Enlarge image
Environmental activists from the Økojord bio-cooperative on Bornholm: »The youngest farmer on the island is 48, we want to change that«
Photo: Anne Lass / DER SPIEGEL
Thomas Thors trudges up a hill.
The wind lashes his face, behind him birch trees bend in the autumn storm.
After a few minutes, rain is dripping from his glasses and his coat is soaking wet.
Thors is the mayor of Bornholm, 72 years old, a thin guy.
His finger points across the harbor to the sea.
"Out there," he says, "we'll be making a lot of electricity in the future."
Bornholm belongs to Denmark and is located in the Baltic Sea, almost 40,000 people live here. There is an art museum on the island, lots of pigs, cows, castle ruins, some barrows and a few hotels. And there is a lot of wind. The wind turbines are not only in the sea, but also on the island itself, even if they are not that big. How much electricity they produce can be seen in Thor's study in the town hall. An animation flashes on a map on his laptop, next to it is the crucial number: 40 megawatts - that's how much electricity Bornholm is currently exporting to the mainland.
This means that the goal has already been achieved, at least for this day: Bornholm generates more renewable energy than it consumes itself. The Danish island in the Baltic Sea aims to become CO2-neutral by 2025. At the moment, a waste incineration plant is still supplying electricity, but it should be closed by 2032 at the latest. All waste will then be recycled on the island. Bornholm wants to be climate neutral by 2035. They call this vision "Bright Green Island"; it is an ambitious project to prepare the island for climate change.
Thors has spent almost all of his life on Bornholm. Now he says his concern is to preserve the island for the next generations. Because Denmark's easternmost island is an island in decline, the population has been migrating for decades. Even the previous mayor who started the project left the island for a new job. Thors was her predecessor, now he is also her successor and has to ensure that the island achieves the goals it has set for itself. High expectations rest on him.
When he was a child, Thors says, dozens of fishermen went out to sea every morning.
Today there are still two.
Bornholm relies on outside help, including with electricity.
When a Russian ship accidentally tore a power cable from the seabed north of the island in 2018, the residents were sitting in the dark on Christmas Eve.
Perhaps there is a trace of selfishness if Bornholm now wants to take on a pioneering role in the fight against climate change.
But it doesn't have to be a bad motive.
Because in the end, it's about facing the problems and solving them instead of waiting until it's too late.
Klaus Vesløv prefers to describe change as an opportunity. Vesløv, tanned, his dark blonde hair neatly parted over designer glasses, is the public utility's head of communications. Almost exactly one percent of Danes, he explains in the mayor's office, live on Bornholm. "That is perfect." The island is to a certain extent a model of Danish society, the ideal location for new climate protection concepts. Small towns, villages, agriculture - "and plenty of room for ideas."
These are now to be realized with the help of wind turbines off the coast. The so far largest Northern European wind farm Kriegers Flak has already been installed from here. Gigantic, even larger parks are to follow in the coming years. They will generate more electricity than Denmark uses itself. For this purpose, the Danish government would like to build artificial energy islands, on which the electricity is bundled, converted and forwarded to the surrounding countries. Bornholm is said to be one of these transformation stations, the only one where people also live. German households could also be supplied with energy from here in the future.
But the Bornholmer's plans go even further. In the future, Vesløv hopes, the electricity could be used on the island to generate climate-neutral hydrogen. Only recently, the world's largest shipping company, Maersk, announced that it wanted to convert its ships to new, fossil-free fuels. But producing them takes a lot of energy. "Why shouldn't we do it right away?" Asks Vesløv. Little Bornholm could thus become a giant green filling station in the Baltic Sea.
There is still a long way to go before then. The projects in the interior of the island are much more specific. The entire energy supply has been modernized in recent years. There is now district heating, solar panels, wind turbines and two new biomass power plants. At least when it comes to electricity, the island is already close to the goal it has set itself of becoming CO2-neutral, although there have been setbacks. The majority narrowly rejected the construction of new, larger wind turbines on land in a referendum. The arguments were the same as elsewhere: too big, too loud, perhaps a danger to birds. They are now to be built on the sea.
