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"The EU is considering proposals that could require the upgrade of 15 million buildings across the region by 2020 to reduce their energy use by a fifth, according to a report from Reuters."

Led by China, the developing nations of the world now consume more energy than the industrialized countries, according to the 2009 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. BP released its annual review of world energy use on June 10, noting that industrialized countries reduced their energy consumption by 1.3% in 2008, led by a 2.8% drop in the United States, marking the country's steepest single-year decline since 1982. That decrease was counterbalanced by increasing energy use in developing countries, which caused global energy consumption to increase by 1.4%.

But unless policy makers can find ways to improve the balance between energy supply and demand, the current slackness in energy markets will last no longer than it takes for the global economy to recover. That scenario will eventually impose significant costs on consumers and businesses in the form of higher energy prices.

The benefits for the market are obvious. Regional, ownership unbundled transmission/ infrastructure companies have a natural incentive to maximise the offering of capacity to the market, as this is the sole mechanism through which they achieve their revenues. They will be happy to invest to meet market demand. With their large scale and regional approach they can pass through the benefits of synergies and eliminate unnecessary interfaces. Finally, as they do not have any potential conflict of interest with supply or production interests, regulation can be lighter, decreasing the regulatory and administrative burden and increasing efficiency even further.

Time will tell, but it seems that the ITO option has its greatest potential for those companies that can not afford to sell their transmission networks under the current economic conditions or that are opportunity constrained and have no suitable investment potential. In any event, the conclusion must be that, whereas full ownership unbundling has not been directly achieved through the Third Package, it would appear that the scene has been set for a market structure that will move gradually but inevitably into the direction originally envisaged in the Commission proposals. So was it worth it? For you to judge.

Dr. Webber explains the intricate and increasingly vital links between energy and water, both in the United States, and the world.

Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation

The way electric power is generated and distributed will change substantially over the next two decades. Power will be democratized, as small-scale production at the individual and community level moves from niche to normal. The resulting "electron-democracy" will still have centralized power plants, but power grid activity will increasingly be dominated by innumerable incremental energy flows between small producers and consumers. This is likely to happen whether or not public policy mandates a shift away from dependence on fossil fuels.

It is clear that we are at the beginning of what has correctly been called the "third industrial revolution" - the rapid development of an entirely new energy system.

Renewable energy needs to become a lot more renewable - a theme that emerged at the Financial Times Energy Conference in London this week.

Although volatility in most assets is sharply lower than it was in November, oil price volatility has continued to climb. This rise in volatility, and resulting near $30-a-barrel oil price, is reflecting the same imbalances in the energy market that $147 oil did last summer: namely inadequate investment in basic infrastructure to produce, deliver, store and distribute energy. Last summer, attention focused on shortages in production capacity. However, present underlying shortages in storage and transportation are creating massive price distortions across the energy complex.

Storage and transportation capacity provides the system with a buffer to supply-and-demand shocks by allowing it to run surpluses and deficits that smooth the normal cyclical swings in prices. As global storage capacity has failed to keep pace with growth in global demand over the past three decades, this buffer has shrunk relative to the size of the market, resulting in chronically higher than normal price volatility. Once infrastructure begins to constrain the ability of the market to run imbalances, prices have to create more of the adjustment process. Electricity markets are an extreme case of this. As power cannot be stored, supply must always equal demand, leaving price as the only mechanism to force the adjustment process. Accordingly, electricity is the most volatile of all assets. Due to inadequate infrastructure investment over the past several decades, oil is looking more like the electricity markets.

The code of conduct covers IT equipment such as servers and the environmental conditions under which they are maintained.

Here is what we had in the initial KMC Futures trend. See also the alliance with GE.

As we move towards a consumer society that's based more on experiences, on status stories, on the ephemeral-and in which, for many, time is now the only true scarcity-expect perks and privileges to become an integral part of every B2C industry and sector.