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The central Copenhagen
cityscape shows rows
of near-shore wind farms
in the harbor area.
Copenhagen
Prepares
Denmark’s capital has
already begun to implement a
comprehensive response to the
threats of climate change.
By Don Hinrichsen
Text and photographs by
PHOTO BY URSLA BACH
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T
HOUGH COPENHAGEN IS NOT THE ONLY URBAN AREA
developing an active strategy to combat climate change, the city—
home to roughly 1.9 million people out of a total Danish population
of 5.6 million (2014)—is unique in its integrated, neighborhood-based
approach. The City Council developed a comprehensive Climate Plan for
Copenhagen in 2009, followed by a Climate Adaptation Plan adopted in 2011.
The original Climate Plan aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by
20 percent by 2015 and to make the Danish capital the first city in the world
to be “carbon neutral” by 2025. In fact, the city managed to reduce carbon
emissions by 21 percent by 2011, ahead of schedule, and is well on its way to
becoming “carbon neutral” within 10 years.
The term “carbon neutral” does not mean zero carbon dioxide emissions.
Rather, carbon neutrality is measured by both a reduction in carbon
emissions at their source and an increase in green areas to absorb and offset
remaining emissions. In the case of Copenhagen, the goal calls for the city to
reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 70,000 tons. This is being accomplished
through a combination of three broad approaches:
•
The largest reductions, about three quarters, will come from the
energy sector. The city is constructing more land-based and offshore
wind farms, bringing on stream a new biomass-fired combined
district-heating and electricity-generating plant, building another
waste-to-energy plant and phasing out fossil fuels for peak load
(electricity) generation. In addition, a geothermal plant may also be
constructed.
•
The transport sector will account for a reduction in carbon emissions
of roughly 15 percent. This will be achieved by encouraging more
cycling (more than half the population already cycles regularly),
introducing biogas and hybrid buses and promoting the use of
electrical and hydrogen-powered private vehicles.
•
The third pillar in the plan calls for energy savings, so-called
“megawatts”, by reducing energy consumption by around 7 percent.
This will be accomplished through the design of new low-energy
buildings, retrofitting existing structures (better insulation and
double-glazed windows) and the use of solar cells for off-peak
electricity production, particularly in the summer months.
These longer-term goals were supplemented in 2011 by a more
immediate, second phase strategy, aimed at mitigating some of the worst
impacts of climate change. The Climate Adaptation Plan was prompted by
two major downpours (called cloudbursts)—one in August 2010 and the
second in July 2011. The later dumped six inches of rainfall on the city in
less than three hours, flooding cellars and completely inundating streets
and main roads. Some low-lying areas were overwhelmed by 20 inches of
sewage-contaminated water. This event alone caused 6 billion Danish kroner
in damages (over $1 billion).
Subsequent surveys found that close to half of all Copenhagen residents
feared damage from future storms, while 61 percent of apartment dwellers in
vulnerable areas had experienced water damage from recent flooding.
“These events put us in the front line of climate change mitigation,”
points out Lykke Leonardsen, head of the city’s Climate Unit. “We had to
develop both short-term and long-term responses to climate change in order
to avoid more severe flooding as a result of an increase in storms.”
Leonardsen heads up a ten-person team within the city administration
devoted entirely to coping with the worst effects of climate change. “We had
already experienced within the last five years a storm that should occur only
once every 100 years, followed by one that should only occur once every 200
years,” she observes. “Redesigning the entire storm-water drainage system,
which is part of the city’s sewage system, was simply not feasible; we would have
to tear up the entire city at enormous costs and inconvenience to residents.”
City planners, hydrologists and climate experts worked with the
city government to design what Esben Alslund-Lanthén, an analyst at
the Copenhagen-based think tank Sustainia, refers to as the “green-blue”
Details of the "green scaping" of Tasinge Plads in the Østerbro section of Copenhagen.
Close to half of all Copenhagen residents feared
damage from future storms.
PHOTO: DAVID BUCHMANN
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approach. “Copenhagen developed
this concept as a cost-effective way
for neighborhoods to deal with the
consequences of increased rainstorms by
introducing a two-pronged approach—
increasing the city’s green areas by
lining main streets with mini-parks
containing more trees, shrubs and
grasses in order to absorb more rain;
and second by turning some streets
According to recent
research by the Intergov-
ernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), the world has
already warmed by nearly
one degree Centigrade since
the end of the Industrial
Revolution. Furthermore, sea
levels have risen by 20 cm
since 1880, but projections
indicate that by the end of
this century sea levels could
well be one meter (three
feet) higher!
Higher sea levels are
triggered by the fact that sea
water expands when heated;
the oceans are absorbing
nearly all the heat added to
the climate system. Tem-
peratures have increased
sharply in the Arctic. As a
result, summer Arctic sea ice
has declined by more than
40 percent over the past four
decades. At the same time
land-based glaciers are melt-
ing at record levels.
This dire situation—more
and more severe storms,
melting glaciers and rising
sea levels—has not gone
unnoticed by the insurance
industry. According to Mark
Carney, Governor of the Bank
of England, there is growing
evidence of humanity’s role
in climate change. “Since
the 1980s,” he says, “the
number of registered
weather-related loss events
has tripled. Losses for the
insurance industry have
increased five-fold to $50
billion per year!”
Climate
change is
here now
Artist rendering of Skt. Kjelds Plads, the next area of the city to be redesigned
according to the "green-blue" approach.
into literal cloudburst avenues as a way of channeling excess runoff into our
extensive harbor area.”
The first neighborhood to be re-designed following the “green-blue”
approach was the Østerbro area, in the north-central part of the city.
