Denmark 1970: 99% energy from the Middle East. 2000: 0%. 100% energy independent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/opinion/10friedman1.html

by ovi256 • 18 years ago

59 67 18 years ago

gruseom2• 18 years ago

Saying you get 0% of your energy from the Middle East implies that you don't buy any oil at all, since the market isn't partitioned by where oil comes from. Is that really the case?

Edit: the "99% in 1973" claim is even stranger. Even if that is how much they depended on oil (the number sounds a little dodgy), the Middle East part can't be true.

asjo• 18 years ago

I think the Danish oil production in the North Sea at least covers our own consumption, so the 0% probably isn't far off. Not that the oil in the North Sea will last, of course.

Norway has larger oil-fields in the North Sea and export quite a lot.

The 99% from the Middle East in 1973 is probably a journalistic exaggeration - 99% from outside the country would probably be correct (the oil in the North Sea was found in the 70s).

Oh, and we burn a lot of coal in Denmark. It is not all rosy.

gruseom2• 18 years ago

Actually, the coal was one thing I was wondering about. The statement was 99% of energy, not 99% of oil. That can't possibly be true with coal in the picture. Note that in this case the exaggeration comes not from a journalist but from the Minister of Energy.

It sounds as if the kernel of truth here is maybe that Denmark produces more oil than it consumes. But I would be shocked to hear that Danish oil is produced by Danish rigs and transported via Danish pipelines to Danish refineries. Rather, oil from Danish territory goes into the same global market as all the other oil, and the Danes buy oil the same way (and at the same price) that everybody else does. So the Middle East bit is a red herring.

vaksel• 18 years ago

Denmark is a tiny country, its 1/10th the size of california, they don't need much oil. Yet look at it, it took them close to 40 years to kick the habit. This is why its so disingenuous when candidates focus so much on offshore drilling like it's a solution to all our problems.

gaius4• 18 years ago

Interesting facts about Denmark: Percentage of their energy requirement that can be met by wind power: 18%. Percentage of conventional power stations replaced by wind farms: 0%.

maximilian• 18 years ago

What are you trying to say with the 0% stat. If I were going to use more wind energy, I wouldn't just shut down a coal plant and throw up a million wind turbines. I would just add more wind turbines as our energy needs grew. So ideally you add a lot of wind turbines to mitigate building a new coal burning plant.

You will probably always need things like coal plants because they are very efficient and always work. You probably build a hybrid of wind turbines and gas powered turbines that are very adjustable. On a good wind day you you use less of the gas turbines and on a bad wind day you use more of the gas turbines to meet demand. The coal (or nuclear) plants are the base upon which you build your solar or wind system.

gaius4• 18 years ago

I'm trying to say that it's not as simple as the article makes out.

When there are wind-powered factories making wind turbines, transported to their destinations and installed by electrically powered vehicles charged by wind power, then it will be real. Until then, wind power requires massive energy subsidies from fossil fuels to the extent that it doesn't actually help much.

mynameishere• 18 years ago

10 dollar gasoline will result in more efforts towards alternative energy. Yes. It will do so if the 10 dollar gasoline is a result of taxation. It will also do so if the 10 dollar gasoline is a result of supply and demand. If you want expensive gasoline, you'll get it eventually.

I'm not sure why people don't understand that.

Andys2• 18 years ago

The danish theory seems to be that if you do it now via tax, you can apply the taxes to make advances in technology for energy efficiency and alternative sources.

gaius4• 18 years ago

Yes, that works if you ringfence the taxes, but almost no-one does - we certainly don't here in England (IMHO we should, indeed we are insane not to).

steveplace4• 18 years ago

The only problem with taxing energy is that it has a disproportionate effect on the lower classes.

gaius4• 18 years ago

Why is that a problem? The planet doesn't care about the socioeconomic status of polluters, does it?

DanielBMarkham12• 18 years ago

Is it me, or has there been a plethora of poorly-reported NYTimes articles on HN lately?

I won't tear into this one save this: oil is fungible. To say no energy from the Middle East is misleading. They buy their oil on the open market like everybody else. (Now they may produce more than they consume, but heck, its not like that supports the headline.)

sh1mmer2• 18 years ago

Oil is fungible, but maybe that's missing the point. It's semantic nit-picking that misses the spirit of what the author is trying to convey (perhaps with some exaggeration).

I buy "green" electricity. That is, all the electricity I pay for is sustainably generated and carbon neutral, from wind, solar, tide or hydro. However, the actually electricity that powers my lights is probably from a coal or nuclear power station. The point is that I pay to put electricity from "green" sources into the grid. The fact that the actual electricity that arrives at my house is not the same I paid to generate doesn't matter.

If Denmark puts more energy/coal/oil into the market than it uses then it is energy neutral or positive even if people are actually using oil from Saudi or wherever.

davidw• 18 years ago

Some of us would rather just avoid the 'politics' thing altogether.

aggieben• 18 years ago

What blather. Two points:

(a) oil is fungible. Fungible, FUNGIBLE.

(b) offshore drilling, will help, and nobody is proposing that it is a solution. Nuclear and solar electricity and better batteries are the solution. Drilling our own oil resources will help us while we get there.

sh1mmer2• 18 years ago

I disagree that drilling will help. The key point of the article is that it was a cultural rather than a resource based shift that helped Denmark become energy independent.

I read a recent estimation that America has enough oil for 3 years at it's current rate of consumption. Unless consumption is dramatically reduced drilling is just going to tap out a resource that would be best saved for a real emergency.

Europe has been coping with smaller more efficient cars, and driving habits for decades. American can too.

