{"id":3502,"date":"2014-01-10T16:02:36","date_gmt":"2014-01-10T15:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=3502"},"modified":"2014-01-10T16:02:36","modified_gmt":"2014-01-10T15:02:36","slug":"one-thing-we-have-learnt-this-week-demark-goes-carbon-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=3502","title":{"rendered":"One thing we have learnt this week-Demark carbon free"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"black<\/a>All this week BBC Radio 4’s consumer programme “You and Yours<\/em>” has been visiting Denmark which has pledged to go carbon free by 2050.\u00a0 As the rows over energy prices in the UK continue in the new year, the programme decided to visit a cold country to compare notes.<\/p>\n

There are a number of differences between Denmark and the UK.\u00a0 For starters most newer\u00a0 houses are better insulated with their current building regulations being far higher on energy efficiency.\u00a0 However, there is still a problem with old housing stock.\u00a0 In fact in this part of the programme as they were speaking to a British person I thought they were talking about the UK as she described how cold and energy inefficient her terraced house was.\u00a0 It was however in Denmark.\u00a0 This person does have another option which she was considering that is not generally available in the UK.\u00a0 That is to connect to district heating.\u00a0 Up to 60% of Danes<\/a> are linked by pipes to small combined heat and power plants (often found in the centre of cities).\u00a0 Interestingly in Denmark as far as energy bills were concerned there was not a great deal of difference.\u00a0 Bills were about the same as here.\u00a0 Being on district heating was slightly cheaper though (and has to be by law).\u00a0 The companies are also not for profit.\u00a0 Some of the fuel used in these is renewable such as straw, others are fuelled by non-recoverable waste.\u00a0 They are also experimenting with passiv and micro-generation technologies for new houses to create houses that generate more energy than they use.\u00a0 They call these latter houses “active houses”.<\/p>\n

Denmark is also nearer to being carbon free by the use of renewable electricity, not only from combined heat and power but also wind.\u00a0 About 50% came from renewables last year, here was probably about 15%.\u00a0 In another effort to go carbon free the Danes are aiming to phase out fossil fuel driven cars.\u00a0 Copenhagen has pledged to go carbon free by 2020.\u00a0 Much of this relies on fossil fuel driven car phase out, but on this despite very large numbers of people cycling, they seem to be struggling.\u00a0\u00a0Copenhagen also have a slightly bizarre way of measuring it which is to calculate emissions saved by renewables and subtract the total traffic emissions from this.\u00a0 When the difference is zero they are carbon free.\u00a0 This is not a valid way of calculating it.<\/p>\n

What can we learn from the Danish experience?<\/p>\n