Green Revolution – How some European countries are leading the way !

Iceland – Reykjavik - The Greenest place on earth!

Iceland is a small Island country in the North American hemisphere and is in the forefront with the Green revolution and Energy efficient ways.

Iceland meets about 80 % of the energy requirements with the renewable energy like Geo-thermal, Water and wind. This is against the forecasts for using renewable energy of 20% by the European union by 2020 and less than 5% by Asian countries like India and China.

The leading green index countries are Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, UK .. and US is around the 66 in the list and India is close to the bottom of the list as of now.

Iceland is the first country in the world to make commercial use Hydrogen in the cars and is also making great use of the Geo-thermal and water energy for the daily business and residential energy consumptions with practically no emissions and minimal use of the fossil fuels.

The country has a small population of about 300,000 and mostly concentrated around the capital city Reykjavik. High Energy dependent manufactures such as Aluminum - especially ALCOA sees this an opportunity to stay committed to stay Green and is in the process of build 300+ stoves using the energy from Geo-thermal and water. The renewable energy in Iceland is extremely cheap due to its availability in abundance and also innovative ideas and technologies of the Icelander's. This small island has or planning on having more than 8 Hydroelectirc plants and 6-8 large Geo-thermal based plants and is the pioneer for using Hydrogen fuel in commercial cars etc.. Iceland is indeed committed to the environment, preserving natural resources and staying green.

Some of new energy friendly and innovative green initiatives:

Developed nations in North America and Europe and combined with rapid growth in the BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China there is an un precedence growth in the consumption of natural energy and fossil fuels in the last few years driving up the oil prices and also resulting in consumption of non-recycle resources.

Here are some of the initiatives that some of the companies in Europe are taking to help protect the natural resources and be green friendly.

Recycle - More and more biz in Europe and North America are using recycle papers, plastics, Aluminum and other precious product that are using natural resources. This is help avoid the land refills and also reuse the natural resources..

Energy conservations bulbs– Leading manufactures in Europe are doing research in coming with LED bulbs instead of the energy efficient CFL. These new generation bulbs will utilize less than half of the energy of CFL and produce equivalent or more lumen output and will be significantly more lasting.

Wind Power for Shipping: Wind power is being tested to be used for large Ships complementing the regular oil guzzling engines and tests have proved that the energy requirements of the ships can be reduced by as much as 20% if the wind power is used during the sail. Just to keep the perspective – large ships consume oil to deliver 35 to 40 feet per gallon and the study predicts that the shipping industry is consuming couple of billions of gallons of oil.

Energy efficient Hybrid cars – Several new energy efficient cars are in the research stage and recently Aptera Motors out of Carlsbad, California has rolled out prototypes of the new 2 seat car that can go up to 300 miles per gallon and is expected to be priced around 30000 USD and working primarily on recharging battery with minimal to no fuel emission. Number of these units have already being pre-sold.

Energy efficient cooking stoves: In the developing countries, there is significant usage of stoves that are energy in-efficient and natural resources. Shell foundation has invested about 25 million to work with companies to develop low cost energy efficient stoves and these will be sent to about 10 million households in India, Africa and Latin America.

That is it for now..Save energy - Think and implement Green !

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References and Resources: Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Economist