Green Nirvana? (Samsø Denmark) - 22nd November 2009
GEORGE NEGUS: It is all a bit 'Back to the Future',
this place.
At first glance, as you leave the port area, Samso looks like a dozen
or so villages and a scattered community of fundamentally conservative
farmers - which is exactly what it is. But, as you look closer, you
start to see telltale signs that something else is going on here,
something very different from their quaint, out-of-the-way lifestyle.
Erik Andersen is a long-time 'Samsinger', as the locals call
themselves, and, just like about every one of the island's 4,000-odd
residents, Erik's well and truly caught up in Samso's renewable
revolution.
GEORGE NEGUS: So, they're really handsome cattle,
aren't they?
ERIK ANDERSON: Sure.
On the face of it, affable Erik - a man of the Samso soil - isn't
exactly what you'd call a natural greenie, but his gut has always
pointed him in an environmentally-friendly direction. So, now, thanks
to the island's self-imposed green technology, these days Erik uses
zero fossil fuels, he says in both his daily life and his farm work.
GEORGE NEGUS: Yours is a very deceptive farm because
it looks just like a
beautiful Danish rural scene, except for when you get here! And what's
that?
ERIK ANDERSON: Solar panels, water-based, for heating the house and the
little ones, solar panels, they make electricity. And they are placed
here because it's towards south, and they hit the sun most of the day.
GEORGE NEGUS: So, you're totally self-sufficient,
energy-wise? Do you get
all the power and energy that you need?
ERIK ANDERSON: Almost. I have a few shares in the windmills.
GEORGE NEGUS: In some of the turbines?
ERIK ANDERSON: Yeah, wind turbines.
GEORGE NEGUS: A lot of people on the island have got
shares in that as
well.
ERIK ANDERSON: Yeah, sure.
GEORGE NEGUS: So, it's not just, if you like, saving
the planet. It's also
saving some money and making some money?
ERIK ANDERSON: Not making much money on this. It's more idealism, I
think.
GEORGE NEGUS: Really? Tell me what your idealism is?
ERIK ANDERSON: Not to burn oil often and spoil the environment.
GEORGE NEGUS: Are you experimenting with other
things, other things on the
farm, where you think you can reduce the emissions?
ERIK ANDERSON: My car and my tractor is running on rape seed oil.
GEORGE NEGUS: Rape seed oil?
ERIK ANDERSON: Canola, whatever you call it.
GEORGE NEGUS: Canola? Yeah, right. And, where is it
processed, the rape
seed, to get the oil that you need?
ERIK ANDERSON: In the barn.
GEORGE NEGUS: Do you do it yourself?
ERIK ANDERSON: Yeah.
GEORGE NEGUS: Right. Can we have a look at it?
ERIK ANDERSON: Yeah, sure.
GEORGE NEGUS: I'd love to, love to. This is your
rape seed plant. But from
those seeds, they look dry, you are able to get enough oil you are able
to extract enough oil from those rape seeds to run your car?
ERIK ANDERSON: Sure.
GEORGE NEGUS: Off this very, very simple looking
piece of engineering.
ERIK ANDERSON: The seed goes into this one and the oil comes out of
this little hole.
GEORGE NEGUS: Can you turn it on for us?
ERIK ANDERSON: Yeah, sure.
GEORGE NEGUS: And what about this? What happens to
this?
ERIK ANDERSON: I feed it to the cows.
GEORGE NEGUS: Ah-ha! Ah-ha! So this is reusable.
ERIK ANDERSON: Yeah, it's valuable. It's got great protein content.
GEORGE NEGUS: And the oil is where?
ERIK ANDERSON: It goes down into these boxes.
GEORGE NEGUS: Right. Running your tractor on that
stuff is doing no harm to
the environment.
ERIK ANDERSON: The CO2 is picked up by the rape plant again.
GEORGE NEGUS: Really? Does it? What, it actually
ERIK ANDERSON: Recycling.
GEORGE NEGUS:Eric typifies that 'something different' that's
clearly going on here.
In many ways, this place is out of whack with itself. On the one hand,
its remote, old-world beauty, and timeless simplicity, like this
fishing village, Ballen. On the other hand, a short stroll away on its
outskirts, is this unlikely establishment, the Samso Energy Academy.
SOREN HERMANSEN, SAMSO ENERGY ACADEMY: The driving force of this was
not to tell people we will cut down the CO2, but talk about the daily
cost, the household economy and the pragmatic attitude to..
GEORGE NEGUS: So, in many ways, it was pragmatism,
rather than idealism
that was the driving force.
SOREN HERMANSEN: I'd say so, I'd say so.
If there was a driving force behind the island's attack on its own
carbon emissions in recent years it was this guy, Soren Hermansen.
Soren's the director of the academy. He got involved 12 years ago when
Samso entered a competition to create Denmark's greenest, most
renewable community, and it won, and that's when things began to
change.
SOREN HERMANSEN: You should think local and act local, and forget about
the global. Because, I mean, we live in a community in a world of
communication. If somebody living in an apartment building is doing
something significant, that will be spread all over the world in no
time.
GEORGE NEGUS: Instead of thinking globally, thinks
lots of locally.
