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September 22, 2011
“We shouldn’t invest in energy efficiency because it’s bad for economic growth”, claims Markus Pieper, MEP. All right, he was speaking in German and maybe the EU Parliament’s interpreters were having a tough day. But they can’t have got it completely wrong. He did say saving energy is a bad thing. What an unhelpful remark.… » read more
September 5, 2011
How could anyone not wish to cut their energy bill? If like us you’re struggling on a measly NGO salary you would jump at the chance of lower bills. So would everybody with a grain of common sense. It means more money for – for what actually? We asked around. If your energy bill was… » read more
September 1, 2011
The sale of 60 watt incandescent light bulbs is banned in the UK from today, as part of an EU-wide strategy. A report on the BBC website was accompanied by a comment from a shopkeeper: “This is not a democracy, it’s becoming like a dictatorship, ordering you to do this, do that. You should have… » read more
August 3, 2011
Dependent on hydrocarbon supplies from Russia, Eastern European countries have been in check since the end of the Cold War. Thanks to the discovery of huge “plays” of unconventional gas, to be extracted by breaking shale rocks, some countries are cheering the prospective end of energy – and political – dependence from Moscow. It is… » read more
August 2, 2011
EnergyBrains is not just a group of people who wish to write about energy politics. It is the first piece of a puzzle that we seek to complete; a theoretical foundation for continued research that we hope will eventually reveal a bigger picture. Our mission is to develop a far-reaching framework for understanding the dynamic… » read more
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Climate & Environment, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English |
July 13, 2011
It’s a summer whodunit. The European Commission’s Energy Efficiency Directive has been public since June 22. But why was the headline policy – an obligation on power companies to cut customers’ energy use – so abruptly dropped from the final text? Commissioner Oettinger and DG Energy had already overruled internal analyses showing that only binding… » read more
Passenger cars account for up to 10 per cent of global C02 emissions. In view of the rapidly growing global stock of motor cars, especially in Asia, it is urgent to tackle this source of climate change. There are two complementary ways of addressing the issue: through gasoline taxation and fuel consumption/emission standards. The USA… » read more
March 26, 2010
In an immediate volte-face the French government has drawn the conclusions from the debacle of the regional elections and abandoned the project of C02 tax that had been prepared with much fanfare during the last two years. Designed to win voters from the green camp it has lost its purpose. Anyhow it had been so… » read more
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Climate change, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, environment, Taxation |
March 25, 2010
The true meaning of Earth Hour is to prepare us to deal with the coming energy shortages, scheduled brown-outs and long duration electricity cuts.
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energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, environment, Uncategorized |
March 19, 2010
As a part of plan of economic recovery, EU decided to allocate EUR 3.98 billion on energy projects. Today, the vast majority (97 %) has been devoted CCS technology demonstrations, building some cross-border gas and electricity interconnections as well as for developing a series of offshore wind parks etc; but not a single euro for… » read more
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Economy & Euro, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, Financial Services, Uncategorized |
March 18, 2010
Igor Kocis is one of the members of Geothermania’s team. But at the same time, he is the member of the Board at AGEO – Agency for Geothermal Power Engeneering as well as co-founder and CEO at Geothermal Anywhere, Slovak-based technology company focusing on technologies of ultra deep drilling. Geothermania’s Igor and Michal talk about… » read more
In view of the stalemate on climate legislation in the Senate President Obama has instructed the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) to prepare executive regulations for capping green house gas emissions from automobiles, trucks, refineries, power plants and major industrial emitters. These measures are designed to enter into force in early 2011 if no legislation has… » read more
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Climate change, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, environment, Uncategorized |
March 12, 2010
Kerosene is the only fuel that is globally exempt from any taxation. This bizarre situation is due to an extensive interpretation of article 24 of the Chicago Convention (1944!) on civil aviation, which provides that states should admit aircraft temporarily free of duty and that fuel shall be exempt from customs duty. This provision prevents… » read more
Iran is probably the country with the cheapest gasoline prices. A litre of gasoline costs only 45 cents beyond the monthly entitlement of 80 litres per car for which car owners pay ridiculous 11US cents. The Iranian government has to pay almost $ 100 billion annually for financing its generous subsidies on petrol, fuel and… » read more
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Climate change, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, environment |
March 5, 2010
The EU’s new Taxation Commissioner Algirdas Semeta has announced that he is planning to revive previously shelved plans for an EU-wide carbon tax, aiming to set a minimum levy of €10/tonne of CO2 emitted (although the exact level is a bit unclear) fr…
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carbon tax, Climate change, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, environment, ETS, EU Priorities and Opinion, Taxation |
February 25, 2010
The V4+ Energy Summit held in Budapest on 24-26 February ended in a joint declaration signed by the V4 plus Austria, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the perspective member state Croatia (along with Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina). If these countries show such unity as they had in the March 2009 economic crisis summit, it can put a… » read more
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Austria, Balkan, Bulgaria, Central Europe, Croatia, Czech Republic, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, EU Priorities and Opinion, Hungary, Poland, romania, Slovakia |
Less than two months after the Copenhagen Climate Conference Congress the US Administration has taken three major decisions on its future energy policy: • A 10 percent increase of its nuclear capacity President Obama has signed an $ 8 billion loan guarantee for the first two new nuclear reactors to be built in 30 years.… » read more
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Climate change, Copenhagen Climate Conference, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, environment, External Relations, United States, US |
February 23, 2010
Under the Spanish Presidency, EU plans to draft a European strategy to address the obstacles facing their implementation. This strategy could be adopted during next spring. The Spanish EU Presidency presented a discussion paper that puts forward several issues for discussion by the delegations. AVERE and Going-Electric congratulate the Spanish EU Presidency for this excellent… » read more
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energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, Homologation, Transport & Services |
February 12, 2010
Geothermal Anywhere company and its partners received together three public grants of total US$ 3,700,000 from EU funds (more information here). The first one we described in the previous article. This flagship project is focused on core rock disintegration technology. The other two, with the total value of almost US$1,600,000, aim to do research and… » read more
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energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, environment, geothermal |
February 10, 2010
Geothermal Anywhere company was granted by total US$ 3,700,000 in order to do applied research in the field of ultra deep drilling, for three ULTRADRILL technology pillars. The flagship pillar project “Applied research and development of innovative drilling technology for ultra deep geothermal wells” has been awarded with value of more than US$ 2,100,000. In… » read more
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11206, 34299, Climate change, energy efficiency, Energy Supply, English, environment, geothemania, geothermal |
