Showing posts with label European Union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label European Union. Show all posts

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Clean And Expensive



There is a tipping point in the Climate Change debate where clean energy starts competing in price with dirty energy.

Why Solar Is Much More Costly Than Wind or Hydro
no surprise that if environmental costs are considered, renewables—particularly wind power—are a far better bargain than coal power. But it might surprise many that according to a new such analysis, solar power lags far behind wind and even hydroelectric power in its economic impact, at least in the European Union. ........ the economic costs of climate change, pollution, and resource depletion as well as the current capital and operating costs of the power plants ....... a metric ton of emitted carbon dioxide costs around €43 ($55). ...... many of world’s solar panels are manufactured in China, where electricity is very carbon-intensive ...... new coal and natural gas plants in the E.U. have levelized costs of just over €50 ($64) (in 2012 euros) per megawatt-hour (assuming they are running at maximum capacity); onshore wind is around €80 ($102) per megawatt-hour; utility scale solar PV is about €100 ($127); nuclear power is around €90 ($115); and hydropower is as cheap as €10.

Saturday, February 02, 2013

The Viking Lead


It seems like goodness follows once you finally manage to manage your fiscal house.

The Economist: The Nordic countries: The next supermodel
So long as public services work, they do not mind who provides them. Denmark and Norway allow private firms to run public hospitals. Sweden has a universal system of school vouchers, with private for-profit schools competing with public schools. Denmark also has vouchers—but ones that you can top up. ...... The performance of all schools and hospitals is measured. Governments are forced to operate in the harsh light of day: Sweden gives everyone access to official records. Politicians are vilified if they get off their bicycles and into official limousines. The home of Skype and Spotify is also a leader in e-government: you can pay your taxes with an SMS message. ...... they employ 30% of their workforce in the public sector ...... They are stout free-traders who resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies: Sweden let Saab go bankrupt and Volvo is now owned by China’s Geeley. ....... focus on the long term—most obviously through Norway’s $600 billion sovereign-wealth fund ..... look for ways to temper capitalism’s harsher effects ..... a system of “flexicurity” that makes it easier for employers to sack people but provides support and training for the unemployed, and Finland organises venture-capital networks. ...... Their levels of taxation still encourage entrepreneurs to move abroad: London is full of clever young Swedes. ..... When Angela Merkel worries that the European Union has 7% of the world’s population but half of its social spending ...... Norway is a particular focus of the Chinese. ..... The state is popular not because it is big but because it works. A Swede pays tax more willingly than a Californian because he gets decent schools and free health care. The Nordics have pushed far-reaching reforms past unions and business lobbies. .... inject market mechanisms into the welfare state to sharpen its performance. You can put entitlement programmes on sound foundations to avoid beggaring future generations ...... root out corruption and vested interests ..... abandon tired orthodoxies of the left and right and forage for good ideas across the political spectrum
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Thursday, November 01, 2012

Finland In The Lead


Finland: Plan for universal 100Mbps service by 2015 on track
Back in 2009, Finland announced what might be the world’s most ambitious national broadband plan: a guaranteed minimum service level of 1Mbps for all homes and companies by 2010. That goal is then planned to be kicked up to 100Mbps, served via a fixed connection or wireless, by 2015 ...... by providing subsidies mainly to local cooperatives that have sprung up to serve rural communities. To date, 86 percent of the 5.35 million Finnish population lives within two kilometers of a 100Mbps connection, and the expectation is that this will grow to 95 percent by 2015. ...... European Union’s Digital Agenda for Europe. ..... requires member states to publish national broadband plans by the end of the year to bring a minimum level of 30Mbps service to all citizens by 2020. It also requires countries to bring speeds of 100Mbps to half of the EU’s households by 2020. (As one commenter pointed out, most of Denmark already has 32Mbps wireless coverage.) In other words, Finland is far surpassing what Brussels has mandated. ...... Karvia—like many small towns around the world—faces a challenge of keeping its younger population local. With more reliable Internet, it lets more creative and freelance workers stay in town. ...... “They can do remote work at home and so they have moved back to Karvia,” she said. “People like artists and people who are designing buildings can work at home and I think that this was very important for us to do. Also, they can study at home because the network has made a possibility to study.” ...... there may be a downside to better access ... “In the first year we had nine children born. Normally we have 20 children [per year]—maybe [couples] are watching TV too much” ...... It can cost up to €53,000 ($68,000) per household in the most rural and remote regions. ..... today, fiber optic broadband is at the level of a basic public service (like electricity, water, or roads). ..... “The Finnish strategy as it is does not seem to provide this but leaves it to market forces on one hand and to regional and local authorities on the other,” he told Ars. “The first actors have no obligation to fulfill their part, and the second actors are lacking realistic financial and political means.”
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Saturday, February 11, 2012

If 90% Of The People Start Voting

A stylized representation of a red flag, usefu...Image via WikipediaA Facebook Supported Online Parliament

These blog posts probably belong at my other Barackface blog, but never mind.

