This week a Chinese delegation took a tour in Denmark to harvest know-how on renewable energy. The visit was organized by the Danish Energy Agency on request of the Chinese delegation who would like to study the Danish solutions in practice when it comes to renewable energy.
“We have been cooperating with the Chinese energy management for about a year now on the implementation of renewable energy in China based on the experience we have developed in Denmark for the last 20-30 years. Typically we travel to Beijing, but sometimes they come to Denmark and Europe. They are only here for two days and they would like to see local efforts on a smaller scale,” says Anders Højgaard Kristensen, an engineer from the Energy Agency.
In China, there is a big need for more energy and on average a new coal plant opens every week. It provides major environmental problems both in terms of CO2 emissions, heavy metals and smog over cities. Therefore, the Chinese authorities are eager to learn from the Danish experience, and the delegation therefore consists of both senior officials, scientists from Chinese universities and representatives of the Chinese industry.
“The Chinese have a huge coal consumption, which they would like to replace with biomass. Therefore we visited the Avedøre plant, which burned one million tonnes of pellets annually. This corresponds to half a million tons of coal,” says Anders Højgaard Kristensen.
The Chinese delegation also visited a wood pellet factory, Vattenfall at the Port of Køge and an energy development company called TK-Energy, and attended briefings on Danish solutions for renewable energy. For the Energy Agency the visit is primarily a promotion opportunity for Danish companies and Danish know-how.
“There are several aspects of it. We hope and believe that Danish companies have great potential to sell their solutions in China. For example, DONG Energy is trying to start production of bio ethanol in China, but there are also global perspectives in this. With the enormous Chinese population it actually has great global importance,” says Anders Højgaard Kristensen.
