By Anna Fenger Schefte

"Why not? After all, it looks like hell to place solar cells out in nature, so why not use our roofs and parking lots to produce the green energy we need. And the roofs we have here are obvious.”

This is what Anders Kjærhauge, director of the film company Zentropa, says promptly in response to the question of why they have chosen to plaster the roofs of their buildings with solar cells. Zentropa, together with about 10 other companies, is housed in old renovated military barracks in Filmbyen in Avedøre, and Kjærhauge sits at a long table with a red and white checkered tablecloth in Zentropa's large canteen - also called the "Nursing Home" - surrounded by walls filled with movie memorabilia and film students chatting and eating breakfast. Across from him sits the green manager, Anne Serup. She is responsible for making Zentropa's productions more climate-friendly. But we will return to that.

The solar cells, which were installed earlier this year, are located on the roofs of four buildings owned by Zentropa (one by the company Mainstream), including the building right next to 'The pissing gnome park,' which is a circle of urinating garden gnomes , which portrays well-known Zentropa personalities such as Lars von Trier and Peter Aalbæk (the Ålen). According to Anders Kjærhauge, the solar cells are a direct result of locally rooted efforts - The energy community Avedøre - where local citizens, institutions, consultancy houses and companies have come together to create a local sustainable energy supply.  

"I have been thinking about having solar cells on our buildings for a few years. We received some offers, but we found it a bit difficult to see through them. Was it too expensive, were they the right suppliers? Someone said we should wait for the solar cells to become more efficient. Then we were connected to the energy community and found out that there was more going on, among other things, at the high school (ed. Hvidovre Gymnasium, which is five minutes' walk from Zentropa) and some of the municipal buildings," he says and continues:

"By entering the energy community, we were given the opportunity for energy-related sparring in relation to offers and purchases. And it has clearly been an advantage that we could come together and place a larger joint order.”

Local change through local anchoring

The whole idea behind energy communities, such as the one in Avedøre, is that anchoring, co-ownership and partnerships across local communities are an important foundation stone in the future's green energy supply. This is specifically formulated in an EU directive from 2020, which opens the way for local and citizen-owned energy communities to produce, exchange, consume, store and sell their renewable energy from, for example, solar cells and wind turbines.

According to the Zentropa director, it is precisely the local anchoring and the possibility of co-ownership that is also the key behind the energy community in Avedøre.

"For many years, there has been a great and broad local enthusiasm for driving Avedøre forward as a front runner city in the transition to green energy. And it has helped to pave the way for the energy community to become a reality and get support from so many local actors," says Anders Kjærhauge.

Since 2018, under the initiative 'Avedøre Green City', they have thus worked with a vision to make Avedøre a sustainable district. An initiative which involves citizens, businesses, the municipality, utility companies and local institutions, and which has so far received almost half a billion kroner in financial support, among other things from the EU, for a number of locally rooted green projects. It is thus also the funding that enabled the establishment of the energy community back in 2020 – as the first of its kind in Denmark.  

Big plans for the future

In recent years, in addition to the solar cell project at Zentropa and Hvidovre Gymnasium, the Energy Community has initiated a number of other local initiatives in the area of ​​energy. This concerns, among other things, the energy efficiency of several buildings in the area, the roll-out of district heating, the further installation of solar cells and wind turbines and the establishment of charging stations.

However, they are far from finished, if you ask Anders Kjærhauge. The solar cells at Zentropa today produce the equivalent of 100-120 MW/h, which corresponds to approx. 25-30 per cent of their annual energy consumption. According to the Zentropa director, who currently sits on the steering committee for the energy community, the goal is to be able to become self-sufficient in green power in a few years - and to an even greater extent to be able to participate both as a buyer and supplier of green power to the rest of the energy community.

"We have the ambition to have a community where the energy can flow crosswise, depending on need. It will make our investment in solar cells more financially profitable and make it more attractive for other companies in the local area and the rest of Filmbyen to come along," he says and continues: "Hopefully, more solar cells will come - at the other companies that own the buildings here in Filmbyen. At least that's what I'm trying to convince them of under the auspices of the landowner association."

Some of what is also on the table is a desire that the excess heat generated at Zentropa through the company's large servers can eventually be fed back to the local heating plant, which can then redistribute the excess heat to heat households in the local area. In addition, the energy community is looking at how to smartly store the energy from, among other things, the solar cells, so that there will also be green electricity on days when the sun is not shining.

