The Eiffel Tower has new wind turbines, and they're beautiful

When the turbines are moving, they’re clearly visible from the Trocadéro square, which offers a direct view of the tower from the opposite side of the Seine. But from the foot of the tower looking up, they’re barely visible, lost amid the lattice maze of iron that holds everything together. Up close, they look sloped, smooth, and far more elegant than the utilitarian propellers usually associated with wind power installations.

UGE's turbines are the latest in a series of clean energy additions for the Eiffel Tower, which attracts an estimated 7 million tourists per year. The 125-year-old tower is in the middle of a two-year, €30 million ($33.6 million) renovation that will add energy-saving LED lights and an array of solar panels to heat half of the hot water it uses. (The renovation also introduced a vertigo-inducing glass floor on the tower's first level.)

a "big leap forward for renewable energy."

Paris has also embraced greener policies in recent months, ahead of hosting a global summit on climate change in December. The city recently called for all municipal buildings and public lighting to exclusively use electricity from renewable sources by the year 2016, and Mayor Anne Hidalgo wants to ban all diesel vehicles from Paris by 2020, in the hopes of easing its smog problems. The hope is that planting discrete wind turbines on the city’s most recognizable building will not only reaffirm Paris' eco-friendly agenda, but spur others to adopt similar technologies, as well.

"It really does represent this big leap forward for renewable energy as a whole, to have this technology to the point where it can be easily adopted by consumers like the Eiffel Tower," Gromadzki says. "And I think that was something that, five years ago, no one would've been ready for. It demonstrates that we’ve come this far to create renewable energy technologies that can be easily integrated into the daily lives of people around the world."

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