Opposition to solar power has become a key electoral battleground in Denmark. Lukas Slothuus writes that to overcome this backlash, policymakers must return to the community-led ownership models that defined Denmark’s earlier success with wind power.
Although Denmark is usually seen as a green frontrunner, recent political developments have begun to challenge this. A good indicator of this is the recent Danish Word of the Year award, announced on 12 December 2025. Elbowing out runners-up “drone” and “shadow fleet”, this year’s winner was “fields of iron” (jernmarker), a pejorative term for solar power parks.
“Fields of iron” entered the centre-stage of Danish politics in October 2024 when Inger Støjberg, leader of the nascent far right Denmark Democrats, coined the word at the party’s annual conference.
The firebrand politician proclaimed that “building giant solar power parks is a colossal change of the map of Denmark, which will have massive consequences for the affected residents”. Using most of her speech to rail against established climate policy, she declared the party’s new credo: “We say yes to fields of wheat. And we say no to fields of iron!”
This solar backlash has emerged as a major electoral battleground in Denmark and played a key role in the 2025 Danish local elections. It echoes the remarkable success of the Sweden Democrats in politicising not just migration but also climate and energy.
The Denmark Democrats
The Denmark Democrats emerged out of internal divisions within Venstre, the largest party on the centre-right of the political spectrum in Denmark. The split reflected a division between the cosmopolitan, internationalist, pro-market wing of Venstre and its rural, anti-migrant “tightener” wing, led by Støjberg.
While Venstre have historically represented farmers and later also business interests, growing concerns among the rank-and-file membership twinned with a major political scandal that led to brief imprisonment for Støjberg caused her to break away and found the Denmark Democrats as a new party.
Going back to basics, she designed the party’s platform around a renewed appeal to rural voters. This is a particularly powerful move in Denmark given the country’s rapid rural-to-urban migration, particularly to the Copenhagen metropolitan area, which is slated to receive half of all new population growth in the coming decades.
Denmark also has a powerful agricultural lobby, the Danish Agriculture & Food Council (Landbrug og Fødevarer). Taken together, these factors have helped establish the Denmark Democrats as a potent popular movement that decries the centralisation of power, money and people in Copenhagen. The party stands in opposition to the ostensible disregard for rural communities who must now also bear the brunt of the green transition in the form of “fields of iron” in their backyards.
The 2025 Danish local elections
After entering Danish politics with an impressive performance in the 2022 general election, securing 8.8% of the vote, the Denmark Democrats’ political agenda dominated the 2025 local elections. Rallying around the issue of local opposition to renewable energy projects, particularly the “fields of iron”, the party established itself as a central feature of the Danish political debate.
The flashpoint of the 2025 local election campaign was in Ringkøbing-Skjern, the municipality with by far the most solar power in the country. Here, Denmark Democrats mayoral candidate Mads Fuglede rode a wave of local discontent with an election campaign focused on opposing unpopular solar energy projects.
For a short while, it looked like this wave of opposition would carry Fuglede into office as the mayor of Ringkøbing-Skjern. But a dramatic set of negotiations ultimately led to Lennart Qvist from the Conservatives being appointed mayor, much to the dismay of the Denmark Democrats.
Ironically, Fuglede, Støjberg and the rest of this insurgent party may have been victims of their own success. Their climate backlash strategy has essentially been adopted by most of the other political parties. This has neutralised its electoral appeal, as voters in Ringkøbing-Skjern could just as easily vote for Venstre if they wanted opposition to solar projects – which they did, ensuring Venstre finished in first place.
Making sense of the solar backlash
In total, the Denmark Democrats secured 4.7% of the vote across Denmark during the 2025 local elections. However, it would be a mistake to view this as a sign of their demise. Local elections typically favour the big historic parties like the Social Democrats and Venstre. Yet among a crowded field of 12 parties, Støjberg’s leadership managed to transform the climate backlash from a fringe complaint into a mainstream concern.
Even the left-wing Red-Green Alliance recently come out in agreement with Støjberg’s opposition to the “fields of iron”. In a 12 December opinion piece, its leader Pelle Dragsted said that she “has a point that the left should have seen” and called “the giant solar parks shooting up in the fields” an “assault”.
It would likewise be easy to dismiss local residents’ resistance to solar as old-fashioned “nimbyism”. To be sure, there are elements of this in the movement. But research shows there is overwhelming and persistent support for ambitious climate action both internationally and in Denmark specifically. The issue is that urban Danish voters demand more action than rural ones, which indicates a growing rift.
This is particularly significant in a country celebrated for its successful and pioneering use of onshore wind power. The success of this “wind fairy tale” rested on community involvement and local co-operative ownership models. This model is replicable in other countries and can help insulate renewables against a public backlash.
Local residents did not even need to care about the climate to support the wind projects, as they could get involved for monetary reasons and with a clear pathway to influence. Rather than extensive local planning appeals stalling projects, a decentralised approach was flexible enough to get projects off the ground. The Danish Energy Agency has sponsored a Handbook for Energy Communities with practical advice for how to set up local cooperative energy projects.
Yet in contrast, large landowners, capital funds and corporations have now captured the solar sector, extracting value from local areas with little benefit for residents. Research on the success of Denmark’s wind expansion and the declared phaseout of oil and gas production consistently emphasises the importance of stable and consistent policy frameworks over long periods of time. This is essential for attracting funding for new capital-intensive large-scale projects.
The polarisation of climate politics
The solar backlash in Denmark should therefore be understood within a much broader polarisation of climate politics whereby especially right-wing political actors increasingly use climate and energy as wedges to distinguish themselves from mainstream parties. This makes it difficult to create a stable long-term framework.
Yet such a climate backlash does not simply emerge out of thin air. Politicians are not simply responding to pre-existing political beliefs but actively construct them. Other actors have also contributed to the backlash, notably the media. Some newspapers report inaccurately and negatively on climate news, which can contribute to popular opposition to more ambitious climate policies and more renewable energy projects.
To ensure public support for renewable energy expansion, policymakers across Europe should draw inspiration from the community ownership model used in Denmark’s “wind fairy tale”, strengthen sanctions against media disinformation and learn from the cautionary tale of how the Danish far right has been successful in polarising renewable energy.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
Image credit: Kenneth Bagge Jorgensen provided by Shutterstock.
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