Not quite

Despite plans for the future, Anders Kjærhauge does not believe that the energy community, neither so far nor in the coming years, will be a pure dance of roses. However, there are clear bumps in the road. Among other things, there was a lot of back and forth in relation to getting permission to set up solar cells on listed buildings - which the municipality, when it came to actual approval of the project and the set-up, would not immediately grant.

"Three years ago we first got a clear yes from the municipality, but when we then made the offer and were ready to purchase the solar cells last year, they suddenly said maybe. We had to understand that there was a local plan and the buildings were listed. We were very surprised by that, since we had received the approval. And that made it a heavier and longer process," he says.

It took half an extra year of dialogue back and forth before Zentropa received a dispensation from the municipality at the end of 2022, which made it possible to go ahead and place the order for the solar cells.

According to Anders Kjærhauge, this is a clear example that energy community can be a more difficult process than what many companies are used to.

 "Over here, we can typically act very quickly on decision-making processes and execution. You cannot do that in the same way in an energy community where there are other actors who think completely differently. As a company, you have to be prepared for that.”

He points out that Hvidovre Municipality is generally very positive about the green agenda, and they also actively participate in the green energy community.

Another hurdle that still stands in the way of scaling the Energy Community in Avedøre is that it is not yet possible here at home to share the power that is produced, which is otherwise the idea behind the EU's directive on energy communities. This currently applies both in relation to electricity produced at Zentropa and out to the rest of the community, but it also applies between the various buildings that Zentropa owns. Rules which, according to the Zentropa director, make it unprofitable for them to set up more solar cells.

“We would very much like to install more solar cells. Today, for example, we have only installed a few solar cells on our building 30, which is our administration, because it simply does not use that much power. If we could pass the electricity produced on that building on to other of our buildings or to others in the energy community, it would be much more profitable for us to purchase more solar cells," he says and points out that "this applies to other local companies, among another out at Avedøre Holme, where it would make fantastic sense to be able to share the power they produce themselves.”

According to Anders Kjærhauge, this is also the reason why the other companies in Filmbyen have not yet followed the same path, and still today only Zentropa is the only private company that has joined the energy community.

"Right now the business case is simply too bad for them. They say no to an investment that will only pay off in 15 years," he says.

According to Kjærhauge, companies' reservations are due to a fixed "we usually do" about the Danish electricity grid, and the challenges of the way it is knitted together today.

"We find that it is difficult to break the framework that has existed for our electricity grid for many years and especially that companies should be able to start making money from it," he says and points out, "that the Energy Community Avedøre works for, that the rules here at home are changed so that it becomes possible to let electricity flow freely within the energy community at the price that the community decides. We hope to start sharing our power from next year. When we can do that, the business case will also be much better, and then we can also get some of the others involved," he says.

Our climate journey has only just begun

However, the solar cells and the energy community are only one step on what the Zentropa director calls a "climate journey". And that brings us back to the Nursing Home and to the red and white checkered tablecloth. To Anne Serup, who sits opposite Anders Kjærhauge. She has recently been given the title of green manager and has thereby become responsible for making Zentropa's productions far less climate- and resource-intensive – a task that she has seriously started in 2023. In the role of green manager, she, together with Zentropa's producers and line - producers, among other things, helped to introduce a 'zero red meat policy' in the productions, phase out disposable water bottles, that electric cars are rented where possible, that surplus food is passed on to the socially disadvantaged and arrange for the resale of used costumes and props.

However, according to Anne Serup, climate-proofing film productions is far from a simple exercise, because much is new and untested for Zentropa and for the film industry in general.

"It's not easy, because we don't have a mindset in the industry where climate is naturally taken into account. Each production is also its own, with new people, new locations, new processes, which we must be able to think climate and resources into. It requires a lot of planning on top of the actual planning of the production of the film," says Anne Serup and continues: "We are very aware that it requires us to make it easy. That we nudge and facilitate the green choice right down to planning the route up through Sweden to our production facilities in relation to where and when they have to charge their electric car."

In explaining this, she points out that no clear one has been developed today either best practice to how to approach it. Just as there is not a large supply of climate-friendly choices today. For example, Zentropa often fights with other producers to rent the only electric bus available in Denmark, which is designed to be used on-set for production, says Anne Serup.

