When governments fall short, ordinary people can spark extraordinary change. Nowhere is this more evident than in Denmark, where citizens and community groups took the lead in a wind energy revolution that helped set the country on a path to phase out fossil fuels entirely. Decades ago, while the Danish government was hesitating on clean energy, locals banded together to build wind turbines on their own. The result? Denmark today generates 84% of its electricity from renewables, with 54% being from wind. Denmark’s proved that the clean energy revolution can be powered by the people.
People-powered wind revolution
In the 1970s, Denmark faced an energy crossroads. The government was considering nuclear power, but ordinary Danes and NGOs had different ideas. A vibrant anti-nuclear movement emerged with the iconic slogan “Nuclear power? No thanks” and activists didn’t just protest, they offered a solution. Environmental groups and citizens began advocating for wind energy as the safe, clean alternative.
In fact, some communities simply went ahead and built turbines themselves. In 1978, a group of teachers and students constructed a then record-breaking wind turbine at Tvind, proving that local ingenuity could achieve what big utilities hadn’t. This DIY turbine, built by citizens on a shoestring, became a symbol of what grassroots innovation could do.
This early citizen leadership laid the foundation for Denmark’s wind power boom. By the late 1970s and early ’80s, rural communities and eco-minded cooperatives were installing wind turbines to power their towns and farms. Residents pooled funds to erect turbines, sharing both the electricity and the profits. By 1996 there were around 2,100 wind energy cooperatives across Denmark. These co-ops gave tens of thousands of people a direct stake in clean energy.
These citizen-led projects moved forward at a time when government support was modest. While officials slowly came around to renewables, communities were already proving wind power’s viability on the ground. By 2001, over 100,000 Danish families belonged to wind cooperatives that had installed 86% of all the nation’s turbines . In other words, regular people owned the majority of Denmark’s wind infrastructure, long before big energy companies jumped in. This bottom-up momentum not only built turbines, it built public pressure that pushed Denmark’s policies to be greener. Community and NGO leadership filled the gap when the government wasn’t doing enough and ultimately nudged the government to step up as well.
The Middelgrunden Model
A shining example is the Middelgrunden offshore wind farm near Copenhagen. Commissioned in 2000, this 40 MW facility is co-owned by the city’s utility and a cooperative of over 8,500 locals. Citizens invested approximately €23 million, covering half the project’s cost. Through extensive public consultations, the project garnered widespread support, turning potential opposition into pride. Investors saw returns of 6-7% annually, recouping their investments within eight years.
When the people lead a fossil fuel phase out
Middelgrunden was not a one-off, it was a model. Inspired by its success, more community wind projects blossomed across Denmark in the 2000s. In fact, Denmark’s government eventually adopted policies to cement community ownership in all new projects. A 2008 renewable energy law (implemented around 2011) requires that at least 20% of any new wind farm be offered to local residents for purchase. This policy ensures that as wind power expands, communities get a slice of the benefits.
Thanks to decades of grassroots action, Denmark has transformed from a fossil-fuel dependent nation into a global renewable energy leader. Wind now generates over half of Denmark’s electricity and much of that power belongs to the people. By 2016, more than 50% of Denmark’s wind capacity was owned by citizens or co-ops, not corporations.
This people-powered approach also fueled economic prosperity. Denmark became a wind manufacturing giant, with renewables employing around 2% of its workforce and generating billions through exports. Denmark’s transition shows that when the clean energy revolution belongs to the people, climate action and community prosperity go hand in hand.
Australia: ready for a community energy revolution
Looking at Denmark, you might think Australia, with our endless sun, wind and wide-open spaces would be following a similar path. We certainly have the natural potential to be a renewable energy superpower. Yet Australia’s renewable journey has been slower and bumpier, often held back by the influence of fossil fuel interests. While Denmark races toward 100% green electricity, only a bit under 40% of Australia’s electricity currently comes from renewables. And we remain one of the largest exporters of coal and gas. In many ways, Australia today is where Denmark was decades ago: the government is talking about climate solutions, but not acting fast enough. This is where Aussies can learn from the Danish playbook.
The good news is Australians are already stepping up. In the absence of strong federal action in years past, communities, NGOs, and everyday families have taken initiative. Just look at our rooftops: as of 2024, nearly 1 in 4 of Australian households have installed solar panels on their homes, the highest uptake of rooftop solar in the world. That’s millions of Australian families who decided to generate clean power on their own, often long before governments provided any substantial incentives.
