Embracing A Clean Green Dream
Copenhagen aims to become the world’s ‘Eco-Metropole’ – the lowest-emitting city on the planet, with harnessed winds, a pristine harbour and cyclists ruling the roads
COPENHAGEN - An inner-city harbour with water so clean the fish are for eating and the beaches for swimming. Offshore wind farms in the waters beyond, piped to the power grid on two generations of Danish brainpower. Underfoot, a district heating network that squeezes every possible joule of warmth from some of the world’s most efficient electricity plants, keeping 97 per cent of Copenhagen toasty.
And here on the ground, a city where cyclists outnumber motorists during the downtown commute on close to 400 kilometres of dedicated lanes so safe that the vast majority don’t even bother wearing helmets, which aren’t mandatory anyway.
At first glance, Copenhagen is everything the brochure says: a hand-shaped city where each finger of suburb is separated by green space and in each fingerbone, a transit corridor of trains and buses, car and bike lanes to the central palm, where many of the globe’s deepest environmental thinkers can be found.
Or so it all seems, through North American eyes.
Ask the Danes, and they will tell you yes, they are rightly proud of their great green strides - especially the fact that this country of just 5.4 million leads in the delicate art of harnessing wind.
How did the Danish windmill come to rule the world? It all dates back to the shower-with-a-friend 1970s, when the OPEC oil crisis and a broad national reluctance to go nuclear sent Denmark on a quest for better energy answers.
From those first small land-mounted experimental turbines to the latest generation of multi-megawatt offshore behemoths, the modern, efficient Danish turbine stands today at the forefront of the emerging green economy - very nearly, but not quite, at cost-per-unit par with fossil fuels.
In total, Denmark drives 40 per cent of the global wind market, and its largest manufacturer, Vestas Wind Systems, commands a workforce of 15,000.
Ironically, while Vestas crews are in demand on five continents, the next generation of wind farms has been embarrassingly slow to take root in Denmark. Since 2004, the Danes have added little of their own product, compared to more than 2,500 megawatts of new wind production between 1996-2003.
The disappointing reason is a familiar four-letter word: coal.
“The brochure tells you that 16 per cent of our energy comes from renewable sources. This is true. What the brochure doesn’t say is that a huge and increasing amount of the rest of our energy comes from coal,” says Tarjei Haaland, who has monitored climate and energy issues for Greenpeace Denmark since 1992.
“We were doing great things until 2001, when a new government arrived with a different approach. Since then, many of us feel we’ve been squandering our advantage. We saw reduced government support for renewables in favour of a shift back to coal. So now the sad fact is our carbon emissions are increasing. This is the dirty Denmark they don’t put on the poster.”
The Danish government appears to have turned a corner, however, striking an agreement last month that will see at least a partial return to the progressive policies of carbon reduction. At the very least, the move is the politically expedient thing to do, given that Copenhagen is scheduled in late 2009 to host the UN Summit on Climate Change, where participants hope to seal a robust global action plan.
But even as climate campaigners chide their national government’s recalcitrance, most offer high praise for Copenhagen’s municipal leadership, which has set itself an ambitious goal for 2015 to become what it calls the world’s “Eco-Metropole” - the cleanest, greenest, lowest-emitting city on the planet.
“The things we’ve already achieved show us that Copenhagen doesn’t need national legislation to go even further. We can do most of this on our own,” said Klaus Bondam, the city’s mayor of technology and the environment. “Cleaning up our harbour so that you can swim and catch cod fish, enhancing our cycling network to where it is today, becoming one of the first in the world to convert the wasted heat of electrical generation into heat for our homes - Copenhagen has done all this. And now we lead Europe. By 2015, we’ll lead the world.”
Among the city’s goals is a plan to raise to 50 per cent the number of downtown commuters arriving by bicycle. The number seems otherworldly, until you consider that bikes comprise 36 per cent of downtown traffic, compared to only 27 per cent private automobiles.
To fully comprehend how such numbers are possible, the Toronto Star sought a history lesson from Dansk Cyklist Forbund - the Federation of Danish Cyclists - an organization launched in 1905 when the pressing issue of the day was punctures resulting from horseshoe nails littered along Copenhagen’s network of horse paths.
“Here in Copenhagen, riding a bike is like wearing shoes,” said DCF’s Allan Carstensen. “It’s normal. It’s easy. It’s convenient. People ride in their work clothes. And even the people in cars, the chances are they have a bike at home that they use regularly to run errands in the neighbourhood.”
The sheer flatness of the city helps, as does the lack of weather extremes - even during a dusting of snow flurries this week, the hardier pedalers were out. Best of all, Copenhagen comes in condensed proportions, with a population of just 1.5 million people, most of whom field modest five-click commutes that would be the envy of many Torontonians.
