Goldman Sachs – Euro Here To Stay

Goldman-Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein gave his first interview in Germany since 2009 to the German newspaper Die Welt. His message was an indirect acknowledgment that the speculative attacks, originating from Anglosphere against the euro, as well as the fraudulent advice from Goldman-Sachs that ‘Greece was ready for the euro’, had failed to have an effect and that the euro is here to stay, not in the least because the euro is essentially a political project and that the political will for commitment to the euro remains strong.

[welt.de]

125 million Europeans yesterday watched the Eurovision song contest in Malmo, Sweden with 26 contestants from all over Euro-Siberia. Denmark, Ukraine, Russia and Norway ended on prominent places. The event bolstered the irreversable perception of a common destiny for the countries of the white Christian European world or the North, replacing the outdated post-WW2 concept of the West.

Paul Craig Roberts: “USA third world country by 2024″.

City-ranking according to quality of living. From the top ten, eight cities are western-European. Top 30: mostly European plus a few Canadian and Australian cities. The first US city ranks 31 (Honolulu). Britain: London (38). Rankings like these should cause the reader to pause and contemplate the preceived advantages of multiculturalism: none.
[wikipedia.org]

Timebomb Iraq

[source]
Iraq is an artificial country and leftover of the colonial era and as such has just as much future as Yugoslavia or Syria, namely none. All these countries are proof that multi-ethnic societies don’t work and in the worst case end in violence or even genocide. Patrick Cockburn paints a bleak picture of the state of ethnic relations in Iraq. In the first four months of this year 1,500 people, mostly Shi’ites, were killed in Iraq due to interethnic violence, 700 in April alone (UN source), the highest monthly total in five years. Iraqi politics currently is based on a fragile Shi’ite-Kurd alliance, directed against the Sunni oppressors of the days of Saddam. Western (Sunni) parts of Iraq are in an uprising against the government in Bagdad. And now that the Americans are gone there is no one left to mediate, as the Kurds are too much at odds with the government in Bagdad themselves. And then there is the spillover effect from the sectarian violence from Syria, which causes the Maliki government in Bagdad to become a supporter of Assad. According to the US, Iran regularly supports Assad by air over Iraqi airspace. And Maliki more and more is seen as a front man for Shia Iraq. The situation is somewhat comparable to what happened in Europe between 1517 and 1648 as a consequence of the Schism in Christianity. The dynamics of conflict in the Middle East points towards increased religious segregation.

[independent.co.uk]

[euro-synergies.hautetfort.com]
Turkish sphere of influence by 2050? Another reason for Europe to stay united within the EU, certainly for Greece.

All of Islam united under Turkish leadership and functioning as a buffer zone between Greater Europe and China? No doubt some Turkish hothead nationalist had a good time dreaming this up. But Turkey has reserves and is on expansion course.

George Orwell saw it all coming in his novel 1984 (although he got Turkey wrong).

Syria Update

[source]

Eric Margolis sums it up correctly: “The Assad government in Damascus was for decades a tacit Western ally that suppressed militant Islamists, kept its border with Israel quiet, and interrogated prisoners for US intelligence services. Damascus even muted claims to its Golan Heights, illegally annexed by Israel after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. But good behavior and cooperation did not help Syria when the US, Britain, France and Israel decided to go after Iran, Syria’s leading ally. When Syria’s President Bashar Assad refused to join the US-led alliance of western powers and conservative Arab states against Iran, his nation’s fate was sealed. “The road to Tehran runs through Damascus,” went up the cry. Syria was marked for Iraq-style destruction.“

Yet it remains to be seen if Assad can be toppled without a real military intervention like in Iraq and Libya. The difference this time is that Assad can count on real support from Teheran, Hezbollah, Russia and China.

And then there is Turkish prime-minister Erdogan, the ‘great humanitarian’, worried about chemical weapons, the Assad regime ostensibly is using against it’s own population. His intentions are so obvious that it borders embarrasment. Not even US loyalists in the UN like Carla Del Ponte are buying it. Erdogan wants to see a repetition of the chain of events in Iraq post 2003, where effectively Iraq was handed over to the Iranian sphere of influence, courtesy US taxpayer. In other words, Erdogan wants the US to cough up another few trillion dollar to invade Syria, accomplish regime change in Damascus, hang around for a few years and then withdraw, leaving a wrecked Syria up for grabs for Turkey, that will install a Sunni muslim Brotherhood satrap regime. Game, set and match Turkey. Erdogan is cleverly exploiting a mistake made by Obama when he talked about red lines in the Syrian conflict. Now he is owned by the neo-Ottoman aspirations of Turkey, that is quietly abandoning it’s EU-ascession strategy, now that it has bigger geopolitical fish to fry: become the de facto leader of Sunni Islam, much to the relief of the population of Europe, fed up with muslim immigration.

One of the very few sane voices in Washington, Zbigniew Brezinski, oppposes an intervention. Brezinski is also one of the very few who can afford to oppose the almighty Israel lobby and get away with it. The conflict in Syria is to be seen as part of the Clean Break strategy, formulated in 1996 by said lobby group: “it… advocated an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting their possession of “weapons of mass destruction”.” This is precisely what happened since 9/11, the pretext that was used to implement the strategy and not few suspect that that event was organized to that effect. However, this is 2013, not 1996 and a lot has changed since: Europe is now united under a single currency, Russia has managed to stop decline and has become an energy powerhouse, China continues to rise, the US narrowly escaped a financial crash in 2008 and is severely weakened since the Iraq debacle. And since 1996 there is the internet, bypassing media, effectively US government propaganda organs.

Meanwhile the US government has understood that a stalemate situation has emerged in Syria and that the rebels are not going to achieve regime change in Damascus on their own any time soon, if ever. This explains the meeting between Putin and Kerry (after the former let the US foreign minister wait for three hours to underline the new relationship). Although this initiative will lead to nothing, it provides an excuse for the US to postpone intervention. The US is stumbling on it’s last legs in it’s role as a global hegemon, a role it could adopt after the demise of the USSR, it’s brother in arms during WW2, their common war against Europe. Regardless of whether the US will intervene militarily in Syria or not, the lasting effect of US policies regarding the Middle East will be the creation of two segregated muslim empires: a Shi’ite empire, centered around the Teheran-Bagdad axis and a Sunni empire, led by Turkey. With Palestine as a province. By still concentrating on Iran and Syria, based on it’s completely outdated 1996 Clean Break strategy, the Israel lobby proves that it is not as smart as it likes to think it is.

