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Jorgen tranberg looks like a farmer to his roots: grubby blue overalls, crumpled T-shirt and crinkled, weather-beaten features. His laconic manner, blond hair and black clogs also reveal his Scandinavian origins.
Tranberg farms at Norreskifte on Samso, a Danish island famed for its sweet strawberries and tasty early potatoes. This place is steeped in history - the Vikings built ships and constructed canals here - while modern residents of Copenhagen own dozens of the island's finer houses. But Samso has recently undergone a remarkable transformation, one that has given it an unexpected global importance.
Samsingers - with Tranberg in the vanguard - have launched a renewable-energy revolution on this windswept scrap of Scandinavia. Solar, biomass, wind and woodchip power generators have sprouted up across the island, while traditional fossil-fuel plants have been closed and dismantled. Nor was it hard to bring about these changes. "For me, it has been a piece of cake," says Tranberg.
Ten years ago, islanders drew nearly all their energy from oil and petrol brought in by tankers and from coal-powered electricity transmitted to the island through a mainland cable link. Samsingers now export millions of kilowatt hours of electricity from renewable energy sources to the rest of Denmark.
In doing so, islanders have cut their carbon footprint by a staggering 140 per cent. And what Samso can do today, the rest of the world can achieve in the near future. Last year, carbon dioxide reached a record figure of 384 parts per million - a rise of around 35 per cent on levels that existed before the Industrial Revolution.
Scientists say the world has only a few years left to make serious carbon-output cuts before irreversible, devastating climate change ensues. Samso suggests one route for avoiding such a fate. Everywhere you travel on the island you see signs of change. There are dozens of wind turbines of various sizes dotted across the landscape, houses have solar-panelled roofs, while a long line of giant turbines off the island's southern tip swirl in the wind.
Towns are linked to district heating systems that pump hot water to homes. These are either powered by rows of solar panels covering entire fields, or by generators which burn straw from local farms or timber chips cut from the island's woods. None of these enterprises has been imposed by outsiders or funded by major energy companies. Each plant is owned either by a collective of local people or by an individual islander.
The Samso revolution has been an exercise in self-determination. Consider Tranberg. As he wanders round his cowsheds, he scarcely looks like an energy entrepreneur. Yet the 54-year-old farmer is a true powerbroker. Apart from his fields of pumpkins and potatoes and his 150 cows, he has erected a giant 1MW wind turbine that looms over his 120ha dairy farm. Four other great machines stand beside it, swirling in Samso's relentless winds.
Each device is owned either by a neighbouring farmer or by a collective of locals. In addition, Tranberg has bought a half-share in an even bigger, 2.3MW generator, one of the 10 devices that guard the south coast of Samso and now help to supply a sizeable chunk of Denmark's electricity. It is a remarkable transformation, wrought mainly by Samsingers themselves, albeit with the aid of some national and European Union funds and some generous, guaranteed fixed prices that Denmark provides for wind-derived electricity.
The latter ensures turbines pay for themselves over a six- or seven-year period. After that, owners can expect to rake in some tidy profits. "It has been a very good investment," admits Tranberg. "But none of us are in it just for the money. We are doing it because it is fun and it makes us feel good." Nor do his efforts stop with his turbines. Tranberg recently redesigned his cowshed so it requires little straw for bedding for his cattle. Each animal now has its own natty mattress.
Instead, most of the straw from Tranberg's fields is sold to his local district heating plant, further increasing his revenue and limiting carbon dioxide production. (Carbon dioxide is absorbed as crops grow in fields. When their stalks - straw - are burned, that carbon dioxide is released, but only as a gas that has been recycled within a single growing season. By contrast, oil, coal and gas are the remains of plants that are millions of years old and so, when burned, release carbon dioxide that had been sequestered aeons ago.)
Samso's transformation owes its origin to a 1997 experiment by the Danish government. Four islands, Laeso, Samso, Aero and Mon, as well as the region of Thyholm in Jutland, were each asked to compete in putting up the most convincing plan to cut their carbon outputs and boost their renewable-energy generation. Samso won. Although it lies at the heart of Denmark, the nation's fractured geography also ensures the island is one of its most awkward places to reach, surrounded as it is by the Kattegat, an inlet of the North Sea.
