The Winds of Change

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On the road to enlightened energy policy, a few countries offer models of reform. More than a decade ago, Denmark required utilities to purchase any available renewable energy and pay a premium price; today the country gets 18% of its electricity from wind. Thanks largely to Germany and Spain, which have enacted vigorous incentives for renewables, Europe today accounts for 70% of the world's wind power. In Japan 80,000 households have installed solar roof panels since the government offered generous subsidies in 1994; consequently, Japan has displaced the U.S. as the world's leading manufacturer of photovoltaics. India established a fund that has lent $1.1 billion to alternative-energy projects; the country is now the globe's fifth largest generator of wind and solar power. Iceland, which lies on a hotbed of underground volcanic activity, uses that geothermal energy to heat 90% of its buildings. The island nation is planning to use geothermal and hydroelectric power to produce large amounts of hydrogen, creating the world's first hydrogen economy.

Such examples show that the future "is more a matter of choice than destiny," as Brazilian physicist Jose Goldemberg, the chairman of a recent United Nations energy study, put it. On the windy border of Washington and Oregon, citizen groups are already making a choice. They have pressured utilities to invest in green energy, and a federal tax credit has made it more profitable. "It's the right thing to do," says Vito Giarrusso, manager of the Stateline wind farm, "to help our little piece of the earth." --With reporting by Toko Sekiguchi/Tokyo