Who lives in Tallinn, travels free with public transport.

based on article by André Anwar of Der Standard of Vienna, 5 April 2013.

The Candidates on Energy Policy

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Issue Tracker – ENERGY.

Updated: October 21, 2012

The cost and availability of energy resources have become contentious issues in the United States amid slow economic growth and high unemployment. On the presidential campaign trail, Republican candidate Mitt Romney has blamed rising gas prices on President Barack Obama’s decision to temporarily block construction of the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to the United States. Obama, meanwhile, has called for investing in alternative energy sources to reduce U.S. dependence on oil and gas.

Still, both candidates have advocated for a reduction in foreign oil imports and for an expansion of U.S. energy production in order to boost the economy and create new jobs. They also agree that increasing energy independence is critical to national security. However, Obama and Romney are at odds over the role government should play in subsidizing energy production–as well as which sectors should be favored–and regulating its environmental impact.

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ENERGY was the subject of two Fareed Zakaria programs on CNN/GPS this Sunday.

The second hour-long program was titled GLOBAL LESSONS and told us for a starter that Bill Gates has a dream – HE WISHES ENERGY THAT IS CHEAPER THEN COAL AND IS CLEAN – this seems to be the only way to solve the problems for our aching world – for the US as well.

President Jimmy Carter has installed solar panels on the White House roof, but they were taken down by the Republican Presidents and never put back up by the Democratic Presidents. Those panels were a mere symbol but let us not fake it – their removal was and is a badge of dishonnor to the US Presidency since Carter.

Fareed did not dwell on this but gave positive examples of forward looking countries.

Denmark, after the 1973 oil crisis unleashed on the world after the Yom Kippur war that the Arabs unleashed against Israel,  decided to climb down from its energy reliance 99% on Middle East oil and developed a wind energy industry that made it independent of oil period – this even though later they found offshore oil and gas. They keep the alternate energy afloat thanks to solid taxation of the gas pump. It is $8/gallon in Denmark and there are no complaints. Vestas is the largest wind energy company in the world. 30% of the electricity in Denmark comes currently from wind power, they intend to bring this up to 50% by 2020 and plan for a totally renewable energy base by 2050. No CO2 emissions from Denmark by that target date – no ifs or buts.
I say this because like everyone else’s their wind industry is hurt by competition from government subsidized Chinese products – so without bickering – the Danes understand that they must subsidize their own products so they can compete with the cheaper imports.

Germany developed solar power in particular and surely it is not a very sunny country. What helped was the Feed-in-tariff that obligates an electric company to buy-back of electricity from homes and other solar collector devices. The repayment time for a solar installation is 7 years in Germany and after that it is all the investors gain. This amounts to an income equal to $3000/year after 7 years. The son is the free source of energy and 2% of the Sahara desert could provide energy for the whole world. Germany went solar after the Chernobyl disaster when it was decided not to expand nuclear power. In effect Germany is in the proces of decommissioning its nuclear plants.

France decided to go nuclear  and gets 75% of its electricity this way. After Chernobyl it developed the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) and never had an accident.

The United States did very little and now fell upon the Fracking Gas – so the system moves on by replacing coal with natural gas that is produced from oil shale strata. This is a step in the direction of a cleaner fuel but it requires serious government supervision of the industry because if gas will come out from water faucets or fires from toilets, that will be the end of this industry – never mind what other pollution occurs to the drinking water from heavy metals and chemicals.

The fifth fuel Fareed talked about is EFFICIENCY or the reduction of the need for fuel. Better insulation of homes, lighter materials for motor vehicles with the introduction of parts made of carbon fiber. Visiting with Amory Lovins at his place in Colorado you see a tropical garden that provides him with bananas and you hear of the 240 miles/gallon vehicle.

In the first program this Sunday Fareed Zakaria hosted Mr. Fred Smith the Chairman and CEO of Fed Ex company who runs 90.000 motor vehicles and 500 planes and who saw his expenses for fuel move up in the last 10 years from 4% to 6%. He said this is a consumption $1300 tax on every American. The country pays for the imported oil $350 billion/year – so the shale gas and oil are going to get the US a turn-around he said.

Then he proceeded and said that the Prius and the Xgevy Volt are great vehicles and a step in the right direction. He also said that now it is 80% cheaper to operate an electric vehicle and the expense is in the vehicle itself – this expense will decrease with better batteries. He spoke of the battery exchange system operated by “Better Place” in Denmark and ended by talking of a great future in aviation for biofuels from algae, urban waste, etc.

Our question is now – will this become part of the US 2012 Presidential Debate on Foreign Policy? The reason why the country was kept in slavery by the oil industry so that it could not follow in the steps of a Denmark or Germany and left in limbo a company like Fed Ex and every single citizen of the US? Will somebody cross his heart and declare he will re-install the Carter panels on the White House roof? Pity there was not a Susan Katz, who asked about President GW Bush, that in a positive way could have asked about the disruption of the Carter efforts on true Energy Independence – the independence from the use of oil?

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But then arrived the CFR primer for the Lynn University – Third and Final 2012 Presidential Debate, and though we all understand that historically Energy means Security and is this was always the most important ingredient of US Foreign Policy, nevertheless no mention of Energy was made in this primer. We did expect from CFR to include questions on energy, though we agreed that climate change and the global environment are no subject for the 2012 US elections – BUT ENERGY?

President Barack Obama and former governor Mitt Romney will face off in Boca Raton, Florida, tonight for the final presidential debate. Here is a nonpartisan guide from CFR and Foreign Affairs on the most salient campaign issues. These and other resources can be accessed on the Campaign 2012 Project page.

The Candidates, In their Own Words

A collection of the candidates’ major speeches, statements, and op-eds. Browse the Essential Documents

Comparing the Candidates on the Issues

Fifteen continuously-updated summaries of Obama and Romney’s positions on Iran, Pakistan, defense policy, Afghanistan, and other campaign issues. View the Issue Trackers

Get Up to Speed on Foreign Policy

 Browse Backgrounders

Tonight’s Must-Ask Questions

Four CFR fellows weigh in on the questions they believe warrant discussion during the debate. Read the Roundup

Challenges for the Next President

CFR experts look ahead at the foreign policy issues confronting the next president, including Isobel Coleman on foreign aid, Stewart Patrick on the United Nations, and Elizabeth Economy on China. Watch the Video Briefs

How the Election is Viewed Abroad

Experts from South Africa, China, Brazil, Germany, and other countries share their take on the campaign, and what’s at stake for each country’s relationship with the United States. Browse the Views from Abroad Series

Olympic Ideal Takes Beating in Badminton.

