Oh, the Green fever dreams. I just love them. So ardent, so sincere, so full of it.

And when you're destroying your citizens' standard of living in steps small and large over the course of a decade or two, who wouldn't feel empowered?

European Union governments certainly have. The EU's spent years squashing little peasant uprisings over home heating, keeping the lights on, and cooking with gas, all whilst threatening the peasants' precious farting moo-cows with annihilation if they didn't toe the Climate Cult Net Zero line.

YOU'LL FREEZE FOR THE PLANET AND LIKE IT OR THE COW GETS IT

It's not all an altruistic, wholehearted buy-in, this "saving Mother Earth" schtick. There's money to be made and power to be exercised, so keeping the grift going even in its current, demonstrable, and miserable state of failure to perform is Job One.

To that end, in 2018, Green Dreamers in Denmark came up with a spiffy renewable idea for one of the myriad inhospitable little islands dotting their craggy coastline.

How's about, the Danish government pondered, we turn that wasteland into solid renewable gold? Like, it's always windy-

IT'S A ROCK. NO INDIGENOUS LIFEFORMS

 - what if we plaster it with windmills and go from there?

SOLD!

In 2020, the "Energy Island" concept for the Baltics - The Plan - was born.

Energy island – the Baltic sea’s nodal point for intelligent energy

Both Denmark and the EU as a whole have established strong climate targets. Striving to become climate neutral by 2050, Denmark aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent by 2030 (compared to 1990 levels) and meet its entire electricity needs with renewables by the same date. Similarly, the EU has a stated goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and aims to reduce its emissions by at least 55 % by 2050.

In its 2020 Offshore Renewable Energy strategy, the EU committed itself to installing at least 60 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030, and 300 GW by 2050. Furthermore, Denmark, which has been a pioneer in the use of offshore wind energy, having constructed the world’s first offshore wind energy farm in 1991, is in the process of constructing three new offshore wind farms that will be in operation by 2030 at the latest. Once completed, the three offshore wind farms will have a combined generation of 2400 MW.

...In May 2020, the Danish government unveiled the first tranche of its so-called Climate Plan. An extension of the Danish government’s landmark target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 70 % by 2030, Denmark’s climate plan is intended to chart a path for achieving the reductions.

The most notable and ground-breaking feature of the plan was the announcement to establish the world’s first two energy islands by 2030. While offshore wind farms have hitherto functioned as individual entities that supply electricity to one specific region or country, energy islands will act as a hub for electricity generation from multiple offshore wind farms. They do so by collecting and distributing electricity between countries connected by an electricity grid.

Sounds wild.

Everyone's favorite Bond villains in Davos already loved the idea (and the implied investment dollar signs) so much that they worked up the creepiest video ever promoting it. From 2018 on, the "Eat the Bugs" boys got their media tools to huckster the thing around.

🇳🇱 🇩🇪 🇩🇰

The most amazing island in the world.

Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands are building an island to house 7,000 wind turbines.

Providing electricity for 80 million Europeans. #innovation #renewables #energy #future #climatechange pic.twitter.com/8DRwszMHxU

— Alexander Verbeek 🌍 (@Alex_Verbeek) May 22, 2018

Isn't that special?

By December 2020, the Danish had signed Germany on along with the Netherlands. In 2021, a Danish operator and a German transmission company signed agreements to do the studies for the undersea cables that would connect the electricity generated on the island to the mainland. 

Yeah. That's the thing. The windmills can spin all they want, but as we say here in the Redneck Riviera, "It's still gotta get there from here."

A big part of this operation paying for itself - eventually - was going to be the Danes selling that power across Europe, plus big plans to get into green hydrogen and becoming a refueling station for ocean-going vessels.

...The long-term aim of the energy islands is to convert the green energy they produce into green hydrogen and carbon-neutral fuels in a process known as Power-to-X that can be used to decarbonise the traditionally hard to abate sectors such as aviation, shipping and heavy transport. The location of Bornholm means it could become a green refuelling station for the approximately 60,000 ships that sail past the island annually.

Speaking of paying for it - what was that tab supposed to be originally? The government never did say in that project overview. In fact, it's kind of funny, considering current events - the only euro figure they cite is as part of a "return on investment" calculation.

I guess they had Kamala's economics professor, no? You have to spend it to find out how much it was.

Big plans aside, the Danish government has put the brakes on the plans, partially because of all the peasant uprisings over the past year and a half on the continent? Perhaps the populist pushback has even typically compliant Danes digging their heels in.

...She believes the government is moving at a careful pace on some aspects of climate action because of a reluctance to stir up opposition, especially in rural communities. But she has concerns that this approach risks inciting an even larger backlash from younger voters who want rapid change.

