Sustainable Samsø!
Attention future DIS students: during your time in Copenhagen, I highly suggest signing up for at least one DIScovery trip. They bring you to places and events you wouldn't experience otherwise! Also, you meet other DIS students outside of your housing and classes, and it's always fun to meet new people.
~the squad~
In July, as a birthday present to myself, I signed up for the Sustainable Samsø DIScovery Trip. Samsø is the 9th largest island in Denmark (which is comprised of a whopping 406 islands total), and it is completely sustainable and carbon neutral. As someone who is interested in environmental and energy policy, I was curious to see how they accomplished this goal and wanted to know if it was possible on a larger, maybe even nationwide scale.
Friday afternoon we all met up for the first time and took a train about an hour and a half west of Copenhagen. From there, we boarded a ferry that took us to Samsø. We pulled in rather late, so we got to know each other over some tea and cakes at the hostel and then went to bed.
Saturday, we biked to the Samsø Energy Academy. We met Bernd, a consultant who helps with Samsø's sustainability projects across Europe. He told us about how Samsø made the changes necessary to become carbon neutral. As a policy student, it was fascinating to hear how it was accomplished. I realized that these changes don't need to be made overnight, and gradual progress is still progress. Bernd showed us a biomass heating plant. Here, straw is incinerated to produce heat which is pumped to homes. This plant powers about 500 homes, and the straw is sold to the municipality by the farmers of Samsø, who make up the majority of the residents of the island. Although the incineration process emits carbon dioxide, it is balanced out by all of the crops.
About one of these straw cubes can net enough energy to fly a plane from Denmark to Italy- and back!
We went to lunch and explored a small town for a bit, and then set off to Nordby Baker for some hiking. These hills at the northern tip of the island were beautiful, and the wild cows and sheep definitely made it that much cooler. Once we made it over the hills, we reached the coastline! While it was a little too chilly to go swimming, being by the water was certainly still peaceful.
Caroline, a fellow student blogger, and I at the coast!
Our vintage bus for the trip! Shoutout Sven, our driver, who is currently on vacation in Spain.
At the end of the night, we had a bonfire... sort of. Because it was so windy, it took a lot of patience and team work to get the fire going, but we managed to make it work. Inger and Christina, our trip leaders, brought snorbrød dough for us to cook over the fire. Because it was so dark, I couldn't take any pictures of it, but basically you wrap the dough around a stick and heat it up over the coals. In about 10 minutes (unless you get impatient like I did), you have a perfectly cooked snack that I can only compare to a pretzel. The Danes love their snorbrød like Americans love their s'mores!
On Sunday, we set off again in our bus to the Samsø Labyrinth, the World's Largest Maze according to the Guinness Book of World Records! We split into three teams to work through the labyrinth. The objective was to answer a series of questions which would tell you which way to turn, eventually leading to a hidden temple in the center. Once you reach the center, you would discover instructions to get out. Most of these questions were geography based, and Maria, Caroline, and I did pretty well!
We made it to the hidden temple!
After the labyrinth, we went through a mini tour around Samsø. We drove through some small towns, went to the water, and even stopped at an organic food stand!
At the end of our tour, we visited Jørgen, a farmer who also owns solar panels and wind mills and sells straw to the biomass heating plant we visited the day before. First, we saw his animals and asked questions about organic dairy and meat production. Then, we walked through the fields to his 1 MW wind turbine that produced electricity for roughly 500 homes. Jørgen explained that the 6,000,000 kroner bank loan (almost $800,000) was granted in a swift ten minutes or so because "the bank knew it was obviously a good investment." I couldn't even imagine how difficult the same loan for the same wind turbine would be to get, let alone how much more expensive the turbine would be without government subsidies. If you've been following my blog, you know that I've already climbed one wind turbine on a field study with my Renewable Energy Systems class; however, wind energy in particular is something I'm very interested in, and I was more than happy to scale another!
From the farm, it was time to head back to the ferry and return to Copenhagen. I couldn't believe that the trip was already over and how much we were able to experience in just one weekend. I learned so much about the awesome island of Samsø and how to implement renewable energies on a larger scale. I'm so glad I had this opportunity!
Now that I'm in Cope again, it's back to my routine. This means an 8:30 yoga class, so I'm off to bed. Talk to you soon!
-Mary
(Day 65)