The Life-Sized City Blog

Copenhagenize Design Company Guest Author, Jason Henderson , is Professor of Geography & Environment at San Francisco State University, visiting Copenhagen this Fall on a research sabbatical examining how culture, politics, and economics shapes transportation in Copenhagen. Jason is author of Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco (2013) , and co-author of Low Car (bon) Communities: Inspiring Car-Free and Car Lite Urban Futures . He has published articles in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Antipode, Urban Geography, the Journal of Transport Geography and several book chapters in academic books on sustainable transportation and the politics of the automobile. He is a Master Class by Copenhagenize alumni, as well. Electric Cars: Where Will the Energy Come From? by Jason Henderson Electric cars are often touted as a promising response to climate change, reducing air pollution, and bringing energy security. So it’s not surprising that th...

So there's me, cycling towards the City's Technical & Environmental Administration for a meeting at the Bicycle Office when I spot something strange outside their offices. I realised from a distance that it was a kind of wind turbine. For some reason, some people have issues with the sound that large wind turbines produce. Curiously, they don't seem to mind the sound car traffic generates. But when cars started appearing on the roads of the world, there were many complaints about the noise. I don't have this issue with wind turbines, personally, but as I cycled closer I was listening to hear when I'd be able to hear some sort of whine or swoosh sound. Amazingly, this wind spire, as it's called, was completely silent, even when standing underneath it. It was also a bit of a headturner as I was photographing it. People on both sides of the street stared at it and passersby read the sign. Four students rode past, girls, and one of them announced to her friends ...

Got a call from Larry vs Harry the other day. One of their customers had converted a Bullitt cargo bike into a power station with a wind turbine and solar panels charging a battery. That's something I had to see for myself so I called Ulrik Bing from HumanBattery.dk and met up with him and his colleagues last week. The bicycle and the wind, in Copenhagen anyway, are often at odds with each other. It's a frightfully windy city and it always seems like there is a headwind. The very idea of combining the two is fantastic. Creating a Bullitt with a wind turbine and solar panels is just one of many ideas on the go with Ulrik Bing, Carsten Koch [the construtor] and Claus Nørregaard. With the UN Climate Conference on the horizon in December 2009 they have a thick idea catalogue with ways to bring climate consciousness to the people. Speaking with them and hearing their enthusiasm as they rattle off their many idealist ideas is infectious. The Bullitt cargo bike is a flagship for th...

The world's first offshore wind farm, at the head of Copenhagen harbour. Denmark has long been a world-leader in wind energy and now the country will act as a laboratory for the development of infrastructure for electric cars, using wind power to charge the new vehicles. The main reason is that in five years Denmark will have wind turbine capacity enough for 1 million homes. This goal will be reached when the world's largest offshore wind turbine farm opens in 2012, between Anholt and Djursland. The offshore farm will look like this new one off the coast of Copenhagen. The colossal amounts of energy generated will also be used to power cars, in order to exploit the wind energy as best possible. The energy generated at night, when usage is low, will be used to charge the cars for use the next day. The island of Bornholm will be the first test area and Peder Andersen of Energinet.dk believes there will be 100,000 electric cars in Denmark in five years. It will be considerably ch...