I was thinking, if Facebook were to manage to create an online parliament for an entire country, the percentage of people voting might shoot into the sky. The average in mature democracies right now is 50% I think. I can see that going up to an unheard of 90%.

It is like in Nepal there was a democracy movement in 1990. And it was successful. Nepal became a multi-party democracy. Before that it was a monarchy that called itself a no party democracy. As in, there was a parliament. What else do you need to be a democracy, right?

Anyways, there was now democracy. But then the communists came out of the woodworks. The most ultra among them called for a boycotting of the "bourgeois" election. 60% of the people voted. Those communists then claimed that means 40% of the people sided with them! Go figure.

But then I just had to share that relevant story.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Post Wintel

MUNICH, GERMANY - OCTOBER 07:  Chief Executive...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
The Economist: The End Of Wintel THEY were the Macbeths of information technology (IT): a wicked couple who seized power and abused it in bloody and avaricious ways. ...... the two firms’ supposed love of monopoly profits and dead rivals. ..... increasingly seen as yesterday’s tyrants. Rumours persist that a coup is brewing to oust Steve Ballmer ..... “Intel Architecture”, the set of rules governing how software interacts with the processor it runs on. ..... the Wintel marriage is crumbling. ...... The Wintel marriage is now threatened, oddly enough, by technological progress. Processors grow ever smaller and more powerful; internet and wireless connections keep speeding up. This has created both centripetal and centrifugal forces, which are pushing computing into data centres (huge warehouses full of servers) and onto mobile devices— ...... The shift to mobile computing and data centres (also known as “cloud computing”) has speeded up the “verticalisation” of the IT industry. ...... now firms are becoming more vertically integrated. ...... Apple .. is building a huge data centre ....... Having lost its battle with the European Commission, for instance, Microsoft must now give Windows users in the European Union a choice of which web browser to install. ...... Microsoft has made big bets on cloud computing. It has already built a global network of data centres and developed an operating system in the cloud called Azure. The firm has put many of its own applications online, even Office, albeit with few features. What is more, Microsoft has made peace with the antitrust authorities and even largely embraced open standards. ....... Microsoft’s mobile business is in disarray. ...... in tablet computers, Microsoft is behind, too ..... Paul Otellini .. is pinning his hopes on a new family of processors called Atom. Rather than making these chips ever more powerful, Intel is making them ever cheaper and less power-hungry ....... ARM’s chips guzzle little power and cost much less than Intel’s, because its licensing fees are low and most customers use foundries (contract chipmakers) to make them. .... Intel’s position seems safe as long as Moore’s Law holds ..... Microsoft has yet to deliver a competitive version of Windows for smart-phones and tablets ..... Meego, an open-source operating system for mobile devices. Microsoft, by cuddling up to ARM, will be able to build chips of its own. ..... Oracle, Cisco and IBM will vie for corporate customers; Apple and Google will scramble for individuals (see table). IT, like the world, is becoming multipolar.

Like Bill Gates once said, success is a lousy teacher. But that does not explain it fully, or even a big part of it. This is about the tectonic forces in innovation, in technology. This is ultimately about hurricane size clouds.

The big company of one era does not end up also being the big company of another era. That is the nature of the beast.

Wintel was a PC era marriage. And the PC era has been ending for a while now. You end up facing a classic problem. How do you lose your love for the big revenue sources and go for the little innovative products that might (or might not) become big tomorrow, but if they become big, they will become big by eating into your current big products? No wonder it is almost always some outsider doing that munching and crunching.

As IT fans out into ever larger data centers and ever more powerful mobile devices, we have entered the era of welcome fragmentation. The PC used to be the center of the computing universe. The PC will still be around, but it will be just one creature in the vast tech ecosystem. It will be just one galaxy in the tech universe.

Like is supposed to happen in functional capitalism: the consumer wins.

The Economist
  1. World economy: The rising power of the Chinese worker
  2. Bullfighting in Catalonia: The land of the ban
  3. Turkey and its rebel Kurds: An endless war
  4. Wealth, poverty and compassion: The rich are different from you and me
  5. Climate change: Warming world
  6. Lexington: Arizona, rogue state
  7. Afghanistan: Don't go back
  8. China and the death penalty: High executioners
  9. Unemployment benefits: Read this shirt
  10. America, Afghanistan and Pakistan: Kayani's gambit
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