Sønderborg Municipality needs to speed up the green conversion of heavy transport and energy consumption by companies, and a stack of EU funds is now helping to make that happen.

The city in Southern Jutland has an ambition to become CO2-neutral by 2029, and the city can now make use of EU support to achieve this goal.

The EU has granted DKK 4.5m (EUR 603,000) to the project called Zero Industry, which Sønderborg Varme, Better Energy, ProjectZero and Sønderborg Municipality will work together on over the next two years, the parties write in a joint announcement.

The project has two main efforts. On the roads, Better Energy will look at the potential for replacing diesel trucks with electric trucks.

Better Energy, which has one of Europe’s largest test facilities for solar energy in Sønderborg, will map the driving patterns and charging needs of manufacturing companies. 

Major manufacturer Danfoss, for example, has already switched to electricity in their Danish truck fleet, and the hope is that more will follow suit. 

”Our theory is that many companies in the Sønderborg area have a driving pattern with routes where electric range can work well in practice,” says Lasse Netterstrøm, head of business innovation at Better Energy.

”We want to take a closer look at this and at the same time explore how we as a society can create the necessary charging infrastructure in the smartest way. Including what we can do to increase the incentive to charge at times when there is the most green power in the grid,” he says.

For the area’s manufacturing companies, it’s primarily about reducing the consumption of gas in production. Sønderborg Varme is already working to replace some of the companies’ gas consumption with green district heating and at the same time feed the company’s surplus heat into the district heating network. 

The project is expected to start in September and run for two years. 

English edit by Kristoffer Grønbæk