From Turbines and Straw, Danish Self-Sufficiency

chrnb writes "Last year, the Danish island of Samso (pronounced SOME-suh) completed a 10-year experiment to see whether it could become energy self-sufficient. The islanders, with generous amounts of aid from mainland Denmark, busily set themselves about erecting wind turbines, installing nonpolluting straw-burning furnaces to heat their sturdy brick houses and placing panels here and there to create electricity from the island's sparse sunshine. By their own accounts, the islanders have met the goal. For energy experts, the crucial measurement is called energy density, or the amount of energy produced per unit of area, and it should be at least 2 watts for every square meter, or 11 square feet. 'We just met it,' said Soren Hermansen, the director of the local Energy Academy, a former farmer who is a consultant to the islanders."

Comments

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[Rei]

Yes, why don't we all go back to a middle age existence. We can enjoy their wonderful quality of life and have a planet carrying capacity a fraction of what we have now.

Why do people pine for this mythical "good old days" before all that pesky modern technology? Between starvation, plagues, and endless manual labor, pre-industrial life sucked.

Re:Nonpolluting straw burning?

[emilper]

yes, horses and subsidies from the mainland, that's the secret for self-sufficiency on an island.

Re:parse error at "generous amounts of aid"

[Zumbs]

The recieved generous amounts of aid in order to investigate what it would take to become self-sufficient. This is similar to producing a prototype of a technology before putting it into mass production: The prototype is likely to be much more expensive to produce than one of the mass produced items. Why do one build a prototype? To see how well it works, discover problems and issues before it is put into mass production.