No-Bullshit Net Zero

There's a phrase I want you to learn. It's a phrase I am going to keep coming back to in my posts between now and the election on November 18th, and a phrase I plan - with your help - to bring into the vernacular of Copenhagen's City Hall. That phrase is NO-BULLSHIT NET ZERO.

SOMETHING IS ROTTEN IN DENMARK: Denmark's celebrates its energy transition. Officially, Denmark has reduced its CO2 emissions by about 50% since 1990. But there's a catch. Half of that reduction has been accomplished by switching out coal for wood and other biomass, most of it imported, in our powerplants. In other words, half of Denmark's green transition so far has been BULLSHIT. I'll briefly explain why.

Burning wood actually releases MORE CO2 than coal for the same amount of energy. Yes, that CO2 came from the air as the tree grew, so in that sense it's a cycle, but the payback time compared to if the tree was left to grow is so long that as far as our planet's climate in 2050 is concerned, we may as well have stuck to coal. There's a unanimous scientific opinion that forest biomass is not sustainable. The fact that a country like Denmark that is extremely well-off in terms of agricultural land per person has to import wood to run on biomass is proof by itself of how unscalable the practice is. The best thing you can do for the climate with a forest is: Leave. It. Alone.

Why then has Denmark switched out coal for wood? It's an accounting trick. Due to conventions set up by the UN to incentivise developing countries to protect their forests and avoid double counting in anticipation of a global carbon market (which has so far failed to materialize), CO2 from biomass is not counted where the biomass is burned. Denmark exploits this loophole with glee, and Danish politicians pat themselves on the back for decarbonizing on paper and being a "climate leader"... while importing 2.5 million tons of wood to burn each year in our power plants. Thank god that no large countries are "climate leaders" by that definition, or the world would soon have no forests.

THE BULLSHIT IN COPENHAGEN: About 1.4 million tons of CO2 come out of the chimneys of Copenhagen municipality's main powerplant, Amagerværket, each year. That's about 2.1 tons of CO2 per year per person living in the municipality. It's funny then, that the official "geographic emissions" as stated in the city's Climate Strategy, are only 1.2 tons of CO2 per person per year (most of which comes from people's cars). How can we only emit 1.2 tons of CO2 per person per year within the municipality's borders when one powerplant in the municipality alone emit 2.1 tons of CO2 per person per year?

The answer is of course that Amagerværket burns wood, and therefore the CO2 it emits doesn't officially count. So the problem is swept under the rug. Out of sight, out of mind.

If you call a CO2 molecule a CO2 molecule - that is, include the CO2 from wood and also the biogenic portion of the CO2 that comes out of the trash incinerater Amagerbakke (pictured) - then you get the no-bullshit total: 3.8 tons of CO2 per person per year.

The real number is more than three times the official number. And it's the real number that causes climate change.

THE SOLUTION: First, let's stop deceiving ourselves. Let's require the municipality and the energy companies operating Amagerværket and Amagerbakke to always show the total CO2 emitted next to the official number. Let's get the biogenic CO2 out into the open where everyone can see it and smell what's rotten. No-bullshit net zero means climate neutrality while taking the whole carbon balance of an area into account, not just the fossil part.

Second, let's get wood out of our energy system! The wood is mainly burned for the heat that gets pumped to our radiators in the district heating system, so the biggest piece in the puzzle is electrifying the district heating system. This means installing massive heat pumps that extract heat out of the ocean and bring it up to the temperatures needed for our radiators. Those heat pumps will run when the wind is blowing and the electricity is cheap and green, so we also need massive thermal storage.

But that will take up space. Where to put it? The district heating pipes point the way: Amagerværket. We need to shut down the power plant's wood furnace and replace it with thermal storage and a massive heat pump as fast as possible.

WHO CAN DO IT?

Elect well-meaning economists and professional politicians, and you'll get a city council that prioritizes solving the problem of our city's carbon budget as it appears on paper.

If you want a chance of eliminating our real climate footprint, and make a difference for our planet rather than just our spreadsheets, then you should vote for an engineer.

I want you to send me to City Hall to plot our course towards real net zero. No bullshit.