When Pigs Can Fly! Some speeches you just have to love for their absurdist qualities.  What could have possibly been a mundane speech by an Assistant Secretary of Energy was turned into a 45 minute exercise in surrealism in front of an audience of 600 venture capitalists from Silicon Valley.  The Asst. Secretary went a long way towards livening up a post lunch doldrum in the schedule with his colorful description of the current state of the CleanTechnology industry.   Many listeners found it bizarre and amusing, others just walked out in bewilderment. Overall it did not make the second in command of a major government department who seemed to believe he was speaking to an audience of the converted, look very good.  After the first five minutes comments at our table ranged from 'this man is just smart enough to be dangerous' to 'whichever Administration takes office next should sack him immediately.'  There was a complete lack of stated policy in the the odd jumble of words, concepts and metaphors that came out.   As source material for a Terry Gilliam  movie it could not have been better.   For a roomful of relatively hard bitten Silicon Valley VC's, not the right audience for an evolved dark comedy play leaking out of the energy departments collective unconscious.
Something Smells FunnyAfter an introduction which eulogised  Lee Raymond, former Chairman of Exxon as 'a great apostle of the climate change discussion'  the Asst. Secretary  went on to explain that 'demand for oil will continue to outstrip supply'   leading to as the Dallas Fed Chairman had said the previous day to 'oil prices in excess of $300 a barrel by 2015.'    Scary stuff which was then described as 'a great opportunity for everyone in this room.'  That certainly could be construed as true, in a way.  But a  description of Bush administration policy which started out with the line 'when is a lame duck not a lame duck' and then jumped to  a reference that the National Governors Association had declared 'Red, White & Blue' the new Green began to provoke odd looks from the attendees.  The Asst. Secretary then made the jump to China where he spoke about his first trip to the Shenzhen special economic zone when it 'was a dirty little place' and his recent visit when it 'had blossomed into a dirty big place, showing the world that Chinese Capitalism is a new model for the future.'
Brave New ModelThis started to be a bit much, one of my neighbors leaned over and eloquently commented 'he either wields the subtle knife of caustic wit or suffers from a terrifyingly large disconnect from observable reality.'  Climate changed then metastasized 'into the war on terror that was before the war on terror' creating the need for 'Apollo like mandates to get back to the moon of energy.'  'We can,' as the Secretary then said, 'Drive this Science all the way back to Kansas because this is the time of good ideas whose time has come.''Disconnect?'  Another gentleman from San Jose commented.  'I would say schizophrenia is a better description.'  'Naw' someone else piped up, 'this is the Wizard of Oz meets  K-Street speech, wait'll he pulls a white rabbit out of his ass thats the finale.'Continuing on the Secretary  invoked the phrase 'phasing out Edison by getting rid of the light bulb and coming up with a new zero emission strategy for home appliances.'  I thought cars emitted more CO2 than dishwashers but they were never mentioned.  We were told that Bali had also 'nailed down the post 2012 world.'  I couldn't help wondering which world this guy was talking about as he looked forward to the next annual 'Big Bang Conference' in Copenhagen.   A place where in the US's  view 'Every Country gets to decide its own problem.'   One translation of that could be 'If we don't like it we won't do it' which was pretty much the pre Bali state of Kyoto.  The Energy Under Secretary also proposed a 'US sponsored CleanTech Fund to accelerate the commercialization of CleanTechnology.'  In theory this sounds good but no numbers were mentioned (e.g. Singapore's Cleantech development fund is allocating $14 Billion over 2 years to for education, incubators, matching funds and satellite university campuses) or details given.  
Cushy Job if You Can Get itWhat was interesting came next, and reveals much about this administration's view of capitalism: 'If you want to do well in the Government's new Manhattan-like program for Cleantech innovation you had better participate in ESCOPs.'  This was emphasized 3 times  to a crowd that probably got it the first time.   An ESCOP is an 'Energy Saving Contract Procurement'  it seems to be descended from a predecessor instrument called an ESCO.  It is bureaucrat-ese for being 'on board with the government' for 'future contracts' and apparently has something to do with being in the right place to take advantage of the huge windfalls that will be associated with the auction of carbon offsets after one of the pending pieces of cap & trade legislation passes and for letting of new 'energy efficient contracts' across the board.  Definitely something to look out for if you are at the governments feeding trough or have just been bailed out from a subprime debacle.  For closing I agree with the Asst. Secretary that we 'have never been up a mountain this big before'   and that the future is definitely too important ' to leave to bumper sticker diplomacy' and  'if we continue on this path we will lay a big fat federal goose egg.' 
A Bleak ViewAbout this time the remaining two people at our table decided it was time to leave, none of us could take it any longer. 'We've gone from 'When is a lame duck not a lame duck,' to big fat Federal goose eggs.' said one, the other said 'It all sounds like Tofurkey to me and time to get out of here.'  That pretty much sums up the reaction of the entrepreneurs and investors who are expected to create a new 'CleanTech' economy to the current U.S. Administration's energy policy Except for one last comment overheard in the lobby: 'not much we can use coming out of Washington these days is there.' Believe it or not? This could be the state of an energy policy somewhere in our World today!

