Is this island the best in the world? 

What do you think are other contenders for the greenest island?

5:58 I absolutely love that you mentioned the desire for “energy independence”. In the US we often use this as an excuse to just drill for more oil, but true independence would be just making energy right in your own backyard or even on your own roof! Need more people to start adopting this attitude.

My brother lives on Bornholm. He might agree. They've got some nice, old fishing villages, good seafood, good beaches and a general landscape that is pleasing to the eye. Bornholm is a center for artsy-crafty things: Ceramics, glass blowing, painting.

I love living on Bornholm! And while we are not that many full time residents, every year we welcome back many returning guests. Some people have returned several times yearly for several decades. That said, here is a selection of errors and unaddressed subjects: • Transportation to the island is not green. Especially the fast ferries! In fact, if you have the choice between flying or taking a fast ferry to Bornholm, the aeroplane might be the less polluting option. If you want to travel less unsustainably, the modern ferry Hammershus (daily sailings to Køge and most of the year to Sassnitz) is a comfortable and reliable choice. The Povl Anker, featured in the video, is also not a bad choice. It is quite old and not very efficient. But it sails at an economical speed on its summer crossings to Sassnitz. There are of course projects underway to better the situation. • Public transportation on Bornholm is by diesel buses only. And the service is infrequent, unreliable, and expensive. Four electric buses are on order, and more will be ordered as soon as a government grant is approved. Probably. • There actually a good amount of public EV charging available. You may not be able to find them all in one app, but there are plenty. And considering the size of the island, if there is a charger at your lodging, you won't need it anyway. • Cardboard and everything else. Those are the only two fractions picked up at present. Why? Because lowest bidder failed. And now the previous contract holder will be using their worn out diesel trucks for at least three years longer than planned. • The recycling centres are great though. And open for self service 24/7/364. • Electricity is indeed delivered via an undersea cable from Sweden. Sometimes though, some idiots drag their anchor along the seabed and cut it. When this happens, diesel generators provide backup power. And the local grid alone is incapable of handling the varying output from wind and solar! • The massive amounts of off-shore wind power planned will also include new undersea cables. And it's actually both a huge government project and a smaller independent local project. The government project is definitely happening. But there is resistance against the large area needed for transformers and such. That's where I'll end it for now. I may answer your questions, if you ask politely.

Best vacation of my childhood was on Bornholm. It's lovely.

These little documentaries about places/events/people are so great. Keep them coming DW.

Government is pretty efficient in Denmark as well, also Bornholm is a single municipality wich means administration is very centralised.

9:40 I'm quite confused. There was no mention of public transportation which seems to me to be the obvious solution to the problem with expensive electric vehicles. Investing in public transportation is proven to drastically reduce to reliance in fossil fuels while also making sense in a social consideration, since everybody can therefore feel more easily connected. Is there a reason why this wasn't mentioned? 🤔 Great video nonetheless. 😌👌🏿✨

Spend my childhood summers here. Totally agree

Such a wonderful video. Really fascinating projects they are working on. I would love to see those ideals carried out elsewhere

Im so happy to see your videos talk direcly and indirectly about the importance of education and awareness. change is always hard it takes a lot of time hard work etc but if you are commitment it is possible. Also when your eyes get use too see turbin or solar panel, electric car and most importantly waste management you feel something in your mind that pushes you forward to responsibilities. Plus I love this part 11:05 people have to be able to afford to become green, for small island changing is way easier than the big populated cities. lastly, I am sure in this island there isnt that much remarkable gap between the population. so since there is a good economy level, environment becomes a priority.

Love Denmark. Their apporach to environment is leading the Europe.

Another island doing great in terms of energy is Orkney north of UK mainland. Bornholm was not as great as I was expecting from the video title.

There is also like this in Japan. They pursuing zero waste. So clean and beautiful island

Other contenders might be the 1000's of islands with entirely self efficient indigenous people who have lived that way for 1'000's of years.

This video is so much better than the last one you upload.

Bornholm was very wealthy during the 60-80ties due to enormus landings of especially Cod - now there are none left. one of Denmarks richest families are fishermen from Bornholm

I love Bornholm. Good people, good place. Glad they're doing this. Much love from Utah, USA.

Great video! Really enjoyed it

really well done!

Great video!

Great job!

I’m a bit underwhelmed to be honest. Burning waste and biomass is still releasing carbon dioxide that could be sequestration somehow. Once they get their new offshore wind farms, large scale molten salt storage and EV charging infrastructure sorted and move domestic heating to heat pumps, then it will be very impressive.

@DW planet A 6:54 " wood is renewable but it release al lot of CO2"? that's a contradictory information. Wood burning doesn't add fossil CO2 into the atmosphere.

I admire the efforts

the moniker greenest island could also apply to a far more northern island, Iceland. 85% green energy overall and 100% green energy for production of electricity.

Good reporting very informative video

very inspiring

Very interesting!

Great to see it works on such a large scale, one problem I see is the molten salt boiler storage, will it not corrode and leak? afaik that is a big issue with those installations. Maybe a sand battery or even a superheated crushed rock would work the same with less dangers?

