 Gennemme og dyrke, tak for at komme tilbage. Det er always nice to visit beautiful Ireland. It's always a pleasure to stay with the Irish people. And we had a very good informal meeting. And of course I'm also happy and honored to be invited to talk a little about the Danish experiences. And about a theme that I consider as probably the most important theme of my generation of politicians, which is the climate change and how we deal with it. Climate change is to some extent the destiny of my generation of politicians. When I was born, a terrible long time ago, I actually, the whole Danish energy system was run by oil. All our power, all our heat came from oil. When I became 10 years, it was actually the whole thing, it was run by coal, or on coal. When I turned into 20, it was largely based on gas. And when I turned into 30, it was already starting to be renewable. Now 46. And it's my intention that before I will turn into 50, we will have achieved 70% of renewables in the Danish power mix. And we will have planned to reach the 100%. My point is that we have always changed our way to produce and consume energy. And we can change it. And the basic message today is not only that we can change our systems. We should do it and not only be good to the climate, it will also be good to our economies. And I think that the Danish case shows that. We know that we have to do something. We already see the consequences of the climate crisis day by day. There is another kind of change happening outside there with droughts, with flooding, with still increasing prices on food and other commodities. And we know that we have to act. We have to choose whether we will just follow behind the change that is actually taking place, or we will try to make the change ourselves. In Denmark, the area where we have most experience is the energy area. We have decided the new government that in year 2020, we will cut CO2 emissions by 40%. In 2020, compared to 1990. And most of that reduction will come from a transition in our energy sector. We actually already made an energy agreement, which is backed by 95% of the Danish parliament. It's a very broad coalition, which will take us to 34% of CO2 reductions. And it is that agreement I will share with you today. Today, where we have 40% of renewables, which we will move into 70 in a very short while. But Danish adventure in the energy field actually started already in the 70s, when the oil crisis hit Denmark, and we began to make energy efficiency efforts, both in our buildings and through district heating systems, where we got use of the wastewater we came from our power production. Since 1980, the Danish economy has grown with 80%, whereas our energy consumption has been the same through the period. So we have actually managed to have remarkable economic growth, but with no increase in the energy consumption. And we are going to take that further action now. We want to go even further. We want to reduce our energy consumption in absolute terms with 12% in 2020. We do that by tearing up our building codes, by asking our utilities, our energy companies to deliver savings in the industries, to give massive support for industry in Denmark in order to make what we hope would be the most efficient industry in the world and competitive. And we are also doing it by trying to find a way to renovate our existing building stock. Yes, you know, it's extremely expensive to make energy renovation, if you just make the renovation because you want to make the energy renovation. But if you have to restore your old house, or you have to replace your room, or you have to replace your window no matter what, and then you do it in the right way, then it's always very good economic. So how do you create a regulation and economic incentives that will ensure that whenever a person is going to renovate his house, they will do the proper way. So in two free decades, we will have a complete energy green makeover, you could say, of the Danish building stock. That would be the next step, and we have put up quite a big work to make a strategy with the building communities, with the owners of the houses, with the financial sector to ensure such development. So that's the first part of our energy strategy towards 2020. The other part then of course is to go even more into renewables. We will go from 40% today to 70% in 2020, and 50% of these 70% would be wind. And the interesting part of this is that no, I should also maybe mention that the third part of the energy agreement is that we are going to make a smart grid. I was just told that Ireland is a hard competitor in this field. You're also going for smart meters, you're also going for flexible prices and price incentives to make a more intelligent demand. So will we. We intend, we already have installed smart meters in 50% of our households, covering 80% of our consumption, but we will take the last 50% over the next six years, and we want to combine that with establishing a data hub at a complete market-oriented approach, and we want to take it on. So it's not only smart grid, but smart energy, putting surplus power into the district heating systems and surplus power into the gas by making electrolyse and produce green gas. So there are a lot of initiatives going on. Now the big question, the million dollar question of course is how terrible expenses will this be? How much will the poor taxpayers and consumers of Denmark have to pay for this crazy minister's adventure? The interesting part of this is that if we look at the present prices of power at the Nordic market, you know we have a complete integrated market among the four Nordic countries, and you exclude the taxes which we pay to our welfare systems, but includes all tariffs and all public service obligation you pay to support the