Community energy projects are also gaining momentum here. Just look at Hepburn Wind in Victoria, Australia’s first community-owned wind farm. In the late 2000s, locals near Daylesford didn’t wait around for big energy companies to act. They came together, formed a cooperative, and raised nearly $10 million from 2,000 members to make their vision real. By 2011, two turbines were spinning, generating enough clean electricity to power over 2,000 homes.
Hepburn Wind shows what’s possible when communities take the lead. Like Denmark’s early wind pioneers, these locals proved that people-powered renewables can thrive in Australia too.
The power of communities: from Denmark to Down Under
The protest sought to increase pressure on the Australian government to commit to a timeline for a fair and fast phase out away from all fossil fuels, starting with no more coal and gas.
Australia is the world’s third largest exporter of fossil fuels, and the Newcastle Port is the world’s largest coal export port. On the final day of the “protestival”, 170 people were arrested while out in their kayaks blocking the channel to prevent coal ships from passing, successfully forcing one coal ship to turn around.
Danish residents didn’t wait for permission or perfect policies, they organised, invested, and built the future they wanted to see. In doing so, they dragged their leaders along with them and reaped rewards for their communities. Australians have that same spirit. We’ve seen it in the rooftop solar boom, in grassroots campaigns to stop new coal mines, and in local renewable projects that put people and the planet first.
The climate crisis demands urgent action, but Denmark shows that action can begin at the grassroots and turn into a national triumph. It’s a hopeful reminder that even if our leaders are slow, we don’t have to be. When communities lead, politicians will follow. As the Danes have shown, a greener future is not just up to governments or big companies, it’s in our hands. It’s time for Australia’s own people-powered energy revolution.
Sign the petition to demand no new fossil fuels and help spark the change we need.
Can Australia catch up? Top lessons from Denmark’s people-powered energy revolution
When carbon dioxide (CO2) is released from a factory or power plant, the gas can be captured and permanently stored underground, preventing it from driving climate change.
This is the idea underpinning carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is at the heart of many nations’ net-zero plans.
Influential organisations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), describe CCS as “critical” for cutting emissions from key sectors – and for helping to avoid dangerous global warming.
In particular, capturing CO2 is seen as one of the only viable options for decarbonising some of the world’s highest-emitting industries, such as cement production.
The UK, for example, has committed to investing as much as £21.7bn over the coming decades in its nascent CCS industry, as part of the nation’s net-zero strategy.
Yet, in the UK and elsewhere, there has been a backlash against plans for CCS.
Citing high costs, ties to the fossil-fuel industry and a “history of poor performance”, critics describe CCS as a “dangerous distraction” or a “false climate solution”.
Time and again, the outlook for the roll-out of CCS has been scaled back, as the technology has failed to deliver as quickly as expected – and as policy support has wavered.
Furthermore, critics state that the technology remains “unproven” on the scale required to make a meaningful impact on global emissions.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief explores the role CCS is expected to play in achieving net-zero, its record to date and the reasons it has been criticised, using the UK as an example.
What is CCS?
CCS involves capturing CO2 emissions released from a large source, such as a gas power plant or a cement factory.
The CO2 is separated from the facility’s exhaust stream, generally using a chemical solvent, before being compressed into a liquid and transported via pipeline or vehicle. The CO2 is then stored by injecting it into underground reservoirs, such as depleted oil fields or saline aquifers.
The term “CCUS” is sometimes also used, referring to the “utilisation” of CO2 to make products, including fertilisers, fuels or building materials. Such uses do not necessarily lead to permanent emissions cuts, as the CO2 can end up later being released back into the atmosphere.
(“CCS” is used in this Q&A, unless quoting another organisation that specifically refers to “CCUS”.)
The infographic below shows the stages of capturing CO2 and transporting it to be either stored or used in other applications.
Carbon capture technology was originally rolled out at US and Canadian oil wells in the early 1970s as a way to achieve “enhanced oil recovery”. This involves injecting captured CO2 into depleted wells – a process that stores CO2, but also helps to extract more oil.
This remains, by far, the most significant end use for captured CO2 worldwide, with around three-quarters of it used for this purpose.
