Word: winded
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
Denmark's dominance of wind power was born in the Riso National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy. Riso, founded in 1958 to focus on nuclear research, is easy to miss on the road to the university town of Roskilde; only the test turbines on its grounds give away the campus's purpose. Turbine manufacturers from around the world test at Riso, where researchers are so expert at honing the aerodynamics of a blade that they've helped turn wind turbines from backyard mills to multi-megawatt farms...
...focus on wind continues, but today Riso - now part of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) - is a global leader in hydrogen fuel-cell research, which could eventually provide a viable storage technology to counter the challenge of intermittent renewables like wind. "Environmental technology is something that can drive industrial exports for Denmark," says John Christensen, head of the UNEP Riso Centre on Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development. "We can and should take advantage of this...
...Denmark stayed with it. While countries like the U.S. let tax credits for renewable energy wax and wane, smothering infant green industries in the crib, Denmark looks to the long term. In the 1990s, the government inaugurated tariffs that required utilities to offer 10-year fixed-rate contracts for wind power. That sort of security led to a rapid expansion of wind power at home - the country has more than 5,200 turbines producing in excess of 3,100 MW of electricity - and helped firms like Vestas scale up and perfect their technology so they could dominate abroad...