By Philip Iglauer

One year since Denmark signed a major green energy cooperation agreement with Korea, the northern European country recalibrated its green energy target recently at doubling wind power electricity output within the next eight years.

Korea and Denmark signed a landmark environmental agreement during President Lee Myung-bak’s visit to Denmark in May 2011.

The so-called “Joint Statement on the Establishment of a Strategic Partnership” was part of the Korean-Danish Green Growth Alliance.

“Korea and Denmark both have ambitious national plans to transition to greener and more energy efficient economies,” the Danish embassy said in an email interview with The Korea Times.

The Danish embassy also predicted that by 2020 not only will half of its electricity consumption come from wind power but energy consumption broadly will be shaved 12 percent through efficiencies and greener technologies and Denmark’s green house gas emissions will drop by 34 percent below 1990 levels.

Today, Denmark produces 25 percent of its electricity from green tech like wind power.

The Korea and Denmark green alliance focuses on promoting the political, commercial and technological developments required for a paradigm shift toward low-carbon green growth, the embassy said.

Korea invested massively in green technology last year, about $38 billion in investment in developing green technology, as part of Lee’s signature global green growth strategy.

The plan has since been derailed however when the president failed to pass key legislation establishing a national carbon emission trading scheme, called cap-and-trade in the United States.

Denmark will build wind power facilities generating a total of 3,300 megawatts of electricity by 2020, including two new large offshore wind farms at Kriegers Flak between Denmark and Germany (600 MW) and at Horns Rev of the west coast of Jutland (400 MW).

The rest is coming from wind turbines on land and offshore wind turbines in coastal areas. Investments in biomass and biogas will also be made.

Korea and Denmark both understood early on that the challenges of climate change and the economic potential of fostering green growth. make the two nations a “perfect match,” according to the then Prime Minister of Denmark, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, when the Danish-Korean agreement was inked.

“One thing that we have both understood is that ‘first movers’ and ‘fast movers’ cannot afford to rest on their laurels in the race to become the winners of tomorrow’s green economy,” said Rasmussen at the time.