DanielBMarkham12• 18 years ago

Your comment has the feeling of a moral judgment or a best-guess seat-of-pants decision, ie, that since Europe has been coping with smaller and more efficient cars, we can too.

I've always found myself too ill-equipped to make decisions on how markets can or should operate (that is, unless the market is obviously broken, in which case somebody must do something)

So I take it you're happy we haven't drilled any of our resources, haven't built a refinery in decades, and haven't built a nuclear power plant since the 1970s? That we continue to _not_ reprocess spent nuclear fuel? That due to these policies our oil output now is the same as it was in the 1940s?

I'm trying not to badger you, but are you saying that because we've basically forbidden the energy markets to work efficiently inside our country, energy prices are going high, and it's a good thing because maybe the culture will shift like Denmark?

Couldn't you just picket or something? Seems like a terrible waste of American's lives just in order to make the culture more to your liking. And please don't argue that the culture must change because energy is so scarce -- it's a circular argument.

smanek2• 18 years ago

Offshore drilling won't really help. It'll take nearly a decade to get operations running, and our best estimates suggest that it will supply ~1% of our daily oil demand.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html

"The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."

DanielBMarkham12• 18 years ago

So your position, and I see you have a doe report, is that "drilling for oil does not help oil prices"

The nice part about this is, once you accept the logic (or lack thereof) it makes total sense why we haven't drilled in the last 30 years. You see? Drilling for oil doesn't help supply any. Why if we had drilled 30 years ago we'd still be in the same situation we are today.

I wonder if the doe could make some estimates on other commodity prices 30 years into the future. I'd like to get in on some of that action.

stcredzero3• 18 years ago

Oil is not completely fungible. There are different grades of crude. Natural gas is a bit more fungible. Once it has been processed to whatever standards apply it is completely fungible. Power is even more fungible.

patrickg-zill2• 18 years ago

Denmark has a population of 5.45 million people; or, about the size of half of New York City plus one of the burbs.

dabeeeenster• 18 years ago

So what?

patrickg-zill2• 18 years ago

So what works for 5 million people who all live within a few hundred miles of each other, may not work for a huge country with over 300 million.

Of course, the answer for Denmark was offshore drilling, so maybe the USA should be looking at that as well.

ckinnan• 18 years ago

America is a continental power that has 7 or 8 cities with a larger population than all of Denmark...

That's not to say we can't learn from their model, but its more of an urban planning context.

Prrometheus2• 18 years ago

What's so bad about foreign oil?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein8-2008aug08,0...

JesseAldridge2• 18 years ago

The problem with oil isn't that it comes from foreign sources -- the problem is that supply is running out.

aneesh• 18 years ago

Exactly. The problem is not so much with foreign oil, as with oil itself. Higher taxes to reduce consumption(Economists call these Pigovian taxes) seem to be a good choice to reduce emissions in the short term, but technological advances provide the long-term hope.

Prrometheus2• 18 years ago

> the problem is that supply is running out.

...eventually. In the 19th and early 20th century there was a lot of people scared that coal was going to run out and torpedo the early industrial economy. Quite a few prominent intellectuals were worried about Peak Coal. It didn't happen. It COULD theoretically happen, granted. But technology grew to use different inputs and the price system gave people incentive to explore new deposits. We still have tons of coal.

JesseAldridge2• 18 years ago

Tax oil -> Create demand for alternative energy -> Avoid political and economic problems associated with a diminishing supply of energy.

Simple.

laut• 18 years ago

Denmark uses oil for cars. Coal for electricity. Denmark now gets a lot of offshore oil relative to the size of the country, that's why Denmark is a net exporter.

natrius4• 18 years ago

The problem with that approach is that it assumes everyone is foolish. A rational actor presented with information that oil supplies will decrease in the near future would adjust his behavior as he sees fit. Moreover, the market will price in the costs of continuing to rely on oil.

Sure, price in the externalities of oil use, but I don't think we should raise prices beyond that just to reduce demand.

steveplace4• 18 years ago

Better (but less simple) idea

Get an MPG benchmark, say 25. Give a tax credit for cars that overperform and a tax debit for cars that underperform. This creates a revenue-neutral incentive structure that would help cycle in more efficient cars into the market. Every so often, raise the benchmark.

Of course you have the problem with fleet vehicles which are always going to be below the benchmark, but they could rotate into natty as a source.

sprachspiel• 18 years ago

If you are interested in the topic, check out the book "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" (available at http://www.withouthotair.com/ ). Unfortunately it's pretty disillusioning.

wwalker3• 18 years ago

Great reference. It's got tons of hard numbers about subjects that I generally only see unsupported assertions about.

michaelneale• 18 years ago

It seems a bit strange to compare the energy consumption of a nation which has a smaller population then Long Island. I am sure there are equivalent chunks of population in the US that could be described as energy independent, if they were to be a country ;)

Not saying that its not great, its just that it would be a challenge to scale something like that (Denmark is much much smaller then people realise).

Now if they went totally off oil altogether into renewable sources, that would be a spectacular achievement for a nationstate.

haasted• 18 years ago

"The cure is not to reduce the price, but, on the contrary, to raise it even higher to break our addiction to oil."

It is interesting that the prime minister's comment was sensational enough for several Danish news outlets to pick up on the NYT story. This indicates that his comment is far from established policy in Denmark.

When our current government was elected, it introduced a stop on new taxes which has been in place since. Having the prime minister talk about introducing an extra tax on already expensive gas is quite newsworthy. Some critics argue that rather than raising the price on gas, the government should consider removing the taxes that are put on environmentally friendly cars and hybrids.

Denmark 1970: 99% energy from the Middle East. 2000: 0%. 100% energy independent.

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