Hello and hej!
It is a grey winter day,
and I’m about to get on the number 2A bus
from Copenhagen central station.
Because today we’re asking the question:
what do you do if your dream is to go downhill skiing,
but you live in Denmark.
(A country whose highest mountain looks something like this.)
Well then you do what the Danes did:
you build an enormous power plant,
stick an artificial slope on the roof,
and go skiing down that instead.
Welcome to Copenhill!
I’ve got off the bus in a neighbourhood called Margretheholm,
in the industrial harbour area, on the east side of Copenhagen.
- It’s not Copenhagen’s most beautiful area…
Hans Christian Andersen it is not, but there are reasons why it looks like this.
The area around here used to be a massive Naval Base,
until the Danish Navy abandoned most of it in the 1990s,
and nowadays the main activities you’ll find here
are heavy industry and waste disposal.
So let’s just say, it’s not a place that’s ever really tried to attract outside visitors.
...until now!
This is Copenhill,
also known locally as "Amager Bakke".
Or something like that.
I think we’ll just call it Copenhill.
It was completed in 2019,
and it is a waste-to-energy power plant and ski slope.
And climbing wall.
And hiking trail.
And park.
You know...
a powerplantskislopeclimbingwallhikingtrailpark.
With a café.
Erm. You know what. Let’s just go in.
- Er, they open the gates at 12 o’clock, so you can climb up.
But the ski slope and the ski hire only opens at 2 o’clock.
So we’re a little bit too early for anything to actually be happening.
But that’s fine, we’ll get a snack at the rooftop café!
So I’m now walking basically on the roof of the power plant.
And it’s a waste-to-energy plant,
so they burn waste, and you get electricity,
and heat as well apparently.
Sometimes the building has to let off steam like this.
They say that it’s completely normal and
COUGH shouldn’t SPLUTTER harm you at all.
We’ve now reached the rooftop café, 78m above the streets of Copenhagen,
which is enough to make this the tallest and longest ski slope in the whole country.
Now I have to be honest, the café itself was nothing but a massive disappointment.
There didn’t seem to be any food or drink on sale
and there was no-one around to sell it anyway.
But soon enough, the ski lift starts whirring into action,
and the first brave visitors begin to take to the slopes.
Don’t worry everyone, I checked, and she did survive that.
And I really want to try this myself now!
But in a world where health and safety regulations are a thing,
how have they got away with this?
Let’s be honest, power plants are not exactly famous for producing
clean mountain air that you want to go skiing in.
Are you telling me this giant incinerator is somehow environmentally friendly?
Well, it’s as close as you can get.
Firstly, waste is a much more renewable energy resource than say, coal, oil, or gas.
But burning it still releases toxins.
So you could have long argument whether waste-to-energy is actually environmentally friendly,
or just less bad.
But here they claim to have made the cleanest waste-to-energy plant in the world.
And how have they done that?
It’s complicated.
There are other people out there who can explain this in much more detail than I ever could,
but essentially, they’ve developed technology
that filters nearly all of the toxins out of the emissions
before they leave the building.
The steam coming out of the chimney at the top is not 100% clean,
but put it this way,
it contains fewer toxins than the air you’re breathing in the car park when you arrive.
So to sum up:
putting a ski slope here was partly just for fun,
and partly to make a statement.
What better way to showcase how clean the air is,
than invite the whole city here to go hiking and skiing?
The only problem is I’ve just remembered that I grew up in southern England
and I’ve never had a skiing lesson in my life.
- Luckily there is an option for people who have never had a skiing lesson.
And it looks like this.
- Fairly sure that looked majestic…
If you’d like to go skiing on top of a giant waste-to-energy power plant,
Copenhill is a 20-minute bus ride from central Copenhagen plus a 10-minute walk.
Entrance to the rooftop is completely free,
- and fully accessible via the lift -
but if you want to go skiing, you’ll have to pay to use the ski lifts
and to hire any equipment you need.
An adult lift pass will set you back 150 Danish krone per hour
which is about 20€.
And as always, thank you very much for watching,
and I’ll see you soon.