It is not strange at all what happened, people will tend to take advantage of bad rules – it is the best (or the richest in Romney’s case) that can take advantage of bad rules – it seems that the rules were skewed in their favor in the first place.

From material on the New York Times website –  August 1, 2012:

On Tuesday night at the London Games, some of the world’s best badminton players hit some of the sport’s worst shots. Sad serves into the net. Returns that sailed far wide. Howls from the crowd were loud and instant, and the calls for investigation immediate.

On Wednesday, four women’s doubles teams — two from South Korea and one each from China and Indonesia — were disqualified. But the circumstances were complicated by the fact that the rules of the sport seemed to give the athletes an incentive to lose.

The eight players were found to have tried to lose their matches intentionally, apparently because they had determined that a loss would allow them to play a weaker opponent in the next round.

Badminton officials introduced a preliminary round at the Olympics this year so that each team could play at least three times and not risk traveling thousands of miles only to be eliminated in the first match. But athletes and coaches have always looked for any available advantage, including throwing a match to save energy or to face an easier opponent in the next round.

There was nothing subtle about how the four teams of players — all of whom had already qualified for the quarterfinals — performed Tuesday night. They repeatedly served into the net and hit shots well out of bounds. During one match, a Danish umpire took the drastic step of flashing a black card to warn the players that they could be thrown out.

The disqualifications threw the tournament into turmoil and prompted protests and calls for rule changes. Indonesia appealed the decision and then withdrew the appeal, while the South Koreans had their appeal denied after officials reviewed the matches, interviewed the umpires and spoke to the players.

The eight disciplined players, who were found to have not tried their best and to have conducted themselves “in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport,” had been scheduled to play Wednesday. After their sudden exits, they were replaced by women’s doubles teams from Australia, Canada, Russia and South Africa. No coaches or teams were penalized.

——————-

Though rare, examples exist for cases in which a quirk of a sport’s rules or competition format has given an athlete or team an incentive to lose — or at least not try hard.

In a World Cup soccer match in 1982, West Germany and Austria appeared to stop trying after West Germany took a 1-0 lead early in the game. Both teams knew that such a result would allow them to advance. That prompted soccer officials to mandate that the final games in a round-robin group-play format must all be played at the same time so teams could not know the outcome of other important matches.

——————-

The charges of match throwing have been biting, with teams from Western nations taking aim at their Asian counterparts, especially the Chinese.

Niels Nygaard, the president of the national Olympic committee in Denmark, which has some of the best badminton players in Europe, applauded the world federation’s decision and blamed the coaches, not the players, for the persistent match throwing.

“For me, it’s really a matter of principle whether things are done in a correct way,” Nygaard said after the announcement.

Still, the tactic of purposely losing has an inner logic that has been used in other sports like soccer and baseball.

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When Wang Xiaoli and Yu Yang from China lost to the South Koreans Jung Kyung-eun and Kim Ha-na on Tuesday, they were trying to avoid playing the world’s second-ranked women’s pair of Tian Qing and Zhao Yunlei, from China. Ha Jung-eun and Kim Min-jung of South Korea and Meiliana Jauhari and Greysia Polii of Indonesia also tried to steer clear of high-level foes in the quarterfinals.

The Chinese did not appeal their suspension and defended their approach. “We would try hard in every match if they were elimination games,” Yu said. “Because they are group stage, that’s why we are conserving energy.”

Lin Dan, the top-ranked men’s singles player, stood by his Chinese teammates and blamed the federation for not anticipating that this strategy might be used. “Think in the U.K.: would your football team want to meet Spain in the first round?” he asked after winning a match on Wednesday. “Athletes think for themselves and would have their best interests at heart.”

“It’s perfectly legal but morally indefensible,” said John MacGloughlin, a Briton who has played club-level badminton for 30 years and paid almost $50 to attend Wednesday’s afternoon session. “At that level, you don’t do that.”

This being Britain, where a bet can be laid on practically any event, the question of whether the match was thrown for profit is reasonable. Kate Miller, a spokesman for William Hill, one of Britain’s largest betting companies, said her 200-person trading team did not spot any irregularities surrounding the match.

And badminton was not the only sport in which teams trotted through a preliminary-round game. On Tuesday, in Cardiff, Wales, the Japanese women’s soccer team, the 2011 World Cup champion, played to a scoreless tie against a much weaker South African side.

The tie, as opposed to a win, meant that the Japanese, who had already qualified for the knockout round, avoided having to travel to Glasgow to play France in the quarterfinals. Instead, they will remain in Cardiff and play Brazil.

Afterward, Norio Sasaki, Japan’s coach, said he put in substitutes and told them to keep possession of the ball. The players, he said, “were on the same page as me.”

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And back to peole like Mitt Romney, please see the latest “CHECK THE LAW” successful event in Washington:

The House and Senate voted to close a loophole in an insider trading law that could have allowed lawmakers’ family members to profit from inside information.   CNN uncovered and reported on the loophole last month.

The STOCK Act, one of the rare bipartisan bills passed this year, was signed by President Barack Obama in April.

Someone sneaked into law “the possibility to cheat by law” by telling your wife to buy stocks based on your inside information – how neat indeed!

BREAKING DOWN THE POLITICAL BARRIERS TO FOSSIL-FUEL SUBSIDY REFORM.

EU Fails To Resolve Dispute Over UN Climate Fund Seats.

Date: 02-Apr-12
Country: UK/BELGIUM
Author: Nina Chestney and Charlie Dunmore from Reuters.

European Union ambassadors failed to resolve a dispute over the allocation of seats on the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund (GCF) board on Friday, possibly undermining the bloc’s credibility in international climate talks.

The EU envoys were meeting for the second time in a week to decide which European nations will be represented on the governing board. This has 12 seats for developing countries and another 12 for developed countries.

“Despite willingness to compromise and adequately share board seats, it has, unfortunately, not been possible to come to an agreement within the EU,” the EU’s Danish presidency said in a statement.

As a result, the EU will miss a March 31 deadline for making a joint proposal on board membership, and EU governments and the bloc’s executive will now have to negotiate directly with other developed countries over who gets the seats.

“For this reason, respective nominations from the group of developed country parties will be withheld until these discussions have taken place,” delaying the entire process, the Danish presidency said.

