A pivotal year 2014 turned the European project into a calamity with far reaching consequences we witness and experience today.

Some topics hardly saw progress as development under a conservative leadership does just that ... kick the can down the road until a crisis strikes and the party can impose tough policy.

Three of your diaries come to mind ...

• IPCC AR5: Climate Extremes | Oct 4, 2013 |
• German Electricity Prices | July 4, 2013 |
• Dutch Energy Agreement - No Vision, All Plan | Aug. 28, 2013 |

After years of halting and flip-flopping policies, the Dutch government is on the brink of presenting a long-term commitment on the development of renewable energy sources and the reduction of carbon-based energy. As a result of the decades of wavering energy policy, the Netherlands currently hold, unsurprisingly, the semi-last position in the list of EU nations, measured by the percentage of durable energy production: a little over 4 percent (4.4% in 2012) of Dutch energy production is listed as renewable, and even that figure is a result of the increase of biofuels.

The new accord sets out to change the ranking, aiming to reach 14 percent of renewable energy production in 2020. In other words, an increase of 1 percent every year until 2020 - thereby fulfilling, barely, the Dutch commitment to the EU-required minimum of producing 14 percent renewable energy in 2020.

The damning effect of the NATO military interventions in Libya and Syria with the inhumane refugee crisis was yet to happen (2015) and the further rise of populist party leaders and extreme rightwing rhetoric in politics. A bad decade behind us where costly time was and is wasted to make war.

'Sapere aude'