SBS Dateline | Green Nirvana

Not far from the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, is the Danish island of Samsø, which thinks it has the answers to tackling climate change that everyone else can learn from.

The island won a government competition in 1997 to become a model renewable energy community. At that point, it relied entirely on oil and coal imported from the mainland.

Now it has wind turbines providing all of the island’s electricity, with the excess sold back to the Danish mainland; and 75% of the island’s heating comes from solar power and biomass systems.

The move has the support of the conservative locals… most own shares in windfarms, and one farmer even produces fuel from rape seed oil to run his car and tractor. Factoring in the green power it exports, the Samsø Energy Academy estimates the island has now reduced its carbon footprint by an incredible 170%.

George Negus visits Samsø and asks how it’s been done, if more places should be following its lead and how its lessons can be learned in different communities around the world.

On air: 22nd November 2009