Pay no attention to the latest financial news. It’s time to buy a new Mercedes!

This is the message that Europe’s largest economy hopes will catch on among its citizens as Europe slides into recession. Two of Germany’s biggest manufacturers, Daimler AG and BMW are reportedly experiencing their worst slump in sales since 2005. This has prompted Daimler to announce that it will close its Mercedes-Benz factory in Sindelfingen Germany, for five weeks. Hoping to avoid a calamity, the German government has passed a new set of tax breaks for cars which meet specific emissions standards. 
“With this package we’re helping the car industry and its workers and at the same time we’re doing something to protect the climate,” says German Economy Minister Michael Glos. The plan includes two years of tax exemption for Euro 5 and Euro 6 emissions standard vehicles and one year of exemption for Euro 4 emissions standard vehicles. (With Euro 1,2 and 3 cars no longer legal to purchase, the German government has effectively subsidized car buying).

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Continue reading " Germany Passes Tax Breaks for Low CO2 Emission Cars "

Wind turbines in Scotland, photo: Gary Denham.

In the deepening alphabet soup of energy policy organizations, here’s another one to look out for. The newly formed International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) doesn’t even have a formalized plan for a headquarters, leadership, or funding, but has indicated that it will announcing its first projects in January. Currently involved nations include pretty much all of Europe, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates. (Maybe the United States would be willing to ge…

Continue reading " New Acronym Alert: IRENA, The International Renewable Energy Agency "

By Sarah K. Burkhalter

World leaders congratulated Barack Obama on his presidential win, and indicated that his environmental policies look to be a welcome change from the past eight years.

Rajendra Pachauri, Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: “Obama has not only been very clear in emphasizing the need for the U.S. to engage in global solutions to meet the challenge of climate change but also in respect of bringing about a major shift in U.S. energy policy … The U.S. now has a unique opportunity to assume leadership in meeting the threat of climate change, and it would help greatly if the new president were to announce a coherent and forward-looking policy soon after he takes office. There is every reason to believe that President Obama will actually do so.”

Lawrence Cannon, Foreign Affairs Minister, Canada: “This augurs well for a North American approach on environmental issues — specifically on climate change.”

Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister, Netherlands: “It was great to see that this election touched so many people in the U.S. but also elsewhere … But I am also thinking about combating terrorism, about climate change, human rights and free world trade … Only with an intensive, transatlantic alliance can we stand up to worldwide challenges.”

Hans-Gert Poettering, President, European Parliament: “[I look forward to] working together in effective partnership [with Obama] on many of the global issues facing decisionmakers in our both continents, for example climate change.”

Jose Manuel Barroso, President, European Commission: “This is a turning point for the United States. It may also be a turning point for the world. We hope to achieve together an ambitious agenda for globalization: overcoming the financial crisis promoting growth and opportunity for all and fighting climate change … We need a ‘New Deal’ between the U.S. and the E.U. A ‘New Deal’ that covers financial stability, the fight against climate change, global prosperity, including open trade. I sincerely hope that under the leadership of President Obama, the USA will join forces with Europe to drive this new deal, for the benefit of our societies, for the benefit of the world.”

Taro Aso, Prime Minister, Japan: “As the world faces many difficult issues, I am sure that the United States, under the excellent leadership of President-elect Obama, will move further forward while cooperating with the international community. With President-elect Obama, I will strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance further and work towards resolving global issues such as the world economy, terror, and the environment.”

Javier Solana, High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, European Union: “President-elect Obama ran on a ticket of change. This is most welcome since many things in the world today need changing. Let us do that together. [The E.U. and U.S. need to address] a high number of very complex global problems: from the Middle East to Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan, from climate change to nonproliferation … with determination and creativity … As we grapple with these problems, it is good to have someone who put change, empathy, and good judgment at the heart of his campaign. I am looking forward to working with President Obama and his administration.”