Jorgen Randers – 2052

From Amazon.com: Forty years ago, The Limits to Growth study addressed the grand question of how humans would adapt to the physical limitations of planet Earth. It predicted that during the first half of the 21st century the ongoing growth in the human ecological footprint would stop-either through catastrophic “overshoot and collapse”-or through well-managed “peak and decline.”

So, where are we now? And what does our future look like? In the book 2052, Jorgen Randers, one of the co-authors of Limits to Growth, issues a progress report and makes a forecast for the next forty years. To do this, he asked dozens of experts to weigh in with their best predictions on how our economies, energy supplies, natural resources, climate, food, fisheries, militaries, political divisions, cities, psyches, and more will take shape in the coming decades. He then synthesized those scenarios into a global forecast of life as we will most likely know it in the years ahead.

The good news: we will see impressive advances in resource efficiency, and an increasing focus on human well-being rather than on per capita income growth. But this change might not come as we expect. Future growth in population and GDP, for instance, will be constrained in surprising ways-by rapid fertility decline as result of increased urbanization, productivity decline as a result of social unrest, and continuing poverty among the poorest 2 billion world citizens. Runaway global warming, too, is likely.

So, how do we prepare for the years ahead? With heart, fact, and wisdom, Randers guides us along a realistic path into the future and discusses what readers can do to ensure a better life for themselves and their children during the increasing turmoil of the next forty years.

[amazon.com]
[wikipedia.org]

Yossie Hollander on Ending Our Oil Addiction

Youtube text: published July 5, 2012 – In his TEDxChapmanU talk, Yossie enlightens the audience about the value of the world’s oil reserves, the impact of our oil addiction, and the ways we can develop cleaner and less expensive American-made fuels.

[wsj.com]

Spain 54% Electricity Renewable in April

[source]
Impressive numbers: hydropower 25%, wind power 22.1%, photovoltaics 3.6% and solar thermal 1.3% of Spain’s electricity.

[pv-magazine.com]

The Chikyu or the Attempted Prolongation of the Fossil Fuel Era

Pictured is the Japanese ship Chikyu, originally an earthquake research vessel, now in service for discovering methane hydrates reserves beneath the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are estimated to be twice as abundant as the rest of fossil fuel reserves combined, we have reported about methane hydrates before here. It is no surprise that it is Japan that has the greatest interest in exploring this potential carbon fuel resource, as nothing has changed for Japan since the days of Pearl Harbor, when Roosevelt successfully provoked Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor (see “read more” section), which for Japan had everything to do with oil and for Roosevelt to get his desired war with Germany finally kicked off, via the Japanese backdoor. But we digress. Japan started to investigate the methane-hydrates option since 1995. Earlier this year the laboratory-test-sample-phase was concluded and the production test phase began. But it is not just Japan that is interested; China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Norway, Canada and the United States have plans as well. The author signalizes that if the methane-hydrates revolution would succeed, it could prolongue the fossil fuel era with potentially catastrophic consequences for climate change.

[theatlantic.com]

Rebuttal of article in the Atlantic:
[theatlantic.com] – Are Methane Hydrates Really Going to Change Geopolitics?

Sceptical comments:
[resourceinsights.blogspot.com]
[kunstler.com]

Shale Gas Revolution In Europe?

Some in Europe want to mimic the developments in the US and start to exploit shale gas in Europe as well. The result would be that like the US, Europe would adopt a kicking the industrial can further down the road attitude and avoid dealing with very tough questions now. The world is running out of fossil fuel anyway and exploiting shale gas merely means delay of execution. The only way that shale gas can be justified is by using every calorie contained in that gas for setting up a new renewable energy infrastructure. The goal of any sensible energy policy would be to have solar panels on every roof as quickly as possible. The German example of the Engergiewende is the way to go forward for the rest of Europe.

Spectacular Decline Prices Solar

Very encouraging graph, showing the spectacular decline of the price of photovoltaic solar over the past thirty years. PV can now compete with conventional sources of energy and the end of price decrease is not yet in sight.

[resilience.org]

UN Has Evidence Syrian Rebels Used Chemical Weapons

[source]
It looks that the UN is not totally a mouthpiece of the US government after all. According to Reuters: the United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte. More importantly Reuters adds: U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday. US president Obama earlier had declared that if the Syrian government would use chemical weapons against it’s civilians, that in that event a ‘red line‘ would have been crossed. Those who still believe in the humanitarian motivations of the US government and suspect that the US now will intervene on the side of the Syrian government, should pause for a moment. As we have written in our previous post, the US still pursues completely outdated goals as formulated in the Clean Break document of 1996. But the world has dramatically changed since. Europe of 500m citizens is now united under a single currency and has the largest economy in the world, Russia has managed to stop it’s decline and has turned into an energy super power, China is on it’s way to become a superpower, the world is now connected throught the internet, bypassing mainstream media and last but not least, the world is running out of fossil fuel. Yet AIPAC Washington still pursues global hegemonic policies. And the Syrian rebels know all too well that it suffices to put in scene an attack with chemical weapons and blame it on the Syrian government to get control over an all too willing US airforce, that does not need proof.

[reuters.com]
[antiwar.com] – Carla del Ponte’s Faux Pas, Never tell the truth in the midst of a “crisis”

McJihad In Syria

Recent depressing Russian documentary about the situation in Syria, showing the horrible endgame of most multi-ethnic/multi-cultural societies: conflict, murder and genocide, be it Yugoslavia, Iraq or now Syria. This war was instigated by the US government and carried out via their proxies Saudi-Arabia and Qatar. Now with the internet around it is not difficult to trace the origins of this war: the Clean Break document of 1996, written by those people that dominate US foreign policy for a century now. The document engages in: advocating an aggressive new policy including the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting their possession of “weapons of mass destruction. And that was exactly what happened since 2003. By invading Iraq and organizing a democratic election in an essentially tribal world, as a result, predictably, the largest ethnic-religeous group, the Shi’ites, won and Iraq was effectively handed over to the Iranian sphere of influence, exactly the opposite of what the US had intended to achieve, to the tune of five trillion $, courtesy US taxpayer. Game, set and match for Teheran that got a rich reward by doing nothing. The intention was to turn Iraq into another western satellite, just like Saudi-Arabia. But that did not happen, as the attitude of the Iraqi government can be summarized with: ‘thank you for removing Saddam and now get lost’. And now the next strategic disaster is unfolding before our eyes: if the Assad regime will be eliminated, the creation of a Sunni Islamic continuum, ranging from Istanbul, via Damascus and Cairo all the way to the Atlantic, or Caliphate for short will be the result. Or to put it differently: a revival of the Ottoman Empire. And again, the gratitude of the Sunni fundamentalists towards the West that gave them Syria on a silver platter will be non-existant. Erdogan these days is hardly interested in EU-membership anymore, he now has bigger fish to fry. The actions of the Clouseau’s at the State Department has given him an unexpected opportunity to expand Turkey’s sphere of influence southwards. For the moment he plays the ally of the West, but he is not, he is merely biding his time, hiding his true colors, that is Islamic green. And Israel, that country will desperately miss the Assad clan in a not too remote future. Palestine could easily be reabsorbed in the neo-Ottoman empire now emerging. A Clean Break beyond repair.

