Hello, and thank you for downloading the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service

with me, Rachel Naylor. This is the story of the Danish school that taught the world how

to build a wind turbine and how important wind power could be.

It's October 1973 and we're in West Jutland in Denmark. Energy prices across the world

are rocketing due to the oil crisis. This is NBC Nightly News, Wednesday, October 17th.

The Middle East War produced developments all over the world today. The oil-producing countries

of the Arab world decided to use their oil as a political weapon. They will reduce oil production

by 5% a month until the Israelis withdraw from occupied territory. Less Arab oil will pose

quite severe problems for the Japanese and especially for the West European countries.

Across Denmark, street lighting was reduced and Danes were told not to drive their cars

on Sundays. British Jensen was an English teacher at the Twin International School Centre near

Oafbog. I think the price of oil went up sevenfold and that meant that all people and also our

schools they struggled to pay the heating bills. Then also in Denmark there was an increasing

awareness of pollution which was caused by fossil fuels. The teachers said we have to do

something about this problem. What should we do? And then we decided we have to make our own

energy supply. Sounds simple right? First they have to choose their energy source. That bit was easy.

The name of British school, twin, means wind. It's on the west coast and that means one thing.

It gets pretty windy. You cannot stop the wind from blowing. You cannot monopolise it and it is

decentralized and it is therefore everybody. But this was 1973. Wind turbines that produced

electricity existed but only on a very small scale. They had been used in the USA on farms since

the 1930s but only produced several kilowatts of energy at the most. Nothing like the electricity

needed to power a school. But the biggest problem British and her colleagues faced is that they

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