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Apple has long maintained that its data center in Oregon will be 100 percent powered by clean energy, following in the footsteps of its ground-breaking data center in Maiden, North Carolina. And now there’s some news about how Apple it will do it: according to Oregon Public Broadcasting, Apple is buying up additional land to build a solar farm near the data center in Prineville, Oregon and could sell the power from the solar project back to the local utility.
Apple used this method for its two 20 MW solar farms in North Carolina, and will also likely do this for its 137-acre solar farm in Reno, Nevada. The strategy to directly work with solar panel provider and project developer SunPower to build a solar system that is owned by Apple is unusual in the Internet industry, particularly at the scale that Apple is doing it.
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Ah, Amish country. Land of fresh air, horse-drawn buggies, artisans, traditional crafts, and…fracking? Oil and gas companies are flooding Amish country in an attempt to find more petroleum sources, and they’re exploiting the Amish community in the process with abusive business practices. Now, the sight of oil and gas extraction is becoming familiar across regions traditionally settled by the Amish, and the families that accept oil and gas leases are relocating.
Are the Amish just opportunists taking advantage of great deals for their land? Or is the situation more complicated than that? As is so often the case, the situation in Amish communities appears to be layered with complexity, because fracking introduces a number of elements into communities that some Amish are finding undesirable. As their friends and neighbors sell up, they’re forced to make difficult choices about their land, and some are choosing to join the exodus.
Fracking leases allow oil and gas firms to access the petroleum rights on a property, for varying amounts depending on the deal negotiated. In a clear legal violation, some firms are securing leases for extremely low prices despite prevailing market values, and when victimized families discover they’ve been duped, they can’t even sue — because this would violate their religious values. As the Amish wise up, however, more and more land is being leased at lucrative prices and because relocation is part of the terms, they’re hitching up for other parts.
As fracking encroaches on the land of remaining families, they’re experiencing issues like polluted water, noise and other problems associated with fracking. Meanwhile, they’re losing their community, a critical part of Amish life, as Amish families work, worship, mourn and celebrate together. As people leave and families face a dwindling number of neighbors combined with the disruptions to their traditional way of life caused by fracking, some are up against the wall, and they make the only logical choice: selling their oil and gas rights and joining those who have already left.
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A new type of thermionic generator that turns heat or light into electrical energy has been developed by researchers in Germany and the US. The new design overcomes the "space-charge problem" that has plagued previous attempts at developing practical devices. The device is about four times more efficient than previous generators and the new technology could find use in a range of applications including solar power and the harvesting of waste heat.
Thermionic generators convert heat or light into an electric current by using the temperature difference between two metallic plates that are separated by a vacuum. The "hot" plate is heated either by incident light or thermal conduction and this causes electrons to evaporate from its surface. These electrons then condense on the surface of the cold plate. This creates a charge difference between the two plates, which can drive a usable electric current.
Because they convert heat or light directly into electrical energy, thermionic generators have considerable potential for practical applications. If used in coal-fired power stations, for example, thermionic converters would, in principle, be more efficient than steam turbines. Thermionic generators could also be applied to a variety of lower-temperature applications, such as the collection of solar energy or the recycling of waste heat in car engines.
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The cold air pushing toward America’s heartland is of a duration and magnitude rarely seen since record-keeping began in the 1870s. In Minneapolis, forecasters warned that all-time wind chill records could be broken, with a stunning -65ºF predicted for Monday morning. As the record-setting cold spreads across the US, brace yourself for this conversation: Your friend: “Sure is cold outside, amirite? Minneapolis is as cold as Mars right now. Crazy, huh? So much for that whole global warming thing, eh?” You: “Well…” In fact, despite the trolling of Donald Trump and other climate change deniers, global warming is probably contributing to the record cold, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. The key factor is a feedback mechanism of climate change known as Arctic amplification.
Here’s how to explain the nuts and bolts of it to your under-informed family and friends:
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China's air pollution problem is bad. So bad that it regularly grinds business in the country's most populated urban areas to a halt. But one of the major culprits -- the car -- could also become one of the solutions.
Chinese cities are imposing limits on car sales to reduce congestion and looking to congestion charges to discourage driving in central urban areas. But in Hangzhou, the solution is more cars, more electric cars that is, using an innovative system that combines ideas from popular carshare and bikesharing programs (Hangzhou has an especially popular bikeshare system) and robotic car garages.
In a joint venture between Kandi Technologies Group and Geely Automotive, the companies plan to place 750 robotic car garage towers that dispense 100,000 electric cars, like a vending machine, throughout the city. Like carshares, users can rent a car by the hour ($3.25 in this case). And, like bikeshares, there will be stations throughout the city to drop off the car after a one-way trip. The city has rolled out its first two garages and 18 more are currently under construction.
With China struggling to get people into electric cars, maybe this could be an answer.
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An intense blizzard, appropriately named Hercules, has blanketed the Northeast. Antarctic ice locked in a Russian ship containing a team of scientists—en route, no less, to do climate research.
Record low temperatures have been seen in parts of the United States, and in Winnipeg, Manitoba, temperatures on Dec. 31, 2013 were as cold as temperatures on ... Mars.
So as is their seasonal wont, here come the climate skeptics. Exhibit A:
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Depending on whom you ask, Evgeny Morozov is either the most astute, feared, loathed, or useless writer about digital technology working today. Just 29 years old, from an industrial town in Belarus, he appeared as if out of nowhere in the late aughts, amid the conference-goers and problem solvers working to shape our digital futures, a hostile messenger from a faraway land brashly declaring the age of big ideas and interconnected bliss to be, well, bullshit.
