January 25, 2011
Letters, Massachusetts

Article explored wind farm rejection by Danish public

Cape Cod Times, www.capecodonline.com 25 January 2011

I write in response to William Griswold’s Jan. 21 letter regarding Denmark’s onshore wind turbines.

An article Sept. 12, 2010, in the U.K. Telegraph addressed efforts to abandon onshore wind farms in that country. Dong Energy announced “Every time we were building onshore, the public reacts in a negative way and we had a lot of criticism from neighbors,” a spokesman for Denmark’s giant state-owned power company, Dong Energy, was quoted as saying. “Now we are putting all our efforts into offshore wind farms.” The article went on to state that Danish electricity bills are some of Europe’s highest, thanks in part to wind farm subsidies.

Most of the wind electricity Denmark generates has to be exported to Germany, Sweden and Norway, where it can be stored in hydroelectric plants and sold back to the Danes at profit. The truth is that Denmark and Germany have managed to get about 7 percent of their electricity from wind “only because of a fortuitous link with Norwegian and Swedish hydropower,” according to the article.

I recently read excerpts of this article at the Cape Cod Commission meeting held in Bourne this past fall. To view the full story go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/7996606/An-ill-wind-blows-for-Denmarks-green-energy-revolution.html.

Mark Hebb

Bourne

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/01/25/article-explored-wind-farm-rejection-by-danish-public/