Embracing A Clean Green Dream

Copenhagen aims to become the world’s ‘Eco-Metropole’ – the lowest-emitting city on the planet, with harnessed winds, a pristine harbour and cyclists ruling the roads

COPENHAGEN - An inner-city harbour with water so clean the fish are for eating and the beaches for swimming. Offshore wind farms in the waters beyond, piped to the power grid on two generations of Danish brainpower. Underfoot, a district heating network that squeezes every possible joule of warmth from some of the world’s most efficient electricity plants, keeping 97 per cent of Copenhagen toasty.0329 03 1

And here on the ground, a city where cyclists outnumber motorists during the downtown commute on close to 400 kilometres of dedicated lanes so safe that the vast majority don’t even bother wearing helmets, which aren’t mandatory anyway.

At first glance, Copenhagen is everything the brochure says: a hand-shaped city where each finger of suburb is separated by green space and in each fingerbone, a transit corridor of trains and buses, car and bike lanes to the central palm, where many of the globe’s deepest environmental thinkers can be found. More >>>