Continue reading " World please "

Mobuzz, one of the more popular online shows to come out of Europe, has run out of money. But instead of bowing out, the site is turning to its users and asking for a €5 donation (or the equivalent in your local currency). The goal? 120,000 Euros by next week, which Mobuzz says should be enough to sustain the site until it can get more funding. If it doesn’t make the cut, the site will be shut down and any donations will be returned.

It’s always nice to see a community come together to support something it enjoys, but Mobuzz and its fans should keep in mind that the site ran out of money for a reason - it’s not like someone came in and snatched it away. So while the guys in the video below can plead about saving the free daily shows that the site has been producing for years, if Mobuzz does survive it will likely see radical changes. Any new investors will want to see the site turn a profit, be it through paid content, increased advertising, or fewer shows.

Continue reading " Strapped For Cash, Web TV Startup Mobuzz Starts Panhandling "

Okay, time to get up and get some exercise. Turn off that computer, DVD player, Playstation and TV and get out there! But wait . . . are they really off? According to Madrid based company Good for You, Good for the Planet, the answer is no.

Good for You, Good for the Planet’s Jorge Alonso Garcia says that nearly “100%” of electronic devices remain on standby mode after they’ve been turned off. “This is so that they can be quickly turned on again,” he explains.

So What Does the Device Do?

100%Off, the device designed by Good for You, is a microprocessor which uses algorithms to detect a decline in the flow of electricity being sent to an electronic device or appliance. Once 100%Off has detected a decline, it completely shuts the device or appliance off. (The amount of time 100% off waits before a complete shutdown of the device is configurable through programming.)

In essence, 100%Off stops the flow of electricity to a device while the device is still plugged in. Unplugging a device is easy, but do your really want to risk a hernia and move that 800lb entertainment center away from the wall to pull out the plug every night? Good for You is betting that the answer is again, no.

Is it Even Worth It?

Well, according to a European Commission study, in 2005, the amount of electricity consumed by devices left on standby across Europe would have been enough to power a small country like Greece or Portugal for an entire year. The standby problem is not unique to Europe, of course. The United States faces the same problem, and worldwide, electronic devices left on standby account for up 1% of global CO2 emissions. It’s also estimated that the standby problem accounts for approximately 12% of home energy consumption in developed countries.

“In less than a year you’ll recoup 100% of the devices cost,” touts Garcia. In Spain, average household energy consumption per year is about 367 Euros ($474 USD). Good for You claims that 100%Off could save the average Spanish family 44 Euros ($57 USD) per year.

Closing Thoughts and Recommendations

Plugging up a leak in the power grid without unnecessary, government regulation is a great idea and one I’m in favor of, but having a Company name that consists of seven words, and a comma isn’t! Seriously, Good for You, Good for the Planet, hire a new marketing person, inmediatamente!

Image Credits: Paul Randall via Flickr, under a Creative Commons license.

Continue reading " The Standby Problem: How a Spanish Designed Device Could Solve It "

photo: SolFocus

Though it won’t be completed until 2010, and its overall capacity will be divided across several sites, SolFocus has announced that it has signed a deal with EMPE Solar worth $103 million that will install over 10 megawatts of CPV power at sites in southern Spain. SolFocus says that the project will create enough electricity for a city of about 40,000 people. While the company claims it as being the largest CPV project in Europe, Greentech Media points out that it will be the largest in the world.

In case you’re not familiar with how concentrating solar PV works (and there a…

Continue reading " World’s Largest Concentrating Solar PV Project Announced by SolFocus "

By David Roberts

The European energy market has been driven for years by restrictions on CO2 and taxpayer support for renewable energy. As a result, Europe boasts many of the biggest, strongest wind companies in the world.

In the U.S., we largely leave the energy market up to the vagaries of rising and falling oil prices. As a result, our wind power industry is fragmented and underfunded — and now that oil prices are back down, on the ropes.

As a result, the big European companies are getting set to buy up lots of smaller American companies to further cement their dominance.

Then, when oil prices inevitably rise again — and when the U.S. passes its inevitable restrictions on GHGs — European companies will be well-positioned to harvest the bounty.