Still, it is a wonder to behold the choreography of Copenhagen in full pedal regalia, with a rush hour that includes cyclists from 8 to 80 flowing at a brisk average of 16 km/h. The dedicated lanes take much of the worry out of encounters with cars, but corners remain tricky, as this is where cyclists sometimes meet motorized metal.
That Copenhagen’s zero-carbon cycling culture fits perfectly with the times is sheer serendipity, for it is merely an enhanced version of a lifestyle that began a century ago.
“Most of our lifestyle is historic - a result of wars that taxed our resources and made us worry about being self-sufficient,” said political scientist Bjorn Lomborg, one of Copenhagen’s most provocative environmental thinkers.
“We grew out of medieval towns that were built before anyone thought of cars. The cycle culture was an extension of that. But make no mistake, there are trade-offs. We deliberately made our cities more compact. And the price is we live in smaller homes than most Canadians, we have fewer gardens and backyards, our kids have slightly fewer places to have fun in.”
Mayor Bondam, on a major branding mission for Copenhagen, unabashedly holds out the welcome mat for Toronto officials to come hunting for inspiration. Harbour rehabilitation, waste management, cycling ideas, wind farms, the combined heat and generation plant at Avedore that fires on a variety of fuels, including straw and wood pellets - Copenhagen is happy to show its hand.
“We know Copenhagen is a small city. But we see our role in the future global community as a sort of model city that experiments constantly with environmental projects, so that hopefully bigger cities like Toronto can draw on our experience,” said Bondam.
“It’s not a question of bragging. We just want to show some political leadership, by being a city that will dedicate itself to these ideals by striving for and sharing more efficient energy solutions.”
Environmental critic Lomborg doesn’t question Copenhagen’s ability to find solutions. But he is becoming famous for his scintillating critique of the world’s obsession with carbon reduction, which he reckons is precisely the wrong response to the right problem.
“The crucial problem with the climate change debate is actually very similar to the bike helmet debate, because the obvious solutions don’t ultimately do the most good,” said Lomborg, who heads the Copenhagen Consensus Centre.
“You think, `Head injuries bad, everyone must wear helmets.’ But then you lose a bunch of the riders who hate wearing helmets and they need much more expensive health care in the end.”
Similarly, said Lomborg, the climate change debate seems now almost certain to be aiming for a batch of new carbon-reduction promises at next year’s UN Summit in Copenhagen. A revival of the kind of goals that were set in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio (”which failed,” said Lomborg) and later, Kyoto (”failed again.”).
“The world failed twice. And now it is talking about coming to Copenhagen with promises to spend the equivalent of 25 to 50 per cent of each country’s health budget on reducing carbon emissions.”
Instead, Lomborg is a relentless advocate for directing those vast resources into a dramatic acceleration of global research and development in search of the answer - or, more likely, the range of answers - to future energy needs.
“Somewhere in the next 50 to 100 years - possibly much sooner - we will find the answer to climate change,” he said.
Lomborg can’t resist one especially tantalizing afterthought. He posits the notion that 100 years from now, under a best-case scenario, Toronto, and not Copenhagen, could end up being the dream city.
“Imagine 100 years from now that we have abundant, free, clean energy that is no longer scarce. Copenhagen will still be here biking around. But I’m not really sure we’ll be so happy with our small, condensed city, so focused on conserving resources that are no longer scarce.
“Toronto will be there in your bigger houses and yards, Copenhagen will be here in our tiny apartments. Maybe you will be the winners. And we will be envious of you.”
© 2008 The Toronto Star
Bike on Copenhagen!!
Hope U.S. cities follow suit and encourage bike lanes and greenways, unafraid to shake off the heavy mantle of a failed past for a brighter future. Knock down some of these old buildings and take back stagnant spaces, reclaim your birthright of a beautiful world. Innovation is our greatest hope, learn all you can and be creative, be relentless.
“You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.”
Justice, Equity, Unity
And peace.
This is wonderful. I’m so HAPPY reading about a positive example and wish I was living there!
Now as before, the Danes are way ahead if US thinking in terms of peace and human purpose. They have been there a long time. The debate is very much not to control citizens in a democracy but allow people their freedom of self without run-away freedom to enslave others as a result of greed, and military conquest, while at the same time not removing incentive. The ideas of sharing this globe and making it a better place for all and not to legislate the free expression of people out of existence it seems are part of the global discussion.
