Most of this is incorrect, starting with your first claim.
Here's a chart that shows the yearly CO2 emissions from electricity generation in Denmark
https://energinet.dk/Om-nyheder/Nyheder/2017/05/19/El-produk...
If you know a bit about Danish politics, you can clearly tell at which point there was lackluster political support.
Re:When will the Netherlands disappear?
by perfunctory on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @10:36AM
(#21825877)
> Solar panels ... need to be changed each 20-30 years
How does this maintenance cost compare to the operating cost of a coal plant where coal has to be delivered non-stop?
Re:When will the Netherlands disappear?
by edhelas on Wednesday December 18, 2019 @11:20AM
(#21826384)
Regarding the drop of price of solar panel I don't think that it's not that uninteresting to invest in it. I'm all in to invest into renewable energy but I wanted to point out the hidden costs of deploying such technologies.
But overall, if it's about CO² emission we want to reduce, I think it's way more efficient to invest into house/buildings isolation, heat pump and save 20 or more % of energy better than trying to invest massively into renewable energy that will gives non-controlled productivity.
You have to take into account the capacity factor of what you install https://jancovici.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/load-factor...
You need to install 3 to 4 times more windmill and solar panel to approach the same output. You also need to install huge way to store your electricity (mostly using damns, hard to get in places where you don't have mountains such as NL) and you need to invest the double into the electricity infrastructure to transport this electricity (your windmill will produce most of the time at 10-20% of it capacity, but the day it produces 90% you still have to transport it, therefore your grid need to be oversized for the average usage).
Solar panels are mostly coming from China and need to be changed each 20-30 years (they are loosing efficiency after a few decades). Windmills need to be changed each 20 years (lots of mechanical stress involved), and are mostly impossible to recycle (https://www.livingcircular.veolia.com/en/industry/how-can-wi...). Also, to install windmills you need to put a lot of concrete in the fields as a base, concrete that is emitting also a lot of CO² to produce.
As a result you'll still have a non-controlled electricity production, where prices will vary a lot and where maintenance costs will stay really high decades after decades. It's not only about investing, it's also about maintaining something that works through the years.