German 2013 Electricity Production Data

Germany, March 2013 electricity generation: 36 TWh concentional, 7 TWh renewable. The next 7 TWh capacity likely will be added much faster than the time it took to install the first 7 TWh.

Mainstream Broker Turns Spenglerian

This is new, picked up from a Richard Heinberg tweet, a mainstream London broker firm announces the Untergang des Abendlandes, or at least that of industrial society:

The economy as we know it is facing a lethal confluence of four critical factors – the fall-out from the biggest debt bubble in history; a disastrous experiment with globalisation; the massaging of data to the point where economic trends are obscured; and, most important of all, the approach of an energy-returns cliff-edge.

The report presents the data and analysis in a scenery of Roman and Gothic ruins at sunset or against the background of dark clouds signaling a gathering storm. This is the first time we see a financial institution actually understanding the critical role of energy in the economic process and even introduces the concept of EROEI in the analysis. Chapeau! The significance of this report is not in the analysis or data presented, that could have been taken from elsewhere years ago, but that finally strong warning signals have arrived at the topfloors of financial circles in the London-New York axis of Anglosphere.

[tullettprebon.com] – Perfect storm energy, finance and the end of growth (pdf, 84p)
[wikipedia.org] – Tullett Prebon

IT Aspects of Smart Grids

This posts contains rather specialized IT knowledge that comes with running a smart grid. Youtube text: Governments worldwide are mandating improved energy efficiency and investing heavily in smart energy infrastructure. Leveraging the deployment of communication-enabled electric meters, many applications can be offered to optimize usage, improve the reliability of distribution and transmission networks, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Home Energy Gateway (HEG) is the hub connecting the utility-controlled smart grid and smart appliances in homes. This session provides an overview and demonstration of an HEG proof-of-concept running on Java ME CLDC VM. The HEG solution features implementation of a demand response Web services client; the Zigbee API for wireless connectivity; and an embedded Web server for remote device control, monitoring, and application management.

[wikipedia.org] – Open smart grid protocol
[oracle.com] – Making the Smart Grid Smarter with Embedded Java
[etsi.org] – Open Smart Grid Protocol (OSGP)

Zero Energy Tablets

We do not believe in cars, trucks or planes. To be honest we do not believe in industrial society either. But a few left-overs from that society could make life of the post-carbon world somewhat more bearable. Like low energy footprint IT, based on a highspeed glass fiber network, already intstalled in large parts of the western world, and potentially zero energy tablet clients, meaning tablets that can be powered entirely using solar cells mounted on the back cover. This solar powered tablet device alone could replace telephones, desktops, televisions, films, books, newspapers, magazines, class rooms, school busses, commuting for office workers, etc., etc.

[gigaom.com]

How To Make A Soda Can Solar Heater

And now for something completely different, as a little diversion from the serious business of commenting the precarious energy situation. Pictures from the future world made by hand.

[sustainablog.org]

Solar Impulse Flies Over Golden Gate

[wikipedia.org]
[1sun4all.com]
[cleantechnica.com] – All articles about Solar Impulse at Cleantechnica.com

Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon

Planned in Wales: 250 MW tidal power station, based on a dam of 10.5 km, surrounding 11 km2 lagoon. The lagoon will generate on both ebb and flow tides using bi-directional turbines, allowing it to produce electricity for 16 hours each day. The lagoon could begin supplying electricity to the National Grid in 2017 and has an expected lifespan of 120 years. Investment volume: £650m (EUR 772m or $1006m). Other locations under consideration: Cardiff, Newport and Bridgewater Bay. The company planning to build tidal lagoon issues a £10m share offer to finance the early planning and research stages.

[walesonline.co.uk]

View Larger Map

[source]

[source]

Flow Batteries

Youtube text: “In this video, Stanford graduate student Wesley Zheng demonstrates the new low-cost, long-lived flow battery he helped create. The researchers created this miniature system using simple glassware. Adding a lithium polysulfide solution to the flask immediately produces electricity that lights an LED. A utility version of the new battery would be scaled up to store many megawatt-hours of energy.“

[stanford.edu]

Support for the Euro from Lithuania

We never heard of Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė before but we already like her. She is committed to bring her country into the euro area by 2015. She correctly denies that there is any euro crisis but instead a debt crisis, self-inflicted by irresponsible behavior of politicians. Hear, hear! Grybauskaitė rejects an opportunistic wait-and-see attitude and wants to join the euro out of principle and solidarity, because Lithuania is a European country. That’s the spirit! The EU is supported by 70% of the Lithuanians, even after the implementation of draconian measures during the past years, that were even more radical than the ones currently underway in southern Europe. Grybauskaitė wholeheartedly supports the austerity policies of Angela Merkel. We wished we had ten more Lithuanias in the EU and one Greece less. Where power hungry politicians with an eye on a career in Brussels try to sell a local southern European debt crisis as a euro crisis, using it as a pretext to further centralize the EU, this woman from Lithuania tells the truth.

[spiegel.de]

ZenithSolar

Two 11 m2 parabolic mirrors can generate up to 4.5 kw electricity and 11 kw heat.

[zenithsolar.com]
[wikipedia.org]

Concentrated Solar Power Development

IBM Zurich proposes a combined photovoltaic/thermal solution.

Youtube text: Bruno Michel, a research scientist at IBM Research – Zurich, explains his latest invention–a technique for concentrating solar radiation to create a much more effective system for harvesting energy from the sun. His hope is that this technique will prove to be so successful that we’ll be able to use it to replace all fossil fuel and nuclear energy with solar. The work is being done in conjunction with the Egypt Nanotechnology Center: http://www.egnc.gov.eg

[trouw.nl]

The World In 2030 According To Bloomberg

Bloomberg foresees a sunny future for renewable energy and expects an annual global investment of ca. $630 billion per year for 2030.

With current global average electricity consumption of ca. 2300 GW, it becomes immediately clear that if the scenario Bloomberg depicts will be all there is, the world is in for some major trouble.

