Danish Pioneering of Modern Wind Power - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 163

Chapter 6
Danish Pioneering of Modern Wind
Power
Niels I. Meyer
Department of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark
[e-mail]
It is not obvious why a small European country like Denmark,
with about 5.5 million inhabitants, managed to place itself in a
global role as pioneer of modern wind power in the 1970s. Why
did this role not go to large industrial countries like the United
States, the United Kingdom and Germany with their manifested
results as technological innovators including the field of
aerodynamics applied to helicopters and airplanes?
This chapter attempts to clarify part of this question where
the author has been actively engaged in promotion of the modern
Danish wind power project since the early 1970s. My text will
focus on the period from 1974 to 1985 where large parts of the
official Denmark were promoting the introduction of nuclear
power and natural gas, while wind power and other forms of
renewable energy sources (RES) had low priority. Wind power had
to rely on enthusiastic NGOs and small private innovators in an
alliance with a few independent university researchers.