The direction and the discussion of society should be how to keep the people safe clean and happy by not polluting the world as has been the case since humans thought about making life easier and more care free for the masses. The insurance companies continually think of new ways to enslave because health has become the basis of their profit, not really caring about whether the person is safe or more healthy. Universal health care becomes part of this equation as does energy production or any service that must be lost cost and available for all members of a society.
We have much to learn from the mutual exchange of ideas. one thing that we have to stop teaching is a better way to kill people rather than a better way to make the lives of people better without it costing them their very existence.
Before Bike commuting can be truly common in the U.S., most of our cities need to be completely redesigned and rebuilt from car-oriented freeway wastelands to “Copenhagen-esque” dense walkable pre-car communities.
It’s going to take more than bike lanes and loose helmet laws to get 50% or even 5% of Houston or L.A. commuting by bicycle.
I see this as the true new “green” economy:
A WPA style job creation scheme that has as it’s end result not stupid giant dams to light up casinos and has-been musical acts (and lame-ass Republican Magicians w/Ponytails and “Man Groups” of various colors) in Vegas, but City Systems that will allow us to even have a chance to match Europe and Copenhagen’s progress.
Some think it will take $5 a gallon gas to make this happen. I hope that’s enough, but I fear a stiffer push might be needed.
We shall see.
Meanwhile we do have several pre-automobile cities -Savannah GA, etc. but especially New York’s Four non-Staten Island Boroughs(sp?)- that could make great test-centers for Copenhagen-style changes.
I think it’s going to be a while before we can fish in the Houston Ship Channel, though.
-matti.
once our enslavement to oil (mandated by gov’t and corporatism) is defeated then the grid will get a lot cleaner.
Is it coal that’s the problem or the way we’re using coal? If we used solid-oxide fuel cells we’d get double the electricity for the same amount of coal.(or the same electricity for half the coal). Not bad.
Bjorn Lomborg must be some sort of Danish chameleon. I don’t remember the specifics, but the last time I heard of him, he was a GW denier with a really goofy rationale.
Hey Bronto, how’s Fred and Wilma?
Thanks for the post. I almost forgot about SOFCs. BMW is going to use them for auxiliary power. Arm phasers and beam me up Scotty!
I just googled the subject and it looks like several companies are putting together demo projects for the DOE. I agree. Half a loaf ain’t bad. Hold those big turbines and bring on the fuel cells.
Some day we may have cars powered by SOFCs running substitute natural gas made from biomass. The fuel will cost about $1 per gallon equivalent and the car will get more than 80 mpg equivalent. The only thing out the tailpipe will be H2O and CO2 and since the fuel was made from biomass it will be CO2 neutral.
As I read this I thought of my home in Jacksonville FL. Here too the terrain is mostly flat. We have the typical urban sprawl (commercial and retail districts located away from residential bedroom communities, and spaghetting interstate and expressways stringing them all together.
What impresses me the most about Copenhagen as described in this article is the unanimity of public acceptance and embracing of a vision for a green lifestyle and future.
That, more than anything else, is what is missing in most american communities today. In its absence, a small clique of corporate elitists plan a future that gaurantees their dominance of both vision and planning for our future and with as handsome a profit as possible for them to boot.
You MUST NOT be frugal. That would reduce our volume of industrial output, cut into our GDP, erode Pentagon revenues, make our country “weak on terra”, and make us fall to the “Islamic Caliphate”.
We got the fossil fuel for you to plunder so please pour yourself some more concrete, tear down your house, rebuild it bigger, and drive your gas-hawg round in circles. God Bless the United States of America!
sjc_1 March 29th, 2008 7:11 pm
If your car uses an internal combustion engine then there will be some nasty nitrogen compounds coming out of its tailpipe, too.
The car I described would be SOFC powered. Methane in, electricity out to power the motor(s) driving the wheels. Rather than using a PEM fuel cell, it would use a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell, no internal combustion engine at all.
The beauty of an SOFC is that it can use natural gas (methane) directly and uses no expensive precious metal catalysts like a PEM. (platinum). This is just conjecture on my part, I have no idea what the future will bring.
“What impresses me the most about Copenhagen as described in this article is the unanimity of public acceptance and embracing of a vision for a green lifestyle and future.”
Good point, Poet.
I’ve wondered what it is about the USA that makes it so hard for consensus to be reached, especially in the areas of environmentalism. Is it our form of government? Is it our heterogeniety? Is it our media? Is it our corporate run society? Is it our dumbed-down populace? Or is it some of each? And, will we ever be anywhere as enlightened as Scandinavian countries?
I sure would like to know.
One more question: Is Danish hard to learn?
I hate living in Australia because almost all of our electricity is coal, public tarnsport is almost as bd as our hospitals and almost everybody drives.
