Inside A Sustainable Power Plant With A Ski Slope On Its Roof

[gentle music]

One of the greater challenges in the world

is the building industry.

The building industry accounts for one-third

of all CO2 emissions, and we need to bring that down.

Of course, designing buildings of the future,

and sustainability go hand-in-hand,

using sustainable materials,

designing sustainable buildings,

that doesn't overheat if they're in a warmer region

or that doesn't need to be heated up

if they're in a colder regions.

By designing more clever buildings,

we can actually become more sustainable.

As architects, we want to make an impact on cities.

We want to design the future of the buildings

that we would like to live in.

[gentle music]

My name is Jakob Lange.

I'm a partner and architect at the architecture firm BIG,

or Bjarke Ingels Group.

We're standing here at the Copenhill,

the tallest mountain in Copenhagen.

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A little more than 10 years ago now,

we started a competition to design the facade

of this building.

We were struggling for quite a while,

but in one of the design meetings,

we were talking about the fact

that because this is one of the most advanced power plants

in the world, the trash is taken from all of Copenhagen,

it's burned, and all the toxins are taken out.

So the only thing that comes out of the chimney

is essentially water vapor from the turbines

when the water has been cooling down.

Everything else is clean.

You can actually walk on the roof.

So we imagined what would it take to create a park up here

and maybe even what would it take to put a ski slope

on the roof of Copenhill?

Of course, building a park on top of a power plant

is not an easy feat.

But we managed to convince the clients

and our collaborators

that we should make the roof extra strong

so that we could carry a layer of soil

so that we are able to plant all these different species

of trees on this entire roof surface.

When the landscaper architects designed this,

they brought a little

over 100 different kind of species up here.

But after two, three years now,

we have doubled that number because birds bring seeds in.

We even caught a fox that is nesting somewhere on the hill

that you can see on the surveillance cameras at night,

running around.

[gentle music]

In this park, we have different kinds of activities.

We have a hiking trail that takes you all the way

to the top where the chimney is.

The tallest artificial climbing wall in the world.

We have the ski slope, we have fitness areas on the top.

This is a place where runners every week go and train

for sort of mountain trekking.

[gentle music]

Here in Denmark, the seasons are quite strong.

The winters we do get a little bit of snow

when all the leaves have fallen.

In the summertime,

everything blossoms and become really green.

So it was important to make sure

that we get a variety of different species

that ensures sort of diversity in the green and shrubs

and so far on the hill.

In winter times, of course, when we have frost,

steam from the chimney can form ice and snow.

That you can see here on the branches.

Denmark is flat as a pancake, we don't have any mountains.

When we had the chance to design

an almost 100-meter tall mountain,

it was clear to us that we could create

quite a decent ski slope.

So designing a ski mountain, obviously,

we don't have that much snow.

So we need to find an artificial ski slope material.

And we tested out different types.

And the one we landed on is

an Italian company called Neveplast.

We worked very closely together,

coming up with a very clever invention almost,

where we have small cuts in the material

so that the material can sort of spread out

and close down depending of the cold and warm weather.

So it feels a bit like a hard groomed piece

where you can carve your skis into the slope

and make some really decent turns,

and because of the length,

you can actually practice quite well and get good.

So everybody watch out for the Danes in the Olympics.

In a few years we'll be world champions. [laughs]

[gentle music]

[gentle music continues]

My name is Jacob Simonsen and I'm the CEO of ARC.

ARC is the waste energy plant in Copenhagen.

And we're very fortunate to have a ski hill, Copenhill,

on top of our plant.

At ARC, we burn about 540, 560,000 tons of waste every year.

That amounts to about 1,700 tons a day.

We have about 300 to 350 trucks coming every day

delivering waste to the plant.

The waste that we receive here

is waste from the five municipalities.

But we also receive waste from other parts of Denmark,

and actually also from abroad.

What actually comes here is pretty much

the whole periodical system.

There's all kind of materials and chemicals and so on

in the waste that we receive.

So when we burn it,

of course you get all this kind of stuff in the smoke.

But we have two football fields

of cleaning technology out there.

What a waste to energy plant really is,

is a water boiling factory.

We boil water for district heating and some part

is actually also turned into steam.

And that steam turns turbine to produce electricity.

We produce vast amount of energy.

Actually enough to supply the energy need

for about 90,000 households in Copenhagen.

And that is both in terms of heating

and in terms of electricity.

We've had waste energy in Denmark for more than 100 years.

Of course, the plant in that time were totally different.

Technology has developed greatly.

And therefore we also actually don't emit anything else

but water vapor and of course CO2.

And the CO2, we want to do something about,

by introducing carbon capture at ARC.

That is actually where you catch the carbon

from the stack so you don't emit any CO2.

And instead of contributing to the climate issue,

you actually mitigate all the climate emissions

from a plant like this.

Waste to energy is a very necessary tool

that you have in your toolbox

in order to remedy the consequences

of our fantastic consumption.

But as long as we consume the way that we do,

we need plants like this.

If we succeed in changing our production

and consumption radically, then maybe in the future,

we will not have plants like this.

But until that, then we need this.

When ARC was built,

it is the first time when an architect actually

turned everything around,

and said that there should be a ski slope

on top of a waste energy plant.

It is a pretty wild idea and a crazy idea.

It is a fantastic idea as well,

because we can actually bring citizens to the plant.

This kind of plant is important for any big city to have,

in order to be able to solve its waste issues.

But being able to welcome people to the plant,

make them see what we are doing here, is a huge benefit.

[gentle music]

[Jakob] I really hope that this building

will inspire to build more of those kind of power plants

around the world.

So of course, designing buildings of the future,

we need to think about reusing materials.

The Copenhill facade is made out of a recycled aluminum

that has been burned and bent into these big bricks

that essentially allows for daylight

to come into the factory,

so that you don't need artificial light

to illuminate the space.

This brings a lot of light into the space,

which creates a much better working environment

for the workers at the power plant.

[gentle music]

We need to think about designing buildings

that emit very little CO2.

So at BIG,

we have started measuring the CO2 impact

throughout the design phase

and therefore nudging the clients

into a more sustainable direction.

When designing buildings at BIG,

we use a term called hedonistic sustainability,

which essentially means a building not only is

can be good for the environment,

but it can also be good for the people

if we use the right materials and techniques.

Copenhagen has been burning their trash into electricity

and district heating for over 30 years.

Copenhill is the upgraded version,

taking all the learnings from the first power plant

and putting it into this.

So altogether,

this can be one of the solutions

of solving the world climate crisis.

[gentle music]