Safe havens for energy democracy? Analysing the low-carbon transitions of Danish energy islands

Abstract

Denmark has long been known as a pioneer in renewable energy technology development. Apart from technological leadership, Denmark has also been the home to many community-based renewable energy initiatives. Citizen involvement in local energy projects has been key to increasing and maintaining acceptance to wind, solar and biomass. Three Danish islands (Bornholm, Samsø and Ærø) have been particularly active in promoting renewables. All three have claimed the title “energy island” and two of them have established specific institutions to promote further RE projects. In this article, we investigate community energy projects on two of the islands (Samsø and Ærø) through an Energy Democracy lens. The purpose of this investigation is to understand how the development on these islands relate to the concept of Energy Democracy: we outline how democratic processes and institutions shape the development of the local infrastructure and how this development, in turn, shaped local democracy. We found that many of the features of Energy Democracy were present in the two cases. Our research highlights a number of shortcomings of the concept of energy democracy, most importantly, a certain disregard for questions of energy justice and a blindness towards questions of scale.

The Interconnection of the Electric Grid in the Island of Crete, Greece, and its Contribution to the Clean Energy Transition

“…They also mentioned that the main sustainable energy system in Sifnos consists of a wind park and a PHES system. The low-carbon transition in Danish islands has been analyzed [4]. The authors stated that three Danish islands, Bornholm, Samso and Ero are particularly active in the promotion of renewable energies.…”