After two major oil shocks in the 1970s, Denmark made a deliberate, long-term bet on domestic renewable energy. That decision now looks prescient in ways that go beyond climate policy. PBS NewsHour's report from Denmark profiles communities running on near-total wind and solar supply, an industry generating roughly $17 billion per year in revenue and employing 107,000 people, and a nation that remained a net exporter of electricity while surrounding countries dealt with fuel price spikes driven by ongoing conflict around the Strait of Hormuz. The EU's climate commissioner has stated that homegrown energy is the bloc's primary exit from crisis conditions. Denmark appears to be demonstrating what that actually looks like at scale.
The report profiles two Danish islands as case studies. The island of Aeroe, home to 6,000 permanent residents, hosts a wind farm that helps make it a net electricity exporter. Solar panels feed a thermal storage system that heats the town through winter and supplies continuous hot water by storing excess solar energy as heat during daylight hours. The island's regular all-electric ferry, Ellen, has operated for nearly seven years without a backup generator and without a single electrical incident. The island of Samsoe ran a particularly striking recent figure: during a windy stretch this past winter, it exported surplus electricity at a value of approximately $39,000 per day. Individual turbine owners receive annual profit-sharing payments. The Danish automotive trade association reported electric vehicles taking 96.3 percent of new car sales in the most recent month, citing both the fuel price shock and the maturation of the national charging infrastructure as drivers.
The report also addresses two specific criticisms that have gained traction in American political discourse. On economics, the former Danish foreign minister, now running a fossil-free energy lobbying organization, notes that wind and solar power is now cheaper per unit than natural gas in many markets, and that the countries buying wind turbines are doing so because the math works, not because of ideology. On national security, a vice president at a major Danish defense company describes software-based radar filtering that successfully distinguishes aircraft, ships, and drones from wind turbine interference, positioning the two technologies as compatible rather than competing. Denmark now derives close to 90 percent of its energy from renewable sources, a figure that has grown steadily since the policy decisions of the 1970s. The foresight is easy to note in retrospect; the point of the report is that the investment horizon for energy security is measured in decades, not quarters, and Denmark is the clearest evidence that the approach works.
Bottom line: The Danish case is the longest-running and most complete natural experiment available for what serious renewable investment looks like at national scale. When the 2026 energy shock arrived, Denmark absorbed it. The countries that did not have domestic renewable infrastructure did not. That outcome is not an environmental argument; it is an energy security argument, and it stands on its own regardless of any other consideration. Other nations watching their fuel import costs spike this year are watching Denmark export electricity and profit from it.