[about.bnef.com]
[cleantechnica.com]

Global Solar Demand Until 2016

The development of the global demand for solar panels until 2016 according to greentechmedia. The demand dominance will shift from Europe to Asia and although demand growth will decelerate, in 2016 global new installed capacity will exceed 50 GW.

[greentechmedia.com]

Price Solar Down To 42 Cents/Watt In 2015

50% was the price drop for Chinese manufactured conventional silicon solar panels between 2009-2012. Expect another 30% decrease until 2015.

[greentechmedia.com]

Global Clean Energy Investment 2012

[click to enlarge]
Pew came with data concerning global clean energy investment in 2012. After eliminating peculiar geographical groupings like “Europe, the Middle East & Africa” or “the Americas” or “Asia and Oceania” we arrive at the following investment ranking in billion $, offset against population size and GDP:

EU	$67B	503	$17T
China	$66B	1350	$7T
USA	$35B	315	$15T

This can be converted into clean energy investment in $/capita:

EU	133
USA	111
China	49

or clean energy investment in % GDP:

China	0.94
EU	0.39
USA	0.23

[pew] – Who’s Winning the CleanEnergy Race?

Why US Debt Is Not The Problem

[source]
A short glance at the graph showing strong correlation between US GDP and public debt, leads to the conclusion that the idea that the US are ‘drowning in debt’, is a little premature. Between 1976 and now, GDP increased eight-fold in nominal terms, but that’s obviously not in real terms, even after compensating for the 50% population growth in that period. What this graph does show is the FED in action: money printing on a massive scale, at the expensive of the rest of the world, as a consequence of the reserve currency status of the dollar, read the currency of globalisation. And as long as the rest of the world keeps accepting the dollar, the US can prolong their basically free lunch deep into the future, at the ‘expense’ of every now and then having to drop a zero from new dollar bills. Meanwhile the rest of the world is slowly beginning to understand this mechanism and starts to act against this by setting up bi-lateral trade and currency agreements. It would be interesting to estimate where the US would be in terms of income per capita if the dollar would be merely one among many competing currencies. EU average? Russia? Ukraine? China? In 2004 Paul Craig Roberts predicted that the US would be a ‘third world country’ within 20 years. Earlier this year he confirmed this judgment by mentioning again 2024 as the turning point. Somehow we are reminded of the prediction made by Patrick Buchanan in his book ‘Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?‘. The elites in Brussels, Moscow and Beijing do read English… and understand that the progressive globalist Anglo-Soviet post WW2 order is drawing to a close, making way for the rising identitarian, if not fundamentalist, multipolar order, better designed for the coming resource depleted world. And that the center of gravity of political power will return to Eurasia, where it had been home for millenia.

MIT Breaches The 34% Solar Efficiency Barrier

Some much needed good news from Boston. Killing two birds with one stone, that’s what MIT seems to have achieved by applying a cheap pentacene coating to solar cells. One of the birds killed might be the theoretical Shockley-Queisser efficiency upper limit of 34% assumed to apply to any solar cell, based on the idea that a single photon could merely knock a single electron out of atomic orbit. The people from MIT now have transfered the game of carom billiards to the realm of sub-atomic particles and are able to hit two electrons with a single photon, a real game changer in the world of solar cells.

[mit.edu]

OpenHydro

[openhydro.com]

Lyken Ocean Dynamic Power

[odp-group.com] – video, short overview
[odp-group.com] – Ocean Dynamic Power, pdf, 24p.

Dynamic Tidal Power

People tend to think that in order to exploit hydropower, water needs to be confined in closed reservoirs, like high in the mountains or hermetically sealed dams in rivers. But according to some, it does not need to be and ‘leaking’ can be tolerated. In many coastal areas in the world oscillating tidal waves runs parallel to the coast. The idea is to build long dams perpendicular to the coast into the sea. These dams could be used to place windturbines on them, exploiting higher than average wind speeds in coastal regions, but the real innovation is to additionally have turbines placed under the water level, exploiting the energy contained in rising tides. China, Korea or the UK could be suitable candidates to try this idea out, where head differences of a few meter can be achieved. A single dam could generate up to an astounding 15 GW in a predictable way. Potential for China: 80-150 GW. Additional economic advantages could be realized by connecting islands or the constructions of safer LNG ports, far from inhabited areas. All necessary technologies do exist, the challenge though is that small scale demonstration projects simply will not work. In other words: kicking this technology off involves high risks. Power generation capacity increases as the square of the dam length increases (both head and volume increase in a more or less linear manner for increased dam length, resulting in a quadratic increase in power generation).

[wikipedia.org]

Massive Dutch Wind Power Investment Plans

[source]
The Dutch government recently allocated 11 areas for large windparks. In 2020, that is merely seven years from now, 6 GW new wind power capacity needs to be installed. In 2009, 25 GW conventional capacity was installed in total. By 2050 electricity needs to generated renewable for 100%. In European perspective, the Netherlands are still a backwater when it comes to the application of renewable energy, which can be explained by large natural gas reserves, now rapidly depleting, and the presence of Royal Dutch Shell.

[volkskrant.nl]

[source]

Philips CFL Breakthrough – 50% Savings

Philips Electronics developed a new LED CFL tube, called TLED (TL + LED), which consumes less than 50% of the current fluorescent tubes and is the world’s most energy-efficient LED lamp suitable for general lighting applications. The people from Philips achieved 200 lumen/Watt, a world record. Since 20% of electricity consumption is dissipated in lighting, this innovation could lead to reduction of global electricity consumption of 10%. The Dutch multinational company just made the energy transition 10% easier, as far as electricity is concerned. For the US alone replacement of all existing lighting with these TLEDs would reduce power consumption with 100 terrawatt or the equivalent of 50 medium sized power plants. Philips intends to start production in 2015.

[prnewswire.com]
[engadget.com]
[trouw.nl]

Who Are The Richest Europeans?

Fig. 1 – Net wealth of median households (1000€)

The ECB created quite a stir recently by releasing a study, claiming that the Germans were in fact about the poorest people in Europe, see graph above. The figures suggest that even the Greeks would be twice as wealthy as the Germans. Professor of international economics, London School of Economics, and former member of the Belgian parliament, Paul de Grauwe puts this study in perspective and basically restores the old image that in reality the Germans are among the best earners in Europe.

Fig. 2. – Mean household net wealth (1000€)

If you look at the average rather than median net worth, the picture already changes considerably. The difference between the two pictures can be explained by big differences in income distribution in Germany. In Germany the mean household wealth is almost four times larger than the median where in many other EU countries the ratio is between 1.5 and 2.