U.N. climate talks in Durban last year agreed on the design of the fund, which is aimed at channelling up to $100 billion a year to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

Disputes of this kind could both slow the process towards the launch of the fund in 2013 and give other countries the impression that the EU is stalling on climate finance. “It shows that the EU unity we had in Durban has been eroded and that could damage Europe’s image in global climate change talks,” Danish presidency spokesman Jakob Alvi said.

The fund’s first board meeting is due on April 25 to 27, a U.N. spokesman said, subject to confirmation next week.

Despite the EU’s failure to reach an agreement, it should not affect the number of seats it will be allocated on the GCF board, he added.

SEAT DISPUTE

Thirteen of the 27 EU countries had requested a board seat, to ensure they had a say in funding decisions.

A draft EU document, seen by Reuters this week, shows that EU member states and Switzerland might together be able to obtain seven full seats plus associated alternating seats between them. Denmark had proposed that Britain, Germany and France, as the likely biggest financial contributors, should hold a full seat each and share three further alternating seats with another EU country.

But an EU source involved in the discussions said Germany – backed by France – refused to share its seat with any other EU country and insisted on a permanent position on the board, ending any chance of an EU compromise.

Poland also insisted on having a full seat, and told the meeting that in the absence of a joint proposal it would put itself forward to the U.N. in a separate bid outside the EU, sources said under condition of anonymity.

Poland, which relies heavily on coal production for its energy needs, says its economy would develop much more quickly if it wasn’t for the EU’s climate policy, which aims to make coal power generation more expensive.

“(The Commission) has tried to rob us so many times before. This time around we want to wear a second jacket – just in case – and let nothing we are eligible for miss us,” a Polish government source told Reuters.

Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) |www.field.org.uk
A FIELD roundtable discussion on “A new governance body for the oceans? Focus on MPAs”  will be held at FIELD’s offices in London on 12 January 2012 (2.30pm – 5pm).

The FIELD roundtable “A new governance body for the oceans? Focus on MPAs” follows from a previous roundtable on “new rules for the oceans” held in July 2011 where the subject was the recent work of the UN Working Group on marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction.

This second roundtable will be an opportunity to continue discussions on UN developments, with a particular focus on the potential for a new global governing body dealing with marine protected areas in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This includes the role that a new global body may play in relation to the identification, designation and management of marine protected areas. These issues will be very relevant to continued discussions of the Working Group.

The event will be informal and it will be held under the Chatham House Rule of non-attribution. A more detailed agenda will follow nearer the time.

Please let anna.karklina@field.org.uk or Steve Cole (colemarinelaw@gmail.com) know if you can make it.

Best wishes,

Joy Hyvarinen
Executive Director

Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD) |www.field.org.uk

Tel: + 44 (0)20 7842 8522| Suite D, 1st Floor | The Merchant Centre | 1 New Street Square | London, EC4A 3BF | United Kingdom

KIMO’s IISD Reporting Services of the ENB (Langston James “Kimo” Goree VI International Institute for Sustainable Development Environmental News Bulletin) provided the unofficial definitive report of the Durban Climate Change Conference – COP17/CMP7.

This is an invaluable unofficial document that will guide negotiators and participants in the intricate steps of governments dealing with the threats of Global Warming and Climate Change.

KIMO makes it clear that South Africa’s determination not to have the Kyoto Protocol die on African soil, and the determination of EU Commissioner for Climate Action,  Connie Hedegaard, to keep it alive, that eventually won the final night in the INDABA Diplomacy and kicked the ball down the road towards the next series of stops.
We provide here the link to this KIMO document that was prepared by about a dozen members of the IISD team, and supported with funds by a long list of Governments, that nevertheless do not interfere with the running of the reporting system nor with its conclusions, as it is understood by all that a professional team of reporters, outside the UN system, is imperative to provide the information Government negotiators, as well as Civil Society, must have, in order to be able to be effective in these intricate negotiations.

We hope our readers will take the time to read the report:
 mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inb…

Fast reading, noting that there were  12,480 registered participants, among them  over 5400 government officials, 5800 representatives of UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental organizations and civil society organizations, and more than 1,200 defined as media, leads to the conclusion that it was a multi-level chess game that somehow ends up making some sense when seen as a whole. Indeed, the final outcome is to be blessed upon in the sense that it returned the game to the true players by creating new alliances. and it is evident that there is a sense now that the problem is real and something will have to be done about it.

The “Monday After” the papers asked: Was the European Summit a “Fiasko” or a “Quality Jump?” The papers also wonder about the effectiveness of the “Durban Platform” having noted the strong involvement of the EU 27 in the Durban Conference fight. The Minister says it ended with a breakthrough – others say it was a “Mogelpackung.”

By the way – I happen personally to know know what a “Mogelpackung” is. Back years ago in New York some character sold me what I thought was a video-camera, but in reality it was just the box filled with trash. Surely I could have tried to accuse him of fraud but I preferred to condemn myself to a form of self-punishment for having been so brain weak – laughed it off and wrote off my loss on my self-education bill.  That was easy then, but what should an European State do now? Global 2000 NGO spokesman Wahlmueller said simply that another year in the war against climate change was just lost. We think he is right.

What happened in Brussels was indeed a “Tour de Force” of the Merkozy motor (Mme. Merkel and Herr Sarkozy) leading to the political exit of Mr. Cameron.  Yes, English will continue to be the diplomatic language of the evolving new European Union, but the UK is free to sail off to the Anglo-Saxon bloc led by the US – that is if the US can get its act together and lead again!

To the travails of the British Islands we attach an article from today’s New York Times – this just to say that the problems with the UK are  also internal.  This will be our only borrowed article of this posting – all the other material is of our own making, and as  we decided to write this up as we realized that we are not the only ones to think the way we do.
In effect at  an off the record meeting at the Vienna Diplomatic Academy  we heard that in Brussels it is understood that going it alone, the individual 27, do not amount to much.

In the real world of the 21st century it seems that as Thomas Friedman observed – the Globalized World is Flat – HOT, FLAT, and CROWDED. We add to this that it is important as well to think about how you draw the flat Map of the World. The realistic way is to put the Americas in the center of the map with the Pacific Ocean to the West – the left – and the Atlantic Ocean to the East – the right – with the Northern Hemisphere that includes among other States, the US and China on top – the North.

This maps shows the Trans-Pacific connection of the US to Japan, Australia and Indonesia, and the Trans-Atlantic connection to Europe and Africa.  In this map European Russia is in the periphery, but Asian Russia shows up closer.

