That worked perfectly.
Now, we have a mess!
The immediate impetus for the resolution appears to have been the recent blackout in Spain and Portugal, which has been generally attributed to the lack of synchronous generation on the power grids of those countries.....
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Denmark has links to Sweden and Norway and of course with Germany since they share a ground border with them. I was curious to see how things shaped up with ‘import and export of electrical energy’ and this data is from 2023….
The numbers are the imported and exported electrical energy in TWh....
Country Imports Exports
Sweden 8.54 1.47
Norway 5.60 (very small/negligible)
Germany 2.45 9.26
Totals 16.89 10.73
Bottom line is that this may have something to do with the recent blackout in Spain/Portugal but up to now, the adjacent countries are what has sufficed for synchronous generation and inertia for Denmark… the advantage of being a small country that is next door to a big country where the neighbors can’t act as a big battery. The problem is that these other countries too have jumped on the UI (unreliable/interruptible) bandwagon. Norway is still fine since almost all of its electrical power is generated by hydro but Sweden is up to nearly 25% wind and Germany is at 60% and therefore are the same type of risk as what took down Spain/Portugal.
Nukes load follow if they are designed to.do so. The ABWR which the Japanese can build in 39 months btw load follows natively by pump speed control from 50-100% and control rods down to 25%. Those can ramp at 2% per minute with the control rods and 30% per minute with the pumps. With a full flow steam bypass to the condensers they can ramp down in seconds by instantly dumping the live steam directly to the condensers it is then how much inertia do the turbine rotors have. If anyone tells you nukes cannot load follow and do it as well as or better than gas turbines they are lying to you with a political agenda.
https://www.hitachi.com/rd/news/topics/2024/2403_hiabwr.html
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