Fig. 3. – Wealth top 20% / wealth bottom 20%

Another question is if the wealth of a household is a good measure of the wealth of a nation as there are other sources of wealth, namely at the government and corporate level. De Grauwe proposes to look at the capital stock of the nations involved:

Fig. 4. – Domestic capital stock per capita (euro)

Fig. 5. Total capital stock per capita (euro)

De Grauwe concludes that for societies as a whole, the northern European countries are indeed the richest per capita, as old prejudice wants to have it. It is not enough to compare bank accounts and real estate. National wealth also includes the contents of pension and unemployment funds, the level of national debt, the strength of your corporations. So yes, there is quite a lot of money in southern European private pockets, but under a very thin roof. It is striking that the Netherlands has a very flat income distribution, yet at the same time has about the the highest per capita wealth. Holland is one of the very few exceptions where ‘communism works’, but if you want to get rich, you better move to Germany. The data presented by the ECB is not wrong, the interpretation was. The report no doubt had a political purpose, namely to lower expectations of the southern Europeans regarding further bailout potential from the north.

[voxeu.org] – Are Germans really poorer than Spaniards, Italians and Greeks?
[wikipedia.org] – Paul de Grauwe

P.S. Meanwhile the rebel rousers at zerohedge picked up the story as well and corrected their earlier conclusions.

The World According To Shell

Electric power supply in 2100.

[shell.com]
[Shell - New Lens Scenarios] – Report, 12 MB, pdf
[theoildrum.com]

European Deficits and Debt Quotes

[source]

US federal deficit 2012: 7%
US national debt in 2012: 101% GDP ($16.8T)

Sobering Thoughts

[source]
Let’s do a little calculation concerning the ability of renewable sources of energy to generate and expand itself. A reasonable assumption is an EROEI value for a wind turbine of 20. This means that during the 25-30 years life span, this windturbine can generate 20 times as much energy as it costs to build said winturbine. How much time would it take to satisfy the world’s current energy needs (consumption rather) with wind power, based on a single windturbine, reproducing itself? Assume we are dealing with a windturbine of 5 MW and that the world’s energy consumption is 12,000 MTOE.
Assuming a load factor of 33%, the wind turbine wil generate 24 * 365 * 5,000,000 * 0.33 = 14.5 million kwh or 14,500 megawatt hours per annum.
Converting 12,000 MTOE in kwh:
1 toe = 11.63 megawatt hours
1 mtoe = 11.63 * 1,000,000 megawatt hours
12,000 mtoe = 12,000 * 11.63 * 1,000,000 megawatt hours = 139560000000 megawatt hours
The number of 5 MW windturbines necessary to generate this amount of energy is 139560000000 / 14,500 = 9.6 million
Now let’s calculate how much time it would cost for a single 5 MW windturbine to multiply itself to this number (EROEI 20):
20 – 25 years
400 – 50 years
8,000 – 75 years
160,000 – 100 years
3,200,000 – 125 years
So we need a little more than 125 years.
Fortunately we do not have to start from 1 windturbine, currently 275 GW windpower already is installed or 275,000 MW or 55,000 5 MW turbines. There we go again:
EROEI 20 * 55,000 turbines = 1.1 million – 25 years
9.6 million – ca. 40 years

We can of course add the already installed solar base (with lower EROEI than wind), which brightens the picture a little. Conclusion: if we use all the energy generated by wind turbines to build new wind turbines and nothing else, than it would take us ca. 40 years to accomplish setting up a global windpower energy base that could replace all current sources of energy. But if we consider that according to the Energy Watch Group, global peak energy will arrive by 2018 and gradually decline afterwards, than it becomes immediately clear that there is no energy capacity left for setting up a new energy base and at the same time maintain current energy consumption levels. And the longer we wait with facing some very hard truths, the more devastating the coming crunch (crash?) will be. Although there is no doubt about the long term potential of renewable energy, we are simply too late for a smooth transition. We should have listened and acted upon the findings of the Club of Rome 40 years ago. We did not (sufficiently) and choose to waste the energy capital on unhindered economic expansion, now in a 7+ billion me-too world and 9 billion soon. Timber!!!

Btw: refining the very simple calculation above into a fullfledged computer simulation model could be very usefull as an instrument of substantiating an energy policy.

The Next Reserve Currency

[zerohedge]
According to Wikipedia: a reserve currency, or anchor currency, is a currency that is held in significant quantities by many governments and institutions as part of their foreign exchange reserves. Being the owner of a reserve currency means you are a top dog; that you are in the middle of where all the action is. During the past six centuries there have been six countries holding the largest reserve currency. Painting with a broad brush you could allocate a century to each of them:

Portugese Century (15th) – The concept of a ‘Portugese Century’ is a bit of a stretch for this tiny melancholic European outpost, but nevertheless it were Portugese dare devils who were the first and only ones during the entire 15th century to explore the planet in grand style, before they were overtaken by Spanish, Dutch and British. The Portugese set the tone for European imperialism for centuries to come.

Spanish Century (16th) – Christianity ruled supreme again in Spain, after the last muslims were kicked out, a process known as Reconquista and America was discovered for the Spanish crown, both events in 1492. Gold and silver were transported from the new world to Spain by the boat load, leading to the rise of Spain within the European state system.

Dutch Century (17th) – Nothing beats winning a major war before you can even hope to own a reserve currency. In this century the Dutch were the winners, the losers the Spanish. The resulting landmark Peace of West-Phalia meant the consolidation of Protestantism in Europe, with Holland as it’s supreme bastion, a religion emphasizing the value of labour, economy, money and profit. All the foundations of modern economic life: capitalism, corporate structures, central banking, share holders, can be found in the Netherlands first as a fully developed integrated economic system, that would expand globally and hold until today. The Dutch were the ones who kicked in the doors of modernity. The last great achievement of the Dutch was the military conquest of Britain and Northern Ireland by the Dutch army in 1688/1689, the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution‘. But please do us a favour, don’t mention this to the British, they don’t like to hear it. By plundering the vaults of the British treasury, the Dutch were able to hold the rising French power in check. The last European assault against Protestantism by Catholic ruled Britain and France against the Netherlands in 1672 was averted and Britain became a Protestant state. By exporting a winning religeous formulae to a larger country, the Dutch eventually digged their own grave. Holland is to be seen as the blueprint of Anglosphere; heck, they even wrote the American Declaration of Independence, so Jefferson did not have to do it. The Dutch are pro-American to a fault, because of the religeous/cultural proximity and historic ties, no surprise they were the first to recognise the American Republic. Here are more than 200,000 Dutch assembled in the Amsterdam arena in May 2012, celebrating America from 20:14 onwards. Not even the British would display this orgy of pro-Americanism, let alone the Germans or French.

