It was a c-c-c-cold day in Copenhagen today. A flood of new delegates arriving in advance of ministers, who all needed to be credentialed, and the lines to get in the Bella Center stretched most of the way down the block - I waited for nearly an hour to get in. The temperature was 2 degrees C, not including the wind chill. The experience gave me flashbacks to my Inauguration Day experience. (Yes, I was one of those purple ticket holders who didn't get in...)
On the negotiation front, multiple things are happing all at once, and very quickly. I have to admit that I am feeling quite overwhelmed at the moment, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to synthesize and understand everything that's going on. The procedural maneuvering in the broader LCA/KP discussion continues. The African delegations and other G77 nations refused to participate in a public informal consultation session this morning, again over the question of whether there should continue to be a two-track process, one for parties to the Kyoto Protocol, and one for a new long-term agreement. They returned to the table in the afternoon after additional informal discussions. This, as I mentioned in a previous post, seems to be a part of the typical process of a COP meeting.
Behind the scenes, the working groups are still making progress. The negotiators have been very busy, and I haven't seen them in a while, except when they've been dashing between meetings, so I don't have any new information here. They're still going strong, which is a good sign.
On a lighter note, during today's impasse in the proceedings, I took advantage of the opportunity to tour the Middelgruden Offshore Wind Farm. This is a set of 20 x 2MW Bonus turbines just outside Copenhagen Harbor. The farm supplies roughly 3% of Copenhagen's power.
Here are some photos. Unfortunately, the windmills are white, and it was a cloudy day.
LEFT: Passing row of windmills RIGHT: At the base of the northernmost windmill. The bow of our boat was less than 2m from the base!
LEFT, RIGHT: A few more shots of the windmills
ABOVE: Oh, the irony. A windmill with a coal plant in the background. It's likely that the coal plan uses a Combined Heat and Power system to both generate electricity, but also steam for heat from the same fuel. This is at least twice as efficient as generating each individually. Almost all of Denmark operates on district heating through Combined Heat and Power. In fact, according to our tour guide, if a plant uses coal, Danish law requires it to employ CHP.
Posted By: Thomas Lee @ 11:53 PM |