A different map is the Euro-centric map. This map keeps Europe and Africa in the center with what the Europeans called the Western Hemisphere – the Americas – to the West – or left – and the huge Asian mass – all of it – to the East or right. The interesting thing is that on this map you see that Europe is just a small part at the West End of the Eurasian land-mass.

The history we learned in school was written by Europeans, and we never were given the true notion that in the last few hundred years it was the European tail that wagged the big Asian dog. We must now relearn our history and realize that the future belongs to big Asia and Europe could have an impact only if it unites and forgets some of the past grandeur, when small European States, Spain, Portugal, France, the netherlands, the British, Belgium, Denmark, later on Italy, Germany, even Austria, having developed their navies and rented  armies,  competed as colonial powers, and made inroads starting out from the coasts of that landmass. But even then – Europe was just an archipelago of small States with the British living on an actual island off the coast of Europe. And you know what? The colonies gone, this same picture stood on, though now, when the size of markets translates into economic power, these European economic islands are shrinking in size. Also, the former colonial powers that still have overseas possessions or linkages, create additional difficulties to their potential to create an integrated Europe. Denmark for instance, joined the EU without Greenland joining as well. Others, like France, the UK, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal had to find also ways to deal with their overseas possessions and linkages to their Francophone community or the British Commonwealth.

This last Friday, the unnatural division of the EU into 17 EURO-ZONE States and 10 Non-Euro States proved untenable and a much higher level of integration was suggested at least for the EURO-ZONE to be implemented with the agreement of the non-Euro States that will be called as well to contribute to the economic safety of the laggard States. Everybody agrees that the EURO idea was premature and showed up half backed, but now if the EURO laggards are not helped the whole global economy might collapse. A much higher level of integration is needed and the start is by calling for fiscal integration to back up the Euro-spending. After a lot of haggling 26 out of the 27 did bend to allow for the loss of some of their National decision making powers. But is it enough? The British opted out, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic showed unhappiness, so did the Hungarians, but in the end it was only the UK that did not vote in the positive and they may find out that the rest of the EU might now try to live without the UK as an active participant. Considering that what was decided upon will turn out to be insufficient, it may thus come to be that the UK will not be able to find its way back in = specially as 58% of the population might instinctively accept the notion that it will be to their advantage to leave the thinking Euro-ship.

But did the British lay people look at the Durban scene? That mob of 27 Environment Ministers that did not add up to a seat at the table with the China-India-US big polluters and nay-sayers of the UNFCCC event. In effect the EU 27 ended up being in alliance with over 100 of the smaller UN fray – the Small Island States, the Least Developed States and parts of Africa. Brazil and South Africa, even though they were not in full alignment with the other BASIC States or the US, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea … the other leading developing economies were still in the lead and the 27 Europeans were tripping over each other in trying to prove that they are on the side of the good and thoughtful. Oh well!
The final result was not satisfying at all and one could have imagined a united Europe with clear power to muscle its way to more concrete results – not just something that boils down to an agreement to meet again.

Kyoto is dead for all practical purposes with Canada, Japan, Russia, New Zealand, joining the US on the sidelines – so it is disingenuous to say that the individual EU States saved the day.

Please see the internal debate now in the UK:

Partner in British Coalition Criticizes Cameron’s Veto on Europe Treaty.

By SARAH LYALL

Published: December 11, 2011, Printed in the New York TimesMonday,  December 12, 2011.

Mr. Clegg told the BBC that the decision by Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative, to veto proposed European treaty changes left Britain in danger of being “isolated and marginalized” in Europe. He added that if he had been in charge, “of course things would have been different.”

Mr. Cameron vetoed the proposals early Friday after seeking, and failing to secure, safeguards he said were vital for the health of London’s financial sector. But with the 26 other members of the European Union either agreeing to the proposed plan outright or saying they would put the matter before their Parliaments, Mr. Cameron’s veto left Britain alone on the margins at a time of great upheaval on the Continent, with the European Union struggling to resolve its financial crisis.

On Friday, Mr. Clegg appeared to support Mr. Cameron’s decision, although he warned the Conservative Party’s anti-Europe wing against being too triumphant about the problems facing the European Union. But his stance hardened over the weekend, and on Sunday he appeared to have backtracked, or at least tried to finesse his explanation to show that was in line with his party’s pro-Europe principles.

In fact, Mr. Clegg told the BBC that when Mr. Cameron called him at 4 a.m. Friday with the news that Britain had vetoed the plan: “I said this was bad for Britain. I made it clear that it was untenable for me to welcome it.”

Mr. Clegg has already lost the confidence of many Liberal Democrats by appearing to betray the party’s position when he has supported the government on other issues, like increasing the amount of tuition colleges can charge.

After the summit meeting, many prominent Liberal Democrats went further than Mr. Clegg.

A former party leader, Paddy Ashdown, described Mr. Cameron’s veto as a “catastrophically bad move” and said it would do nothing to shield London’s financial district, the City, from future European regulations. “In the name of protecting the City, we have made it more vulnerable,” he said.

Lord Ashdown also warned that the move had alienated Europe in a way that would haunt the United Kingdom.

“The anti-European prejudice of some in the Tory party,” he said, “has now created anti-British prejudice in Europe.”

Mr. Clegg, a former member of the European Parliament, said he would now “fight, fight and fight again” to make sure Britain remained an influential force inside the European Union. He said he would resist “tooth and nail” efforts by some Conservatives to take the country completely out of the union, particularly since the United States has found Britain a useful conduit to Europe.

“A Britain that leaves the E.U. will be considered irrelevant by Washington and a pygmy in the world, when I want us to stand tall in the world,” he said.

Mr. Clegg criticized Conservatives who had hailed Mr. Cameron as a “British bulldog” for his tough line on Europe.

“There’s nothing bulldog about Britain hovering somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, not standing tall in Europe, not being taken seriously in Washington,” he said.

To which one Conservative member of Parliament, Mark Pritchard, retorted, “Better to be a British bulldog than a Brussels poodle,” The Associated Press reported.

Mr. Cameron, meanwhile, was welcomed as a hero by his party’s anti-Europe right wing. “Up Eurs,” was the headline in Rupert Murdoch’s populist, anti-European tabloid newspaper, The Sun, along with a photograph of Mr. Cameron in a Churchillian bowler hat, holding two fingers up to Europe — the equivalent of an American middle finger.

“He did what I would have expected Margaret Thatcher to have done,” Andrew Rosindell, a Conservative member of Parliament, said approvingly.

