CopenHill: is waste incineration truly sustainable?

Built in 2017, CopenHill is Copenhagen’s largest waste incineration plant, annually converting 600,000 tons of waste into energy for over a third of Copenhagen households.

Sune Scheibye, press officer of Amager Resource Centre (ARC), the publicly owned company which manages waste in Copenhagen, says CopenHill is “innovative, spectacular, and cool.”

The design invites the public to connect with nature, offering greenspace and hiking trails in the middle of the industrial precinct.

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the architectural firm who designed CopenHill, states "the building embodies BIG's notion of hedonistic sustainability while contributing to Copenhagen's goals to becoming one of the world's first carbon-neutral cities.” 

However, Ulrik Kohl, a PHD fellow working on Democratic Energy Transitions from Roskilde University says the design “doesn't give anything to biodiversity. It's not green or anything.” 

CopenHill was built by Babcock & Wilcox, a US company with significant investments in waste incineration. Kohl says the company was interested in using CopenHill, strategically located near the airport, as an example for international investors interested in waste incineration, rather than a way to sustainably power the city.

He says the design was flawed from the start, with the decision to include two furnaces decreasing efficiency and resulting in reliance on imported waste.

Scheibye agrees, stating “the two furnaces are bigger than they needed to be to manage waste from our area.” He explains planners anticipated more waste from Copenhagen residents.

Kohl believes this is not the case. “I think they always knew there wouldn’t be enough waste in the city to power the plant. I think they lied.”

CopenHill currently imports over 10% of waste, primarily from the UK. This waste has a higher concentration of plastic, which contributes significantly more CO₂ emissions.

Whilst waste incineration results in less greenhouse gas emissions than sending waste to landfill and less overall emissions than fossil fuels, it is not as sustainable as renewable energy.

CopenHill emitted 560,000 tonnes of CO₂ in 2025, contributing to 13% of Copenhagen's annual emissions, and resulting in failure of the city to reach carbon neutrality by 2025.

Whilst Scheibye says “burning stuff is never sustainable,” he believes “incineration is the pragmatic approach to waste management.” 

“We have a problem, we need a solution. For now, this is the best solution.”

Carbon capture

Scheibye says ARC has been working to better this solution through carbon capture.

In 2025, ARC partnered with E.ON, a German energy company, on CopenCapture, a project aiming to capture 400,000 tons of CO₂ and store it underground. 

The project has “died” after E.ON ended the partnership, but Scheibye assures ARC is “still working on it.”

“It takes time to make things happen, to develop stuff like this,” he says.

He believes it will take 5 to 10 years to realise their carbon capture goals.

Carbon capture has been criticised for disincentivising efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enabling waste incineration to maintain the illusion of sustainability.

According to Kohl, “path dependency” explains Denmark’s contradictory increase in waste incineration plants, despite goals to reduce emissions and promote a circular economy.

“In the European context, there shouldn't be a future for waste incineration,” he says.

“But the waste incineration industry lobby is very, very strong. And when you have built a plant, nobody's going to shut that plant down for 30 years, because the investments are so huge.” 

Despite these environmental issues, CopenHill is received positively from the public due to its unique design. Ulrik believes this “sustainable branding” is a “double-edged sword.” 

He says “green washing” makes waste incineration more attractive to policymakers. However, through his experience as a politician in Copenhagen City Council, states "there is also an advantage of this image because it sets an agenda for conversations that everybody around the table has to join.”

Scheibye also believes CopenHill facilitates discussions about the environment.

“When we have schoolchildren and international delegations visiting our place we show them the waste hierarchy and importance of stopping waste production.”

However, Kohl believes sustainability should not be up to the individual.

“I'm not a super fan of individualistic solutions,” he says.

 “I think if people collectively argue for more sustainable waste management, they should direct this to state or city institutions.” 

This story is for an audience in Australia and could be published in The Conversation.