Christian Wenande
October 23rd, 2015

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The Faroe Islands has set a goal to be 100 percent reliant on sustainable energy by 2030, according to the Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq.

The Faroese government and the national energy provider SEV have agreed that all energy consumption on land should be provided by energy sources from water, wind, sun and currents.

Hákun Djurhuus, the CEO of SEV, presented the goal at the Arctic Circle Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland along with Aksel V Johannesen, the prime minister of the Faroe Islands.

READ MORE: Denmark part of global agreement for sustainable development

Getting results
SEV has already established a wind turbine park with 13 900-kW turbines outside Thorshavn, and the energy provider is working on optimising its energy generation.

The remote location of the island means it is unable to connect to an existing energy grid, and because there is too little wind during the summer to support the island’s energy needs, SEV wants to utilise pump and storage systems, which store and generate energy by moving water between two reservoirs at different elevations.

The island is already showing significant results. During the first half of this year, 65 percent of energy production was generated by sustainable energy – up 15 percent on the same period in 2014.

Further assistance could come from the new global wind atlas that Denmark’s Technical University (DTU) helped develop, which aims to improve the harnessing of wind energy by using more precise data regarding prevailing wind conditions.