Progress Report No. 5 — Denmark is making its mark on a clean future

The Amager Bakke (Amager Hill), also known as Amager Slope or Copenhill.

Like Ethiopia (Progress Report 3) and Costa Rica (Progress Report 4), Denmark is a little country with big plans. Its capital, Copenhagen, is making a capital improvement with its Copenhill project, the project of the decade, in my very humble opinion. Who said  alternate energy can’t be fun? Imagine turning something you don’t like into  something you need and then some. You can  do this  in Copenhagen.
​The Amager Bakke (Amager Hill), also known as Amager Slope or Copenhill, is a
combined heat and power waste-to-er plant in Copenhagen that doubles as a ski slope.
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First, a brief history
Denmark is remarkable for its long history of engineering skills. Danes were master shipbuilders and navigators. They built windmills to pump water. This, in turn, helped to build polders an engineering structure still in use today. That created highly tillable soil. It also served as a deterrent to invading forces. Polders were easily  turned into  marshes that would either trap or bog  down the adversarial forces. The Danes discovered North America over  900 years ago.
Today,  they are responsible for Legos  (today’s  toy for future engineers), Skype  and Bluetooth. While Denmark still burns a signicant amount of coal, it also  produces 42% of its energy through wind power. While Denmark exports petroleum products, it also  has its eye on being carbon neutral by 2050.
What  makes the country interesting is that its innovations just  keep on pushing the envelope. Denmark has some of the largest wind turbines in the world. Someday the Danes will push 15 megawatts of power per  wind turbine once the economic climate permits. The current highest rated output installed is 8 mw. Denmark also  is the largest wind turbine producing country in the world with Vestas as the leader. It has stopped building nuclear power plants. In fact just before the completely avoidable Chernobyl tragedy, Denmark voted to never build  another nuclear power plant ever again. Couple this  with the amazing technologies of Bluetooth and Skype  for a country of only 5.5 million  that is saying something. And then there’s this  (drum roll please) …

Feature story: Copenhill Project
What  strikes me  about the Amager Bakke  (Amager Hill) or Copenhill project is not  just  that it is an intense and well-thought-out site  for energy and material reconstitution. Copenhill is a model for the future, a model for handling one of our  most sinister and rapidly increasing problems, waste.
As a snapshot from a previous column on the energy of waste, it takes energy to make the waste, and it takes energy to get rid of the waste. Therefore, more waste equals more energy expenditure. Copenhill is as much a technological wonder as it is an architectural wonder. It is built right  in the heart of Copenhagen. This way, waste does not  have to travel far to be recycled. That solves a number of problems: transportation costs, accidental spillage, and the not  so accidental spillage caused by corrupt shippers. At one time toxic waste had a habit of being dumped along our  Thruway by organized crime as well as some private rms. Toxic waste is otherwise very expensive to dispose of legally. This is one of the many reasons we need a strong EPA. I don’t have to tell anyone in this  area about what it means to have regionally restricted waste transportation.
With Copenhill situated in the heart of the city, the plant generates enough electricity to light 30,000 homes and enough heat to warm an additional 32,000 homes. The ash generated at most trash burning plants is sent into  the air, but  this  plant is 99% clean at the stack output.
The highest rate so far. The ash -- 100,000 tons of it during its rst full year in operation -- was precipitated out  and is used for road construction. All this  ash is generated from 500,000 tons of trash which  otherwise would have to be consolidated into  a landll  site.  Nearly  100% of the metal was  reclaimed. Some of the plastic from the waste is being used to create a new  kind of road material that not  only provides quick  repair but  has an intrinsic infrastructure that would allow access to public  services such as water, electricity, and any new  communications that comes along.
Not only that but  this  plant has a unique method of catching water which  feeds the living plants along its side.  Take this  one giant step further and the roof  of this  waste-to-energy miracle is a year-round ski slope!

Conclusion
Denmark is clearly  on the threshold of tomorrow. We need to follow its example to restructure our  cities,  better manage our  resources, consolidate our  space, minimize out-sourcing of waste to other locations, and bury  our  waste. 
I hope one day that America will realize that we can’t go on handling our  waste and resources as we do. Today  even after years of ecological resolve the President has reduced public  access to three national parks. He is turning these national treasures into  mining pits  for the most dangerous and toxic minerals, i.e. yellow cakes of uranium and the most pollution prone of fossil fuels,  coal. While doing this  he is restricting the power of the regulatory bodies by eliminating the laws that protect and hold accountable the use of such lands. It’s an insult to our  health and the environment and it’s an insult to our  leadership in technology.
Denmark is yet another small country setting a worldwide example. Denmark, Ethiopia, and Costa Rica do not  have anywhere near the natural resources that the United States has. Yet look what they have accomplished.

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