thanks for the heads-up, this could be important.

we could bring a lot of what we discuss here to a bigger portal, perhaps...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

Heaven knows we need to mobilize all our resources in order to emerge with appreciative quality of life for all children.

Heaven knows we have all it takes, as can be read on my posting to mr Piebalgs:

--- March 1st, 2008 at 8:35 pm ---

Dear mr Piebalgs,

Firstly I'd like to applaud this initiative. I assume you have dedicated adequate resources in communicating with your European constituency in order to make optimal use of the knowledge present in it.

Upon your request I am willing to support this endeavour where I can.

I'd like to take the liberty to share some of the key findings of my research so far:

on the formal side:

• state of the art knowledge is hidden from main stream research institutes
  
• - it took concrete interactions with stake holders and compare them with official reports to come to this conclusion

• for road transport: bio fuels, hydrogen, CNG/LNG are fundamentally flawed and temporary at best
  
• mass produced electric vehicles (EV) are a reality wirhin 3 years (source: CEO Renault Nissan)
  
• Israel will have 200.000 charging points and 500 battery swapping stations for those cars by then (source: www.projectbetterplace.com)
  
• a member state will join this initiative by the end of this month
  
• the electricity source of choice for these EV's is from Solar Thermal power plants (CSP)
  
• for the EU, CSP is also entirely feasable, as indicated by the presentation of CSP for the EU (TREC) by Prince Hassan of Jordan to MEP's some months ago
  
• - cheaper as coal with CCS; cheaper as nuclear (when taking decommissioning cost into account)
  
• - 100 % reliable, sustainable electricity within 15 years for all member states
  
• - abundant drinking water (a by product of CSP) for the North Sahara
  
• - major business opportunities for EU-industries

• a leading role regarding these 2 phenomena for the EU is entirely feasable. Facilitating your endeavours of reducing the EU's dependency on -foreign- oil & gas and effectively addressing emissions / climate change
  
• the EU's leading role regarding these issues on the world stage will enable it to facilitate its endeavours for a more sustainable course for people, planet and profit

Emil Möller
0031651680992

---

indeed not new an angle: http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2006/12/9/16451/1405

ok, ok, there are a few chirps, but not at andris's site yet!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

They tend to end up as a pronouncement followed by various remarks on this, but no dialog. A real blog has to be spontaneous and interactive, and be willing to put up with the occasional trolls. An example of a good one is the economics blog run by Mark Thoma (Economist View) and a bad one that of Paul (I know everything) Krugman.

The worst is that of conservative Greg Mankiw who shut down all comments when he discovered that not everyone thought he was a god.

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Short comment (policies for energy efficiency):

On the product side, I would like to see the European Union adopt the Japanese `top-runner' approach. It is a tried and proven policy that makes the most efficient products now into the industry standard after a number of years. There has already been discussion of this in the Commission, as I understand it.

On the production side, energy efficiency should feature more prominently in the EU's integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) policy, particularly in the reference documents drawn up for the industry.

On the consumption side, the major issues are information and people's aversion to front-up investments. Investment in energy efficient equipment and housing is often worthwhile, but only pays back after a number of years. The first problem could partially be dealt with on the European level, by building an information clearing-house for domestic energy efficiency. The second problem can be dealt with through providing zero-interest financing. The EU should stimulate its Member States to do so, when possible, through the power utilities, or now, power companies.

Longer comment (renewables, security of supply):

As you indicate, the most important factor that will drive the development of renewables is policy innovation. In that context, I would like to make two comments.

First, reports have it that the Commission will seek to implement a Europe-wide renewable energy certificate scheme. This is a bad idea. Renewable energy certificates have a very poor performance in practice. For instance, the UK's renewable energy certificates have cost a lot and effected very little.

Experience shows that feed-in tariffs are a more effective policy. A renewable energy certificate scheme on the European level would undercut national feed-in tariffs and thereby damage the development of renewables in various countries. An alternative measure would be a Europe-wide mimimum feed-in tariff.

This would be a great measure to further the growth of renewables, and would leave individual Member States the required flexibility to meet their renewables targets by increasing the tariff or by providing ancillary support for renewables as they see fit.

By my understanding of EU law on this topic, the hurdles faced by a Europe-wide feed-in tariff would be exactly the same as a renewable energy certificates scheme.

Second, if renewables are ever going to provide the majority of our electricity, it will be necessary to make further innovations in the electricity grid. There needs to be more support for this from the Commission, both in terms of research under the 7th framework programme, and in terms of integration of national grids through the Trans European Networks. Both research and TEN should receive larger budgets.

Having a more integrated electricity grid, far more capacity for energy storage and maintaining significant spare capacity are all preconditions for establishing a competitive energy market in which security of supply is ensured. Liberalisation is currently being rushed by Brussels and its actual effects are not carefully considered.

Splitting the grid from the providers has previously been attempted in California and did not lead to very satisfactory results. So please consider the following questions:

What is the coordination between your Directorate and DG Competition on this topic? How will the EU ensure that there is no imbalance between the regulation on the providers and on the grid operators, as was the case in California? How will the EU prevent the rise of Enron-like intermediaries? How will the EU ensure that there is effective competition without an integrated grid? How will the EU guarantee that liberalisation does not lead to higher energy prices, as would be expected under the current market conditions and the practice of marginal pricing?

Biofuels Consultation

Open Letter complaining about the Public "Consultation" on the Energy Green Paper.