BY: Zoe Melnyk
Norway’s plans to end deforestation and ban gas-powered cars are quickly making it one of the greenest countries in the world.
Just last month, Norway promised to ban deforestation. That’s a huge leap most countries in the western world cannot even imagine, considering it means that the country cannot produce a single product that involves deforestation of a rainforest.
The five main products that drive destructive deforestation around the world are beef, soy, palm oil, wood pulp, and cocoa, so, despite the negative stereotype, keeping an eye on your consumption may be a good idea.
Norway didn’t just stop with banning deforestation. There are talks of possibly banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars by the year 2025.
Currently, 24 per cent of new vehicles in Norway are hybrid. The country is leading the world in cars powered by electric drivetrains. However, it is still a major leap to 100 per cent, especially in just under a decade.
While the Liberal Party and Democratic Party are completely committed to the new law, the initiative is not yet set in stone and will take some further negotiations before the plan is officially underway.
Norway isn’t the only country looking to take aggressive action to save the environment.
Chile’s solar industry is becoming so successful that it is seemingly distributing electricity for free.
This year spot prices have already reached zero for 113 days, meaning that the expansion of solar farms from 29 to 44 could lead to the entire country being powered by solar energy for a very affordable price.
Morocco has also jumped on that solar power trend and built the world’s largest solar power plant.
With a prime location on the edge of the Saharan desert, the solar power plant covers thousands of acres and will hopefully make 2,000 megawatts of solar generation capacity by 2020.
The basic understanding on megawatts is that a single MW can power, on average, 1,000 homes. Now, this can be misleading based on the size of the homes and the amount of energy used. However, even if a single megawatt could only power 600 homes, Morocco is still looking to create enough solar energy to power at least 12,000 homes in the next four years.
That protecting the environment is a priority is a value slowly creeping up on just about every political party, and with these countries, among many others, taking on the responsibility of creating and using green energy, hope for our future generations may yet remain.