renewables, you include that. You will find that the Nordic prices, the Danish power prices, is actually far below average in Europe. How comes? That's simply because that even though the capital cost of renewables are rather high in the beginning, and we have to support them the first more or less eight years. After that we don't support any longer, for the first eight years we do. Then the marginal cost to produce a kilowatt hour once you build a windmill is very close to zero. So it's very hard to compete with wind or solar or hydro once you have installed it. And that's increasing competition, is pooling the prices in the market so much down that that pool is stronger than the extra PSO you have to pay for the capital cost. According to the Nordic experience, I was very encouraged to go to Romania last week, where they have actually, will you believe it, I didn't have a clue about it, in Romania they have in three years installed 2,000 megawatt of wind. They have gone from zero to 20% of renewables in their power mix in three years and they intend to go further on. What's really interesting now is will they, Bulgaria has done the same, will we see the same in their part of the market? Will we see prices which is sold, I mean the power prices on the stock exchange go down? We don't know yet, but we know that last year it actually went down due to this pool, whether it would be steady. I'm really interested to see because it could be a good showcase that not only in the northern part of Europe, but also in the southern part. This is the case. What are the lessons learned then from Denmark to be able to make such extreme transition and still with an economy which is actually competitive? It takes one thing, it takes political will, it takes that you actually want change and you tell your people why you want it and you have the gods to actually become true. Secondly, it of course takes that you get your analysis right, that your decisions are based on a strategy with a lot of scientific and knowledge input to it. Thirdly, it takes long term planning. We have a very good tradition in Denmark for broad coalitions behind the energy packages, not because we agree, actually we have a disagree on almost everything, but because we know that the investments we make in the energy sector, it would take two, three, four decades before you see the real consequences and we need long term stable mechanism which brings me to the fourth point which is that we need a consistent regulation which means that the investors, private investors, because all this in Denmark is paid by private investors. There's no, not one public money in it. We have our schemes, our regulation, but the investors are private. Many of them of course being energy companies, but also other kinds of pension funds and institutional investors. So to secure the investors that this will not be changed, they can actually rely on the legalization. That's a very, very important part of getting the risks and thereby the cost down. If you, every single day say, hey maybe we will cut a little in subsidies or we change the little in the framework, that will put cost up. I actually had to some extent a very depressing day yesterday because I think I talked to four good colleagues, all very much in favor of renewables. All came into me having trouble because they have oversubsidized the renewables far too much. And that's probably the biggest problem we are facing today is that in many countries they have simply given too much in support and then it has become too expensive. So it is an art how you actually make a stable regime that gives exactly what it takes to compensate for the high capital cost but on the other hand does not overcompensate so that consumers and industries feel uncomfortable doing it. And here I think that we have a lot to learn from each other in Europe and we should be much better in sharing our best practices in exactly this which is, yeah, a whole scientific approach would probably be valued here. You need the investments as I just said but my two final points are probably the most important ones. How do you get the public support which is required if you should have a long term planning and there is no, not one answer to that of course just ordinary enlightenment in the public schools about the necessity of the green transition it's important part of it of course to take into account environmental issues you don't plan a windmill just next door to a house with health problems and damages of the value of the house as a consequence you try to do things in a proper way but besides that probably the best thing we have invented when it comes to public support is that when we build windmills and parks we actually ask all the private investors whenever they do it to offer 20% of the windmills ownership to the neighbors they have to pay for it but they only have to pay the cost price so instead of going out in the morning after a good sleep looking at the windmill thinking oh, this is taking the value out of my house people are just counting 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents in my pocket and that helps that helps a lot and we are going to take the scheme further on and we are in our next efforts actually expanding so also local municipalities and enterprises can take part of the shares but final point which we come to the lessons learned and which is probably the most important part of this and the most important experience we got in Denmark which we have actually used quite a lot of time at the informal meeting to discuss is as small as bigger and more wealth function market you have got to sell your renewables at as more profitable your renewables will get the secret behind the low prices in the Nordic market definitely is that we have a completely