Thisted Municipality is Proud to be Sustainable

The Danish text was an unfortunate initiative given the choice of Denmark for site of COP15. A sizable portion of electric power in Denmark comes from renewable energy.

At the convention center for COP15 are a number of exhibits; one of the exhibits, reports Alyssa, “is about the Thisted Municipality in Denmark.”

The 226 wind turbines in the municipality are able to produce 339 GWh which means the municipality can all be ran off of renewable energy. It has successfully created an energy system that allows for it to be powered by clean energy… The speaker went on to say the benefits financially are huge.

The Protest outside the Bella Center may be over dramatic in saying it is the last chance, yet even the best climate scientists equivocate about exactly when would be too late (tipping points are non-linear, donncha, kno) and some have said it already is too late.

Alyssa noted that Thisted Municipality in Denmark not only runs off of wind power, but it also “uses many other types of renewable energy sources, such as biomass and wave power to list a couple.” So if there is still is time to mitigate the worst consequences of climate change from human-caused emissions, what can make a difference is more than one clean energy strategy, or one sustainable city. It requires a massive effort around the globe

GE chief hopes Copenhagen leads to US clean energy (sfgate.com)

This entry was written by jcwinnie, posted on 2009-12-9 at 3:30 pm, filed under advocacy, energy and tagged biomass, civic, climate, electric power, oceans, renewable energy, urban, wind power. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

2 Comments

jcwinnie

Posted 2009-12-14 at 9:56 am | Permalink

“Since 1990,” reports the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, “Denmark has grown its economy by 45 percent while energy consumption has remained constant and CO2 emissions have fallen by 13 percent”.
jcwinnie

Posted 2009-12-14 at 9:59 am | Permalink

OTOH, Reddit commentator spuur observes:

As a Dane I would like to encourage every foreigner hearing these arguments to start asking questions about Denmark’s role in CO2 emissions and SO2 pollution from container shipping, to the people who blurt it out.

Our politicians seems very adept at disregarding whatever happens in international waters. Though Denmark is a tiny country with around 5.5 million inhabitants (0.09% of the World’s population), Danish companies such as MAERSK are responsible for at least 10% of the World’s pollution from shipping.

Of course, if MAERSK wasn’t there to haul gazillions of containers from Shanghai and Singapore to San Francisco, some other company with poorer environmental standards would be doing it instead. Still, that shouldn’t be an excuse for our government (or any other government) from demanding reduced environmental impact and higher standards from resident shipping companies.

So please call our government out on their double standards if you ever hear these arguments again. They are far from being as impressive as they sound, and if the Kyoto treaty included international shipping we would be absolutely farked.

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