But Kenneth Clarke, the Justice secretary and the Conservatives’ most prominent pro-Europe member, said in a radio interview that Mr. Cameron’s veto was a “disappointing, very surprising outcome.” He said he would be listening carefully to the prime minister’s statement in Parliament on the matter on Monday.

As upset as he is, Mr. Clegg said he did not want the coalition government to collapse.

“It would be even more damaging for us as a country if the coalition government was to fall apart,” he said. “That would cause economic disaster for the country at a time of great economic uncertainty.”

Related:

Tracking Europe’s Debt Crisis
News Analysis: Chronic Pain for the Euro (December 12, 2011)
Times Topic: European Debt Crisis

2011 Human Development Report

“Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All”

What: New York launch of the 2011 Human Development Report

When: Wednesday, 2 November 2011, at 10:30 a.m. EST

Where: UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium

Who:               William Orme, Chief of Communications & Publishing, Human Development Report Office

Milorad Kovacevic, Statistics Advisor at the Human Development Report Office

Satinder Bindra, Director, Office of Communications

The annual Human Development Report is an editorially independent publication of UNDP, produced annually since 1990. The Reports are available in ten languages for free downloading as PDFs or e-Books at

The Global launch of the Human Development Report will take place in Copenhagen, at 11:00 am GMT. Live webcast: on.undp.org/v2nDEC

We’ll also live tweet from @UNDP – join the conversation by using #hdr2011 in your tweets!

Join the discussion on Sustainable Human Development in a World at 7 Billion: Twitter chat with UNDP Administrator Helen Clark 13:30 GMT (9h30am EDT)

Join the conversation on Twitter by using #UNDPchat or follow it on www.undp.org/chat/

You do not need to have your own Twitter account to read chat contributions.

These states are:

Three of them are – The UK, Isle of Man and Jersey Island – Like the Isle of Man, Jersey is a separate possession of the Crown and is not part of the United Kingdom.^[

Seven independent States – AUSTRALIA, CANADA, LICHTENSTEIN, LUXEMBOURG, NORWAY, SINGAPORE and SWITZERLAND.

Seven EURO States – AUSTRIA, DENMARK, FINLAND, FRANCE, GERMANY, THE NETHERLANDS, and SWEDEN.

and HONG KONG that sits on the rib of China.

Of these France seems to be next State to fall of this economists’ tree of life.

An Austrian made SOLAR BUS WITH EXCHANGEABLE BATTERIES was launched June 27, 2011 at the Marktplatz of the Marktgemeinde Perchtoldsdorf outside Vienna. This is the first such bus in the world, they claim.
I wish former Governor Schwarzenegger were here to bless. What is needed is a good public relations job.

we posted:

Five reasons why Europe is cracking up.

by José Ignacio Torreblanca, 3 June 2011 on Open DEmocracy as
 www.opendemocracy.net/jos%C3%A9-i…

This article was first published in the El Pais daily newspaper, 15/05/11

José Ignacio Torreblanca joined the European Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Madrid Office in September 2007.

He found that:

In Germany, France and Italy, but also in many other places, we find ourselves confronted with a generation of leaders ever more shortsighted and given over to electioneering: among them, none speak to Europe nor for Europe.

Denmark has reintroduced border controls with the populist excuse of controlling crime. By taking the step, the country that was once a model of democracy, tolerance and social justice has placed itself on the frontlines of a Europe that is increasingly surrendering to fear and xenophobia.

Greece, meanwhile, has spent more than a year teetering on a cliff edge and few fellow European governments seem disappointed that it may abandon the euro – some of them are even secretly supporting the markets against Athens.

Finland has thrown itself into the arms of xenophobic populism and, following in the footsteps of Slovakia, has refused to finance the bailout of Portugal.

With elections around the corner, France and Italy have taken advantage of the Tunisian uprising to restrict the free movement of people within the European Union.

And Germany, unhappy at managing the euro crisis amid regional elections, has broken ranks with France and the United Kingdom in the United Nations Security Council, ignoring the Libya crisis and undermining 10 years of European security policy.

With the future of the euro in doubt and the Arab world erupting, European leaders are governing on the basis of opinion polls and electoral processes, hanging on to power through any means possible even if that results in undoing the Europe that it took so much time and so many sacrifices to build. Few times in the past has the European project been so questioned and its disgraces so publicly exposed. It would seem that in the Europe of today, having a large xenophobic political party is obligatory.

The truth is that Europe is cracking up along four fault lines: its values, the euro, foreign policy and leadership.

If there is no radical change, the integration process could collapse, leaving the future of Europe as an economically and politically relevant entity up in the air.

If interested to read further on issues like:

A project without fuel

Crisis of values and political shortsightedness

The end of solidarity

Absent from the world

The rebellion of the elites

please go to the original: www.opendemocracy.net/jos%C3%A9-i…

With every passing day, the sensation that Europe is fragmenting is more real and more justified. Can Europe break apart? The answer is evident: yes, of course it can. At the end of the day, the European Union is a human construction, not a celestial body. That it is necessary and beneficial justifies its existence, but that will not prevent it from disappearing. Just as a series of favorable circumstances led to the risky launch of this grand project, the unleashing of a series of adverse circumstances could very easily make it disappear, especially if those responsible for defending it shirk their responsibilities. Many committed pro-Europeans are conscious that the danger of Europe unravelling is very real, and they are duly worried about the course of events. However, at the same time, they fear that feeding pessimism with warnings of this nature could only serve to accelerate the collapse. But when, day after day, we see the red lines of decency and the values that Europe embodies being crossed by bigoted politicians who unscrupulously fuel the fears of citizens, it is impossible to continue looking the other way. Seeing the clarity of ideas and the determination with which the anti-Europeans pursue their objectives, it is hard to believe that mere optimism will be sufficient by itself to save Europe from the ghosts of doggedness, egoism and xenophobia that are haunting it at present. Without an equal level of determination and clarity of ideas from the other side, Europe will fail.

D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning.

By GINGER THOMPSON, ERIC SCHMITT and SOUAD MEKHENNET

Published: November 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — American authorities sent David C. Headley, a small-time drug dealer and sometime informant, to work for them in Pakistan months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups, according to court records and interviews. Not long after Mr. Headley arrived there, he began training with terrorists, eventually playing a key role in the 2008 attacks that left 164 people dead in Mumbai.

The October 2001 warning was dismissed, the authorities said, as the ire of a jilted girlfriend and for lack of proof. Less than a month later, those concerns did not come up when a federal court in New York granted Mr. Headley an early release from probation so that he could be sent to work for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration in Pakistan. It is unclear what Mr. Headley was supposed to do in Pakistan for the Americans.

