New Record for German Renewable Energy in 2010

One-Quarter Million New Solar-Electric Systems Installed

New World Record: 7,400 MW of Solar Photovoltaics Installed in One Year

Renewable Electricity Penetration More than 30% of Supply on February 7th

New Renewables Near 17% of Electricity Supply

Renewable Generation Greater than Natural Gas--Closing in on Nuclear

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Market-based solutions key to UK government's green budget aims

The energy sector is still in the dark
ages when it comes to satisfying consumers'

Philip Lowe, Director-General for Energy at the European Commission, who came over last year from the heavyweight Competition office to undertake the Herculean task of completing the EU energy market, does not attempt to hide his frustration at the lack of progress he is witnessing. In a candid interview with EER, the veteran public servant coolly notes that `the energy market is lamentable'. The energy companies, he says, `are still in the dark ages when it comes to satisfying their customers'. They are still `primarily focused on regulation rather than on behaving like normal market-oriented players'. But politicians in the member states can be just as unreliable, adds Lowe. `They are pushing regulators for lower prices instead of letting supply and demand do their work.'

The upshot of this is that players in the financial market are still not convinced the energy market will happen. `They tell me they are still betting on national markets controlled by politicians.' Yet the Englishman is convinced that this is a bad bet. `This market is going to happen', he declares. How? Not by more regulation. `There will be no Fourth Liberalisation Package.' What has to be done, according to Lowe, is, in the end, fairly simple: `Remove the obstacles, build the interconnections, get people to compete. Start focusing on what the consumer wants, like in any normal market.'

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Prime Minister Julia Gillard congratulates Oscar winner Emile Sherman

JULIA Gillard today acknowledged she would never win an Oscar, but she couldn't help running her hands over one of the prized statuettes.
"Do people kiss it?" she asked Emile Sherman, co-producer of The King's Speech, the film which won Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards.

I lived with his family several weeks in the 80s when my parents shipped me to Australia to learn to speak English...

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Should there also be a Yemen and Syria mothership hanging around? Couldn't they just wait a little while?

Grief.

Libya news seems to have calmed down in the US this week.  I was worried, but now we can get back to the important issues, like drilling for imaginary oil in the Everglades and keeping Sharia law out of Kansas.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Forget corium deposits from too cheap to meter power, forget young human beings being shot for yelling slogans of freedom on the streets, forget the greatest robbery the world has seen since Alexander discovered Aryan cooking, forget that the four horsepeople of the self-inflicted ecopocalypse haven taken to ride over the removed for coal hills, it's that time of the year when modern civilization vibrates to the most stunning engines of our culture.

Where aerodynamics are down to the millimeter, where exhaust-blown sidepods have replaced the blown diffuser, where degradation of rubber induces casino elements in what was formerly science, where the gladiators of old ride the angry infernal combustion efficiency of the new... where?

Vhooooom!

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin