Although three organic farmers on the island plan to convert their diesel-powered cars to run on the rapeseed oil they harvest, everyone else relies on conventional fuels and probably will continue to for a long time. Transportation is one area where renewable energy is not close to competitive. Surplus wind-generated electricity might eventually be used to create hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles,
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Erecting windmills was easy compared with replacing the coal and oil that heated Samsø’s buildings. The island’s principal work is farming; 80,000 pigs a year are raised on the island. Idealistic energy planners looking at the expanse of filthy pens immediately saw an untapped resource. A biogas plant could digest that manure, along with clover grass, and extract concentrated methane to power a generator and provide heat and electricity for about 200 homes. Although some Danish companies have brought biogas technology to market, the project stalled after the government decided not to establish price supports for electricity derived from biogas. Another innovative proposal, to tap into waste heat created by the ferries that run back and forth between the island and the mainland, got shot down on practical grounds: Ensuring a fail-safe backup in case a ferry failed to show up would have been prohibitively expensive.
So Lillevang and his fellow planners turned to simpler techniques. Supported by a $500,000 grant from the Danish Energy Agency and another million dollars in loans, Samsø Energiselskab began building in June 2002 a second plant to generate heat by burning straw—the stalks and husks of corn harvested on the island. It opened that November, early and under budget, in time for the cold season. The success of the plant, in the village of Onsbjerg, then sparked the construction of yet another small straw-burning plant.
A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES Even though our per capita income is just 16 percent greater, the average American consumes three times as much energy as the average Dane, much of which is a reflection of lifestyles in the United States. Tax policies encourage Danes to conserve. DENMARK Energy fraction supplied by renewables (excluding hydropower): 13.2% Electricity cost (1 kilowatt-hour): $0.23 Annual household electricity consumption (kWh/square foot): 3.4 Per capita greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 equivalent): 9.9 tons Per capita income: $30,290 UNITED STATES Energy fraction supplied by renewables (excluding hydropower): 3.3% Electricity cost (1 kilowatt-hour): $0.08 Annual household electricity consumption (kWh/square foot): 6.8 Per capita greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 equivalent): 19.8 tons Per capita income: $35,060 |
When that plant is completed later this year, 70 percent of the townspeople on Samsø will consume renewables-powered district heat. For people who live in the countryside, the energy office suggested solar heaters and stoves that burn wood chips. But even with generous subsidies, public acceptance foundered, says Søren Hermansen, who runs the island’s affiliated energy and environment office. He turned to local blacksmiths for help. “We call specialists from the mainland and invite everybody to a meeting at the hotel,” he says. “We offer a glass of beer, a coffee, and everybody sits there for two or three hours and listens to the new stuff from the energy office. Private people like to listen to our vision, but when it comes to action, they talk to their ordinary tradesmen.” By 2003 residents of Samsø had installed more than 90 new solar heat systems and 250 chip burners, often used in tandem, as well as 30 heat pumps that draw thermal energy from the soil. More than a quarter of the island’s rural residences—and two-thirds of the island as a whole—are now heated with renewable energy.
But a quarter of the island’s population consists of pensioners who can neither afford the up-front costs of installing green technology nor wait for the payback. For them, Samsø’s planners preach the simplest methods of stretching the island’s resources: insulation, new appliances, and relatively cheap ways to reduce energy demand. Thirty years after they first came into vogue, efficiency solutions remain remarkably underexploited, says Amory Lovins, CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. By his calculations, the United States could save a billion dollars a day in energy costs—roughly half its total expenditure—through more efficient use. “This is our biggest, cheapest, fastest energy resource, and we ought to be doing a lot more of it,” he says. On Samsø, the preaching is finding converts: About 45 percent of low-income pensioner households have invested in energy saving.
