Turning waste into climate-friendly energy

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Doing something for the climate is not just idle words in the Municipality of Syddjurs in Jutland. The aim is ambitious but the way to achieve it is based on common sense. Mayor Kirstine Bille has a pair of bird-watching binoculars in her office, because Ebeltoft Town Hall is located amid beautiful scenery with an abundance of bird life. The mayor has great interest in safeguarding the environment, as well as ensuring that the municipality’s ambitious climate plan is more than just noble intentions. “Empty words achieve nothing. We seek results and have described what our actions as a municipality need to be,” says Kirstine www.syddjurs.dk Bille. One example is that the municipality’s own buildings must become as energy efficient as possible. “In all our administration buildings, we have set up screens so that staff can monitor energy consumption. This helps us all remember small things such as switching off lights and computers. And it works. We can see it clearly in our energy consumption. It demands an Kirstine Bille, Mayor of the Municipality of Syddjurs in Jutland. “We set climate goals we know we can reach” www.syddjurs.dk effort too, because our aim is to save two percent on electricity, water and heating consumption annually up to 2025,” she says. Energy efficient solutions are also being incorporated whenever the municipality renovates or constructs new buildings – and the same applies to citizens. Kirstine Bille emphasises that the climate plan must help create growth: “We have many small and medium-sized enterprises in the municipality, including carpentry firms, blacksmiths and engineering companies. Many of them are implementing energy efficiency initiatives, and we need to support them so that we can safeguard the climate and create jobs for our citizens.” Syddjurs has many villages, open countryside and around 8,000 holiday homes. In order to achieve the objective for energy saving and the introduction of renewable energy for these areas, the municipality needs collaboration partners. “We have many district heating stations which use locally produced biomass. But we have a challenge with our holiday homes which are typically heated by electricity and wood-burning stoves. So we will enter climate agreements with businesses, associations and organisations which can help us reach the objective.” It is important to the mayor that citizens and businesses see the sense of the climate plan. “We must avoid a them-and-us situation, and achieve results together,” says Bille. FacTS: • The Municipality of Syddjurs is one of the Danish Conservation of Nature Association’s climate municipalities, which have committed themselves to reduce Hovedgaden 77 · 8410 Rønde · tlf. 87 53 50 00 CO ² emissions by at least two percent syddjurs@syddjurs.dk · www.syddjurs.dk annually until 2025 • The municipality has also joined the EU Covenant of Mayors, where the municipalities commit themselves to higher ambitions than the EU’s own climate objectives Hovedgaden 77 · 8410 Rønde · tlf. 87 53 50 00 syddjurs@syddjurs.dk · www.syddjurs.dk
A clean future university of copenhagen plays an important role in solving our environmental challenges through copenhagen cleantech cluster. As part of Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster, University of Copenhagen has its say in how our future is going to look or rather smell or taste: How are we going to clean our air and our water in the most clever and most environmentally safe way? Copenhagen University is about to find out. The gap-funding part of Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster has 579.000 EUR available for promising cleantech inventions by researchers at University of Copenhagen. And new inventions are already well on their way: “Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster has every potential of putting Denmark on the map as a cleantech metropolis,” says Project Leader Birgitte Neergaard, University of Copenhagen. University of Copenhagen has a strong green profile covering both cleantech, sustainability, climate change and mitigation. The University hosts Sustainability Science Centre - a cross disciplinary centre GREEN IS IN THE AIR Copying what the atmosphere does to clean the air by photochemistry and downsizing it to be used as a cheep and environmentally friendly way to solve indoor air pollution. That is what Copenhagen University professor Mathew S. Johnson has invented and is now testing under the name ‘Green Air’ as part of the Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster project: You might say I stole the idea from nature and made it faster, says the professor and explains how the device purifies the air using natural chemistry and UV light. At the moment a device is being tested in full-scale in corporation with several companies in the windmill and container industry and the potential is enormous since it will be able to replace normal, expensive and not so eco-friendly heating-, ventilation and air conditioning systems: The test results up until now are formidable and the market is already reaching out for this, so corporation with the industry will take Green Air to a new level in the coming years. ITS RAINING GREEN FACTS: Copenhagen Cleantech Cluster is a eU regional Fund project and one of the largest global clusters dedicated to providing necessary business conditions to aid cleantech research, development and implementation. University of Copenhagen is one of eleven partners. What to do when extending the sewers is expensive and in some cities virtually impossible? When climate changes make it rain too much some places and some periods and far too little in other periods and other parts of the world? Reusing the rainwater is a well-proven idea, but Copenhagen University professor Marina Bergen Jensen is now testing how to locally drain the storm water in cities. She has invented the idea of dual porosity filtration of storm water runoff from roads, which means that the storm water is lead through a multistacked filter, cleaning the water by every meter of filtration without blogging the filter and without any use of energy or chemicals: What we end up with is water so clear and clean, that you want to drink it, which you can if you boil it. This means that this system can make an impact on a global market. Both in terms of climate change adaptation. And in terms of providing water for households. At the moment the filter is being tested in a part of Copenhagen in cooperation with The City of Copenhagen. Nørregade 10, DK-1165 Copenhagen K +45 35 32 26 26 www.ku.dk
Page 1 and 2: cutting edge energy industry Indust
Page 3 and 4: exploit the fact that we are in a u
Page 5 and 6: KEEpING THE BIlls dOWN Calculations
Page 7 and 8: Green City - Green Growth The world
Page 9: Project Zero creates green growth A
Page 13 and 14: Cleantech is a gold mine Political
Page 15 and 16: CEO of Kamstrup, Per Asmussen: TRUE

Turning waste into climate-friendly energy

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