GoKawiilIn one telling of the story, the golden fields of a proud farming nation are under attack. Besieged by an industrial sprawl of solar panels, they are being smothered at the behest of an urban elite.
That narrative has failed to thrive in conservative heartlands such as Texas and Hungary, which have embraced solar power while lambasting green rules. But it is taking root in Denmark, the most climate-ambitious nation on Earth. “We say yes to fields of wheat,” said Inger Støjberg, the leader of the rightwing populist Denmark Democrats in a speech in 2024. “And we say no to fields of iron!”
Jernmarker, or iron fields, was chosen as the Danish word of the year in December after the solar backlash swayed municipal elections and prompted some councils to pull projects. The spectre of barren metal landscapes has since returned to the campaign trail as Danes prepare to vote in national elections on Tuesday. “We need more common sense in the green transition,” Støjberg said in the first televised debate between party leaders last month.
Pockets of resistance to clean energy have hardened across Europe as far-right parties focus on climate action as their second target after migrants. Until now, solar panels had escaped the wrath of powerful campaigns that have stymied the rollout of wind turbines, heat pumps, electric cars and plant-based meat.
But in Denmark, which generates 90% of its electricity from renewables and aims to cut planet-heating pollution faster than any other wealthy country, the spread of solar power has alarmed some regions in which construction is concentrated. Solar tripled from 4% of Danish power production in 2021 to 13% in 2025. And a handful of villages have found themselves surrounded by silicon.
Opponents of solar farms say the photovoltaic panels are ugly, destroy nature and deflate property prices in neglected hinterlands. As drone shots of encircled farmhouses have become a symbol of urban overreach, the campaign has led even some established parties to soften their support of solar.
The backlash had been brewing locally, but Lukas Slothuus, a climate politics researcher at the University of Sussex who grew up in a rural town near the Danish-German border, said the Denmark Democrats had provided a “clear vector to articulate that discontent politically” across the nation. “The far right have realised – and decided – that climate is a potent electoral battleground,” he said. “It’s just about finding one issue to centre it around.”
View image in fullscreen A house surrounded by rows of solar panels in Hjolderup. Photograph: EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
The resistance has led to cancelled projects. The municipality of Køge voted in January to cancel a renewable energy park in Vallø, and in Viborg, the council voted last month to stop a planned solar farm in Iglsø while approving only the wind and biogas components of another project in Vinge. In Samsø, the first island in the world powered entirely by renewables, councillors from across the political spectrum voted last year to reject a solar park.
In Ringkøbing-Skjern, the country’s solar heartland, the appetite for new projects has dried up. Mads Fuglede, a Denmark Democrats politician who was elected to its council in November, said: “Solar panels have become a symbol of the political elite that wants a green transition and doesn’t care about what happens to the countryside. Because that’s not where they live or where their voters live.”
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