Today Tanja and I were at the CO2Penhagen.com festival at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). We liked the initiative and thought it was a good cause to support. It was a really great festival with a lot of popular Danish names playing. We saw Mikeal Simpson, Lars HUG, Dúné and the Mercury Rev. For some real intimate concerts with few people, so it was possible to stand in the front for all the events. We had a blast and feet at home at DTU.
The purpose was to create the world’s first CO2 neutral festival, with energy from biofuel and trash. They also had contest with spinning bikes from eTenzor, where two teams competed on how could generate most energy. I was on the bike for 30 minutes and produces just below 300W for the period. The bikes had Watt meters and displays to configure the ride. I hope the Fitness World which I train spinning in will change to such bikes next time they need new bikes.
They also tried to conserve power on stage lights, where only LED lights were used. It did not have the same special effect as the normal stage scanners, but the LED lights did work very well. It was very powerful, fast switching, multicolor and the scanning function was also fine. It was not possible to see if they had used some other speaker or amplifiers, to conserve energy. Beside the LED it was not possible to see any places where there were changes compared to normal parties.
There were also some exhibition areas where it was possible to see electric cars and water pumps. We heard about the DTU hydrogen car, which won the ECOchallange.
The only problem was that there where to few people at the event today. I would guess there only where 300 people paying 200kr each, so they only got 60.000kr (8.500 Euro), which is not enough to pay for the tents and guards. So bands played for free. So CO2 is only something we want to talk about not participate in. I hope they will have the event next year as well. Then we would go if it is possible.
At the festival they served organic food, which probably is not very CO2 friendly, like Dúné pointed. I don’t have the facts about it, but it requires more energy to harvest 1 kg organic foods, because the crops are less dense in the vegetations. It will probably be some discussions that we will have at some point. Also producing electric on bikes is not sustainable, unless it is instead of other practices. If we where to bike just to produce energy, it would be better to use bio fuels.