Paths to a Better Future


Catching up with a story from last week concerning the visit of Danish Crown Prince Joachim to Stanford University:

Prince Joachim and his delegation toured Stanford University, meeting with scientists working on ways to solve the world's daunting energy needs in the next century. Those scientists, affiliated with the university's Global Climate and Energy Project, spent the morning tutoring the prince, 36, on ways society might someday warm the home, power the TV and ward off global warming.

It was a dazzling display of American ingenuity: Nanoprobe arrays that pluck off the extra electron or two cells generate during photosynthesis, advance membrane reactions to produce carbon-free hydrogen, genetically engineered cellulose to increase biomass yield.

There are some hitches, however. None of that works on a commercial scale. And Denmark did not use any of it en route to energy independence.

Which isn't to say these new technologies won't work or won't help. But Denmark hasn't waited for them:

In 1979, when Three Mile Island almost lost its nuclear core and much of the world turned from nuclear power, Denmark turned to wind, said Danish Ambassador Friis Arne Petersen, who accompanied the prince.

Today Denmark is a global leader in wind turbines. But big breakthroughs did not turn Denmark into an energy exporter, Petersen said. "You want that big breakthrough. That's wonderful if it succeeds," he said. "But sometimes lots of small steps need to be taken."

Denmark's approach, the story says, was: Sacrifice, save and sweat the small stuff.

Today the country is the only exporter of energy in Europe, producing 55 percent more power than it needs. Renewable fuels — wind, solar, waste — generate 15 percent of that, and the country is almost completely "energy independent."

Denmark is a small country, and it is still largely dependent on homegrown natural gas. But there is something to learn from Joachim's remark: "America has always been a leader," the prince said. "Now we're reaching a point where comfort has allowed America to not develop. But need and competition has brought change to Europe."

What can we learn from Denmark? Lynn Orr, director of Stanford's climate and energy project, brooks no qualm over wind power. Or conservation. Americans certainly have plenty to conserve and can even make money doing so, he said. Yet when you look globally, when you follow trend lines out 50 years, Orr said, you quickly realize the numbers are far too huge for any one approach. .."There's no silver bullet here," Orr said of the high-tech solutions his group is exploring. "We need all of these things plus probably 20 more."

But Denmark had a simple and consistent approach: develop wind power as an energy source and an exportable industry, and do what can be done as a matter of public policy with little or no new technology: most of which involves conservation.

Rather, said Danish officials accompanying the prince, such freedom came from small things: toilets with two buttons — one for a big flush, one for a little; highly insulated houses; a switch years ago to compact fluorescent bulbs; high energy taxes; wind.

What Denmark tells us basically is what a number of other countries tell us: energy independence and positive steps to combat future global heating begins with public policy leadership vigorously applied to encourage and enpower partnerships among central government, big industries, science and technology, local communities and institutions, and incentives for small industries and individual innovation. But you first have to get the country on the same page, and committed enthusiastically as a matter of national identity, to the cause of real independence, real interdependence and real freedom. To an energetic present and a better future.