Use of data

Zentropa has therefore also joined the partnership Green Producers Club as part of the climate effort, whose common goal is to reduce the CO2 footprint of film productions and which, among other things, has developed a tool, the Green Producers Tool, which both measures and helps to reduce CO2 emissions on cultural productions. A tool that Anne Serup is concretely testing on Zentropa's ongoing production of their next film 'De Lydløse'.

"This is something completely new for us, and we are in the process of practicing collecting the right data, but we hope that in the long term it will give us the opportunity to get a clear picture of the climate footprint of each our film focuses – right down to transport, food, waste and materials,” she says.

According to Anne Serup, it is a necessary step to take, because more and more people in the industry are starting to move towards it, and because precisely data on climate footprint is increasingly becoming a requirement in the industry - especially from the big players such as TV2 and Netflix.

"We find that there is really a development in the industry underway with an increasing focus on being able to document the climate footprint of a production," she says.

The growing focus must be seen in the light of the film industry's current climate impact. The film industry is part of the so-called information technology industry, which accounts for two to three percent of the world's CO²-discharge. According to the report Screen New Deal an average big film production emits 2.840 tons of CO2. Half of this comes from fuel, 30 per cent. from energy supplies and 16 per cent. from flights.

Quiet forward

One could perhaps be tempted to believe that Zentropa, which with the DOGME95 movement, Ålen as former director and with film productions such as Dogville and Breaking the Waves is so used to sticking its nose out, would therefore also take bombastic action in the climate area .

However, this is far from the case. On the contrary, Anders Kjærhauge points out that, in relation to climate change, the film producer will proceed quietly – step by step and area by area. The film producer thus has no immediate plans to create a definite climate strategy or to set a reduction target for their CO2 emissions, nor have they announced anything officially about solar cells, energy community or efforts on productions.

“We have only just started and it is a long journey we are on. The energy community was one step, our green focus on production another. They are both an expression that we prioritize it, but also that it is an adjustment for us, which will take time and where we practice. That is why we proceed more quietly," says Anders Kjærhauge.

This article is part of our project 'Yes in my backyard', where we focus on how people around the country help drive the green transition in their local communities.

Local energy communities

• Local energy communities have become a declared area of ​​action in The EU's worke with setting up renewable energy. In the EU's Directive on common rules for the internal market for electricity ((EU) 2019/9), it has become possible from 2020 to establish local energy communities, where citizens, authorities and companies come together to share the power they jointly produce, for example via collectively owned wind turbines and solar cells. The whole idea behind energy communities is thus that the members must produce, consume, share and store energy, be responsible for charging electricity-based transport and convert electricity into heat.
  
  
• The Avedøre energy community was founded on 18 August 2020 by Hvidovre Municipality, Hvidovre Gymnasium, Avedøre Village Guild, Avedøre Fjernvarme amba, Filmbyen and EBO Consult A/S.
  
  
• Economy: The price for solar cells on Zentropa's four roofs has been DKK 1.4 million. DKK, and in addition Zentropa has purchased eight charging stands for a total price of DKK 100.000. Both parts have been installed this year.
  
  
• The solar cells currently produce 100-120 MW/h, which corresponds to approx. 25-30 per cent of the annual energy consumption at Zentropa and Mainstream (sound producer located in Filmbyen).
  
  
• Since 2018, Avedøre has had a vision to develop a sustainable district - Green City Avedøre with inspiration from the Green City Europe initiative. Under that vision, a number of initiatives have been launched in recent years - including the energy community.
  
  
• On the national stage too, there is an increasing focus on energy communities, which are increasingly highlighted as an important piece in the future energy system - and are also seen politically as an important lever to avoid criticism and opposition and to secure local support for RE projects. In 2021, as part of the financial law agreement for 2022, a political agreement was thus concluded on the allocation of a smaller pool to support local energy communities from 2022-2025. In 2023, the pool is 3,4 million. NOK Hvidovre Municipality also today has "committed energy communities with both companies and citizens" as a declared vision their climate strategy.

Hints to others who want to transform their communities:

• Lots of patience. It takes time to join communities where many different organizations and people are included. When citizens, authorities and companies have to cooperate, it requires patience, and it will often be slower than if you as a company do something on your own.

• A long-term business case. It is not always upfront good business for a company to invest in renewable energy – as a company, you have to count on a longer repayment horizon.

• Learning along the way. With new communities, collaborations and a new mindset that must be integrated into one's business, there is a need for an openness to the fact that it is a journey where you learn along the way and continually adjust.