The European Union’s climate commissioner has told the 27-country bloc that the only way out of energy crises fueled by the wars in Iran and Ukraine is homegrown energy, and that the EU must accelerate its transition away from fossil fuels. One country leading the charge towards green energy is Denmark.
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President Donald Trump has continued to roll back green energy developments, and most recently, the administration has offered two electricity companies a billion dollars each in return for scrapping wind farm projects (For additional context, see the PBS News Hour Classroom Daily News Lesson "Why the Trump Administration is paying billions to abandon wind farms").
Donald Trump has claimed that "the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses", while former Danish foreign minister Kristian Jensen explains that "the price of power coming out of a wind turbine is cheaper than that of natural gas". Additionally, Denmark leads as an example, ranking in the world's top 10 economies, and its green energy industry employs 107,000 people and earns about $17 billion a year.
Another argument raised by the administration against wind energy is that it poses a security risk by interfering with radar and allowing hostile aircraft or missiles to penetrate national defenses. However, Martin Couet, a vice president at a major Danish defense company, Terma, argues that the echoes and clutter in signaling caused by wind farms can be mitigated.
Media literacy: The News Hour segment included interviews with a former Danish foreign minister, a Danish mayor, and an energy engineer, among others, while interspersed with video clips of interviews with President Donald Trump. Why do you think the story was told through these varying perspectives?
Go to the US Energy Information Administration "Energy Kids" website and navigate to the "Energy Sources" tab and/or visit "Energy Explained" on the US Energy Information Administration site. Choose one renewable resource and one non-renewable resource, and answer the following:
Share your findings with your class, defending either the renewable or nonrenewable energy source that you chose.
Alternatively, find out which energy sources your state uses. Go to the US Energy Information Administration States Overview linked here. Answer the following:
Now, compare your state's energy consumption with the US as a whole (data can be found here for total energy consumption and here for electricity generation).
Written by Claudia Caruso, PBS News Hour Classroom's intern, and News Hour's Vic Pasquantonio
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