When the world is getting serious with its global warming and greenhouse gas emissions issues, more and more energy producers are shifting to alternative or renewal resources to produce power.

But, it does not seem sufficient to just resort to alternative energy to stay in the ‘competitive paradigm shifting.’ To berge ahead, the companies are pushing hard to create something different, atleast enough to make a headline.

Perhaps, cuing with these lines, the German engineering giant Siemens has planned to build a wind farm. True, wind farms are no more a new concept, but they are planning to erect the ‘world’s first floating wind turbine!’

Alexandra Bech Gjoerv, the head of the energy division at Norsk Hydro — the Norwegian firm spearheading the project – said,

It’s attractive to have windmills out at sea. We can produce a lot of energy, out of sight.

Explaining the advantage of having a floating wind turbine, Walt Patterson, an energy expert at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said,

It’s a logical step. Floating turbines will be easier to make because you can do most of the fabrication on land and then float it out to sea.

But, the questing of keeping the turbines secure in the North Sea, where waves can reach 30m in height, arises. To face the waves, three cables will be loosely anchoring the base of the turbines to the seabed, a technology similar to that used for offshore oil platforms. But, this is with much greener credentials.

The prototype is initially expected to generate about five megawatts of electricity, which can supply at least 1,000 homes. And once successful, a small offshore windpark could be built by 2014, which would consist of about 200 turbines.

The floating wind turbine is expected to be up and running in under two years. Hope this would help environmental campaigners chill down with their claims that turbines are an eyesore for tourists – endangering the tourism industry.

What Sustainable Development Indicators are doing is turning the generic concept of sustainability into action and Zurich-based SAM Group within the Dow Jones and STOXX classifications is currently providing a standardized set of indicators for this purpose.

Continuing their assessments based on companies’ economic, environmental, and social performance, to measure and monitor sustainable development, this year Dow Jones sustainability indexes has ranked Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian aluminum company as overall best performer.

Norsk Hydro’s claimed the top position as it did a great job in risk management and compliance systems citing an example for innovative techniques for better energy use with lower emissions.

While BMW, for the third consecutive year grasped the top rating in automotive index for variety of achievements, including its efficiency enhancements and its steady work on developing hybrid technologies.

On the other side as strong candidate in the social dimension, human capital development, corporate citizenship/philanthropy, social reporting, animal testing and bioethics, Novo Nordisk ranked as best-in-class in healthcare – one of 18 global super sectors in Dow Jones Sustainability indexes.

Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes are the first global indexes tracking the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide since 1999 and analyzes almost 2500 companies rating them based on economic, environmental, and social performance every year. This year, 42 companies have entered the index while 33 will loose the eligibility, thus dropping off the list.

For the last few years sustainability indicators, indices and reporting systems gained growing popularity in both the public and private sectors and mainly intended to effect actual policy and practices to put the concept of sustainable development into action.