With toxic black ooze spreading throughout the Gulf of Mexico, it is time for the Obama administration to think seriously about national energy policy. They could learn plenty by looking across the Atlantic to Europe.

By forging ahead with widespread implementation of innovative conservation practices, renewable energy technologies and fuel efficient transportation, Europe has managed to reduce its “ecological footprint” to half that of the United States for the same standard of living. The average European emits half the carbon of an average American and uses far less electricity. It takes 40 percent more fuel for an American car to drive a mile than a European car.

How has Europe managed to achieve this? Through smart, strategic government policy, working closely with the private sector to advance incentives and regulations that encourage the necessary behavior from consumers, households and businesses.

During the past decade, as the US has resorted to increasingly desperate strategies to secure more oil – whether Middle East wars under Bush-Cheney or more offshore drilling under Obama – the European landscape has been slowly transformed by new conservation and renewable energy technologies that look like something out of a sci-fi movie. Picture windmills, tidal turbines and solar panels on rooftops, dotting the European landscape. Imagine large cylindrical “sea snakes” bobbing in the ocean, transforming wave motion into electric power. Or vast solar arrays with tens of thousands of panels that have tracking technology to follow the sun and “smart” energy-efficient buildings that monitor the temperature and sunlight to open and close window panels and blinds automatically. Imagine harnessing the body warmth of 250,000 daily commuters to produce heat for a nearby office block. Or how about high-speed trains circling it all, linking major cities, whisking passengers in carbon-friendly efficiency? All of these inventions and more are becoming reality in Europe.

Windmills, Tides and Solar Besides: The European Way of Energy

Europe leads the world in the production of wind power and Germany leads Europe. All across rural Germany, giant windmills line the landscape like rows of a new-fangled crop. Nationwide, more than 20,000 windmills generate 8 percent of the country’s electricity, some 21,000 megawatts (MW) of power, enough to power ten million homes and save an estimated 42 million tons of carbon dioxide. Germany has plans to build an additional 30 offshore wind farms in the North and Baltic seas. Britain, Spain, Portugal and Sweden also are investing heavily in wind power. Denmark already gets 20 percent of its total power from wind energy. The US has only a third of Europe’s wind power.

Solar power also has surged in Europe, with photovoltaic capacity in the European Union growing at an annual rate of 70 percent in recent years. Other energy forms are being developed, including geothermal, biomass and small-scale hydro. Harnessing the limitless power of the sea has long been the dream of science fiction and it is becoming reality in Europe. Imagine taking a windmill and sinking it beneath the sea – that, in effect, is what engineers have done a mile off the British coast. Like a field of windmills, these underwater “seamills” create the possibility of grids of undersea turbines producing thousands of megawatts of carbon-free power.

Portugal is the first country to pioneer an eye-popping new technology known as a “sea snake” or “energy eel.” Sea snakes are 100 meter-long floating cylinders that bob semi-submerged in the waves and convert wave motion to power that is then fed into underwater cables and brought to land. Portugal is planning a grid of 30 sea snake segments producing 20 megawatts of power, saving some 30 million tons of carbon emissions. Twenty-five of these grids could power a city the size of Lisbon.