Don't be alarmed when they say that waste is burned; you might not be able to recycle all the time but its a good alternative. It frees up space in landfills and produces electricity. Fumes that would otherwise become air pollutants are turned into an ash that is then used as landfill cover. Waste incineration rocks!

9:43 an island doesn't need cars in the first place for 99% of use cases. the solution is public transit, not electric cars.

LOVE! I hope one day we can see this practised all over the world, including Malaysia.

Great vid! It would be cool if governments did like partnerships with their surrounding islends to do more research like this. Or even universities now that I think about it. This is also the first time seeing electric cars as storage for cities. It would be so easy for cities to replacate this with just a few government buildings to experiment.

One good way to store heat is using well insulated silos filled with sand and crushed gravel. It is here on You Tube also.

Cool other countries should follow this green energy technology

Bornholm was always danish. Denmark almost lost it to Sweden along with the rest of Scania, but the people rose up and refused to be administred by Sweden. So it never changed hands.

Recycling is a great idea, many countries could solve their excess waste problem and lack composte with it.

I'm from New Zealand's South Island, and I must say its far better here than the island in this video. Renewable power doesn't been a lot in the scheme of things

I lived on this island for most of my life, i actually interviewed someone at the wage management sight about pollution back in grade School .

I'm glad to see a solution for storing renewable energy with molten salt!

This is the island my very distant ancestors came from! I am glad it is famous yet again!

Would love to go someday with my mum and siblings! Through my fathers line, my 5x great grandfather was born in Copenhagen, but his parents were born on Bornholm. Supposedly, his maternal grandmothers family were from neighbouring Christiansø.

So this sounds a bit like the situation there is still nearly as bad as the rest of Denmark (With that law of being able to pick up things that were going to be trashed/recycled as an exception), but maybe in the future it will be better because that´s what their plans are? I´m pretty sure the rest of Denmark also has equally ambitious plans.

Thank you for the video. I noticed about the off-shore Wind farms that it would not be enough to make Bornholm energy neutral., however, it's plenty enough to do that. The total electricity for the wind farms is over 3GW., which is enough for 2 million people, Bornholm got 40.000. Most of the energy (if not all) is however being exported and sold to Germany. It would be fair for the families living on Bornholm if they would get free electricity upto let's say 10.000kwh per year, since it's power from local wind farms, it's locally produced. It would also allow people to invest in electric cars as they would get the power for free to charge them around the islands or at home. I really hope that the families living on the island don't get surpassed by large energy deals made by the rest of EU.

5:20 small correction to the subtitles here the gentleman said "to district heating in Rønne" there is no mention of oil. not sure if he meant to say "for district heating" like it says in the subtitles or if he meant to say "to distribute heating" but Rønne is the name of the city, so again nothing to do with oil in that statement.

I appreciate their optimism and know Bornholm will go all-clean energy soon, however, not all people want to do the right thing as we have millions of radical right Americans who work tirelessly to stop wind and solar production and do everything they can, to do the wrong thing. It's a constant fight.

Biomass can be used to make charcoal. The limited heat available from this can be used to generate energy by steam or steam turbine. A heat pump can be used.

Not sure why the journalist said marine diesel is very dirty. It is similar to on-road diesel. If you have sufficient renewable energy, you could use hydrogen to power ferries. Short distance makes it possible to use compressed hydrogen as a fuel.

I think id like to live on an island one day

The best island in the world :) My childhood home :)

I Love Bornholm.

going through the local trash dump for usable stuff is illegal here in the NL too, its so stupid. there was perfectly fine sets of cups and plates right there, RIGHT. THERE.

Tasmania has had nearly 100% renewable energy for decades. Iceland too.

Isn't "El Hierro" the spanish island even more "greener"? The island has managed several times to be supplied with 100% renewable energy for several days in a row (The last time I checked it was about a month in a row). This island is approaching total energy independence with CO2 emissions

at roughly 08:40 you forgot to ask a question regarding efficientcy here, normally it should be 30-40% recovering your energy back from the molten solt btw

Making an island sustainable must be a dream project for any local politician, Sim Island irl.

in real need to go to that bofa

What about the benefits of thirsty concrete to reduce flooding and sand mining helping ecosystems and you. Or how insulation is like r30 at most but really should be r100 minimal because better insulation = less energy demand to cool or heat a home and keep it warm or cool way longer.

Your suggestions at the end for change were sophomoric.

Have you heard of Graciosa island in Azores?

@DWPlanetA What do a household pay for electricity? Should be low due a lot of renewables?

It's interesting that dialects shines through when speaking English. Bornholm dialect is strikingly different from the mainland. There's a complete lack of the classic Danglish.

I want to install solar panels but the batteries and inverters are so expensive.

It sounds like some places just burn excess waste but there are places that burn waste & somehow turn it into energy. Why isn't that more widely adopted? Are there any downsides?

Good idea 🙂🙂🙂👍👍👍👍👍

Efficiency is always better then capacity. In the long run those who run lean with less to maintain come out on top.