At the same time, international corporations are testing new technologies, and there are more EU funding programs than one could count.
The island benefits from being a pioneer.
For its size and location, Bornholm already has an above-average supply of electric pumps, Teslas and heat pumps.
However, this progress sometimes causes problems.
When the smart thermostats went crazy in the middle of winter during a test project by Siemens and IBM, the people from Bornholm did not call the engineers, but instead called Klaus Vesløv.
"That is already a motivation to make things work".
The climate program has changed people too. Hundreds of engineers, project managers and technicians have come to the island in recent years. One of them is David Christensen, 37 years old, an environmental engineer who is supposed to ensure that Bornholm will recycle all its waste itself in ten years. Moving to the remote island was no problem for him and his family, says Christensen. »There are not often such opportunities in our industry. The political debates are held in Copenhagen, but the real work takes place here. "
To show how rubbish is still being disposed of at the moment, Christensen leads into a dark room, as high as a cathedral. There is a sweet smell in the air, in the middle a metal monster painted blue is panting. Again and again it crashes at an indefinable distance, Christensen points to a porthole behind which flames are blazing. "30 years ago it was still a step forward that we no longer bury the garbage," he says. “But from today's perspective, this concept is hardly better. We burn raw materials here non-stop. "
On the way to the future, Christensen leads into the cellar of the toxic waste store. Here, in two slumped sacks, are the remnants of his previous work. It's the shredded remains of food packaging made from plastic. Their composition is often no different from the material used for oil canisters and cleaning utensils. But for complete recycling, the packaging must be separated. Only in this way can they be used again for food.
Christensen knocks on a wooden container the size of a small car.
There are ten openings with pictograms on the sides for paper, electronic waste, leftover food and various types of plastic.
With the »Wasteman«, the garbage man, he tested in the past year how far the Bornholmer's willingness to recycle really goes.
Even fishing nets are to be recycled in the future.
"So far everything has only come in two or three tons," explains Christensen.
"But in order to be able to recycle the garbage in the future, we first have to learn what people throw away in the first place."
For three months, he and a handful of employees not only took the rubbish from 33 test households to two collection points, but also unpacked, sorted and weighed it. A dirty job. But how representative is the waste from people who voluntarily sort their garbage? "We also thought it might be misleading," says Christensen. »But the comparison with a larger sample showed that the participants did not behave differently from the general public. The real problem is much more the motivation - and the possibility of actually being able to recycle everything. "
The recycling plans are new territory. How plastic can be reprocessed on a large scale is now known, every sneaker manufacturer now has a recycling program. But how does it work on a small scale? Can electronic waste and plastic waste really be processed in a meaningful way on Bornholm? "We will still try out a lot to learn how we can use the waste sensibly," says Christensen.
Citizens will also have to rethink. In order to be able to organize the disposal and recycling in the island villages, they should bring their waste up to 300 meters away from their houses to central collection points. For this, Christensen promises, nobody will have to set up ten garbage cans at home. "We'll spend a good portion of the time explaining the benefits to people and convincing them."
Mads Kissow is one of those people who no longer have to be convinced. If you want to visit it, you have to drive half an hour out of Rønne into the forest and turn onto a bumpy slope until you stand in a clearing in front of colorful wooden buildings. With 14 fellow campaigners, Kissow has set up a kind of community here on almost twelve hectares. Most of them come from the mainland, they moved to Bornholm because it is quieter and greener here than in the big city and because there is still affordable living space.
From Kissov's point of view, the climate goals on the island are ambitious, but also dishonest.
"You only look at the electricity and the heating, but not at the other causes of CO2 emissions," he says at the kitchen table.
"Agriculture is the most important branch of the economy today - 25 percent of emissions come from tractors alone, did you know that?"
He talks about the 300 employees in the slaughterhouse and the poverty among the locals, especially in the interior of the country.
