A Huffington Post article recently caught my attention with a headline that claimed, "Denmark Just Broke The World Record For Wind Energy," followed by the subtitle, "The U.S. could learn a thing or two from the Danes."
Nothing against the Danes, but I think articles like this paint a very misleading picture. So let me elaborate a bit on the topic to make the record clearer.
According to the 2015
Graphically, it becomes clear that the U.S. has left Denmark far behind in the deployment of wind power:
So what is the deal then? Let's put things in perspective.
Denmark is a very small country surrounded by the North Sea. It has a population that is smaller than the Houston metropolitan area. If it was a U.S. state it would rank 42nd in land area, between West Virginia and Maryland. Because of its small size and proximity to the North Sea, the entire country has abundant wind resources.
Also key to Denmark's wind industry, the country has the ability to export wind power production to neighboring countries like Sweden, Norway, and Germany. That means that they can often produce at more than 100% of domestic demand, and because their demand is relatively small they can simply export that excess power to other countries with much greater demand. What that means is that they can -- on average -- generate a high percentage of their electricity from wind power. For 2015, that was the equivalent of 42% of the country's electricity consumption for the year, which was the highest ever percentage by a country for a single year.
A large country like the U.S. doesn't have that same level of flexibility. Weather patterns vary across the country such that the wind is never consistently blowing everywhere, and there are lots of areas where the wind resources are insufficient to support a wind farm. Further, U.S. power demand is much greater than that of our neighbors Mexico and Canada, so if we did get into a situation like Denmark where at times we produced >130% of our domestic demand, there is no way Mexico and Canada could absorb our excess.
So, while the Danes are to be commended on their achievement, it is in fact the U.S. that is producing more power from wind energy than any other country. The overall amount of U.S. wind power deployed has been a far bigger driver of the global wind industry than Denmark's high percentage of power from wind.
I am sure there are things that the U.S. can learn from Denmark, but we can't learn to be a very small country surrounded by water. Nor can we learn to have neighbors that can take a substantial fraction of our excess capacity. But we have clearly learned how to rapidly ramp up wind power production.
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