Kalundborg Municipality has signed a climate partnership agreement with DONG Energy, Denmark’s leading power company. This agreement sets out the terms and conditions of a close collaboration project on energy saving measures and supports the further advancement of renewable energies.
Thanks to the partnership agreement with DONG Energy, Kalundborg Municipality has become even more involved in the development of sustainable energy technologies than any other Danish municipality. The agreement makes Kalundborg Municipality an important partner in DONG Energy’s development of new, sustainable energy systems.
- We have set up the goal that Kalundborg will be Denmark’s Green Industrial Municipality by the year 2020. Today, approximately 9% of Denmark’s overall CO2 emissions stem from Kalundborg, and if our industries are to continue growing and thriving in the future and if the CO2 emissions and our overall environmental impact are to go down at the same time, we must develop a new, sustainable energy technology. These efforts have put us right at the front of the development along with DONG Energy, explains Martin Andersen, head of the Municipality’s EU office in Brussels and one of the initiators of the partnership agreement.
Testing facilities are required
DONG Energy’s interest in the partnership agreement is that the company intends to reverse the ratio between its fossil and non-fossil energy production from 85/15 to 15/85 - within one generation. To accomplish that objective, DONG Energy needs to increase its production of renewable energies and to develop and test new energy systems under realistic conditions.
This is where Kalundborg Municipality comes in handy because Kalundborg already has the world’s potentially biggest industrial symbiosis, the world’s largest demonstration plant for the production of straw-based bioethanol, Denmark’s largest power station as well as the biggest industrial water treatment plant in Northern Europe.
From electric cars to bio-refining
Since the agreement was signed, Kalundborg Municipality and DONG Energy have structured their collaboration by setting down a number of working groups, an innovation panel, a coordinating group and a steering committee. Working groups have been established for the following areas:
- Biomass and bio-refining
- Intelligent energy plan, including heating plan
- Electricity within the transport sector, mainly electric cars
- Energy advice (C-ESCO)
- Purchase of green electricity
- Communication/PR
The working groups are well on their way to solve their respective objectives, including mapping the potential of each area, assessment of possible actions and analyses of existing data and project development.
1 + 1 makes 3
Both Kalundborg Municipality and DONG Energy expect a lot from their joint cooperation, especially because the two partners are perfect supplements of each other.
- DONG Energy has many qualified professionals with special knowhow and experience – something we do not have. But it takes other things than knowhow to create new, more sustainable forms of energy: New energy technologies must be reality tested and – preferably - in a demonstration scale in order to approach a commercial exploitation of the technology. This is why Kalundborg holds a key position within the energy industry, just like e.g. DONG, but Kalundborg is also DONG’s business partner in electric cars, Better Place, on which Kalundborg signed an agreement in April 2010. Other challenges involved are e.g. the need to set up the right framework of a new or well-known technology, typically in the form of a political or regulatory focus, and, preferably, accompanied by a financial support programme. Additional challenges are e.g. finding the strategic partners from the industry as well as from scientists and researchers. As a municipal authority, we are able to locate and furnish the resources and authorities required to create appropriate framework conditions for the joint development project. In that way, we are able to position ourselves at the cutting edge of development, says Martin Andersen.
More project partners
The agreement with DONG Energy does not exclude Kalundborg Municipality from cooperating with other relevant partners, because the Public Tender Act must be respected, of course. The Municipality’s ESCO Project, for example, is conducted in cooperation with the company Schneider Electric, previously TAC.
- Our partnership agreement with DONG Energy is not an all-inclusive agreement, and it can be freely cancelled by both parties. It will hardly be the case, however, since the potential is much too big, and we have already created a great many results together with our partner DONG, says Martin Andersen.
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