Bu$h the inferior has us on the brink of a new golden age - just a few more tax cuts, free trade agreements, another branch of the war on terror, drill for oil in Alaskan wilderness and mine the grand canyon and prosperity will be ours forever as long as the terrorists phones are monitored.
Those poor bastards in Europe suffering with government health care and worrying over renewable energy. They just need to remove a mountain top and light up that coal.
Its a new “gilded age” with a few billionaire businessmen, overpriced professionals, and workers lined up at the factory and Wal-Mart gates to earn a worthless $10.00/hour.
Bjorn Lomborg is an idiot.
He is the Ann Coulter of environmentalism. He makes his living saying ‘provocative’ things that the global capitalist elite *wish* were true.
He thinks ‘Global Warming’ is a minor problem, that will maybe flood Bangladesh in 100 years. He thinks the best ‘cost/benefit ratio’ for ‘do-good spending’ is to first focus on AIDS and malaria. He thinks Third World people will be two to four times wealthier in 100 years, so Global Warming will be even less of a problem, so why spend lots now for little benefit 100 years from now ?
He admits he knows very little about Global Warming, I guess that is good. But from the blurb he read in the newspaper, he figures economists are the best ones to decide what the ‘value’ of each ‘major problem’ is, to prioritize what ‘problem’ to tackle first. Hence, Global Warming is at the bottom of his list. Hey, just let the Bangladeshi guy move to Canada.
And optimistic Bjorn seems to never have heard of Peak Oil. Yup, everyone will be so much better off in a 100 years. By then, energy will be free, we will all have flying cars and vacation homes on Mars, robotic maids, we will all be millionaires, yeah, that’s the ticket. We will all be rich Westerners living in McMansions. Just what the world leaders at Davos want to hear.
Everything is just fine. When coasts start to flood in 100 years, we’ll just levitate our cities with our new anti-gravity devices.
“How did the Danish windmill come to rule the world? It all dates back to the shower-with-a-friend 1970s, when the OPEC oil crisis and a broad national reluctance to go nuclear sent Denmark on a quest for better energy answers.”
Yes, we all had this same chance in the 1970’s….Remember…all those HIPPIES, who were chanting “Go Solar” at those anti-Nuke demonstrations?…or the ones who touted growing your own food…or the ones who took to the herbs instead of the phamaceuticals…
or the ones who never owned a car…
They were blasted by press and made into lunatics by the “right” and they quietly disappeared…until Walmart started selling tye dyes we would never know they existed….WHERE ARE YOU? COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE….IT’S TIME TO PLAY AGAIN!!! Maybe “they” will listen this time
The things we’ve already achieved show us that Copenhagen doesn’t need national legislation to go even further. We can do most of this on our own,”
Doesn’t need national legislation and WE CAN DO MOST OF THIS ON OUR OWN….
stop complaining about government and get active!!!
I have been living in Copenhagen for the past 9 months. I am trained as an environmental manager and I am working in that area, specifically on climate change issues. It is crazy that it is in Canadian newspaper that I finally read Denmarks dirty coal story, something that is never ever mentioned here (i dont speak super good Danish yet, but my husband does and he reports on everything green that he reads about, no newspaper mentions the coal issue…). As for Copenhagen being a bikers paradise, well of course in comparison to LA, then it is truly heaven, but it is also dangerous to compare apples and pears, or cherries and water melons in this case because there is a HUGE size difference. Copenhagen centre is tiny!! I can bike anywhere in the city within 20 mins. max 30 min, and it would probably be much faster if the bike lanes were not so crowded, there wasnt so much car traffic, and i didnt have to be so super careful about cars running me over all the time!!
It is sad but true, biking in Copenhagen is only a real pleasure on Sunday mornings. When I bike to work every morning it is extremely stressful because we are so many bikes on very narrow bike paths, there are A LOT of cars, noise, pollution (jogging around the lakes in the centre of the city is equivalent to smoking six cigarettes, so i have read, I still have not found the scientific data that proves it, but simply smelling the air makes me think it is true)
I sincerely and truly wish that Copenhagen will become the Ecometropole it could most definitely be, but the car industry and lobby is still very strong. The local authorities were planning on closing traffic on one of the roads with the most transit, leaving it for buses and bikes (i was delighted since i had to take that road every morning to work) BUT either because of bad planning or lack of power, the shops on the road and the drivers rallied up one or two days before it was supposed to happen and blocked the process.
I just want to add that i am 100% behind tinylotus, it is up to us to make the change and we can do it in simple small steps that will gather momentum and maybe get us to that dreamland…I plan on making my dreams come true, what about you?