Why is Copenhagen such a sustainable city?

Brut America

Leading the major cities towards a more sustainable future. That’s the goal of the C40 Cities, which is starting tomorrow in Copenhagen.  Brut nature met the city’s mayor. This is how he managed, together with the inhabitants, to turn his city into an example.

Transcript

00:00I'm happy to welcome you all to Copenhagen and look forward to show you

00:03what works in Copenhagen when it comes to transform your city to be green and

00:07livable. Welcome to Copenhagen!

00:31We have a very ambitious climate plan here in my city. We want to become the

00:35first carbon neutral capital city by 2025. It's very ambitious but I'm glad to

00:40tell you that we are well on our way. We have already reduced our carbon

00:44emissions with 42 percent since 2005 and until 2014. Today we have a growing

00:51population. The number of citizens have grown with 20 percent since the 1st of

00:56January 2010 and you can see even that we have had a growing population in the

01:01city. We have cut down carbon emissions with more than 40 percent so it makes it

01:07amazing and Copenhagen is a front-runner when it comes to make your city more

01:13more climate friendly, more sustainable and we have done that

01:19together with the citizens, with the Copenhageners, because our bicycle

01:23infrastructure is a very good example. We have invested a lot in bicycle

01:27infrastructure over the last two decades and now 60 percent, more than 60 percent

01:32of the Copenhageners use the bike for daily transportation. That's a fantastic

01:37result of a concrete policy where City Hall want to change the situation where

01:43where the car was going to be king in the city. Today the bicycle is king in

01:48Copenhagen. We have a long tradition in Denmark and in Copenhagen for using

01:53energy out of waste. We produce heat, we are recycling a lot of our waste and we are

01:59going to recycle much much more of our waste in the years to come. We are

02:04introducing a lot of new sustainable solutions in my city. One of the big ones

02:11was to make Copenhagen complete with district heating. 99 percent of all

02:18households in Copenhagen are linked to our very efficient district heating

02:22system and then we can make our completely heating system CO2 neutral. We

02:28also introduced new technology like district cooling where we take the cold

02:32out of the water in our harbour and distribute the cold in pipes beside the

02:36district heating pipes so you can cool down buildings and you can reduce

02:40electricity used for cooling down buildings with 70 percent. It makes sense.

02:45It makes it also better life but it also makes it cheaper for the citizens and

02:50for the factory in the city. We also want to use more more carbon-friendly

02:56products. We have decided a food policy where 98 percent of all the food

03:01produced in the public kitchen should be organic and I'm glad to tell you that

03:06today we are very close to our target. 97 percent of the food in our public

03:13kitchens are organic and now we also want to to reduce the climate footprint

03:19of our food in the city. So step by step we change the behavior, the way of life

03:26and we learn our kids to go in the right direction because in Copenhagen kids

03:30learn to bike when they start kindergarten with their parents and when

03:34they start school they can go by bike themselves, learn to eat carbon-friendly

03:39food in the kindergarten and they hopefully they will do the same when

03:43they go to school and and when they have left school they have learned to

03:47have a kitchen where they produce carbon-friendly food in the kitchen. So

03:52that's how we do it in Copenhagen. We want the people to be a part of the

03:56green transformation.

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