Copenhagen’s Struggle to Become the World’s First Carbon Neutral Capital: How Corporatist Power Beats Sustainability

Abstract

Nordic cities are often perceived as frontrunners of urban sustainability and their planners increasingly embrace and combine environmentalist ideas with communicative planning approaches. We argue that how corporatist networks promote green growth strategies that can undermine sustainability targets is often overlooked. In this article, we examine how the City of Copenhagen is failing in its efforts to become the world’s first carbon-neutral capital by 2025 partly because of corporatist capture of the decarbonisation agenda. Taking a phronetic social science approach we shed light on the production of knowledge and counter-knowledge in planning conflicts over energy infrastructure, in particular the iconic €530 million Copenhill waste-to-energy plant in Denmark. On one side of the conflict was a green coalition that initially blocked the proposed energy megaplant to defend the city’s ambitious climate targets. On the other side was a corporatist coalition who subsequently succeeded in strong-arming the city council to accept the plant, even though that meant carbon emissions would increase significantly, instead of decreasing. We focus on this U-turn in the planning process as a case of dark planning and a knowledge co-creation fiasco. Our findings reveal how the sustainability concept can be utilised as an empty vessel to promote private sector export agendas. We suggest that environmentalist ideals may stand stronger in planning conflicts if they link up with a broader alternative socio-economic agenda capable of attracting coalition partners. The lesson to be learned for green coalitions is that it is crucial to combine expert, local, and political knowledge to be able to “read” the power configuration and develop strategic and tactical capacity to challenge dominant discourses.

Urban Heat Transition in Berlin: Corporate Strategies, Political Conflicts, and Just Solutions

“…This historically evolved fossil-based structure has mostly remained untouched by urban sustainability policies, which focus largely on urban greening, smart growth, and technologyoriented efficiency policies (Long & Rice, 2018). Some scholars criticize how recent urban climate policy efforts and carbon neutrality programs have become integrated into capitalist production and consumption patterns (see Castán Broto & Robin, 2021;Kohl & Andersen, 2022;Long & Rice, 2018). Yet, ambitious multilateral emissions reduction targets and growing climate activism are increasingly challenging common technical approaches.…”

“…It is important here to pay attention to evolved structures, materializations, and ownership patterns in key infrastructures like heat and housing and the respective constellations of actors. Such constellations influence how ambitious urban climate policy is, whether it is coopted by capitalist dynamics, and whether it tries to integrate social justice aspects or reproduce established power geometries (see Kohl & Andersen, 2022;Long & Rice, 2018).…”

“…However, advocates of green urbanism often ignore the fact that sustainability policies are embedded in neoliberalized urban structures, which facilitate corporate interests and aggravate socio-spatial injustices within the city (Gould & Lewis, 2016;Kohl & Andersen, 2022). Hence, the heating transition is also shaped by the strategies of energy and real-estate enterprises, often resulting in ecologically questionable outcomes, increased heating costs due to expensive technologies, and building renovations that lead to higher rents.…”