Word: wind
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...want to know why Denmark is the world's leader in wind power, start with a three-hour car trip from the capital Copenhagen - mind the bicyclists - to the small town of Lem on the far west coast of Jutland. You'll feel it as you cross the 4.2 mile-long (6.8 km) Great Belt Bridge: Denmark's bountiful wind, so fierce even on a calm summer's day that it threatens to shove your car into the waves below. But wind itself is only part of the reason. In Lem, workers in factories the size of aircraft hangars build...
...technology, like the wind itself, is just one more part of the reason for Denmark's dominance. In the end, it happened because Denmark had the political and public will to decide that it wanted to be a leader - and to follow through. Beginning in 1979, the government began a determined program of subsidies and loan guarantees to build up its nascent wind industry. Copenhagen covered 30% of investment costs, and guaranteed loans for large turbine exporters such as Vestas. It also mandated that utilities purchase wind energy at a preferential price - thus guaranteeing investors a customer base. Energy taxes...
...result, wind turbines now dot Denmark, the country gets more than 19% of its electricity from the breeze (Spain and Portugal, the next highest countries, get about 10%) and Danish companies control a whopping one-third of the global wind market, earning billions in exports and creating a national champion from scratch. "They were out early in driving renewables, and that gave them the chance to be a technology leader and a job-creation leader," says Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the New York City-based Natural Resources Defense Council. "They have always been one or two steps...
...challenge now for Denmark is to help the rest of the world catch up. Beyond wind, the country (pop. 5.5 million) is a world leader in energy efficiency, getting more GDP per watt than any other member of the E.U. Carbon emissions are down 13.3% from 1990 levels and total energy consumption has barely moved, even as Denmark's economy continued to grow at a healthy clip. With Copenhagen set to host all-important U.N. climate change talks in December - where the world hopes for a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol - and the global recession beginning to hit environmental...
...dwindling supply on the market of top Impressionist 20th century art means museum-quality work should offer stable - and potentially stratospheric - growth over the coming years. In 1979, two years before the record-setting 1911 Mattise would wind up in Saint Laurent's hands, Nahmad paid about $300,000 for the piece. Although he is sanguine about the market, the dealer, based in Monte Carlo, Monaco, was staggered by Monday's sale, which also netted records for Piet Mondrian (two of the Dutchman's paintings sold for eight-digit figures), Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Klee and James Ensor...