“They have, in my view, neglected to have a more genuine communication with people,” she said of the government.

Genuine communication would emphasize that Danes need to be willing to change their behavior to aid an energy transition, she said. This might mean eating less of certain meats, or paying more for certain products.

If this is a conversation that Denmark’s leaders aren’t yet ready to have, it raises the question of whether, and when, it can happen anywhere.

Or, maybe, the reticence is that the pricetag for another energy islands concept was already at €150B this past January.

...Copenhagen Energy Islands, backed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, aims to invest some €150 billion ($163 billion) in the coming decades on a series of islands that will use massive wind turbines to generate electricity and power green hydrogen production offshore. That is if they can overcome various technological and political hurdles.

IF IF IF

...CIP estimates spending at least €1.5 billion for each of the artificial islands.

Baruël Poulsen said the islands would mainly produce power for hydrogen electrolyzers, and the resulting gas would be sent to land via pipes. This is a cheaper alternative than sending power to shore through cables, he said.

Current supply chains are incapable of providing enough cables to be able to send all the electricity to shore. Using the power at sea and then shipping the hydrogen in pipes could save as much as 20% in upfront investment per mega project that would otherwise be spent on cables, Baruël Poulsen said.

As of today, it was another "IF" too far for the languishing Danish project - if Belgium was willing to pick up some of the excessive freight of paying for the project.

Alas.

The Begians said they were out. Those partners folded their hand, left the game, and the Germans aren't answering their phones.

Denmark will delay by at least three more years construction of a planned North Sea energy island to supply renewable power to three million European households, a government minister said on Wednesday, citing rising costs and high interest rates.

The projected investment exceeds 200 billion Danish crowns ($29.81 billion) and would require about 50 billion crowns in state support, Energy Minister Lars Aagaard told Reuters. He declined to say how much the cost had increased from original projections.

Just over a year ago, Denmark announced a previous delay, citing cost, of the artificial island that is designed as a hub for collecting and distributing power generated by surrounding offshore wind turbines.

Initially, it was planned as a Danish-Belgian project.

Aagaard said that was no longer viable following increases in raw materials prices and in interest rates, but it could be redesigned to include power cables linked to Germany, adding the earliest completion date was 2036 from a previous estimate of 2033.

All this wing and a prayer of billions of euros bet on unproven technology. You know it was sketchy af from the get-go when one industry online paper is calling it a "large-scale Danish prestige project." Like it was a designer bag or something.

In the ten-plus years the Danes have been kicking this around, they never once considered a small modular nuclear reactor? 

Maybe if they hadn't self-righteously shot themselves in the energy foot - and continued to do so - this wouldn't be an issue until someone actually had the "technology" locked on.

...Denmark also expanded its production of oil and gas, thanks to the discovery of resources offshore in Danish territory. The country started slowly, with the first North Sea production in 1972, and then ramped up to the point, in 1997, that Denmark was a net exporter.

But Denmark becoming an oil exporter needs to be understood in the context of another essential fact: Denmark is small. Its population of 5.7 million is about the same as that of Minnesota, only with about one-fifth of that state’s surface area.

...Then, in 2020, Denmark agreed to stop producing offshore oil and gas—one of the first countries to do so. The government passed a measure banning the issuance of new drilling leases and said that owners of existing leases needed to stop production by 2050. The country’s fossil fuel production had peaked in the mid-2000s, so the lack of new leases means a continuation of the existing trend of a long-term decline.

€28 billion to ship (energy) steel, concrete, and sand (energy) to build intermittent wind (energy) to be sent via HVDC back to shore for power and green hydrogen.

If Rube Goldberg were alive in 2022 he'd be proud.https://t.co/6ZakndabDD

— QE ∞ (@controlprintQE) December 7, 2022

The other energy island developers are swearing they are using "proven" technologies and, for the moment, they have the money to burn to keep trucking along. They're also flexible enough not to have to worry about not being able to procure enough cables to sell all the electricity they generate, unlike the Danish, who can't afford any of what they need at the moment.

...And just recently, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) announced that it is working on about 10 energy island projects in the North Sea area, the Baltic Sea and in Southeast Asia. According to the company, they combine existing, proven technologies in an innovative way and at a much larger scale, allowing for a cost-efficient build-out and integration of offshore wind. To advance these projects, CIP says it is launching Copenhagen Energy Islands, a new development company dedicated to developing energy islands globally with backing from Nordic, European and North American investors.

I'm glad for them. 

Now, if only the wind would always blow, the skies would never ice or snow and undersea cables wouldn't go kasplurt naturally - or unnaturally - what a great idea these islands in the Baltic sun would be.

And SO worth every green grifting dime, right?