"How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?"
That's a quote from
a famous song by Bob Dylan.
I love that line because it reminds me
that sometimes what we need is actually
right there in front of us.
I will argue that that is also the case
with climate change.
We can actually replace some
of the biggest sources of the problem,
oil, coal and gas,
with something we have in abundance:
wind.
In my country, Denmark,
we are doing just that.
Now we are a small country
with a small population.
If you haven't visited yet, please do so.
We are all friendly people.
As long as you don't criticize
our national football team.
(Laughter)
Nothing makes a Dane proud
like the knowledge
that something we have done
makes a positive difference in the world.
Historically speaking,
we’ve made a difference before.
1,000 years ago, countrymen of mine
controlled most of northern Europe.
I'm sure you've heard of them.
Big, strong guys,
helmets, beards, long hair.
The Vikings.
Now I will make the case today
that in order for us
to fight climate change,
we actually need to learn
from the Vikings.
But before we get to that,
please indulge me.
We have to go somewhere else.
I have to say go back in time.
Not all the way back to the Viking age
in the heydays of Harald "Bluetooth,"
but to the 1970s
during the oil crisis in Denmark.
Not to a Viking fortress,
but to a small workshop,
in a barn, in a farm,
in a village in Denmark.
Meets Henrik Stiesdal.
He’s not an accomplished,
experienced engineer.
He's 19 years old, a young man.
He set himself a challenge.
He thought,
"What if I could make a wind turbine
that could produce electricity?"
And you know what?
He did.
How do I know?
Because that's it.
Not a model, not a replica.
This is the actual one that Henrik made.
He was kind enough to lend it to me.
It says M1 on it.
That stands for "mølle one,"
"mølle et" which translates
into "turbine number one."
And of course, this was just
the first one he made.
Later, he managed to build a big one
that could supply his family with cheap,
affordable electricity
in the middle of the crisis.
And soon after that,
other farms asked Henrik
to build a turbine for them as well.
And he did.
And eventually he actually sold the design
to a company called Vestas.
You might have heard of them
because they are the biggest
turbine producer in the world today.
So this is how Henrik’s invention
became a sort of the prototype for many,
many of the wind turbines
that you'll see all over the planet today.
Now a lot of things have happened
since Henrik and other pioneers
took the first steps back in the 1970s.
In 1991,
we built the first offshore wind farm
in the world called Vindeby.
Eleven turbines, 54 meters tall.
That was considered a landmark.
They were huge.
Today, of course, they seem pretty tiny.
This is Kriegers Flak.
That's the biggest offshore
wind farm in Denmark now.
72 turbines,
188 meters tall, each of them.
To give you a comparison,
that's twice the height
of the Statue of Liberty.
Every time one of those turbines
has one rotation of the blades,
it creates enough electricity
to charge more than 1,400 cell phones.
The park itself covers the electricity
demand of 600,000 households.
So the story of wind power in Denmark
is the story about how one turbine,
on one farm
sparked a transformation
that influenced the whole country.
We, of course, now hope,
small as we may be,
that we can spark a transformation
that will also affect other countries.
We are a green frontrunner,
but we need to do more
because at the same time,
we rank number one in the EU,
or at least as one of the biggest
oil producers, in the EU.
This has to change.
And it will.
Last year, the Danish government
and the Danish parliament
made an important decision.
We’ve decided to put an end date
on extraction of oil and gas in 2050
and immediately cancel
all future licensing rounds.
(Applause)
That wasn't an easy decision.
When we made the decision,
we were the biggest
oil producer in the EU.
But the reason we made it,
even though it was expensive,
was because we need to show the world
that there are actually
alternatives to oil and gas.
Now, some of you are probably thinking
that sounds very good,
but how will you do it?
What do you do the days
when the wind doesn't blow?
And what about the parts of our energy
system that cannot be electrified?
Surely you cannot fly a jet plane
without jet fuels?
Surely you cannot sail
a big container ship without bunker oil?
But actually, you can.
This is an electrolyzer.
The photo is from a visit I paid
a factory in Denmark a few weeks ago.
So it's not a prototype,
it's not a model in a lab.
It's a functioning machine,
it's a commercial product.
What does it do?
It transforms electricity into hydrogen.
And that, friends,
that's the game changer.
Because it makes it possible for us
to solve two problems
we have with wind energy.
One, we can now store the energy
for when the wind is not blowing.
And two,
we can now decarbonize
parts of our energy system
that we couldn't decarbonize before.
Because the hydrogen
can be transformed into green fuels.
Imagine that.
The wind in the North Sea is transformed
by a turbine into electricity.
The electrolyzer transforms
that into hydrogen,
and the hydrogen is then made
into green, sustainable fuels
that we can use to sail our ships
and fly our planes.
I know it sounds like science fiction,
but actually it's just science.
Now in order for us to do that
at a scale that we need,
we will need a lot of renewable energy.
We will need to massively expand
our offshore wind capacity.
And in Denmark, we're doing just that.
A very important part of that strategy
is to build the world's
first energy island.
This is a simulation
of what it may end up looking like.
80 kilometers out in the sea,
the size of 64 football fields,
the biggest infrastructure
investment in Danish history.
We're changing literally
the map of our country.
Hundreds of wind turbines around it.
When fully scaled,
it'll be able to generate
10 gigawatts of green electricity.
Now 10 gigawatts,
that's enough to cover the demand
of 10 million households.
That's far more than we need
in Denmark, which is good news,
because then we can use it
to make the hydrogen,
to make the green fuels,
and we can export it to other countries
and thereby help them decarbonize
their energy systems.
Some of you are probably thinking,
"What does this have to do
with the Vikings?"
But do you know what it was
that made the Vikings so successful?
How they managed to go to Greenland?
How they managed to sail to America
500 years before Christopher Columbus?
Their secret?
They exploited the wind.
They put tremendous effort
into making efficient sails,
and it took as a long time for them
to make a sail as it did to build a ship,
and it was just as important.
And that brings me to my main point.
We need, as the Vikings did
1,000 years ago,
to change the world by finding new
and more efficient ways
of exploiting the energy.
This time, with slightly
better haircuts --
(Laughter)
and the motivation that lies in the fact
that this may be our biggest chance
of making a positive difference
in fighting climate change.
Now, some people will probably tell you
that a small country
cannot make a big difference.
I beg to differ.
When a young man like Henrik
could make a difference
for a whole country,
why not also believe
that a country like Denmark
can make a difference for a whole world?
We can't do it alone, but we can do a lot.
By innovating,
by creating new technology
and new solutions,
by exploiting something
that is much bigger than ourselves,
the forces of nature.
If you ask the International
Energy Agency,
they will tell you that offshore wind
has the potential to cover
the current electricity demand
of the entire world, not once,
not twice,
18 times.
So when you go to Denmark,
you’ll meet a Dane.
After you have said something nice
about our football team,
(Chuckles)
try and ask her,
"How do you think we should solve
the climate crisis?"
Chances are, she will say,
"The answer, my friend,
is literally blowing in the wind."
(Laughter)
Thank you.
(Applause)
[Take action on climate change
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