Page 293 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

The European Union: Nordic Countries and Germany Chapter j 14 267

FIGURE 14.6 Depiction of the renewable energy island Samsø (Energy Institute).

As in Ærø, the ownership structure of the Samsø projects heavily includes
the local population and government. The municipality owns 5 of the 10
offshore wind turbines; profits from these wind turbines are to be invested in
future energy projects as per Danish regulations. As for the other five, private
groups made up mainly of local farmers own three, and the other two are
owned by cooperatives. One cooperative is locally managed and it consists of
450 people who own shares, and the other is national (people from throughout
Denmark can buy shares), consists of 1100 people who own shares, and is
managed by a professional investment foundation (Energy Academy, 2011;
Zipkin et al., 2015). Local farmers own nine of the onshore turbines inde-
pendently and the other two are owned by local cooperatives. The two local
cooperatives for onshore turbines consist of 5400 shares that were offered to