integrated market when it's blowing in Denmark a lot we can sell the power to our neighbouring country and when it's not blowing we can import electricity and my dream is to expand that market in the first place to the North European market with connection to also UK and indirectly to islands but also to Poland and to the Netherlands and so forth simply to expand it because I am completely convinced that this is an answer to the backup challenge but it's also a way to make economically more beneficial for the investors and for the consumers because when you create a market when you create good interconnection between the countries you also create higher competition and you lower prices by that which is good to the consumers and to some extent the last big energy agreement in Denmark has actually been financed by ensuring a higher degree of competition which will take the power prices down and then we add a little of the public service obligation to pay for the renewables but I think there is a beautiful package that you can actually to some extent finance the investments in renewables by making a more efficient and competitive market so that's what we have to do in Europe as such there are too many countries in Europe which have actually invested a lot in renewables but don't get the money out of it which they should and it doesn't make sense to build more renewables before you have a market where you can riddle it it doesn't make any sense on the paper to have 100% of renewables if you can only use 20% of the time so that is just as important I use the impression that that it takes both a mother and a father to get a beautiful child and it takes both renewables and a market to actually get an efficient result in a green transition which you can pay now that brings us to the European politics I really think that Europe has a role to play in providing not only the physical grid but also the market integration which is required for all its citizens and countries and investors we have a crisis in the common European energy and climate politics policy right now the prices in the ETS system are far too low we are lacking long term targets for 2030 and we are lacking unity on what is actually the speed and the way we are heading at it would be my hope that we would be able rather shortly to make a back loading in the ETS system although the vote failed in the parliament last week I still have a hope that in the second round we will be back on track I think it could be possible to actually gather the council around such a solution it's not a given thing but I would estimate that it would be possible because everybody kind of realize that if we don't fix the ETS we don't have a common European climate policy and that will be more expensive to our industries it will be more expensive to our consumers if all 27 conscious each of them will have to deal with climate politics alone but it's also obvious that a back loading solution in the short term will not solve the problem alone we need more structural reforms we need long term planning and the Danish precision is pretty clear we want free targets for 2030 one on the CO2, one on the renewables and one on the energy efficiency and we want that because I think that as clear a signal we can send to the market for renewables to the market for energy efficient technologies as cheaper we will get them as more secure the investors are as cheaper to a cheaper rent they will give us their money now that is going to be a huge discussion in the council at you should have only one CO2 target and then let the market do the rest or you should have free targets we did a mistake when we made the 2020-20 because when you take the energy efficiency target of 20 and the renewables target of 20% and you sum them up it becomes into more than 20% CO2 reduction plus 20 is not 20 so due to that, that's also a structural problem it's a system that the allowances prices are simple too low due to that so next time we should have a target of renewables and energy efficiency that sum up to a CO2 target and what should that then be I don't know I don't know what would be possible but I know that if we are going to actually live up to the European policy of reducing our greenhouse gas emission with 80-95% in 2050 it should probably be something between 40 and 50% of CO2 reductions in 2030 if we should do it in a cost efficient way is it durable? of course it is okay at the present situation Europe is facing an economic crisis which make many member states many finance ministers thinking can we actually afford a green transition of the whole European energy sector do we have the money? I probably won't surprise you by saying that my point of view is that we can't afford not to do it Europe is the region, the continent in the world with the highest share of imports of energy in the last 25 years we became 1 billion more middle class habitants at earth the next 25 years we will be 3 billion habitants middle class habitants more having their first car their first house, their first everything the only way to secure cheap, stable and clean energy for the Europeans and for the European industry is to ensure that we will not keep on importing more than half of our energy we will not keep on depending on still increasing prices of fossil fuels we will not keep on investing our money in countries outside of Europe instead of inside Europe if we turn our investments into energy efficiency and into renewables and into grids in the next 10 to 20 years we will make value in Europe we will create jobs and we will create green growth if we keep us on as business as usual we will do the opposite so that would be my introduction and I hope that we will have lively discussion and I'm really keen to take questions and comments from you Thank you