“All I knew was the D.E.A. wanted him in Pakistan as fast as possible because they said they were close to making some big cases,” said Luis Caso, Mr. Headley’s former probation officer.

On Sunday, while President Obama was visiting India, he briefed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the status of his administration’s investigation of Mr. Headley, including the failure to act on repeated warnings that he might be a terrorist. A senior United States official said the inquiry has concluded that while the government received warnings, it did not have strong enough evidence at the time to act on them. “Had the United States government sufficiently established he was engaged in plotting a terrorist attack in India, the information would have most assuredly been transferred promptly to the Indian government,” the official said in a statement to The New York Times. The statement did not make clear whether any American agencies would be held accountable.

In recent weeks, United States government officials have begun to acknowledge that Mr. Headley’s path from American informant to transnational terrorist illustrates the breakdowns and miscommunications that have bedeviled them since the Sept. 11 attacks. Warnings about his radicalism were apparently not shared with the drug agency that made use of his ties in Pakistan.

The director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., began an investigation into Mr. Headley’s government connections after reports last month that two of the former drug dealer’s ex-wives had gone to American authorities between 2005 and 2008, before the Mumbai attacks, to say they feared he was plotting with terrorists. Combined with the earlier warning from the former girlfriend, three of the women in Mr. Headley’s life reported his ties to terrorists, only to have those warnings dismissed.

An examination of Mr. Headley’s story shows that his government ties ran far deeper and longer than previously known. One senior American official knowledgeable about the case said he believed that Mr. Headley was a D.E.A. informant until at least 2003, meaning that he was talking to American agencies even as he was learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.

The review raises new questions about why the Americans missed warning signs that a valued informant was becoming an important figure in radical Islamic groups, and whether some officials chose to look the other way rather than believe the complaints about him. The October 2001 warning from the girlfriend was first reported Friday by ProPublica, the independent investigative news operation, and published in The Washington Post.

Fuller details of how the government handled the matter were provided to The Times by officials who did not want to be quoted discussing a continuing inquiry. They disclosed that the F.B.I. actually talked to Mr. Headley about the girlfriend, and he told them she was unreliable. They said that while he seemed to have a philosophical affinity for some groups, there was no evidence that he was plotting against the United States. Also influencing the handling of the case, they said, was that he had been a longtime informant.

The Indian government has been outspoken in its concerns that the United States overlooked repeated warnings about Mr. Headley’s terrorist activities because of his links to both American law enforcement as well as to officials in Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate — a key ally of the United States in the fight against terrorism.

Bruce O. Riedel, a terrorism expert at the Brookings Institution and a former C.I.A. officer, said the Indians were right to ask, “ ‘Why weren’t alarms screaming?’ ”

Mr. Headley, 50, born in the United States to a Pakistani diplomat and Philadelphia socialite, has pleaded guilty in connection with the Mumbai plot and a thwarted attack against a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. As he has many times before, he is cooperating with the authorities, this time hoping to avoid the death penalty. Officials of the D.E.A., which has a long history with Mr. Headley, declined to discuss their relationship with him. The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. said that Mr. Headley had never worked with them. Privately, the agencies point fingers at each other.

The transcript of a Nov. 16, 2001, probation hearing in federal court in New York shows the government took great pains not to identify which agency was handling Mr. Headley, or whether he worked for more than one.

Mr. Caso, his former probation officer, recalled that Mr. Headley had been turned over to the D.E.A. Another person familiar with the case confirms this account. It was a world Mr. Headley knew well. After arrests in 1987 and 1998, he cooperated with the drug agency in exchange for lighter sentences. He specialized in the ties between Pakistani drug organizations and American dealers along the East Coast.

A September 1998 letter that prosecutors submitted to court after an arrest then showed that the government considered Mr. Headley — who had admitted to distributing 15 kilograms of heroin over his years as a dealer — so “reliable and forthcoming,” that they sent him to Pakistan to “develop intelligence on Pakistani heroin traffickers.”

The letter indicates that Mr. Headley, who faced seven to nine years in prison for his offense, was such a trusted partner to the drug agency in the 1990s that he helped translate hours of tape-recorded telephone intercepts, and coached drug agency investigators on how to question Pakistani suspects. The courts looked favorably on his cooperation, according to records, sentencing Mr. Headley to 15 months in prison, and five years’ probation.

While he was on probation, in October 2001, a woman told the F.B.I. that she believed her former boyfriend, Mr. Headley, was sympathetic to extremist groups in Pakistan, according to a senior American official who has been briefed on the case. The government was flooded with thousands of such tips at that time, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

William Headley, an uncle, recalled that agents called his sister to ask if her son had terrorist leanings. “She didn’t seem upset at all by the call,” William Headley said. “And I didn’t think much of it either because at that time, I thought the government was checking out anyone who had ties to Pakistan.”

It is unclear how widely disseminated the warning was. But in that probation hearing one month later, the government enlisted Mr. Headley’s help again, suspending his sentence in exchange for what court records described only as “continuing cooperation.” According to the transcript, it was a rushed affair. The probation officer apologized for not being properly dressed, and the lawyers explained that they had not been able to make their case in writing. Mr. Headley was a potential gold mine, according to an official knowledgeable about the agreement to release him from probation. One person involved in the case said American agencies had “zero in terms of reliable intelligence. And it was clear from the conversations about him that the government was considering assignments that went beyond drugs.”

American authorities have not disclosed what happened after Mr. Headley resumed his role as an informant. But in December 2001, the same month Mr. Headley departed for Pakistan, the United States designated the Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba as a terrorist organization. Less than two months later — in February 2002 — Mr. Headley began training with the group on “the merits of waging jihad.”

Between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Headley attended at least four additional Lashkar sessions, including training on surveillance and small-arms combat. Then in 2007, he began scouting targets for the group to attack in Mumbai, staying at least twice at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, and hiring fishermen for private tours of the port that helped him identify where the sea-traveling attackers could land. It is unclear when and why his connections to the United States government ended.

After the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Headley apparently turned his attention to Europe, according to recently released transcripts of his questioning by the Indian authorities. He contacted Ilyas Kashmiri, widely considered one of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous operatives, and begin plotting the attack against the Danish newspaper, according to his own account. Mr. Kashmiri put Mr. Headley in touch with Qaeda operatives in Europe who would help. He traveled to Britain in August 2009, then to Stockholm.