Thousands of animals are slaughtered on Bornholm every day.
As in the rest of Denmark, pork is, to a certain extent, a cultural asset.
"But we don't even process the meat, we export our raw materials directly to the mainland by ferry like a third world country," says Kissow.
From his point of view, the island is divided.
Tourists would benefit from lighthouse projects such as charging stations for electric cars than most locals.
When he sees a Tesla in front of the bakery in the village, he often offers his friends a sarcastic bet: "Bet they are German doctors?"
Kissow is already carefully separating his rubbish, and according to his own statements, he built his blue construction trailer exclusively from recycled materials.
His toilet is a wooden outhouse.
Up to this point he could be dismissed as a man of conviction.
One who does a lot, but doesn't necessarily work as a role model for the vast majority.
Kissow says he knew how people initially thought of him.
There are enough people who come from the city to the country to suddenly know everything better.
But he claims to do it differently.
Since the beginning of the year he has been President of Bornholms Økojord, an organic cooperative with 142 shareholders. 125 of them, says Mads Kissow, are from the island. Their goal is to buy land together and to cultivate it sustainably. "Most of the island belongs to a handful of people," says Kissow. "The youngest farmer on Bornholm is 48. We want to change that."
In the beginning, the biorebells were hardly any different from the city dwellers that Kissow warned against. In the first four months they hardly raised EUR 80,000 in capital. Then they changed course. “At first we thought our cause would be convincing on its own. Everyone is for climate protection. But if you want others to get involved, you have to go to the people, ”says Kissow today. For four weeks he and his colleagues toured the island, visiting farms, villages, clubs and long-established families. 40 meetings later, they had collected the equivalent of more than half a million euros and founded a functioning movement.
Kissow also speaks regularly to agricultural schools on the mainland.
The young farmers, he says, asked themselves the same questions as he did: How should things go next?
If you want to become a farmer today, you need an average of two to five million euros to take over a farm.
Apart from factory farming, which is harmful to the environment and the climate, there is almost nothing.
»Nobody who is 23 today and can think wants to work like this for the next 40 years.
We want to offer alternatives here. "
Instead of exporting pork halves, the members of Økojord want to grow old types of grain and vegetables that can cope well with the harsh Baltic Sea climate.
"We want to ensure that our products are processed on the island," says Kissow.
There is already an organic craft beer that is now also known in Copenhagen.
Recycling engineer David Christensen is also familiar with the work of the eco-activists.
Kissow was one of the hardest-working participants in the Wasteman project, he says.
“I'm a bit of a different guy politically.
But Mads is someone who gets involved and changes things. ”Kissow says he continues to be critical of the city administration's major environmental plans, the management, the deals with large corporations.
“There are problems I want to address, yes.
But let's be honest: it's a very good project overall. "
This contribution is part of the Global Society project
Expand areaWhat is the Global Society project?
Reporters from
Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe
report under the title “Global Society”
- on injustices in a globalized world, socio-political challenges and sustainable development.
The reports, analyzes, photo series, videos and podcasts appear in the international section of SPIEGEL.
The project is long-term and will be supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) for three years.
A detailed FAQ with questions and answers about the project can be found here.
AreaWhat does the funding look like in concrete terms?
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is supporting the project for three years with a total of around 2.3 million euros.
Are the journalistic content independent of the foundation?
Yes.
The editorial content is created without the influence of the Gates Foundation.
Do other media have similar projects?
Yes.
Big European media like "The Guardian" and "El País" have set up similar sections on their news sites with "Global Development" and "Planeta Futuro" with the support of the Gates Foundation.
Have there already been similar projects at SPIEGEL?
In the past few years, SPIEGEL has already implemented two projects with the European Journalism Center (EJC) and the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: the “Expedition ÜberMorgen” on global sustainability goals and the journalistic refugee project “The New Arrivals” as part of this several award-winning multimedia reports on the topics of migration and flight have been produced.
Where can I find all publications on global society?
The pieces can be found at SPIEGEL on the topic Global Society.