French century (18th) – Next there were the French, who rose to continental supremacy, starting with Louis XIV, culminating in the conquest of the entire European continent up until Moscow under Napoleon. It is interesting to note that in this list of six, the French, who detest water, unless there is alcohol in it, were the only landbased power, unlike the Portugese, Spanish, Dutch, English and Americans, who are all seafaring nations (or ‘thalassocratic‘ nations if you have a degree in geopolitics and want to impress your mother and pretend that you understand the Heartland theory of Mackinder). The Anglos, who like to cultivate a certain dedain for these ‘cheese eating surrender monkeys‘, have yet to show for a similar military accomplishment (Subduing Hottentots or bombing women and children from safe three mile altitude or fighting German kids in the 1944 Ardennes does not really count). Just like that if you want to count in the modern world you need to have an ipad, in those days the snobs spoke French, like the upperclasses in the Netherlands or Prussia. The British, who by definition don’t like the strongest state in Europe, be it the Spanish, the Dutch, the French or the Germans (Balance of Power politics), organized a coalition against the French, who literally found their Waterloo in 1815.

British Century (19th) – From now on, for two centuries, the reserve currency would speak English. After Napoleon, the British empire was next, greatly stimulated by the invention of the steam engine, leading to vast industries, train networks and increased shipping. London was the true center of the world, much more than New York is today. By 1920 the British had acquired ca. 25% of the planet as a little Lebensraum of their own. But then the British committed suicide by applying their balance of power strategy one time too many and chose to destroy Germany, that had dared to outcompete Britain (and France) on world markets by the turn of the century. The British started to mastermind a coalition with the intent to destroy Germany (‘Germania est delenda‘), a strategy that succeeded initially, culminating in Versailles, the most cruel ‘peace treaty’ ever, but the same conflict was exploited the second time by extra-European powers USA and USSR. Although the British until today think that they won WW2, in reality they lost the largest empire in recorded history and unintentionally created the foundations of European unity, ending five centuries of British balance of power strategy. It is unlikely that we will hear much of Britain ever again as it remains to be seen if London can hold onto Scotland and Wales, or even onto itself as London is no longer majority English.

American Century (20th) – The 20th century should have been the German century, but thanks to the actions of Britain in 1914 and 1939, Europe, that had ruled the planet since 1492, committed geopolitical suicide and the baton was passed to the USA and USSR. The American century was born. Or was it the jewish century, as this jewish author wants to have it? It was the Soviet spy Harry Dexter White, acting on behalf of the US government, who was the architect behind the Bretton Woods arrangement, that explicitly bombarded the US dollar as the reserve currency of the western world, now under leadership of the US. The western world experienced unparalleled economic prosperity, mainly thanks to unlimited supply of cheap fossil fuel. In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and soon afterwards the USSR disintegrated. What followed was the so-called ‘unipolar moment‘, where the real US power brokers behind the scenes, like Krauthammer, Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz, Ledeen, Libby, the ethnic identity of whom you are not supposed to mention in polite company, were dreaming of a ‘benevolent hegemony‘ of the US. The event of 9/11 provided a pretext for the creation of a terrorism meme, which would be used to invade countries at will; not few suspected that 9/11 was setup for that purpose (‘inside job’). Whatever the truth of that, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan proved to be a disaster for the US, from which it will unlikely recover. Combined with the rapid morphing of the US into a third world country and structural fiscal deficits of 1+ trillion $, it is obvious that the days for the dollar as global reserve currency are numbered and that it can lay itself to rest in the reserve currency mausoleum, next to the pesos, guilder, franc and stirling. Washington wants to rule the world but it can’t. Even Samuel Huntington, the great American prophet of the coming identitarian multipolar world order, had to backtrack from his own theory, as he foresaw that possibly North-America would not fit into his scheme.

So which currency is going to be the next reserve currency? Who are the candidates?

Current reserve currency situation:

[source]

Ranking nominal GDP:

EU	$17T
US	$15T
China	$7T
Japan	$5T
Russia	$2T
India	$2T

Dollar? All talk about American decline is premature and the dollar will stay in place? Owning a reserve currency means you can, to a certain extent, print money with zero nominal value in exchange for real values, first and foremost oil. But this setup presupposes that there are economic partners willing to accept this money in the first place. As we speak all major ‘partners’ like Russia, China and Brasil (BRICS) and now even Australia, are working towards the goal of eliminating/bypassing this essentially American free lunch.

Euro? Come-back of Europe? They ruled the planet for five centuries, even as a divided continent, until assorted inconveniences like Americans and Soviets came along and (temporarily?) interrupted the European party. The Soviets are dead and although the US can wipe out life on the planet 100 times over, the Russians, Chinese, French and British can do it at least one time, which is basically enough, militarily speaking to keep the Americans in check. A cowboy carrying hundred shooters is not necessarily in advantage facing an opponent with only one. Militarily the US are a paper tiger as soon as the famous boots are on the ground, as fiasco’s like Vietnam, Somalia, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq have shown. The American is a travelling salesman, not a warrior, or ‘lousy imperialists‘ as Pat Buchanan once put it. Europe already is the largest economic power on the planet, is for the first time united under a single currency and has 500 million Europeans in contrast to 180 million Euro-Americans plus 120 million of non-European origin, many of whom are a burden rather than an asset. Europe’s industry by-and-large outcompeted that of the US (cars, planes, trains, aerospace) and sooner or later this will have repercussions on the political power level. Not that these industries have a lot of future in a resource depleted world, but it does show the strength of the new formation. And then there is the option of a Paris-Berlin-Moscow alliance, the one advocated by French general De Gaulle (‘Europe of the Fatherlands’). Quintessential gas-pipelines to Europe already come from the East, not from the Atlantic, a geopolitical fact of the highest importance.

The French president Charles de Gaulle in 1962 rejecting supranationalism and Atlanticism in favour of a Europe of the Fatherlands, including Russia after the demise of communism. The time is ripe for that vision to be realized.

Renminbi? The what? See, everybody on the planet knows what a dollar or euro is, or even currency number three, the British pound, but China still has a long way to go before at least 5% of the US population can discern this currency from a starlet featuring in American Idols. Would-be Nostradamusses like Jim Rogers already let their kids learn Mandarin (which is not a fruit), because, you see, China is the next big thing, just because these people are foolish enough to fill the shelves at Walmart with pedal bins in exchange for printed green paper.

