Another great news for all the renewable energy lovers out there! The national railway company Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) has just announced that the year 2017 will see all Dutch electric trains running on wind energy.
“Since 1 January, 100% of our trains are running on wind energy,” said NS spokesman, Ton Boon.
This feat was achieved after the Dutch electricity company Eneco took up a tender offered by NS two years ago, which set a 10-year deal between the two companies to make all the trains wind powered. The original deadline for the project was January 2018, and NS has achieved it a whole year earlier!
“So we in fact reached our goal a year earlier than planned. An increase in the number of wind farms across the country and off the coast of the Netherlands had helped NS achieve its aim.”
Eneco and NS said on their website that the “first in the world” wind train is taking around 600,000 passengers daily, and operates about 5,500 train trips a day.
“NS uses the same amount of energy as the city of Amsterdam,” Ton Boon added. “And the electricity is supplied from newly built wind farms. With this we lead by example: this contract will boost the production of green energy, we hope that other companies will follow this in their coming contracts.”
The companies also explained that a single windmill running for an hour could power a 120-mile train trip, and they hope to reduce further the energy used per passenger by a further 35% before 2020. NS and some other train operators do still run use a small fleet of diesel trains, though they have planned to phase them out by the end of 2017.
In what other fields do you think the green energy can be used? Comment below!
 has just announced that the year 2017 will see all Dutch electric trains running on wind energy. “Since 1 January, 100% of our trains are running on wind energy,” said NS spokesman, Ton Boon. This feat was achieved […]&media=https://wonderfulengineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/trains-wind-power-1.jpg){kind=link}