Have you ever checked how insulated your house is? Well maybe you should! In an attempt for a more ambitious energy program German Federal Minister of Environment
Sigmar Gabriel suggested enforcing a new law that allows renters a rent reduction if their apartment does not hold up to environmental standards.

"Don't waste your money. Dress your house warmly", the ad of the Federal Ministry of Environment says“We waste too much energy. We got to change that”, Mr. Gabriel said to Braunschweiger Zeitung. According to the minister renters should be able to refuse handing over their money if landlords are unwilling to renew heating installation or replace single glazing.
The German Magazine Wirtschaftswoche said there are about 2,4 million households that are in need of modernization. Mr. Gabriel’s suggestions will be up for debate in late August when the German government appoints a new climate protection program.
Oh, and just because Germany has this new idea, does not mean the rest are exempt. Chancellor Merkel set the agenda for other politicians by announcing to reduce the energy consumption of Germany by 20 percent until 2020. And since its election time in the United States and the United Kingdom, environmental questions will come to the fore.

In the US after all the House of Representatives has past a bill for the advancement of environmentally friendly forms of energy. Until 2015, energy groups will have to obtain 15 percent of their energy from wind or solar or other renewable energy sources. Proponents of this new law say its arrangements will lower CO2 emissions by about 500 million tonnes per year. The law will also decrease the subsidies for the oil industry by 16 billion dollars in order to invest this money into renewable energy research. President Bush is not very fond of the project and has announced his resistance.

Find more in the Financial Times Deutschland

Once many small rivers in the northeastern United States had pocket hydropower stations that supplied clean, easy to tap hydroelectric power to municipalities and local industries. These were largely phased out and supplanted by large dams and by monolithic power authorities in the 1950's & 60's.Most of these stations are no more but a few small facilities have been restored and there is great interest putting the machinery back in some of the old stone power-plant buildings and spillways.

Photo by Kit Latham: Housatonic River, MassachusettsNew York City on the other hand is trying out a tidal electric installation on the bottom of a river. Verdant Power, a developer of free-flow turbine systems recently began installing its new kinetic hydropower plant in New York City's East River. The East River is a tidal estuary that runs right by Manhattan through the middle of New York City. Tides flow through the river which connects New York harbor with Long Island Sound and can sometimes run in excess of 8 knots, fast enough to roll good sized boulders along the bottom of the river according to some coast guard personnel. The Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy Project (RITE) seeks to harness the potential kinetic energy of the river's motion by installing free-flow hydopower turbines on the riverbed. These turbines resemble smaller versions of wind turbines often seen on land using the flow of water instead of air to generate energy potential.

The first two of the six turbines were deployed on December 11th and 12th of 2006, the remaining four turbines will be installed in the first part of April for an 18 months test. One of the initial turbines has a dynamometer to measure load factors and the other turbine contains a power generation system.According to Trey Taylor at Verdant Technologies the turbines are being put through their operational paces in their first 5 weeks with following results:• 40 days of continuous operation (about 155 tides)
• 100% turbine availability during that period.
• reached or exceeded every performance specification
• world's first grid-connected power without any switching or power-quality problems
• generated power to the grid 77% of the time
• performed equally well in both tide directions, another first
• average power output during tidal generation periods of 14.5 kW
• average energy production of 270 kWh/day = 8.1MWh/month = 97 MWh/yr
• generated a total of over 10 MWh

This underwater turbine farm is completely submerged but essentially located directly in front of the United Nations Building, not a bad location for the first test of its kind in the United States.