From Energy Crisis to Industrial Adventure: A Chronicle - Wind Power for the World: The Rise of Modern Wind Energy - page 183

electricity. The waste heat can be utilised for heating up the many
greenhouses of Funen,” is his recommendation.
Jean Fischer continues his battle for large-scale wind power.
Showing his model at a conference in Stockholm, he gains the
support of Professor Niels I. Meyer, pro-rector of Denmark's
Technical University and president of the Danish Academy of the
Technical Sciences, who will, during the coming decades, become
a leading figure in the field of renewable energy. Niels I. Meyer
says, “We cannot aford to neglect any kind of energy source that
we ourselves are able to control. Consequently it is evident that
Jean Fischer's technology must be submitted to thorough practical
tests along with other types of wind turbines. Wherever we find
promising systems we must work on them. We should not let wind
power to be wafted away with the wind.”

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The sceptics, however, pushed themselves forward more and
more. Immediately after Professor Ulrik Krabbe of Denmark's
Technical University, had spoken enthusiastically about the
windmill project at Tvind at a conference in Copenhagen, engineer
Mogens Johansson from the research department of the central
power utilities (DEFU), stated that wind power would only play an
extremely limited role. In his opinion wind power might become a
supplementary source of energy, but it would only provide a few
percent of the total energy consumption, and only by means of
investment of billions.
Thus the note was given out about the attitude of the central
power utilities towards wind energy. Denmark was in the process
of being divided between pros and cons: centralists against the soft
energy paths.
E. L. Jacobsen, director-in-chief of the leading power utility,
ELSAM, says at the end of 1975, “The power utilities are willing to
shoulder the task of developing wind energy, as it is decidedly one of
our concerns. We are also willing to spend money on it, but it should
result in electricity at the right price.” He does, however, consider
nuclear power to be the most realistic alternative.
In this manner he hedges his bets, because at that time it was
difficult to calculate a price of wind power that could compete
with other kinds of electricity. The power plants showed a positive
attitude because Erik Holst, spokesman on energy for the leading
Social Democratic Party, wanted them to do something. “The
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See chapter Danish Pioneering of Modern Wind Power by Niels I. Meyer.