This is what corporatist conservative governance in the U.S. has gotten us — a competitive disadvantage in one of the fastest growing markets of the 21st century. Huzzah.

BusinessWeek has the whole sordid tale.

Continue reading " Wind fail "

By David Roberts

“There is an appetite for city-to-city rail. Why should we be different than any other country in the world? You go to Europe and you can’t get an airplane to a city less than 200 miles away.”

– Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, commenting on rising national interest in passenger rail

Continue reading " Notable quotable "

: Photo: Bain News Service/Courtesy Library of Congress

Republican William Howard Taft (the portly gentleman at center) receives his ballot in November 1908. Taft won that election but lost his re-election bid in 1912. He is widely remembered (or remembered widely) today as the heaviest president (peaking near 350 pounds — girth of a nation, some have called it). He was also the first president to throw out the ceremonial first ball of the baseball season, in 1910.

From 1921 to 1930, Taft served as chief justice of the United States, the only president ever to do so. For that reason alone, he must be counted among the nation’s most successful ex-presidents.

: Photo: Courtesy Library of Congress

Democrat Thomas Woodrow Wilson (yes, that was his name) poses in the seat of power in the Oval Office in 1913, the year he was sworn in. Wilson had been president of Princeton University before moving on (but not necessarily up) to governor of New Jersey.

Although he had two full terms as president of the United States, he really didn’t serve the end of the second term, having suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919. The 25th Amendment to the Constitution (covering presidential disability) wasn’t ratified until 1967, so Wilson’s wife and doctors effectively ran the White House for many months.

: Photo: National Photo Company/Courtesy Library of Congress

President Wilson (left) rides with the incoming Republican president, Warren G. Harding, in the back seat at Harding’s inauguration, March 4, 1921. Sen. Philander Knox (now, there’s a name) and Rep. Joseph Cannon, both Republicans, ride in front.

Harding was the first sitting U.S. senator elected to the presidency. He has a reputation as a White House philanderer. His death in San Francisco in 1923, supposedly by accidental food poisoning, is now thought by some to be no accident at all.

: Photo: National Photo Company/Courtesy Library of Congress

Republican John Calvin Coolidge (yep, his name) tips a ceremonial Smoki Indian hat on the grounds of the White House, Oct. 22, 1924. When Harding died, Coolidge succeeded to the presidency and was sworn in by his father, a notary public, in the middle of the night at their family home in Vermont. Coolidge was elected in his own right to a second term in November 1924.

Notoriously taciturn, he earned the nickname “Silent Cal.” It’s said that he once learned that a guest at a banquet had bet a friend that the president wouldn’t say three words all night. Coolidge learned of the bet and kept his mouth zipped until he was leaving the dinner. He then walked up to the gent who’d scoffed at tales of the president’s laconic habits, leaned over and said, “You lose.”

: Photo: National Photo Company/Courtesy Library of Congress

Republican Herbert Hoover (center, just to the right of first lady Lou Henry Hoover) and the presidential party stand for the national anthem on baseball’s opening day, April 17, 1929. It was a few weeks after Hoover’s inauguration and six months before the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression.

Hoover, like Taft, had an extraordinary career following his presidency. He organized post-World War II food relief in Europe (as he had done after World War I), and heading the “Hoover Commission” on the reorganization of the executive branch.

Hoover was the last Republican president elected on a ticket that did not include a Nixon or a Bush.

: Photo: Courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum

Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, a distant cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt, campaigns for vice president of the United States, in his hometown of Hyde Park, New York, Aug. 9, 1920. FDR lost that race and was stricken by polio the following year, but recovered sufficiently to win election to the governorship of New York in 1928.

Roosevelt is the only person elected to the presidency more than twice, winning the elections of 1932, ‘36, ‘40 and ‘44. He died in office April 12, 1945, just before the successful conclusion of World War II.

