Project Better Place Expands to Denmark

27 March 2008

DONG Energy and California-based Project Better Place have signed a letter of intent to bring the mass-marketed electric vehicle and infrastructure project to Denmark in 2011. Project Better Place’s first deployment is to be in Israel. (Earlier post.) DONG Energy is a Northern European energy company based in Denmark, and is primarily owned by the Danish government.

The Danish government will provide tax incentives on 100% electric vehicles, Renault will supply the electric vehicles and Better Place Denmark will construct and operate an Electric Recharge Grid across the entire country. Nissan joint venture AESC has developed a Li-ion pack that meets the requirements of the Project cars, although the Renault-Nissan alliance reportedly is also considering cells from A123Systems. (Earlier post.)

With this project, we hope to contribute substantially to reducing CO2 emissions from Danish cars. At the same time, we will achieve a new way of storing the unstable electricity output from wind turbines, as EVs are typically charged during the night, when the exploitation of power generation is low. This provides optimum exploitation of our resources for the benefit of the environment

—Anders Eldrup, CEO of DONG Energy