WHAT do a small Italian village, a community of millionaires in Oregon and a town in Austria have in common? Nearly all of their electricity needs are supplied by renewable energy. They are by no means the only ones. A growing number of communities are working towards using only electricity generated by renewables.
At the same time, many of the largest cities around the world have set themselves ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions to less than half present levels in the coming decades, and they will be relying heavily on renewable energy sources to do this. For example, London aims to cut its emissions by 60 per cent of 1990 levels by 2025 with the help of renewables. While no country - except geothermally blessed Iceland - gets all of its electricity from renewables, some resource-rich, sparsely populated countries, including Austria, Sweden and Norway, aim to get between .