A total of 4100 people live there, working on farms or in hotels and restaurants. THE JOB of setting up the Samso experiment fell to Soren Harmensen, a former environmental studies teacher, with thinning greyish hair and an infectious enthusiasm for all things renewable. Outside his project's headquarters, at the Samso Energiakademi - a stylish, barn-like building designed to cut energy consumption to an absolute minimum - there is an old, rusting petrol pump parked on the front steps.
A label on it says, simply: "No fuel. So what now, my love?" It took endless meetings to get things started. Every time there was a community issue at stake, Soren would arrive and preach his sermon about renewable energy and its value to the island. Slowly, the idea took hold but the process was erratic, with individual islanders' self-interest triggering conflicts.
One Samsinger, the owner of a cement factory, proposed a nuclear plant be built on the island instead of wind turbines. He would then secure the concrete contract for the reactor, he reasoned. The plan was quietly vetoed. "We are not hippies," says Harmensen. "We just want to change how we use our energy without harming the planet or without giving up the good life." Eventually the first projects were launched, a couple of turbines on the west coast, and a district heating plant.
"Nothing was achieved without talk and a great deal of community involvement," says Harmensen. It's a message he has since carried round the planet. "I visited Shropshire [in England] recently," he says. "A wind-farm project there was causing a huge fuss, in particular among the three villages nearest the proposed site. The planners would soothe the objections of one village, only for the other two to get angry - so local officials would turn to them. Then the first village started to object all over again. The solution was simple, of course. Give each village a turbine, I told them.
The prospect of cheap electricity would have changed everyone's minds."' Needless to say, this did not happen. On another visit - this time to Islay, off the west coast of Scotland - Harmensen found similar problems. "I was asked to attend a public meeting to debate the idea of turning the island into a renewable energy centre like Samso. But nearly all the speakers droned on about ideals and about climate change in general. But what people really want is to be involved themselves and to do something that can make a difference to the world. That point was entirely lost."
"Later I found that a local Islay distillery was installing a new set of boilers. 'Why not use the excess water to heat local homes?' I suggested. I was told that would be far too much bother, yet that was just the kind of scheme that could kickstart a renewable-energy revolution." It should be noted that the island's transformation has come at a price: roughly 420 million kroner ($120 million) that includes money from the Danish government, the EU, local businessmen and individual members of collectives.
Thus the Samso revolution cost around 105,000 kroner ($30,000) per islander, although a good chunk has come from each person's own pockets. "This is a pilot project to show the world what can be done," says Harmensen.
"We are not suggesting everyone makes the sweeping changes that we have. People should cherry-pick from what we have done in order to make modest but still meaningful carbon emission cuts. The crucial point is that we have shown that if you want to change how we generate energy, you have to start at the community level and not impose technology on people.
"For example, Shell heard about what we were doing and asked to be involved - but only on condition they ended up owning the turbines. We told them to go away. We are a nation of farmers, of course. We believe in self-sufficiency."
Jesper Kjems is the official spokesman for the Samso project. Outside the town of Nordby, he showed me round its district heating project. A field has been covered with solar panels mounted to face the sun. Cold water is pumped in at one end to emerge, even on a gloomy day, as seriously hot water - around 70C - which is then piped to local houses for heating and washing. On particularly dark, sunless days, the plant switches mode: woodchips are scooped by robot crane into a furnace which heats the plant's water instead. The entire system is automated. "There are some living creatures involved, however," adds Kjems.
"A flock of sheep is sent into the field every few days to nibble the grass before it grows long enough to prevent the sun's rays hitting the panels." Everywhere you go, you find renewable-energy enthusiasts like Kjems.
Crucially, most of them are recent recruits to the cause. Nor do planning rows concerning the sight of "eyesore" wind turbines affect Samsingers. "No one minds wind turbines on Samso for the simple reason that we all own a share of one," says electrician Brian Kjar. And that is the real lesson from Samso. What has happened there is a social not a technological revolution.
Indeed, it was a specific requirement of the scheme, when established, that only existing, off-the-shelf renewable technology be used. Kjar's house near the southern town of Orby reveals the consequences. He has his own wind turbine, which he bought second-hand for 190,000 kroner - about a fifth of its original price. This produces more electricity than his household needs, so he uses the excess to heat water that he keeps in a huge insulated tank that he also built himself.
On Samso's occasional windless days, this provides heating for his home when the 21m turbine outside his house is not moving. "Everyone knows someone who is interested in renewable energy today," he says. "Something like this starts with a few people. It just needs time to spread. That is the real lesson of Samso."
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