Gold? Libertarians of all nations unite! Oh wait, that’s a ‘collectivist’ thing to do and we are all glad we are not like that. Seriously, gold has won considerable traction world wide since the FED began to print money big time and nobody was fooled by the soothing term ‘quantitative easing’. Yet as a coin gold is useless unless you bring your microscope when you buy a loaf of bread. Demanding that paper currency is backed by gold for 100% will work maybe for a couple of years, but soon another Nixon will come along and start to ease this restriction. In itself ‘fiat currencies’ can and did work, provided you have an independent central bank with the task of keeping inflation low. Best example is the Bundesbank, an institution that worked perfectly for decades. Why? Because the Germans had not set themselves impossible goals and merely concentrated on building cars and left ‘conquering the world’ gladly to the Americans. The Americans in contrast cannot let go of impossible imperial dreams and that’s what’s bringing them and their currency down in the end (‘imperial overstretch‘). They don’t have the money to fund all their imperial projects, so they print, which is noticed by the rest of the world, which votes with it’s feet, that is away from the dollar.

IMF run world currency? Well, as long as the IMF is (correctly) seen as an institution serving western interests, this is not likely to happen.

Conclusion

First of all, in the rising multipolar world, there will be no second Bretton Woods, where one entity can impose it’s currency upon another. There will be several competing currencies and the acceptance of a foreign currency will be proportional to the package of products that economy can provide to the potential holder of that currency. You are from Kenia and you want a car? Forget your local currency, make sure you have dollars or euro’s and then you can come back. You are still from Kenia and now want oil from the Gulf to drive in your newly acquired French car? Bring dollars only, courtesy US army, which occupies the Gulf region, providing ‘security’ to that area. Or try the Russians, maybe they accept euro’s. So how is the graph above going to look like in 10, 20, 30 years time? We could be honest and say we don’t know, but that’s not a billable answer. So our guess would be that, ignoring resource depletion and the possibility of war, the green euro area will increase somewhat and that a small band representing Chinese money will appear, both at the cost of the dollar, but that if the international system remains stable, the dollar could hold out quite some time. But that is a big if. The greatest threat to international financial stability comes from Washington itself, in it’s unwillingness/inability to cut it’s spending and moderate it’s ambitions. Washington could reduce it’s military budget with 50% without compromising it’s own security, but it won’t. Washington is up to something, prepares to jump and does not mind if the American launchpad for that jump will get under water because of the jump and the rest of the world knows it and starts to react, putting Washington in dangerous isolation.

But maybe all the talk about the reserve currencies of the past is meaningless for the direct future as the most likely successor for the dollar has not been mentioned in the list above: barter, meaning no currency at all. If everything breaks down and no trust is left, this is going to be the mechanism to keep economic life going, be it on a the back burner. In the thirties the Germans traded locomotives against Argentinian wheat, circumventing financial institutions in Anglosphere, which was not appreciated in London and New York. One thing we do know for certain, namely that the Unipolar Moment of US supremacy is going to be just that: a moment (1991-2003). What is really in store is a chaotic declining world, where modernity is going to be traded in for archaism, where all the peaks will be behind us, except peak hurt:

1914 – Peak Europe (at the eve of the Great War)
1969 – Peak Euro-America (moonlanding)
2005 – Peak conventional oil
2008 – Peak USA/ Peak West (Lehman crash)
2018 – Peak Energy

Global Installed Windpower Update

China now has 75 GW, the US 60 GW, Germany 30 GW, India 18 Gw installed wind power. Denmark generated in 2012 30% of it’s electricity from wind and 28% in the year before. Only 2% comes from offshore, mostly from Europe. For the first time in 17 years the growth of wind power would be smaller than the year before, mostly because of a slowdown in the US. 425 GW installed wind power expected for 2015. China will reach 140 GW of wind by 2015 and nearly 250 GW by 2020.

[sustainablog.org]

Neo-Ottoman Empire in the Pipeline

[source]
Forget about Turkey’s entry into the EU, as it has found a more alluring geopolitical objective, much to the relief of the European population: becoming the Germany of a Sunni-Islamic sort of EU, or Caliphate, as they prefer to call it. The implications for the geopolitical landscape are far-reaching, if not breath-taking and it shows that the West and the US in particular has learned nothing from the Iraq disaster. Currently the West is supporting the Syrian rebels via their Qatar and Saudi satraps. Why? Because the West is focussed on getting rid of an ally of Iran, which in it’s turn is a proxy of Russia and China, the last obstacles en route to the New World Order and western liberal global hegemony, a world without nations and borders, a goal btw not supported by the majority of the western citizens, but we digress. Like the Iraq invasion of 2003, which ended in geostrategic disaster for the US, here is another major calamity in the works, the creation of a Sunni islamic empire that will be hostile to the West in general. The idea behind the Iraq invasion was to topple a serious opponent of Israel in the region and add Iraq, including oil wealth, as another satellite to the US empire. It did not happen. As one of the US war mongers behind the invasion Edward Luttwak had to admit, the US never really occupied Iraq:

American and coalition forces have criss crossed Mesopotamia in all possible directions, but at no time did they hold more than a fraction of the territory of Iraq, and they do not hold any at present, except for parts of a few cities and some isolated bases. But that’s all. In most of Iraq there is no permanent control by western forces; and there cannot be.

Straight from the horse’s mouth. The only reason why Washington was spared the repetition of the embarrasing pictures of the US retreat from Saigon, was that this time the insurgents were not armed by Moscow and Beijing, but basically US forces were trapped in the Green Zone, prefering to avoid being IED-ed during patrols outside. What the US achieved at the cost of 4-6 trillion $, was handing over Shia-majority Iraq as a valuable ally to the Iranian Shi’ite empire. Attitude of the Shia Maliki government in Bagdad towards the US: “Thank you for toppling Saddam and now piss off“. Bagdad is now selling a lot of it’s oil to China as it is definitely not an American puppet, like Saudi-Arabia and Qatar still are (but not much longer). Not satisfied with the results so far, the US is merrily blundering into it’s next debacle: creating a Turkey led Sunni empire as well. How is that for ‘nation-building’? In it’s effort in preventing a Moscow-Beijing leaning Shia-axis Teheran-Bagdad-Damascus, leading to direct access of Iranian gas and oil to European markets…

…the US is unleashing the forces of fundamentalist Sunni islam under the leadership of Turkey. Turkey/Erdogan is by no means a western satrap, he is merely using western fools for his own aims: adding Syria to his sphere of influence, for starters. Jordan and Sunni parts of Iraq will be next. And once that job is done the Saudi and Qatar fat cats will be eaten by their own populations as the water carriers they were for the West and descend into their mausoleum, next to Mubarak. Wonder what the Israelis feel about becoming a Turkish administered neo-Ottoman province, again. This rare old fox knows what is going to happen. Welcome to the identitarian multipolar world of the 21st century. Karl Marx and Leo Strauss exit stage left, enter Samuel Huntington and Alexander Dugin.

