BIG CITIES SHOW OFF THEIR GREEN INITIATIVES

Soren Kastalje took his wife and two children to the Future City exhibition at downtown Copenhagen for a Sunday outing, only to find a city he never learned of before: Jakarta.
“This city looks so great, with a lot of greenery. It has a good combination of high rise buildings surrounded by green,” Kastalje told The Jakarta Post, while observing a display of Jakarta’s National Monument (Monas) at the Future City exhibition in Copenhagen on Sunday.
The exhibition, organized on the sidelines of the UN Climate Change Conference here, features 11 of
the world’s big cities, including Jakarta, Copenhagen, Mexico City and New York.
Each presents its own environmentally-friendly unique characteristics. The city of Copenhagen, for example displays a wind turbine; while Mexico City shows a motorcycle commonly used among workers and local students.
New York City presents a miniature of its landmark, the Empire State Building, to show off its retrofitting of existing buildings. Over 22,000 buildings in the city, including Empire State Building, will benefit from energy upgrades.
Jakarta is promoting its green drive through Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects, which include the Bantar Gebang trash dumping site, where a power generator is built using gas from the trash site.
“You see, we are taking the first steps toward transforming Jakarta into a sustainable city,” said Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo in his video presentation.
Fauzi and more than 80 mayors from around the world are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways to tackle green house emissions as cities are responsible for more than two thirds of the world’s carbon emissions.
“I call upon national leaders at the COP 15 (Conference of Parties) to engage, empower and resource our cities to act against global warming,” Fauzi said.
As city governments are showing their efforts to climate change at the Future City exhibition, private corporations are organizing Bright Green expo, another sideline event.
Big corporations like oil giant Chevron, transport and energy infrastructure company Alstom and lamp and electronic giant Philips all have their own ways to attract visitors. Philips, for example,  takes pictures of visitors in its booth, prints them and gives them as a gift from Bright Green expo, with a message to promote energy efficiency.
But, it is the smaller companies drawing more attention from visitors with their  innovation. Shanghai Grandway Limited, for example, attracts visitors for its eco-friendly oil pump “grant titan pumpjack”.
A couple of companies promoting wind-power energy, including Grontmij Carl Bro and nkt cables, are also of special notice. Gronjmij Carl Bro, which provides engineering services to build wind power farms, attracted visitors with its melting ice installation, representing melting glaciers.
“Wind power is a potential alternative energy, but still underutilized,” Ian Reeckmann, international director of Grontmij Carl Bro. Nevertheless, more and more countries, including developing countries, are adopting this technology.
Grontmij Carl Bro, he said, has designed a wind farm in Egypt, now one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world, and is in talks with an Indonesian partner to assess the possibility of building a wind farm in Indonesia, but he refused to give details.
RGS90, a leading waste processing company in the Nordic countries, is another attraction  with its very simple presentation, using only two large trash bins in its display.
“Our business is very simple, we collect and process trash. But our contribution to the climate change
is real,” said Rasmus Valstedgard from RGS90.