Gillis, Justin. "A Tricky Transition From Fossil Fuel." The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 Nov. 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
“A Tricky Transition From Fossil Fuel”-By Justin Gillis
The articles “A Tricky Transition From Fossil Fuel”- By Justin Gillis writes that Denmark, a small country in Northern Europe, is planning to be 100% free of burning fossil fuels by 2050. This is an incredibly ambitious goal, as the Danes do not just want to rid of burning fossil fuels to produce electricity, but also to no longer burn fossil fuels in transportation. The Danes invented the modern industry of wind energy, and now have 40% of their electric grid on wind power. By 2020, they plan to increase to 50% of their electric grid to wind energy.
This article also compares the progress of Denmark to other European countries such as Germany. The passage states,”Their policy is similar to that of neighboring Germany, which has spent tens of billions pursuing wind and solar power, and is likely to hit 30 percent renewable power... The 5.6 million Danes have pushed harder than the Germans.”(Gillis Paragraph Four). The Danes are making progress to their ambitious, more progress than other countries.
This article also discusses how the change toward wind and solar energy is affecting the power plants. Although the fossil fuels will be needed when the “wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining”(Gillis Paragraph Seven). However, these power plants are losing value and no longer seem profitable to run. This is an issue, as the power plants are needed as a backup but the prices are dropping because after the wind turbines are built, it costs nothing to produce wind energy.
This is quite relevant to not only Danes but all people of the world, as this movement could inspire other pushes to go “green” and change from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. In the United States of America, there is growing emphasis on electric cars and renewable energy, but nothing like the plan of Denmark. It would be much harder for the USA to model this plan, especially to rid of fossil fuels in transportation. However, this ambitious idea of the Danes may influence other countries and how they change their electric grid to be more environment-friendly. I believe this is very important to stopping the drastic climate change that is so clearly happening on our planet, and also to keep the planet much cleaner for the civilizations who succeed us.
This was a well written articles by Justin Gillis. He explained the goal of Denmark impressively, and also gave statistics and percentages to show their progress in their plan. Also, I enjoyed the fact that he compared the success of Denmark to that of other countries such as Germany. In addition, he gave the pros and cons of changing of eliminating fossil fuels, saying that it is much safer for the environment but the power plants become much less profitable. One aspect he could of improved is that Mr. Gillis talked about transportation in the beginning, but did not refer to that idea again until the last few paragraphs. There would be better flow if he weaved that component into the article better. Overall, this was a well-written article by Justin Gillis on the plan for Denmark to be free of fossil fuels by 2050.
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I read Kevin Hendricks review on the article “A Tricky Transition from Fossil Fuels” by Justin Gillis. This review was very well written. One thing he did particularly well was that he stated many facts that help the reader understand the main point of the article. A second aspect of this review that was well done is that he quotes the article to help improve his point. A third thing that was executed well was when he explained how this article affected him. He did this very in depth and had facts to support his answers. To improve this article Kevin could use less facts. When summarizing the article he consistently uses facts to the point that it is too much. A second thing he could do to improve this review is include a longer critique. His critique only covers 2 or 3 issues with the article. From this article I learned that while many countries are talking about making changes to prevent global warming Denmark has started executing a successful plan.
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