Danish Energy Agency Reports North Sea Oil & Gas Reserves Gone By 2020, Spurring Renewable Push

The opposition is echoing calls from the Danish Energy Agency for the country to become entirely free of its fossil fuel dependency by 2050, reports Politiken newspaper. In a report released this week, the agency indicated that the country’s oil and gas reserves in the North Sea would run dry by 2018 and 2020, respectively.

The Climate Ministry’s current policy only plans to double the current amount of renewable energy being produced by 2025. The European Union’s overall goals are to increase renewable energy 20 percent by 2020 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the same amount for the period.

But that is not enough, according to Margrethe Vestager, head of the Social Liberal party. ‘Last year’s energy agreement is now clearly not good enough. The opposition is united in its goal of Denmark being free of coal, gas and oil in 40 years,’ said Vestager, indicating the idea is also supported by the Social Democrats and the Socialist People’s Party.

Morten Bødskov, the Social Democrat financial spokesman, said speeding up the process of turning fully to green energy is a necessity in light of the economic implications of the North Sea dilemma.

EDIT

http://www.cphpost.dk/news/politics/90-politics/46538-oil-depletion-hastens-green-energy-race.html

powerhouse, Germany.

Right now, for all the endless talk about "renewably powered" Denmark - how many years have we been hearing all about it - Denmark's energy policy is largely "Drill Baby! Drill!" with a dollop of heavy marketing put in just for amusement.

All of Denmark's wind plants do not produce as much continuous average power as the Swedish Baresback reactor of which they worked to force closure produced.

This "by 2050" talk is essentially as useless as the rest of "by 2050" talk.

Denmark, as we often hear, is a "WORLD LEADER!!!!!" in "Renewable technology."

Right now, however, Vestas is laying people off and Germany of course has all of its ex-Government officials working to secure new pipelines from Russia and the Caspian Sea to bring in dangerous natural gas from central Asia.

How's that?

The fact is that the nation that once hosted the world's premier center for nuclear science, the Neils Bohr Institute, the place where nearly every major nuclear scientist in the world learned and worked under the man who was Rutherford's (and J.J. Thompson's) best student and Albert Einstein's only peer in the 20th century, is now reduced to mysticism and soothsaying and shell gaming.

It's very sad, very sad indeed.

...why else would they be building http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skanled">a bloody great pipeline to ship NG in from Norway?