The Cleantech Future

Youtube text: “What if we could live in a clean world?A world in which energy would be 100% renewable, water no longer polluted, transportation truly green and production methods clean and regenerative? There will be such a world. In this documentary VPRO Backlight explores the unprecedented possibilities of a new industrial revolution: Cleantech.Signs of a new future are visible everywhere, from China to the US and from Europe to Thailand. Green mobility powered by sustainable energy, clean drinking water for all thanks to nanotechnology, dyeing textiles using recycled CO2. All of this is possible and is happening successfully now! Working together with Cleantech-founder Nick Parker, this film shows what our world will be like in the decades to come.VPRO Backlight travels the world in search of a clean future” (uploaded 13 December, 2012)

Energy Watch Group Updates It’s 2008 Scenario

In contrast to the jubilant voices in the media about the coming ‘oil glut‘, the Berlin based Energy Watch Group offers a much more sobering view on the energy situation, see graph above, which shows the projected global total energy production (carbon + nuclear). Peak energy: 2018. From their conclusion (p131):

According to our study, coal and gas production will reach their respective production peaks around 2020. The combined peak of all fossil fuels will occur a few years earlier than the peaking of coal and gas and will almost coincide with the beginning decline of oil production. Therefore, the decline of oil production – which is expected to start soon – will lead to a rising energy gap which will become too large to be filled by natural gas and/or coal. Substituting oil by other fossil fuels will also not be possible in case gas and coal production would continue to grow at the present rate. Moreover, a further rise of gas and coal production soon will deplete these resources in a way similar to oil.

[energywatchgroup.org] – “Fossil and Nuclear Fuels – the Supply Outlook” pdf, 178p
[wikipedia.org] – Hans-Josef Fell, gounder of the EWG
[energywatchgroup.org] – People behind EWG

P.S. The report does not mention methane hydrates.

China Bolsters Ties With Russia

Youtube text: “China’s tightening its energy security – with the help of Russia. Moscow’s agreed to double oil supplies to its Eastern neighbour, in return for a 2-billion dollar loan from Beijing – along with other deals. The two powers also want geo-political change – with the new Chinese President saying ties with Russia will help bring about a ‘fair’ world order. William Engdahl – a geopolitical analyst and the author of ‘Myths, Lies and Oil Wars’ – says the visit is also meant to send a signal to the U.S. that Beijing won’t be a puppet. (uploaded March 23, 2013)“

Greece’s Hidden Riches

Aljazeera discusses Greece, with William Engdahl (first 10 minutes)… youtube text: “Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil and gas are believed trapped under the seabed around Greece – enough to wipe out the country’s debt for good. But can they get to it? And who else is looking to get their hands on the energy bonanza? Some experts say the recent discoveries of oil and gas in the Aegean Sea could turn the entire region into the ‘New Gulf’. But where there is oil, there is usually some sort of conflict (uploaded March 16, 2013).“

[Let Greece Pay With Oil]

Britain on the Brink of Gas Rationing

Reason: unusual cold weather, the breakdown of a pipeline with Belgium and most important, surprisingly little gas storage capacity. One expert said that Britain had less than 36 hours left and that rationing was a real possibility if the cold weather would continue. Gas prices increased with 50% overnight. Gas stores are 90% empty. Britain’s only sources are pipelines from Norway, Holland and Belgium as well as liquid gas from Qatar. A trip from the Middle East takes about 2.5 weeks. Sometimes the destination changes at full see, because some other country is willing to pay more. Power stations will be the first to be rationed, households last. International comparison storage capacity in days: UK-20, Italy-70, Germany-92, France-103, USA-180, Holland-23,000.

[dailymail.co.uk]

Peak Oil Infographic

[source]

Complete infographic below gives a stylish overview of the (peak) oil situation:

Peak Oil Arrives At European Parliament

Youtube text: Benoît Thevard presents the conclusion of the report “Europe facing peak oil” at the European Parliament in November 2012. This study, commissioned by the MEP Yves Cochet, aimed to clearly redefine the contours of the oil situation, to place them in the current geopolitical and economic contexts, and to consider the potential impact on Europe (uploaded March 1, 2013).

[peakoil-europaction.eu]
[findupetrole.canalblog.com]

VW Up Electric

81 hp, topspeed 84 mph, 0-62 mph in 14 seconds, 18.7 kwh battery, enough for 90 miles. 80% charge in 30 minutes. Expected autumn 2013.

Let’s calculate… 18.7 kwh * 20 euro cent = 3.74 euro ‘fuel price’ for 90 miles. A Dutch train ticket covering the same distance would cost about 18 euro.

[gas2.org]

E-bike Enorm V2 Custom Cruiser

Range 100 km, motor 0.25 kW, 30Ah battery, 48V circuit, $5200.

[enorm-ebike.at]

Solar Rush In Holland

[source]
Government subsidies (650 euro max.), ever lower solar panel prices as well as low VAT tariffs, have induced the Dutch to embrace local production of electricity and harvest kilowatthours simply from their own roofs. Typical investment for 100% selfsufficiency: 4500 euro. In combination with zero net payments to utilities companies (Dutch feed-in tariff system described here), this comes down to a return on investment of a spectacular 17%. Currently a solar kwh costs 7 cent, dramatically lower than the 23 cent for a kwh from the grid. In Holland, the birthplace of modern capitalism (17th century), people can calculate. Currently 100,000 roofs are covered with solar panels, 6.9 million more roofs to go. Timothy John Berners-Lee came up with the HTTP protocol in 1989 and it took six years before the internet started it’s meteoric rise in 1995. Then it took another six years before the first signs of internet saturation appeared with the popping of the .com bubble in 2001. Holland was always at the global forefront of internet adoption (50% penetration in 2002), and it will not be different with the adoption of solar power, especially as with solar panels money can be made, in contrast to the internet. Although the Germans currently have a clear lead in a per capita adoption of solar compared to Holland, rooted in a geo-strategic motivation of energy independence and rejection of nuclear power, the Dutch will catch up quickly, from a financial motive. Expect financial service companies to emerge offering packages, where it will suffice for a household to make a simple phonecall in order to earn thousands of euro’s, without having to do anything but making coffee for the workers of the solar panel installation company and start paying monthly fees to the financial service company, which will more than compensated by the reduced bills from the utility company. Once two or three roofs in a typical Dutch street are covered with panels, others will follow quickly. Monkey see, monkey do.

[nu.nl]