British intelligence authorities alerted the United States to Mr. Headley’s August meeting in Britain, saying that they believed he was involved in a plot against the Denmark newspaper. He was arrested in connection with the Denmark plot last October.

American authorities had no idea that he was also involved in the Mumbai attacks until he told them. Since then, he has been in federal custody in Chicago.

An American counterterrorism official said that agents who had questioned Mr. Headley called him “dangerously engaging.” The official said Mr. Headley was “a very charming individual who clearly knows how to manipulate the system to get what he wants” and added that agents steeled themselves before meeting with him so as not to “get sucked into his mind games.”

We are extremely gratified by the following article I just received as this is about one of the tenets we put forward many years ago: It is Israel’s self interest to be a leader in efforts to decrease the WORLD’S dependence on oil – not just because it improves air quality and helps combating climate change – but it also decreases the funds that are made available to its enemies. In past years, because of US politics being driven by Washington lobbyists for Big Oil, the Israelis kept very low on these topics – seemingly now – because of open disagreements on Middle East policy with the United States – they seemingly feel free to do the right thing and step closer to the leadership position in energy technologies that they are so capable of.

Back in 1959 – then again in 1974 – we suggested Israel develop its oil-shale resource for supply reasons. We got off that track when we moved our interest to biofuels – which we suggested  the Israel Refinery become the global example and start using ethanol as an octane enhancer to replace lead compounds – that would have created an 8 – 15% replacement of the gasoline used in the global market. Some in Israel understood the argument, but others looked to the non-forthcoming US leadership.

Then we trumpeted on www.SustainabiliTank.info technologies being developed by Israeli academic institutions – advances in electric batteries, algae, cellulosics, solar energy, geothermal installations, mini-turbines, the “Better Place” management concept. We spoke with some Israeli politicians and found an echo with the budding Green Party representatives in the Tel Aviv municipality, and some of Israel’s representatives at the UN. Our argument was – “Yes you can” – you can innovate and make technologies available free to the global market – free in the sense that you do not charge patent fees – as the country will get repaid by the decrease in military expenditures. The world’s attention to climate change allows you a leadership position because of your high level of scientific research. The following article shows that things-are-changing and Centers of Diplomacy and Communication – not just Science – are being created in Israel in order to promote these ideas. Would it not be nice to see other countries, i.e. India, Germany, Denmark, Brazil, New Zealand,  join with Israel in promoting these ideas and push as well the UN institutions that deal with sustainable development and climate change?
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The emergence of China as a major oil importer is feeding geopolitical tensions with the United States over the securing of oil supplies. Russia’s oil resources – a significant source of that country’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy – are also of concern to the US, as is the expected depletion of oil resources over the coming decades. The solution to this problem lies in the ending of oil’s monopolistic status by promoting the use of biofuels and electricity for transportation, something in which Israel can assist thanks to its technological lead in electric cars and second-generation biofuels.

More than any other source of energy, oil is at the core of global geopolitical tensions because of its monopoly as an energy source for transportation (land, sea and air). US dependence on oil is not related to power generation. Only 1-2 percent of the electricity used in the US is generated by oil. Similarly, only 4% of the EU’s electricity is produced from oil. Since industrialized economies no longer generate electricity from oil, promoting nuclear power or renewable energy would have no effect on reducing oil dependency. Building more nuclear plants, solar panels and wind farms would only reduce the use of coal and gas in power production. This would have a positive impact on the environment, but virtually no impact on oil consumption. The US is nearly self-reliant for power generation but entirely dependent on imported oil for transportation. In fact, America is more dependent on oil imports today than it was 40 years ago, because of declining domestic production. In 1973, the US imported 35% of its oil consumption, in contrast to 60% in 2007.

The only way to really reduce oil dependency in a country like the United States is to change the energy consumption of engines. There are two realistic alternatives: electricity and biofuels. While hydrogen appears on paper to be a third alternative, it is too impractical and too expensive. Hydrogen is not available in nature in a usable form and must therefore be separated from the materials of which it is an element (such as water, natural gas or coal) in order to be used as a fuel.

Incidentally, Israeli technology is revolutionizing the use of electric transportation and biofuels. Israeli scientist Yitzhak Barzin founded GreenFuel, a company that produces biological fuel from seaweed, in 2002. Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi founded Better Place in 2007, with the purpose of spreading the use of electric cars worldwide.

In January 2008 Better Place signed a partnership agreement with Renault-Nissan to launch a new electric car project. Renault-Nissan is building the vehicles while Better Place is building the electric recharge grid, which will enable its customers to recharge their cars wherever they park. More significantly, battery switching stations will enable drivers to switch their car battery in less time than it would take to fill a gas tank. These stations will be spread out just like gas stations, and switching batteries will not involve any extra cost for the customer since the customer is charged only for kilometrage.

While Israel is among Better Place’s first and leading “trial countries” (the company is also implementing its model in Denmark and Hawaii), the Israeli government has done too little to promote biofuels. By contrast, the EU and US have adopted policies that make the use of biofuels mandatory. The European Commission’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) requires 10% of fuels in the EU to be composed of biofuels by 2020. Many of the light planes manufactured in Europe now use bio-diesel, both for cost and air quality reasons. The US Air Force is introducing the use of synthetic fuels made from gas derived from coal or biomass. Its target is to use a 50:50 blend of synthetic and traditional jet fuel for half of its aviation requirements by 2016. As for the US Navy, it is testing biofuels in ship turbines. It also recently launched an amphibious assault ship that runs on an electric motor at low speed. The Navy’s ambition is to ultimately develop all-electric ships.

Israel is certainly aware of the need to dethrone the monopolistic status of oil, and it has recently taken initiatives in that regard (such as the launching of the yearly international renewable energy conference in 2007, the establishment of the Institute for Renewable Energy Policy at the IDC in 2008 and the setting-up of a national commission for the replacement of fossil fuels in 2009). In September 2010, the Israeli government decided to invest nearly NIS 200 million over the next ten years in R&D projects aimed at creating alternatives to oil. (The plan also calls for government money to be supplemented by donations from the private sector to the tune of NIS 180 million a year).

To avoid the risky dependency on electric cars exclusively (an electric blackout caused by natural disasters could cripple transportation for entire regions), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), which run on electricity and automatically keep running on liquid fuel (including biofuel) when the electrical charge is used up, are most likely to become the most widespread vehicles in the future. Moreover, replacing gasoline cars with electric cars would only partially reduce the world’s dependency on oil because of the massive use of petroleum by ships and airplanes (both civil and military). Hence, the importance of biofuels.

