ENERGY-DENMARK: Samso Island, Beyond Fantasy

On the Danish island of Samsø, a model of energy self-sufficiency, even cow’s milk helps reduce emissions of climate changing gases.

Samsø has an area of 114 square kilometres with just over 4,000 people, located in the Bay of Kattegat, in the North Sea, some 120 km west of Copenhagen.

ts reputation as a model of sustainability is due to the fact that it uses wind turbines and solar panels to generate all of the electricity consumed by local residents.

Since 1997, when Samsø won a national competition to become a prototype community in the use of renewable energy sources, the Samsingers, as locals are known, revolutionised all aspects of their daily lives in order to contribute to greater efficiency.
The effort has such a broad scope that even milk production is part of the energy system.

At the time of milking, cow’s milk has a temperature of about 38 degrees Celsius and has to be cooled immediately to three degrees. Some dairy farmers in Samsø connected a heat transfer mechanism to the collection tank to prevent the warmth from the milk from dissipating into the air, and harnessing it instead to help heat their homes.

So far, despite their inventiveness, the farmers have not resolved the problem of methane and other greenhouse gases generated by the bovine digestive system. But they are studying the system used on a model farm on the Jutland Peninsula, which recycles gases and waste from raising pigs and uses them as energy sources and fertiliser to grow tomatoes.

Although the transfer of heat from the milk to household heating is just a small component in the Samsø community’s energy system, it illustrates how hard the Samsingers are willing to work towards living in harmony with nature.

The centrepiece of the system are 11 wind turbines, which generate an average of 28,000 megawatts annually. That’s enough to meet the community’s electricity demands, supply the island’s entire public transportation system, and have a surplus of 10 percent to sell to other regions of Denmark.

The income from those sales is reinvested in the local renewable energy system.

It’s not that the Samsingers have given up their cars and other usual modes of transport. For example, the three ferries that connect the island with the mainland consume 9,000 litres of petroleum per day. Even so, Samsø sells more clean energy to the continent than it purchases in fossil fuels.

The community is interested in experimenting with electric cars. ”The distances here are very short, less than 50 kilometres,” said Søren Hermansen, director of the island’s Energy Academy and a pioneer in the local environmental revolution.

”If the battery of an electric car can store up energy for, say, 120 kilometres, then that would mean we wouldn’t have to sell our clean energy and we would use it here,” Hermansen told Tierramérica.

Farmers have adapted their tractors and other vehicles to consume ethanol or other fuels distilled from locally grown plants, like canola.

Samsø also has four generators that run on the combustion of hay, which is abundant on the island. The generators are especially efficient because they produce both heat and electricity. Many homes have installed solar panels, geothermal heating, and solar boilers.