: Photo: Sammie Feeback

Former President Harry S. Truman comes out of the voting booth after casting his ballot in Independence, Missouri, April 10, 1956. Democratic Vice President Truman had succeeded FDR in 1945. He was elected in his own right in 1948, overcoming defections by both the left (Progressive) and right (Dixiecrat) wings of his own party and defying expectations of victory by Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

: Photo: U.S. Army/Courtesy 
Library of Congress

Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower talks to American paratroopers in England just before D-Day in 1944. Republican Eisenhower was a popular war hero who swept into office in the GOP landslide of 1952, and he was re-elected in 1956.

Ike followed Generals Washington, Jackson, W.H. Harrison, Taylor, Pierce, A. Johnson, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and B. Harrison in the presidency. Nonetheless, he warned in a farewell address to the nation in 1961: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

: Photograph: Cecil Stoughton, White House/Courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

A young girl is lifted above the crowd to shake hands with Democratic President John F. Kennedy, Sept. 25, 1963, in Billings, Montana, during the president’s “conservation tour” of Western states. JFK would be shot and killed two months later while riding in a motorcade in Dallas.

Kennedy thus became the eighth U.S. president to die in office, the seventh consecutive president who’d been elected in a year ending in zero to die in office, and the fourth U.S. president to be assassinated.

Kennedy was the last sitting U.S. senator to be elected president. With Sen. John McCain running against Sen. Barack Obama, that 48-year losing streak is likely to end today.

: Photograph: Cecil Stoughton, White House/Courtesy Library of Congress

U.S. District Judge Sarah T. Hughes administers the oath of office to Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One at Love Field, Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963. Former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, widowed just two hours before, stands at the new president’s side.

Johnson won election in his own right in 1964, but was forced out of the Democratic nomination race in 1968 by challengers to his conduct of the unpopular war in Southeast Asia.

: Photo: Courtesy Architect of the Capitol and Library of Congress

Republican Richard M. Nixon delivers his inaugural address on the east portico of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 20, 1969. Nixon served as Eisenhower’s vice president from 1953 to 1961. He was defeated for president in 1960 and for governor of California in 1962, but rose from the political ashes to be elected president in 1968 and re-elected in 1972.

His conduct in the Watergate scandal forced him to resign in disgrace and under threat of impeachment in August 1974. He is the only president of the United States to resign. Ashes to ashes.

: Photo: David Hume Kennerly/White House/Courtesy Gerald R. Ford Library

Musicians Billy Preston and George Harrison pose with President Gerald Ford in the Oval Office, Dec. 13, 1974.

Republican Ford reached the presidency through an extraordinary double fault. Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in October 1973 in a bribery and tax scandal. Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1967. When Nixon resigned the presidency less than a year later, Ford became the first U.S. president who had not been elected to the presidency or vice presidency.

He ran for election to a second term in 1976 and lost.

: Photo: Courtesy the Carter Center

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (left), U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin make a three-way handshake during the White House signing of the Middle East peace accord in March 1979.

Democrat Carter was elected in 1976, but his re-election bid in 1980 was derailed by an energy crisis, the Iranian hostage crisis and the campaigning ability of Ronald Reagan. Nonetheless, he followed in the footsteps of Presidents Taft and Hoover — and John Quincy Adams before them — in remaining a major political force after leaving the White House.

: Photo: Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation

Professional golfer Raymond Floyd gives President Ronald Reagan putting lessons in the Oval Office, June 24, 1986.

Republican Reagan was a Hollywood actor of some repute who was elected governor of California in 1966 and 1970. He won the presidency in 1980 and 1984. His acting skills, which were considerable for a politician, and his ability to sell an idea, led his admirers to dub him, “The Great Communicator.”

: Photo: Courtesy Architect of the Capitol and Library of Congress

Chief Justice William Rehnquist (back to camera) administers the oath of office to George Herbert Walker Bush on the west front of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 20, 1989. First lady Barbara Bush is holding the Bible, and Vice President Dan Quayle stands just behind her.

