1 INTRODUCTION
9
and Japan has consciously followed these Nordic models. Like Japan, grid
development and storage in response to expanding renewable electricity
generation has already become a key issue for Denmark and Finland.
There are several other reasons why the Nordic countries are a good
fit for a book about renewables and the way ahead through secondstage challenges. Together they represent very different energy situations
while being politically relatively similar. With respect to facing the future,
Nordic countries represent very different situations. Denmark has the
highest share of new renewables of any country in its electricity mix. It
is thus also one of the countries that have come the farthest with respect
to the new stage-two challenges and opportunities this book focuses on:
electricity intermittency as a challenge for traditional and national grid
systems.
Norway offers a distinctive case as a country with strong incumbent
fossil-fuel stakeholders and renewable energy in the form of traditional
large-scale hydro, and the challenges these interests pose for the expansion of other renewables, especially wind power. Norway has one of the
highest shares of old renewables, in the form of large-scale hydropower,
of any country in its electricity mix. Its problems are thus of a completely
different kind. What is interesting here, is how a relatively slow renewable energy transition (wind power) is creating major popular opposition,
from a wide range of groups—nature conservationists, NIMBY groups,
anti-globalists, and far-left industrial interests. Norway may be a bit of a
special case, as its wealth of hydropower allows anti-wind groups to argue
that the country is already renewable as well as fully supplied in terms of
energy. At the same time, it is also an example of why the next stage of
the renewable energy transition is difficult, and the many interests that
the politics of this transition needs to accommodate.
Finland is another distinctive case and a somewhat understudied one.
Its energy mix relies far more on biomass, but it also has a considerable
amount of nuclear power, and from an initially slow response with respect
to renewables, it has set itself a very ambitious target of reaching negative
emissions by the 2040s, relying to a major extent on large forest-based
carbon sinks. Thus, Finland represents an uncommon mixed strategy with
biomass far more important than in most countries.
This is of course not to say that looking at other European countries
would have been uninteresting, or that a European focus exclusively on
the Nordic countries is without weaknesses, but we believe that there
9
and Japan has consciously followed these Nordic models. Like Japan, grid
development and storage in response to expanding renewable electricity
generation has already become a key issue for Denmark and Finland.
There are several other reasons why the Nordic countries are a good
fit for a book about renewables and the way ahead through secondstage challenges. Together they represent very different energy situations
while being politically relatively similar. With respect to facing the future,
Nordic countries represent very different situations. Denmark has the
highest share of new renewables of any country in its electricity mix. It
is thus also one of the countries that have come the farthest with respect
to the new stage-two challenges and opportunities this book focuses on:
electricity intermittency as a challenge for traditional and national grid
systems.
Norway offers a distinctive case as a country with strong incumbent
fossil-fuel stakeholders and renewable energy in the form of traditional
large-scale hydro, and the challenges these interests pose for the expansion of other renewables, especially wind power. Norway has one of the
highest shares of old renewables, in the form of large-scale hydropower,
of any country in its electricity mix. Its problems are thus of a completely
different kind. What is interesting here, is how a relatively slow renewable energy transition (wind power) is creating major popular opposition,
from a wide range of groups—nature conservationists, NIMBY groups,
anti-globalists, and far-left industrial interests. Norway may be a bit of a
special case, as its wealth of hydropower allows anti-wind groups to argue
that the country is already renewable as well as fully supplied in terms of
energy. At the same time, it is also an example of why the next stage of
the renewable energy transition is difficult, and the many interests that
the politics of this transition needs to accommodate.
Finland is another distinctive case and a somewhat understudied one.
Its energy mix relies far more on biomass, but it also has a considerable
amount of nuclear power, and from an initially slow response with respect
to renewables, it has set itself a very ambitious target of reaching negative
emissions by the 2040s, relying to a major extent on large forest-based
carbon sinks. Thus, Finland represents an uncommon mixed strategy with
biomass far more important than in most countries.
This is of course not to say that looking at other European countries
would have been uninteresting, or that a European focus exclusively on
the Nordic countries is without weaknesses, but we believe that there