Netherland has been harnessing the power of the wind to drain bodies of water, saw timber and to produce oil for centuries. Now the country has decided to run all of its electric trains with the power of wind.
How Did It All Began
The Dutch Railways network started using the power of the wind energy generated with the help of the turbines owned by electric company named Eneco two years ago and at the time signed a ten-year agreement with them. It became the first-ever railway company that gets 100 percent energy from wind power. At that very moment, they decided that they would power all of county's electric train with wind-generated energy by 2018. However, they have been an inspirational example for all the other countries as they achieved this goal a year before. What an amazing start of the wonderful year it has been for the country.
The country's electric trains carry 600,000 people to their destination in around 5,500 train trips a day. These trips use about 1.2 billion kWh of energy every year, which has been estimated to power up all the houses in Amsterdam for the same time period. It takes about an hour for a wind turbine to generate enough power to run a train for about 120 miles. But the railway network has some further bright plans that would lower the machine's consumption by 35 percent before 2020 in order to use smaller amount of energy.
What Are Future Concerns
In addition, the railway company has committed to lower its energy consumption by two percent per year. As the facts say since 2005 they have already decreased its energy consumption by 30 percent. Though according to certain reports, Netherlands is far away when it comes to climate change as compared to other European countries. The country thus needs to work on these aspects to help fight climate change.
