Chapter 7 - Sustainable Towns: The Case of Frederikshavn Aiming at 100% Renewable Energy

In 2006, a number of Danish energy experts proposed that Denmark should convert the supply of a specific town to 100% renewable energy by 2015. The experts suggested Frederikshavn in the northern part of Denmark for the following reasons. The town area of 25,000 inhabitants is well defined, the local support is high, and Frederikshavn already has a number of large wind turbines at the harbor. In February 2007, the city council unanimously decided to go for the project and set up a project organization involving utilities and municipality administrators. The local industry and the Aalborg University are also involved in the project.

This chapter presents the methodology of mapping the existing energy system, including transport, and defining the share of renewable energy, which is approximately 20% at present. It introduces a proposal for a potential 100% renewable energy system for the year 2015 and a number of realistic short-term first steps, which will raise the share of renewable energy in Frederikshavn to approximately 40% by 2009 or 2010. This chapter describes detailed hour-by-hour energy system analyses of the proposal for a 100% renewable energy system. Also, it relates the proposal to the perspective of converting Denmark to a 100% renewable energy supply system.