The controversy over biofuels is too wide and complex to be discussed here. One important remark though is that biofuels do not need to be produced from crops. “Second generation” biofuels are produced from waste, algae and non-food vegetation. One example is cellulosic ethanol. Another example is algae. Algae double their mass in a few hours and produce 30 times as much oil per acre as sunflowers. Most significantly, algae devour carbon dioxide, the primary culprit in global warming. Growing algae like a crop enables the production of biofuel.

It remains an intriguing fact, however, that biofuels are virtually nonexistent in Israel’s transportation landscape. The Israeli government must be more proactive in that regard. By contributing to the breaking of oil’s monopoly over transportation, Israel will not only strengthen its strategic value vis-à-vis the United States and Europe, it might also provide its oil-producing neighbors with a good reason to be more pragmatic.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon is a lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s Abba Eban Graduate Program for Diplomacy Studies and a senior fellow at the Center for International Communication at Bar-Ilan University.

We had posted the following on September 6, 2010 and the UPDATE is a result of our having listened to the September 10 presentation. Besides this update we expect to follow up further as we see high potential in the ideas presented here.

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venue: 8:00am (presentation begins at 8:30am) at Dickstein Shapiro, LP, 1633 Broadway, 32nd floor, btwn 50^th & 51^st streets

date; Friday, September 10, 2010 New York City.

An exciting company that is generating revenues today, and has a prototype fuel cell car that can operate with our current refueling infrastructure.

The Metha Energy Solution’s fuel cell car, which was unveiled at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit,  will be able to fill up your tank with methanol at your local service station and get the kind of driving performance you have today—in driving range, acceleration, average speed and “refill time”—but with 70% fewer CO2 emissions.

Metha Energy Solutions Inc. (soon to become Metha Serenergy Inc.) is a publicly-listed US company, stock symbol: MGYS.OB. Its fuel cell technology is currently generating revenues in the backup power and remote power generation markets.

Metha Energy’s fuel cell technology improves over hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles because they don’t carry heavy batteries and  refill with fuel rapidly. Also, they avoid the on-board hydrogen storage problem that plagued earlier hydrogen vehicles by integrating the reformer into the fuel cell modules.

All this is based on a breakthrough for the future energy-supply chain.  These are high-temperature proton-exchange membrane air-cooled fuel cells, which deliver energy efficiency up to 50%, a figure more than double that of a traditional combustion engine. Metha Serenergy has already received initial orders from European vehicle and US non-vehicle customers. And their fuel cells have been proven to operate for more than 5,000 hours according to the vehicle industry standards.

Metha Serenergy Inc.’s current revenues come from the sale of its fuel cells to the military for transportable light for air strips and telecom backup. Immediate target markets include IT back-up, data centers, servers, cell phone antenna backup, remote monitoring, traffic control signaling and off-road transportation.

Metha Serenergy is currently raising US $ 2 million.

Register by sending an email to donna@ceepinc.org You need JavaScript enabled to view it with your contact information.  Please bring payment of $50 to the program.

Call-ins are available. Specify call-in in your email to Donna and send her a check or request a credit card form for the $25 fee.

Gelvin Stevenson, Ph.D.
Program Director

Center for Economic and Environmental Partnership, Inc.
212-222-4369, 917-599-6089

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David J. P. Meachin, a Director of Metha Energy Solutions Inc. www.methaenergy.com (MGYS – OTC), a US company deploying Danish technology focused on commercializing innovative fuel cell technology for the transportation and off-grid markets. He is Vice Chairman of the University of Cape Town Fund in New York and a Director and past Chairman of the British American Educational Foundation. He is an Advisory Board Member of Structured Credit International Corp. (SCIC) and an Advisory Board Member of the South African Chamber of Commerce America (SACCA). Prior to his founding Cross Border Enterprises in 1991, he was Managing Director, Investment Banking Division, Merrill Lynch & Company in New York. He is based in New York and is in the process of birthing the Metha Serenergy Inc. that will be marketing the Danish product – the Metha patented Fuel Cells that can be used in stationary situations as well as a source for mobile energy needs – such as motor vehicles.

Jasper Toft of Denmark, CEO and founder of Metha Energy Solutions Inc., made the power-point presentation at the breakfast.

Fuel cells operate best on pure hydrogen. But fuels like natural gas, methanol, or even gasoline can be reformed to produce the hydrogen required for fuel cells. Some fuel cells even can be fueled directly with methanol, without using a reformer.

Considering that all that talk of using directly hydrogen as energy fuel has really not led to much as practical results, the idea of using a known liquid fuel in conjunction with a stack of fuel cells instead is very attractive. From all the hydrogen containing liquids – methanol is the most attractive. We know many ways to produce methanol – some of the feed-stocks for methanol are cellulosics and the needed energy can come from wind or solar. In effect the production of methanol can be the way to store excess renewable energy obtained at times of lowest demand for electricity. Methanol produced this way has no fossil CO2 liabilities – it sounds like the ideal 21st century fuel. Furthermore, ethanol – the carbohydrates turned to fuel via fermentation – has the inherent problem as being tackled for using edibles as feedstock. The search for ways of breaking down cellulosics like agricultural wastes and wood chips to fermentable sugars has not yielded yet an industry – again – using these materials to make methanol instead would seem a natural outcome.

In the future, hydrogen could also join electricity as an important energy carrier. An energy carrier moves and delivers energy in a usable form to consumers. Renewable energy sources, like the sun and wind, can’t produce energy all the time. But they could, for example, produce electric energy and methanol, which can be stored until it’s needed. This also can avoid the talk of storing the energy as hydrogen.

As said – this is just an appetizer or a post talk UPDATE and we expect to get further information that we will share on www.SustainabiliTank.info As of now – let me say that hearing the presentation – we suggested to the hosts that the SER they intend to use in their name should stand for:

SIMPLICITY of their technical product,

EFFICIENCY as they claim a three times higher efficiency then the internal combustion engine,

and RELIABILITY – this because of the potential of using various liquid fuels – the aspect that already caught the eye of the US D.O.D. that already 25 years ago, well ahead of US D.O.E., has looked into alternative fuels – ethanol, methanol and CNG as fuels to the military internal combustion engines. Moving to fuel cells as means to use electric engines requires a change of structure, but opens the way to a variety of inputs. In effect, captive fleets such as in the military or taxi and bus industries are natural first clients for these new mechanisms.