Windmills on the Eiffel Tower?
By Bloomberg
Windmills on the Eiffel Tower?
Yes. Two windmills on the Paris landmark will next week start producing energy as the French capital looks to use the iconic iron structure to promote its environmental policies ahead of a climate summit it will host in December.
The blades of the windmills latched on the second floor of the tower began their lazy turns on Thursday in a week-long test period. Hanging 416 feet off the ground, they will capture the Paris air to produce about 10,000 kilowatts of energy a year, enough to power one of the gift shops on the first floor.
The Eiffel Tower project is France’s latest effort to show it’s serious about cutting emissions and make environmentally friendly moves to showcase its role as the organizer of the United Nations Climate Change conference at the end of the year. The goal of the Paris conference is to have all countries sign up to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to cap global temperature increases.
President Francois Hollande went on a two-day visit to the Philippines starting Thursday, the first of several he plans across the globe to promote the conference. He stopped in the town of Guiuan on the archipelago where Typhoon Haiyan swept away several coastal communities in November. More than 4 million people were displaced by the storm.
“I’ve come to see you, here in Guiuan, to show the whole world what this disaster means, the typhoon that hit you, the destroyed homes, the damaged fishing port, the collapsed church, the devastated market,” Hollande said in a speech on the island Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.
Paris Efforts
Back home, the Eiffel Tower, which has over 7 million visitors each year -- more than 250 million since it was built in 1889 -- will become a symbol of France’s concerns about climate change.
The tower has often been used to promote policies dear to France and to celebrate its victories. French carmaker Citroen used it to promote its brand and its prowess as an industrial powerhouse in the early 20th century. The tower glittered in colored lights when France won the soccer World Cup in 1998.
The vertical, 23-feet-high windmills will be a small part of Paris’s efforts to cut emissions. The city wants to reduce gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020 and get a quarter of its energy from renewables by then.
Anne Hidalgo -- Paris’s first female mayor -- pushed the city council to vote in February a plan to ban diesel vehicles and slash the number of cars circulating in the capital. The plan by Hidalgo, who took over as mayor last year, came years after measures by London to reduce vehicles in the city center.
Green Efforts
“The Eiffel Tower will be the emblem of the conference and the city of Paris is fully engaged in the plan to cut emissions,” Matthieu Lamarre, the spokesman for the City of Paris, told Bloomberg.
The windmills have been designed and produced by New York- based Urban Green Technology and “specially painted to match the iconic tower,” according to the company’s website.
Granted, the windmill effort is more symbolic than functional. The 1,062-foot tower uses more than 6.7 gigawatthours of electricity each year, enough to power a town of about 3,000 people.
Still, the tower’s operator, Societe d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, or SETE, has tried in recent years to save energy and costs.
Since Jan. 1, a producer of renewable energy provides the tower with enough power to light the 40,000 light bulbs and 336 projectors that keep the landmark lit in the Parisian night.
Rain water is collected to be used in the toilets, the angle of the windows on the first floor has been changed to deflect solar rays and reduce the heat in the summer and 107 square feet of solar panels provide energy to heat water.