A friend very recently asked me if there was just one place on the planet I would love to go back to. Without hesitation, I said Greenland. He thought I was joking but when I started to explain my answer, he began to understand.
I worked for an aircraft manufacturer who sold fixed-wing planes to Greenland’s national airline. I was given the opportunity of a lifetime to travel to the largest island on the globe to document in words and pictures the life of the people and the impact the airline and ‘our’ airplanes had on their lives. It is the least densely populated country in the world and most of the fifty-seven thousand people live in small communities along the fjords on the west coast including Godthåb, the capital. A large number of the communities are accessible only by boat or plane during the summer and by plane – weather permitting – or dog team in the winter.
I was there in January and for several weeks travelled the length and breadth of this remarkable land – always in the jump seat between the helicopter and fixed wing pilots. One of the things I found fascinating is how people coped in the self-contained environment of Greenland’s villages and communities. Each town generates its own energy and distributes it through a micro-power grid and local district heating network. For many years the joy was generated by power plants made from old ship engines running on diesel, every drop of which had to be imported. I remember seeing U.S. Air National Guard LC-130 Hercules heavy lifters flying in huge bladders full of fuel to replenish supply depots at Søndre Strømfjord the major airport on the west coast. I was told in English the name translates as ‘the great (or long) fjord.’ It’s no secret that the downside of burning fossil fuels is pollution and in this case, it is the biggest single contributor to the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.
I learned that the country has been replacing its diesel power machines with hydropower plants. Incredulous at first I started asking questions and researching how this could be done. Greenland has vast resources of glacial melt water that is being used to generate lower cost hydropower. The latest installation is a 22.5 megawatt plant comprising three 7.5 megawatt turbines for the town of Ilulissat, the third largest community in Greenland and the iceberg capital of the northern hemisphere. I was immediately reminded that the townspeople would enjoy the clean, renewable energy and so too would the local district heating network. This power plant is unmanned and located in an isolated fjord 45 kilometres from Ilulissat and is built into the permafrost 200 metres beneath the ice cap. Melt water is then channelled through the permafrost to spin turbines, which feed the power to lines that carry the clean power 50 kilometres to the town. Apparently the site is so remote that if a fault were to occur during the harsh winter storms it could take weeks to reach the plant for repairs. In that case, the old diesel genny would have to be put back into action.
The plant produces enough hydropower to supply more than 16,000 households and the new power saves about 23,000 tonnes of CO2. I also learned that this is the third complete power and automation system in Greenland’s ongoing conversion to renewables. These, combined with other hydropower projects, provide almost 70 percent of the county’s electricity.
The town of Ilulissat sits across the water from Disko Island and overlooks the mouth of the Ilulissat Icefjord or in Geenlandic, Kangia, which is 40 kilometres long and seven kilometres wide in places. It’s just under halfway up the west coast some 300 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, and is part of the Disko Bay tourist region. Its particular notoriety is the location itself. Called the Sermeq Kullajeq glacier, which means southern glacier, it travels about 40 metres each day and spawns around 45 cubic kilometres of ‘calf ice’ each year. It is here that the world’s fastest moving glacier calves many of the huge icebergs that languish for a couple of years in Baffin Bay slowly drifting into Davis Strait and finally entering Iceberg Alley. With over 700 metres visible above the water, which as we all know represents only about ten percent of their size, mammoth bergs can seriously threaten shipping in the North Atlantic and oilrigs off Newfoundland more than 2900 kilometres to the south on their way to a certain end in the moderate waters off the U.S. east coast. It was one of their ancestors that sent the great White Star liner Titanic to her death in 1912.
As for Greenland’s drive for clean energy, I take off my hat to them. I have witnessed how primitive life can be and was privileged to have the best seat in the house through the windscreen of a helicopter to watch a dozen or more men working in unison, as they had done for thousands of years, to harpoon a whale. Working from their small boats surrounding the creature in a sea of red froth was a sight I shall never forget. That whale fed and kept oil lights on for many people over the frigid, near dark conditions that still lay ahead. As we flew up the coast just off the deck, I saw several women cutting up a whale carcass and filling wooden boxes with the meat. One of our drivers said the animal could have beached itself or died and was washed up onto the shore. It too would be a welcome find for the community and every member would receive a share.
Today, as we move into a new year, I thought of the disconnect of the scenes that had unfolded before me in this tough, yet giving land. I wondered how many of the people I saw had any idea their land and their time was entering an era of clean, renewable power destined one day to land on their very doorstep.
