An Ecotopia for Climate Protection: Samso Island Is Face of Danish Green Revolution

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Hermansen saw it right away. He had already had a wind turbine installed on his father's farm in 1984. He is a good talker, and he loves to persuade people. Pumpkins make poor conversationalists, which was reason enough for Hermansen not to spend his life working as a farmer. He was looking for a project, and this was it. The 50 islanders at the Tranebjerg meeting quickly agreed that Hermansen was to be their representative.

He went from house to house to promote the plan, drinking vast amounts of coffee in the process. Then he bought a cider press. Almost everyone on Samso has apple trees, he reasoned, and offering them fresh apple juice was the perfect way to get them to listen to his pitch and calmly discuss the project. "The question was: How can we all continue living on Samso? In the year before, the slaughterhouse had closed down, putting hundreds out of work. It was our Great Depression," he recalls. The plan is better than the slaughterhouse, he said, and soon his argument began having the desired effect.

Three heating plants were built between villages in the southern part of the island, and pipes were laid into the houses. Now the farmers bring the straw that they used to burn in the fields to the plant, where it is burned to generate heat. The farmers are paid for their hay, building the three plants created short-term construction jobs, the villagers are saving money -- and their money stays on the island.

'Everything Has to Belong to the People'

They also built a solar heating plant on the northern part of the island, as well as the wind turbines. Eleven were to be built on land and 10 on the Paludan flats. Big companies were not to be permitted to own any of the windmills, says Hermansen. That was his most important selling point, he says. "You can't do anything from top to bottom. Everything has to belong to the people. It has to become their project."

One of the first islanders to understand the concept was Jörgen Tranberg, a man with an angular head and bushy eyebrows. He owns 150 black-and-white Holstein cattle, which makes him a major dairy farmer on Samso. He is a smart man. His cows crowd onto two ramps to his left and right, as the milking machines click uniformly. He earns less than 22 cents per liter, he says -- in other words, not much.

But Danish law requires electric utilities to buy wind energy at prices significantly higher than production costs. This turns wind turbines into significant moneymakers, an insight that didn't escape the attention of Tranberg's bank. He invested €2.5 million.

He built a turbine on the hill behind his silage tank and invested in half of Turbine No. 8 on the Paludan flats. The community now owns five of the offshore generators, using part of the proceeds to fund the Energy Academy. About 400 Samsingers own the remaining offshore wind turbines and the turbines on land, of which Tranberg owns a very large share. "I think the weather here is always good," he says. "When the wind blows, the rotors turn. When it rains, the feed for my cows grows. And when the sun shines, I take my boat out for a spin." He laughs and calls his dog Vaks. Vaks means shrewd in Danish.

The wind turbines provide Tranberg with about €3,000 in gross daily revenues, while his cows earn only about €1,000 a day -- and have to be milked twice.

Extracting Heat from Cow's Milk

Even the cows do their part to save the world's climate, and they contribute to Tranberg's bottom line in more ways than one. A cow's body temperature is 38.5 degrees Celsius (101.3 degrees Fahrenheit), and the milk has to be cooled down to 3 degrees Celsius. Tranberg, like other farmers, has installed a heat exchanger near the milk tank. The device is as large and angular as a refrigerator, and it even works like one: It cools the milk, releasing heat that is used to heat the house. The wind turbine provides the electricity to run the heat exchanger.

The only remaining net emitters of carbon dioxide are Tranberg's and the other island residents' cars. The ferry to the mainland consumes 9,000 liters of diesel fuel a day. Nevertheless, Samso's overall energy production is still CO2-free, because the island exports more electricity than it imports oil.

But Hermansen isn't finished yet. Automakers Citroën, Peugeot and Mitsubishi plan to start building electric cars next year. Hermansen is negotiating with the electric utility DONG Energy and the wind turbine manufacturer Vestas. He envisions a technology that would allow electric cars to be connected to the generators, and would include computers that charge the cars' batteries when the wind is blowing and tap electricity when it is not.

"We are completely normal people here. Everyone can do what we are doing," says Hermansen. But then he adds: "In the countryside, that is. Cities are a problem."

The Egyptian ambassador visited the island some time ago. After touring the facilities, he said that the number of people living on Samso could fit into three apartment buildings in Cairo -- buildings with no abundant source of cheap straw nearby and not surrounded by the sea.

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• Part 1: Samso Island Is Face of Danish Green Revolution
• Part 2: 'Everyone Can Do What We Are Doing'