Moreover, most of the CO2 currently captured is a by-product of gas purification – the process by which fossil fuels such as methane are separated from other, unwanted substances. Selling this CO2 can make such gas projects more economically viable.
Therefore, as shown in the chart below, which is based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, the majority of CO2 that is both captured and used today helps the fossil-fuel industry to extract and sell more oil and gas.
CCS was first proposed as a way to deal with CO2 emissions in a 1976 academic article, which imagined injecting the captured gas into the ocean.
It is only since the early 2000s that CCS has gained traction as a proposed climate solution, with a 2005 “special report” by the IPCC exploring the topic. At that time, the authors note there were just three small-scale projects trying to capture and permanently store CO2.
Installing CCS at factories or power plants and permanently storing the CO2 would mean that, in theory, such facilities could continue using fossil fuels without contributing to climate change.
Such applications are often mentioned alongside two related technologies, both of which could be used to “suck” CO2 out of the atmosphere and, thus, deliver “negative emissions”.
One is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Crops absorb CO2 as they grow and BECCS involves a power plant burning these crops, then storing the resulting CO2.
The other technology is direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are classed as “CO2 removal”, as they involve absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere using plants or machines and then storing it permanently.
By contrast, CCS installed at a factory is considered a way to avoid CO2 emitted by that specific facility from entering the atmosphere. This Q&A focuses on such applications, which account for the vast majority of existing and planned CCS.
How much CCS capacity has been built so far?
As of February 2026, there were a total of 75 operational CCS projects around the world. As noted above, almost all of them are at fossil-fuel extraction and processing sites, according to the IEA’s database.
Together, these projects capture 62.5m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) each year. This is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Ecuador.
(This compares with the 22 CCS projects, promising to capture 40MtCO2 annually, that were operational or under construction as of 2014.)
As the chart below shows, the amount of CO2 currently being captured and stored is a tiny fraction of the total emissions from fossil-fuel use.
In a 2020 report, the IEA explained that the “story of CCUS has largely been one of unmet expectations: its potential to mitigate climate change has been recognised for decades, but deployment has been slow”.
A wave of interest in CCS in the 2000s, largely from countries in Europe and North America, focused on enabling coal power plants to continue operating with lower emissions.
This interest largely petered out, as plummeting renewable energy costs weakened the case for coal plants with CCS. Today, there are only seven operating CCS-coal plants worldwide – five in China, one in the US and one in Canada.
Yet the Paris Agreement in 2015 – and the national net-zero targets that followed – highlighted the need for deep emissions cuts in sectors that previously expected to continue emitting for decades. This, once again, has fuelled interest in the use of CCS.
In recent years, there has also been growing interest in producing low-carbon “blue” hydrogen from gas with CCS.
Hydrogen is widely seen as key for decarbonising certain sectors – particularly in industry – but analyses suggest that it may be difficult to make sufficient “green” hydrogen using renewable power on the timescales required.
As the map below shows, most CCS capacity is based in the US and Canada, with other major fossil-fuel producers such as Norway, Brazil and the Gulf states also contributing.
A surge of projects have entered the global CCS pipeline in recent years. According to the IEA, 93.7MtCO2 of capture or storage capacity is under construction as of February 2026 and another 1,279.6MtCO2 is in the “planning” stages.
“Planned” projects include any initiative at early concept, feasibility or engineering study stages and the industry has a long history of projects being cancelled or delayed.
Nevertheless, this pipeline of projects could lead to a large expansion of facilities dedicated to permanent CO2 storage that does not involve extracting more oil.
The planned projects – if they are realised – would also include significant growth in sectors where CCS is virtually non-existent, such as steel, hydrogen and cement production, as shown in the chart below.
What role is CCS expected to play in reaching net-zero?
It will be impossible to stop dangerous climate change unless the world reaches net-zero emissions, according to the IPCC. The amount of global warming – and whether the Paris Agreement temperature target can be met – depends on when net-zero is reached.
Many global pathways that have been set out for achieving net-zero, including a majority of the IPCC-assessed pathways where global warming is limited to 1.5C, rely on the use of CCS at fossil-fuel plants and industrial sites.
“These models have been quite instrumental in bringing CCS back onto the agenda,” Lina Lefstad, an ecological economist at Lund University, tells Carbon Brief.
Influential organisations relying on CCS in their net-zero scenarios range from the International Renewable Energy Agency</