If all Europeans bicycled as much as the people of Denmark, the European Union could achieve up to one-quarter of its target for carbon emissions reductions in the transportation sector by 2050, a new report says.

According to the European Cyclists’ Federation, the average Dane cycles about 2.6 kilometers a day. If (more…)

Two weeks ago, the citizens of Denmark elected Helle Thorning-Schmidt as the country’s first female prime minister. And in the period since, negotiators from the three parties working to form a new coalition government have hinted at the kinds of policy decisions the left-center coalition will be (more…)

For the past 40 years, Denmark has been synonymous with world-class green high-tech solutions. It began with wind technology as a solution to the 1970s oil crisis, but since then the Danish cleantech sector has evolved and now offers technologies within all types of sustainable energy, climate-friendly (more…)

Biofuels have been dismissed by environmentalists as an unsustainable alternative to fossil fuels. But some hope that second-generation biofuels could offer a better solution to the dirty oil crisis.

Second generation biofuel, or cellulosic biofuel, is made of non-food feedstocks such as straw and (more…)

The European Union will exceed its target of meeting 20 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020, according to a new report. Twenty-five of the 27 EU nations will meet or exceed their national targets, according to the analysis by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA).

About 14 percent of the total energy (more…)

Denmark, like, Germany, her neighbor to the south, is a country that takes renewable energy seriously. The wind energy industry alone in Denmark is booming with companies like Vestas and Siemens Wind Power both having production facilities and bases of operation on Danish soil. Denmark’s own wind based energy also grows exponentially each year leaving (more…)

Just over a week ago, Denmark became the first European country to make available to drivers second generation biofuel, fuel made of agricultural residues that do not compete with food crops. The fuel, called Bio95, is now on offer at 100 filling stations across the country on a 95% (more…)

In the United States, even the most basic programs for encouraging renewable energy and sustainable business have a hard time making it through Congress. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, western European countries are lining up to demonstrate that how industrialized nations can build up their economies with renewable power. Justmeans has already covered (more…)

Twelve years ago in Kyoto, the world was poised to act on a climate treaty but looked for a clear signal from the United States. Now, with the Copenhagen talks set to begin, the outcome once again hinges on what the U.S. is prepared to do.

President Obama took much of the drama out of the Copenhagen talks earlier this month when he and other world leaders announced that there’d be no treaty at the end — in essence, they said, we’ll wait for the U.S. Senate. Still, you can’t call off the party entirely, and so the planet’s climate scientists, bureaucrats, activists, skeptics and journalists will still descend on the Danish capital in a few days for a fortnight of meeting, marching, propounding, denying, and most of all spinning.

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We are living in a world where high consumption has been relentlessly praised, suggesting that we should buy, consume and dispose more stuff than our grandparents used to do. With some nations consuming more than others, the quality and quantity of waste varies across borders. And so does the way it is managed.

A conventional method for waste management is to dump the waste into designated landfill areas where it is left for years without being monitored. Landfill activity remains the most commonly used organized waste disposal method in the world. It is also the easiest and the cheapest. However, brimful landfill sites, hazardous waste and uncontrolled greenhouse gases cause greater environmental and economical impacts. As a simple example, part of the carbon content of the waste when it is dumped into a landfill site, is emitted into the atmosphere in the form of methane, which has a greenhouse effect 20 times greater than that of CO2.

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