SOREN HERMANSEN: Yeah!
Once they got a guaranteed price for electricity, the wind turbines
became viable, but they still don't come cheap.
SOREN HERMANSEN: I think you've got to remember that we've had
windmills here for 300 years. They were there because of a practical
reason. They were not there to disturb the environment, or to kill some
birds or whatever. They were there because we needed them and, today,
as a promoter of this, I use the same argument saying, "Why should we
have the wind turbines?" Because we need them. We need them to produce
cheaper energy and cleaner energy for us and to stop the imported cost
of fossil fuel.
GEORGE NEGUS: But, the Soren-driven revolution to make Samso
CO2-neutral didn't stop
with the mighty wind-turbines. It spread, and now includes all sorts of
'things renewable' in its anti-carbon armoury, like this biomass
heating plant for the district - one of many that have sprung up using
the co-op model.
GEORGE NEGUS
: You've got very conservative rural people, like Eric
Anderson, that we talked to yesterday, to turn around, turn around, and
get rid of all their old habits. How did you do that?
SOREN HERMANSEN: You have to remember that we are - the farming
community is an old co-op community. They have this cooperation in
them, and they make co-op dairy factories, co-op slaughterhouses, co-op
farms.
GEORGE NEGUS: So, they're used to working together?
SOREN HERMANSEN: Yeah. They have to. We think we are leaders of our own
life. I think we have this independent thinking, but we also know that
we are part of a system, so, we work in cooperation with the system.
And, then, in a very pragmatic way, we see "What's in it for me?", kind
of.
MOGENS MAHLER: This climate here on the island is a little bit better
because we have the sea all the way around.
GEORGE NEGUS: Mogens Mahler, a Christmas tree grower and
seller, is one Samsinger
who's privately making a decent kroner as a carbon-busting convert. As
well as his clever Chrissie tree operation, in summer, Mogens grows
strawberries and blackberries - two very seasonal crops. But, now, he
can make money all year round from this - a massive tower with
revolving blades.)
MOGENS MAHLER: 10 years ago. In August 2010, it's 10 years old. So, it
has been a good investment.
The base of the wind turbine takes up only a few square metres of his
land. A sea breeze comes in, a turbine turns, and you make money. It's
a return literally blowin' in the wind.
MOGENS MAHLER: In farming, there you have to make something yourself.
You have to be there. If you have to make money on farming, you have to
be a good farmer, but this does it itself. Of course, I have to be good
having the right service on it, making the right contracts with selling
the energy.
GEORGE NEGUS: Has it all come about because of the
fact that Samso is the
energy island? It's all part of that whole wonderful scheme, isn't it?
MOGENS MAHLER: We sometimes have a dream here, on Samso, and maybe we
can live that dream out - that we could sell our energy to some
companies who want to buy really green energy. So that we could get, of
course, a little bit more money for it but then we should make a deal
with these companies so this extra money that we get we use them again
to make green energy, so it drives around, like in a circle. We don't
just put them in and buy red wine for them, that we'll then use them
again to make new energy.
GEORGE NEGUS: So it does look like your dream is
coming true, though?
MOGENS MAHLER: Yeah. In a way, it does. I can also say it's one of the
best investments.
GEORGE NEGUS: So, do you see yourself as an
environmentalist, or a farmer,
or a businessman?
MOGENS MAHLER: Part of everything.
GEORGE NEGUS: All three? All three. It's amazing.
It's amazing to be here
and share this with you, it really is.
OK, I know what you're thinking, this carbon reduction idealism stuff
is all very well, but what about all those cars driving around Samso's
country roads and villages, including the one yours truly's been
getting about in? Aren't they running on nasty, carbon-belching petrol?
They certainly are. But the Samsingers insist their emissions are more
than offset by a massive wind farm just off the island's coast.
GEORGE NEGUS: The wind turbines, offshore and
onshore, are obviously vital
to the whole exercise?
SOREN HERMANSEN: They are vital. They are the biggest producers and
they are - that is the number one technology in supporting the rural
community to the system. We are harvesting the wind and then we are
producing green electricity and we feed it into the national system.
GEORGE NEGUS: Because you do have about 40% more
than you need?
SOREN HERMANSEN: More than that. I think we have 60%, 70% more than we
need.
This is Samso, the energy island, in one shot - two worlds, not
colliding, but actually working together. Here to see it happen are
these guys. They are from China. It's fair to say that tiny Samso, with
its big ideas, has caught not just ours, but the world's attention.
Every year, they tell us, hundreds of climate change policy makers and
activists visit this so-called 'Isle of Plenty'.
CHINESE TRANSLATOR: So, you use the pipes to transfer this power to
different areas?
FARMER: Yes, you have
In the global scheme of things, of course, Samso's carbon footprint is
insignificant. Its 4,000-plus rabid energy renewers are far too few to
save the planet. But there's definitely heaps of carbon reduction
tricks to be learned from Samso's amazing 10-year turn-around. What a
remarkable place Samso was - carbon neutral and all that - and what
about its people! In fact, it made me wonder whether the summit next
month should be held in Samso, not in Copenhagen.