The Danish architecture firm, Tredje Natur, was chosen to redesign the
neighborhood as a model for the rest of the city.
“Instead of doing pinpoint projects, we decided to develop a rainwater
master plan,” points out René Sommer Lindsay, the city official in the
mayor’s office in charge of Østerbro’s transformation. “Given the fact that
our storm-water system is over 100 years old, we had to look at practical
ILLUSTRATION:SLA
ILLUSTRATION: SLAS VISUALIzATIONS
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New York City officials like the idea of having
an experimental model neighborhood.
solutions from a hydraulic and environmental point of view. After all,
rainwater is only a problem if it goes where you don’t want it to go.”
Working with Tredje Natur, which designed the master plan, along with
a number of other architectural and engineering firms, officials decided to
tear up a number of the neighborhood’s sterile asphalt streets and squares
and replace them with green areas consisting mostly of grass, trees and small
shrubs. The main streets are being turned into tree-lined boulevards with
elevated sidewalks and bike paths on both sides. When the next downpour
occurs, more of the water will be absorbed by the green areas and pocket parks,
while the main streets will become canals, directing the water away from the
squares and people’s cellars and into the harbor. As the cloudburst avenues
approach the last 100 meters or so before reaching the harbor, the water will
be directed into newly installed underground storm-water drains. “This way,
millions of gallons of water will be effectively channeled back into the harbor
with minimal, or no, damage to the built environment,” observes Lindsay.
In December 2014, Østerbro’s Climate Quarter, the city’s first, was
inaugurated in the climate resilient square known as Tåsinge Plads. In the
summer of 2016, the neighborhood’s first green courtyard will be finished,
while by the end of 2017, the streets-turned-cloudburst boulevards will be ready
for the next major rainstorm. A group of residents have also planted a rooftop
garden which already supplies fresh produce to the neighborhood. The redesign
of Østerbro’s Climate Quarter should be finished by sometime in 2020.
“We are not only doing disaster preparedness, but beautifying the city
and making it more liveable at the same time,” insists Lindsay. “The other
Skt. Kjeld Plads from another perspective in the architect’s rendering.
benefit of more green space is that the vegetation will act as a natural air
conditioner during the hotter summer months, reducing Copenhagen’s “heat
island” effect.”
If all goes according to plan, Copenhagen’s climate change adaptation
plan will be fully implemented throughout the city by around 2033. By the
middle of this century, Copenhagen will have smaller streets surrounded by
plenty of trees and shrubs designed to absorb runoff and regulate water flow,
while channeling excess water from storms into cloudburst boulevards. At
the same time, the city is expected to be fully carbon neutral within 10-15
years, perhaps the first urban area in the world to achieve this goal.
“So far,” points out Leonardsen, “no other city is taking such a
sustainable, integrated approach to mitigating climate change.” The other
benefit of this “green-blue” approach is that it is much cheaper than building
sea walls or expanding the storm-water sewer system. “We have calculated
that the total cost of redesigning Copenhagen will be on the order of $1.5
billion,” affirms Leonardsen. “Re-doing the storm-water sewer system alone
would have cost at least twice as much.”
A
CCORDING TO MORTEN KABELL, COPENHAGEN’S DEPUTY
Mayor in charge of environment and technology, this approach “is
unique because it’s the first system in the world to cover an entire city,
as an inter-connected system. It is also unique because there is a strong focus
on using adaptation as a way to create better urban space—more green and
blue—creating a more liveable city. In this way,” he continues, “we can turn
rain into a resource, a natural part of the city.”
Kabell was in New York City at the invitation of the mayor’s office in
September 2015. New York has come up with a $19.5 billion climate change
adaptation plan of its own, consisting of some 250 separate projects. But the
plan relies too heavily on expensive “gray” solutions, including building very
expensive sea walls.
“New York is interested in two aspects of our plan,” explains Kabell.
“First is the integrated, connected system for cloudburst management;
planning for a 100-year storm instead of the usual 10-year storms. And
second, they are interested in the climate neighborhood approach as
exhibited in Østerbro.”
New York City officials like the idea of having an experimental
model neighborhood, “one where they can also work with integrated
solutions where storm-water management, greening the city, urban space
improvement and creation of public areas where residents can meet and
interact all come together,” says Kabell.
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Don Hinrichsen, an internationally recognized environment writer, has undertaken numer-
ous assignments for United Nations agencies. He is the author of The Atlas of Coasts and Oceans:
Threatened Rersources and Marine Conservation, published by the University of Chicago Press.
Another rendering of Skt. Kjelds Plads.
The architects overall design of Skt. Kjelds Plads.
New York is already looking at the possibility of setting up a model
project in the southeast area of Queens, in Jamaica, which could then be
used as an experimental neighborhood.
“In adapting to climate change, cities can choose either grey or green
infrastructure,” points out Professor Stuart Gaffin, a research scientist at
the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. Professor
Gaffin, who also advises the New York City municipal government on how
to adapt to climate change, says “gray infrastructure means building walls
and barriers. In the case of New York, we might lose Long Island if we went
for the gray option. The green option, which has growing support, includes
green roofs, green streets that will capture more storm-water and pavements
that allow water to percolate through.”
Other coastal cities are also climbing on board, introducing plans to
deal with rising sea levels and increased rainfall, among other perturbations.
The Dutch delta city of Rotterdam, for instance, is even designing a plan for
floating neighborhoods.
Kabell is upbeat about Copenhagen’s approach. “There is no reason why
Copenhagen could not be a model for other cities,” he says. “But context is
a big issue when talking about adaptation and urban development. However,
handling floods with surface solutions instead of using storm-sewers and
making cities greener is definitely exportable.”
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