Republican Bush, Reagan’s vice president for two terms, was elected in 1988 but defeated for re-election in 1992.

: Photo: White House

President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton dance at the inaugural ball, Jan. 20, 1993.

Democrat Clinton was elected in 1992 and 1996, but impeached by the House of Representatives in 1998 over his testimony regarding a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Senate acquitted Clinton, and he completed his term in office, only the second president in U.S. history to be impeached.

: Photo: White House

President George W. Bush stands on the ashes of the destroyed World Trade Center towers, Sept. 14, 2001.

Republican Bush was elected in narrow, disputed contests in both 2000 and 2004. Bush is the son of George H.W. Bush. Presidents William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison were related, as were Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But not since John Adams and John Quincy Adams, near the dawn of the republic, had a father and son both occupied the highest office in the land.

Bush is slated to complete his second term Jan. 20. With President Clinton before him, it will be the first time since 1825 that two consecutive presidents (James Madison and James Monroe) have served two complete terms in office.

Continue reading " Gallery: A Century of Presidents "

1952: Television makes its first foray into predicting a presidential election based on computer analysis of early returns. The Univac computer makes an incredibly accurate projection that the network doesn’t think credible.

The Univac, or Universal Automatic Computer, was the next-gen version of the pioneering Eniac built by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1940s. Remington Rand bought the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. in 1950 and sold the first Univac to the U.S. Census Bureau in 1951.

The eight-ton, walk-in computer was the size of a one-car garage and accessed by hinged metal doors. Univacs cost about $1 million apiece, the equivalent of more than $8 million in today’s money. The computer had thousands of vacuum tubes, which processed a then-astounding 10,000 operations per second (compared to 5 billion per second for today’s superfast chips).

Remington Rand (now Unisys) approached CBS News in the summer of 1952 with the idea of using Univac to project the election returns. News chief Sig Mickelson and anchor Walter Cronkite were skeptical, but thought it might speed up the analysis somewhat and at least be entertaining to use an “electronic brain.”

Eckert and John Mauchly enlisted their former Penn colleague, mathematician Max Woodbury, to assist. Mauchly and Woodbury gathered data and wrote a program that would compare the 1952 returns to previous elections and figure which way the wind was blowing. The duo worked at Mauchly’s home because he’d been blacklisted as pro-Communist and wasn’t allowed to work at the company anymore.

The Univac in Philadelphia was connected to a teletype machine at the CBS studios in New York City. As the first precincts reported on election night, technicians used Unityper machines to encode the data onto paper tape to feed into Univac.

Pre-election polls had predicted anything from a Democratic landslide to a tight race with the Demo candidate, Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, slightly ahead of the Republican, five-star Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in World War II.

So it was a surprise at 8:30 p.m. Eastern time when Univac predicted Eisenhower would pile up 438 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 93. The odds of Eisenhower garnering at least 266 electoral votes — the minimum needed to win — were 100-1.

In New York, news boss Mickelson scoffed at putting the improbable prediction on air. In Philadelphia, Woodbury added new data to the mix. At 9 p.m. correspondent Charles Collingwood announced to the audience that Univac was predicting 8-7 odds for an Eisenhower win.

But wait! Back in Philly, Woodbury discovered that he’d mistakenly added a zero to Stevenson’s totals from New York state. When he entered the correct data and ran it through Univac, he got the same prediction as before: Ike 438, Adlai 93, again with 100-1 chances of an Eisenhower victory.

As the evening wore on, an Eisenhower landslide gathered momentum. The final vote was 442 to 89. Univac was less than 1 percent off.

Late at night, Collingwood made an embarrassing confession to millions of viewers: Univac had made an accurate prediction hours before, but CBS hadn’t aired it.

The public was now sold on this computer stuff. By the 1956 presidential election, all three networks (yes, there were just three) were using computer analysis of the results. It was here to stay.

Source: CNN, USA Today

Continue reading " Nov. 4, 1952: Univac Gets Election Right, But CBS Balks "