Niels Carsten Bluhme has been the Area Director of the Municipality of Albertslund (Copenhagen Metropolitan Area)  shares in this GE blog post projects in the Greater Copenhagen region in Denmark that is transforming the metropolis to the new city of light.

For the three Danish regions collectively known as Greater Copenhagen, the vision for reducing global warning and creating green growth is quite clear and very ambitious.

In Greater Copenhagen, which consists today of 80 municipalities and 3.8 million inhabitants, the government has adopted a political strategy that uses technology as the driver behind the green transition. This is in recognition of the area’s front-runner position when it comes to cleantech products and solutions, as well as being a world-leading hub for photonic technologies, smart lighting and smart city technologies and concepts.

(Photo courtesy of GE)

As part of this political strategy, Greater Copenhagen has recently launched REVUS, a new green growth four-year plan for the capital region, which has a very narrow and clear focus on the green transition, digital skills, smart city and smart growth.

One project under this banner is DOLL (the Danish Outdoor Lighting Laboratory) – Denmark’s   national green photonics lab. Launched last year, the lab has rapidly become one of the most important innovation hubs in Europe for demand-driven private-public lighting and smart city technologies. The DOLL eco-system, which is a blend of the public sector, knowledge research institutions and private industries, has proven to be very successful, where full-scale ‘living labs’ are an effective methodology for driving innovation and development.

DOLL is also planning to launch Greater Copenhagen as the new ‘Lighting Metropolis’. This is a new large-scale initiative, that brings together nine major municipalities across Greater Copenhagen with universities and a number of companies in the lighting, sensor and data industries, to develop new and even more advanced intelligent lighting solutions and applications in full-scale outdoor and indoor living labs.

Interesting Facts

When it comes to public-private innovation and triple helix partnerships, the Nordic countries hold a strong position. In Denmark, as in Sweden, the public sector represents about 50 per cent of the total GDP.

The Danish Government has to a large extent delegated a significant part of the public service to the municipalities, which represent more than 63 per cent of the public sector (US$100 billion per year in 2013). In Sweden, the municipalities represent about 30 per cent of public spending. In other words, Danish and Swedish municipalities are globally among the strongest economically per capita.