Anyone who thinks skiing is rubbish will have their opinion confirmed in Denmark, where five municipalities near Copenhagen have clubbed together to replace an old waste incinerator with a gigantic new one that will burn a greater quantity of trash, heat homes, generate electricity, and provide winter fun.
Under construction now and due for completion in 2017, the Amager Bakke plant replaces a 45-year-old incinerator. It will burn around 400,000 tonnes of waste a year and convert that to electricity for 50,000 households and district heating for 120,000 households.
But the icing on the cake is that, instead of being a dreary industrial behemoth, this 80m-high structure, which covers an area of 41,000 sq m, will bring a taste of the Alps to an otherwise height-challenged Copenhagen.
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Brainchild of Danish and New York architectural practice BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), the plant will have more than 500m of year-round ski runs for all abilities, from green circle to black diamond.
Clad entirely in stacked aluminium bricks, the facility will have planted areas and a hiking trail, so skiers and walkers will find it easy to forget that they are cavorting on a furnace that is burning 70 tonnes of waste an hour.
A further BIG touch, however, won’t allow them to forget completely: the designers proposed a modification to the smokestack enabling it to puff out a single smoke ring every time a tonne of carbon dioxide is produced. This, BIG says, will be a “gentle reminder of the impact of consumption”.
According to the engineering firm supplying the plant’s combustion system, Babcock & Wilcox Vølund, the new plant will be far less polluting than the old one, reducing sulphur emissions by 99.5%, and cutting mono-nitrogen oxide emissions to a tenth of former output.
Read the rest of the article at GCR
Viva Denmark, for showing us all just how beneficial high level technology can be when aimed at democratically improving the living standards of their resident
citizens! All this in stark contrast to many a new venture which tends to down grade living standards with the sole aim of maximizing profit margins!