So much 'we are planning' to be called as the best island

3:45 It can be worse. In my town, the city hall is paying a company to manage the "recycling" center and the things brought there are their property. They are suppose to recycle them but of course they don't do it properly. Giving objects a chance at reuse or repair (both trumps recycling) is much better for everyone except some corrupt idiots.

If I where the mayor of this island I would try to find energy intensive industries

There is nothing like the threat of economic calamity to change peoples behavior. Given the very high start up costs of new power sources, I would bet my life that Copenhagen heavily subsidized this transition. I applaud the communities' embrace of recycling but feel that burning waste of any type very troubling.

What about trams or trains on Bornholm? Trams are a highly energy efficient form of local transportation because of the steel on steel running

Burning non recyclable garbage is the way to go so long as emissions are monitored and minimized. It is the best way to mine for metal and keep plastic out of the oceans. We must never stop this. Biogas is even better, you get your fuel and your compost too! Wind and solar are great, although it didn't seem too sunny there. But public transport is key, electrify that. For the ferry, I doubt an alternative could compete with diesel, possibly hydrogen air ships, though I doubt it. Electric would not work, the batteries would cost too much, weigh too much and just not have the power needed for such a task.

Sure makes me wish my Larsen ancestors had stayed put!

@3:05 The way to make recycling easier and more efficient is by getting rid of petroleum based plastics and substituting in plant-based biodegradable plastics, not by creating 40 different types of recycling bins! We need to control industry, not the other way around. If you make it illegal and refuse to bring plastic into the country or manufacture plastic products it will eventually be the norm.

Seems like a perfect place for nuclear energy, public transportation and bike infrastructure

It works amazing, managed by Dunes, simple :)))) superb :)))

It is also the best climbing area of the reagion

At first I thought, "What kinds of Danes are these, trying to figure out how to make cars sustainable instead of just riding bikes when they live on a small island?" But a quick search revealed that Bornholm does seem to have plenty of great cycling infrastructure, so maybe it is just the people in this report coming from a more car-centric perspective?

I live in the Netherlands but my location is always set to Bornholm lmao

Hopefully this incentivize countries to pursue a net negative carbon goal instead of a net zero.

I like seeing the transitional nature of the progress here, considering waste as resources is key. I can see a future with companies mining landfills. Knowing the efforts it took to produce, capitalism makes no sense when it fails to incorporate its 'externalities' we need to find better ways of packaging and recycling resources, waste not, want not and all that rot.

at last an ecomodernism chanel, (suscribed !) I'm ecologist, but reject most ecologist views because they don't follow science but popular beliefs, like the idealize nature (and thus, human nature amongst other toxic beliefs)

And when the wind is not blowing and the sun not shining they import nuclear fossil free energy from Sweden, so does the rest of Denmark but sometimes there is not enough because they got Sweden to close down Barsebäck so they import coal power from Germany instead. Coal is s booming industry there after the Nuclear phase out of course..

It used to happen ALOT in the uk. Now it’s banned. Pointlessly adding to the waste

Hello there, if I move to Denmark, will I be welcome and accepted ?

Warm weather?🥶

🥰

💚💜

I would have liked to see more information about just how much of an impact the decisions being made are affecting the bottom line. This came across as a puff piece without substance as opposed to a informative, motivational video. “This whisky company has been able to reduce their heating expenses by xx%, or recycling has saved xx hectares of land over the last five years which would have been landfill, etc.”

How about offshore wind farms?

Sorting waste and recycling is a brilliant idea - but people are daft, and will not do this properly at home themselves. There will always be people who sees a waste bin for simply a waste bin and throw anything in it, making a mess of the system. I highly doubt adding more categories will help. Unless it is sorted at a facility by professionals, of course.

okay but that presenter is adorable

Read Martin Andersen Nexö

What good is it when you are lonely, bored and cold almost year round?

Im not so sure about that. I remember this story from Bornholm you might want to hear before going there. Couple years back in 2020 men covered in Nzi tattoos tortured a young black man to death while having a bond fire in a wooded area on the Island. Burning him with hot Irons for hours on end until he tragically died of his injuries. The courts didnt see any grounds for charging his killers with any hate related murder charges, just regular accidental killing.. The mother of one of the killers then accused the murdered Phillip Johansen of rape AFTER his death which is such an insult first of all and obviously an attempt to put her son(the killer) in a better light in terms of the media and the media ate it up. They presented it like the murder "might've been justified now that we know Phillip Johansen was clearly maybe a rapist who got that he deserved". Look it up! Its probably one of the worst cases I've ever heard of in my life. Tortured to death and then smeared with a rape accusation destroying any sympathy for him post mortem. Im still shook because of this case. I've learned that our media and courts in DK are horrifically brutal and racist, the part they've played in besmirching the memory of this young man. The country owes the family of Philip Johansen millions in reparations and an apology for this unforgivable treatment and public humiliation of their son. I still cant wrap my head around it. UNFORGIVABLE! I've been to Bornholm several time. Dont think I'll be going back.

Decouple bornholm from the European grid and see how they manage when there's no wind.

and rising seas? how would Bornholm deal with that? people may have to move to higher ground...

3:20 yea buddy surely noone disliked it or got angry about it

Makes sense, why not try it on something more substantial like a small nation of Estonia?