This Waste-to-Energy Plant Puffs Smoke Rings & Has a Ski Slope!

By: | March 6th, 2015

Challenging Perceptions in Architecture

Maybe the book should have been called “Humans are from Venus, Danes are from Mars.” Actually, from the 8th to the 10th centuries, Danes were known by another name: Vikings. Perhaps this is the reason Danes, for better or worse, are not followers but doers and visionaries.

Danes have apparently taken their inner warrior energy and transmuted it into socially useful technology that is economically, ecologically and socially sustainable. The rest of the world can “put that in their pipes and smoke it” green with envy.

IndustryTap has documented the impressive ingenuity of Danes: solar powered floating homes, the Sahara Forest Project, N55’s Walking House, the Blue Planet Aquarium, the world’s largest lathe, the world’s largest FLNG platform and ship (visions of the Viking past), a giant solar hourglass energy plant, hybrid electric bikes, the new Copenhagen Metro expansion, and the list goes on.

Danes Cornering Market on Chutzpah

Today we turn to the latest and perhaps most impressive project designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG): a $670 million 60 megawatt power station fueled by a trash incinerator doubling as a year-round ski attraction.

The project, which was started in 2013 and is expected to be complete in 2016, will no doubt have the Germans and others talking trash. But the project is impressive and will combine a state-of-the-art waste-to-energy plant, aka the Amager Bakke Incinerator. The facility will process 400,000 tons (41,000 m²) of waste per year and have a 400,000 ft.² year-round man-made ski slope on its roof. What’s more, the smoke stack will emit smoke rings rather than run continuously, and last but not least, it will power 150,000 homes.

Just this week, a video was published showing tests of the new incinerator’s smoke-ring blowing-chimney. Following are images from a video created by Highwire Ultra Media Group and published on Dezeen.

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David Russell Schilling

David enjoys writing about high technology and its potential to make life better for all who inhabit planet earth.

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