Lessons from an island go around the world
After achieving its own clean energy transition, the Danish island of Samsø is now advising towns and regions worldwide how to follow in its footsteps, and sees its next role as a test ground for innovative energy solutions
In the middle of Denmark lies the picturesque island of Samsø. At just over a hundred square kilometres and home to around 3700 inhabitants, Samsø is the definition of a small community. In recent years its place at the forefront of the clean energy transition has attracted international attention to the island far beyond its modest stature. It now advises towns and regions around the world and believes becoming a test ground for unproven energy technologies would be a logical next step
“Samsø is more than just an island,” says Søren Hermansen, CEO of Samsø Energy Academy, the organisation leading the island’s transition to a fully sustainable society, including breaking its reliance on fossil fuel for heating, transport and electricity in favour of an all-renewable energy supply. He describes Samsø as a “tool” and a “vision” before opting for the word “process”, insisting that the island’s projects and learning cannot simply be “copy and pasted” for implementation elsewhere.
The adventure started in 1997 when Samsø won a competition arranged by then energy minister Svend Auken to become Denmark’s renewable energy island. A masterplan was drawn up, indicating how the island could make the transition within the aegis of current legislation and using known technologies. “We looked at consumer patterns and the resources we had available, and asked what it was possible to change,” says Hermansen. The focus was on practical suggestions, such as how to replace one litre of oil with ten kilowatt hours of electricity, and on building a business case around which money could be borrowed from the bank to finance the change, he explains.
The first ten years were dedicated to energy production and moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Four district heating power stations running on straw-fired boilers were built, 11 on-shore wind turbines were erected as well as ten near-shore turbines and buildings were renovated to reduce their energy use. “From the beginning it was our ambition not just to switch production to renewables, but also to save energy,” says Hermansen.
The process was anything but smooth and discussions among the island’s residents often heated. One of the main lessons learned was the importance of involving everyone in open debate to see how far people were willing to go. “Discussions and arguments are often very personal in a local community, but it was essential to have these talks upfront and not to be afraid of them,” says Hermansen. The hope was to establish a sense of community and to find a common platform around which everybody could agree that change was necessary.
As with most small islands, the decreasing number of habitants and rising average age was a concern for all. “We reversed the discussion and asked if we could do some damage control and create new jobs,” says Hermansen. This became the key to getting people on board. The green transition became the tool to create jobs. Instead of saying that 350 houses needed to be connected to one of the new district heating stations, we explained that 350 houses needed renovating with better insulation and windows, heat pumps and solar panels, meaning new jobs for the craftsmen on Samsø, he explains.
Open democracy
Another key lesson was the importance of involving citizens not just in discussions, but also in ownership. The district heating facilities and the 11 onshore wind turbines are owned by cooperatives. Local farmers who had land available for wind turbines were very keen to invest in their own hardware, but the energy island organisers set up an ownership programme, enabling all of Samsø’s inhabitants to invest in the turbines. “We made a deal with the farmers to help with authority approvals and in return they had to offer 20% of the project to the local community. This is now a nationwide rule.” He adds: “Local ownership works as a visual safety net. You tolerate noise and whatever nuisance there may be much more when they are your own turbines. Then it becomes a local discussion of how we handle any nuisance factors,” says Hermansen.
To enable cooperative members to finance construction of district heating stations, the local government issued a guarantee providing access to cheap loans from KommuneKredit, the Danish local government credit institution. In return, members of the cooperative agreed to buy district heating for a ten-year period until the loans were paid off. “What we did was anti-competitive and the oil companies operating on Samsø were not pleased. But our argument was that, yes, there may be two oil truck drivers losing their jobs, but they can transport wood pellets and straw for the combined heat and power facilities,” says Hermansen.
“The island has managed to combine the transition with a bottom-up approach and national policy should be planned this way too,” says Brian Vad Mathiesen, professor in energy planning at Denmark’s University of Aalborg. He believes this is why Samsø has gained so much international attention, which has, in turn, helped secure the project’s success. “This was our key to the future. We were not helped by existing policies, but by positive feedback from outside Denmark. We suddenly had a role to play,” says Hermansen.
International relations
Samsø Energy Academy today works with small communities and islands around the world. Hermansen says discussions always start by identifying the “burning platform”, a problem that needs solving. For Samsø it was the closure of the local slaughterhouse, which saw almost a hundred men being laid off. “We don’t ask how we can do this, but why,” he says. The focus is then on finding small projects that makes sense for the community in question and getting the “fireballs”, those who will fight for projects that help local people, involved. Energy is the perfect tool for small communities because it is also the key to an improved economy, he states. “Instead of importing energy, you start to create your own turnover locally and suddenly it all makes sense,” says Hermansen.
Samsø Energy Academy works closely with the EU and in Europe is involved with projects in Greece, Madeira, the Canary Islands, Sweden and Scotland. Further afield, the academy is working with the local authorities in Victoria and South East Australia, where the largest coal-fired power plants in the southern hemisphere are being closed and replaced by wind turbines and solar panels. This will mean changes to the entire infrastructure. “It is Denmark many times over. They need help to organise and set up structures. We are helping with village development,” says Hermansen.
Samsø has been working in Japan for close to 20 years and has helped establish four local district heating power stations as well as numerous co-operatively owned wind turbines on land and solar projects. Here the “burning platform” of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima has helped trigger an understanding of the need for change.
In the US, the academy is helping the Molikai islands in Hawaii with their aim, supported by the US Congress, to be self-sufficient in energy. It is also cooperating with islands in Maine, where a small wind power project of three 1.2 MW turbines is being built. “It is the first co-operative project on the east coast,” says Hermansen. “The turbines are owned by the lobster fishermen, who use the power for their cold stores and sell the rest to the grid.” In Greensburg, Kansas, his organisation is helping with the construction of wind and district heating power stations. “There is lots of wind and straw in Kansas. The farmers supply the straw for the district heating units,” he states.
A new project is being started up in Indonesia with the Confederation of Danish Industry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is expected to be officially launched in 2019. It is yet to be decided whether to include the whole of Indonesia or just Lombok, the island hit by an earthquake earlier this year. Hermansen comments: “It needs to be rebuilt, including new infrastructure, and to be sustainable instead of coal-based.”
Next steps
Back home on Samsø, the next phase is to make the island 100% fossil-fuel free by 2030, including transport. “This will be a rather difficult challenge and it requires a high investment upfront. I think it will be difficult to get people to change their cars or tractors to electric vehicles and it may require some economic aid from outside [the island],” says Vad Mathiesen. Samsø is already the municipality in Denmark with the most electric vehicles per capita and one of its two ferries sails on liquified natural gas and can potentially be refitted to become a hybrid-run ferry to sail partly on electricity, Hermansen explains. “There will be a tender for the other ferry within five years. It could be a good chance for the municipality to make a bid.”
He acknowledges that transportation is a challenge. “We need to change people’s perception of mobility. You do not necessarily need to own your car,” says Hermansen. “We will throw all the cards up in the air and see where we end up. Perhaps we should try something completely new,“ he asserts, positing the idea of driverless cars or drones to pick up and deliver packages.
Where the first step of the green transition was based entirely on proven technology, this may recede in future and one of the ideas for the coming years is to make Samsø a test island for new unproven technology. “I could easily imagine that you create this wild vision for the future and test it here on Samsø. Try it out with companies, get investors onboard too. It will be on a small scale, of course, but if it fails it will not be such a big financial loss,” says Hermansen.
This article by Karin Jensen was originally brought in the Cities section of FORESIGHT Climate & Energy
