Amsterdam is known for many things. It has notoriety for its relaxed regulations on drug use and prostitution. It is a city with distinctive architecture where city dwellers live in tall narrow homes.  It is a city where many people ride bikes, not just for fun, but to get to school and work.  It is a city with beautiful canals and stunning bridges that really look like they are right out of a postcard.

Amsterdam will also soon be known as one of the pioneers of urban carbon reduction on a massive scale. Amsterdam will be rolling out smart grid technology to some 800,000 homes, in an effort to be 100% carbon neutral by 2020.

Amsterdam aims to be Europe’s first “Smart City” and will employ smart grids, smart meters, smart-building technologies and electric vehicles to reduce its energy consumption in housing, commercial properties, public buildings and areas, and transportation. While they acknowledge their efforts will not single handedly stop climate change, they will serve as an interesting test bed to see the benefits and pitfalls of proposed climate change solutions and to discover how they work out of the laboratory and in the real world.

The good Dutch folks have always been known for their thrift and that holds true for their carbon footprint as well. The average Dutch person emits just half of what someone in the US does. Are you amazed that they are looking to improve on this?

Don’t forget that much of Amsterdam is below sea level, so they have a vested interest in helping lead the world to save their city from the rising tides of Global Warming.