To say that Morozov has gone out of his way to irritate powerful and influential people in the tech world doesn’t quite capture it. Doing so is his primary occupation. In the Morozovian worldview, New York University professor and social-media theorist Clay Shirky is a “consultant-cum-intellectual”; Google’s mission is to “monetize all of the world’s information and make it universally inaccessible and profitable”; and Tim O’Reilly, the Silicon Valley publisher and venture capitalist who coined “Web 2.0,” is an Orwellian “meme hustler” and the main culprit behind “the enduring emptiness of our technology debates.” To millions of viewers, TED talks are inspirational speeches about “ideas worth spreading” in science and technology. To Morozov they are a “sinister” hyping of “ideas no footnotes can support.”
Or try this passage. It’s a takedown of a work of technological triumphalism called Hybrid Reality, but it doubles as a summary of his thinking about the entirety of the tech discourse: “[P]erhaps this is what the Hybrid Age is all about: marketing masquerading as theory, charlatans masquerading as philosophers, a New Age cult masquerading as a university, business masquerading as redemption, slogans masquerading as truths.”
The entire Morozov aesthetic is in this sentence: the venom, the derision, the reverse jujitsu of his opponents’ sanctimony, the bald accusation that all the talk about a new age of human flourishing is nothing but an attempt to vamp the speaker’s consulting business. Tech enthusiasts channel hope. Tech skeptics channel worry. Morozov channels anger, and this can be a very satisfying emotion to anyone unconvinced that everything is getting better.
Leon Wieseltier, who has published some of Morozov’s most acid criticism at The New Republic, compares him to the ferocious jazz musician Charles Mingus, who once responded to an interviewer who accused him of “hollerin’ ” by saying, “I feel like hollerin’.” I asked Morozov if he considers his Twitter feed, which spews a constant stream of invective and absurdist satire, to be performative. This was a bit like asking Mingus if he considers jazz performative. “Absolutely,” he said. “I consider it art.”
At some point, though, the hollerin’ ends, everyone’s feelings are hurt, and it’s time to talk about what we’ve learned.
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An under-the-radar startup is moving ever closer to seeing its long-lasting lithium ion batteries power a growing number of cell phones and tablets. Amprius, which was launched in 2008 as a spin-out company from Stanford University, is already shipping its batteries to a small number of (undisclosed) Asian smartphone makers, and this week is announcing that it’s closed on a round of $30 million to continue commercializing those batteries.
The funding was led by Asian private equity firm SAIF Partners, and included the company’s current investors like Innovation Endeavors — the fund of Google Chairman Eric Schmidt — Kleiner Perkins, VantagePoint Capital Partners, Stanford University, and others. The series C round brings Amprius’ total funds raised to $61 million, making the company one of the more well-funded battery startups out there these days.
So what’s so great about this battery? The claim is that it can last around 25 percent longer between charges than the current lithium ion batteries on the market. That means that cell phone and tablet makers could use the battery to boast that their gadgets can be more mobile and unplugged for longer than their competitors’. As smart phones and tablets connect to faster wireless networks, and users download an increasing amount of power-hungry apps onto devices, extending the battery life of gadgets is becoming a major competitive edge for manufacturers.
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The novel WiFi networks are created using an array of Cisco outdoor wireless access points connected to a fibre-optic backend. The first network to be operational will be the AdelaideFree network. It has been under construction since August by iiNet subsidiary Internode, after it was awarded a $1.5 billion tender from the Government of South Australia. The network uses 200 connection points around the Adelaide CBD to create a continuous WiFi network which iiNet plans to allow iiNet broadband and mobile customers to connect to for free.
It is the connection to capital city networks that iiNet believes will spur residential and business customers to move from larger rivals Telstra and Singtel owned Optus.
In recent years the telecommunications sector has undergone a period of consolidation with larger players M2 Telecommunications and iiNet snapping up smaller companies including Dodo, Commander, iPrimus, Internode, AAPT, Netspace and Adam Internet. The consolidation has slowed for now and the companies will have to rely on organic growth to spur subscriber numbers.
As the nation's number three internet provider, iiNet is aiming to take subscribers from Telstra and Optus in the battle for the mobile data use market. Some analysts have noted that the networks may be make-or-break for iiNet after it failed to acquire the infrastructure assets of AAPT in 2013. If iiNet can find co-investors and successfully get the networks up and running in the next 12 to 24 months it will likely have a profound impact on the mobile data and broadband industries, especially for high-margin business customers.
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When the era of television dawned, the smart money was on the decline of radio.
After all, with all-singing, all-dancing TV beaming images into our front rooms, just why would we need to be entertained by that distant voice emerging from our radio sets?
Yet radio’s very simpliciticy and ease of delivery has proved like a suit of armour.
Be it a voice for the lonely or a free ticket to the world of music for adolescents, radio continues to fulfil a vital role and remains a comfortably affordable platform – a basic set, after all, will set you back just a few pounds.
And while technological breakthroughs mean we can now summon movies, TV and music via broadband in the twinkling of an eye, radio simply surfed in on the back of it.
It is the format which refuses to die; not only maintaining an audience share, but on a local level flourishing once again.
Where perhaps regional TV took its eye off the ball through relentless cutbacks reducing genuine local news coverage, there is a new breed of ultra-local radio stations – community radio – delivering airtime at grassroots level.
Today, there are more than 200 such stations broadcasting in the UK. Not, mind you, that they’re dominating just yet.
In Kent, the leading local radio station is commercial network Heart – which was previously Invicta FM. It may be based in Whitstable, but its local roots are somewhat sparse, with much of its programming syndicated nationwide.
Then there is BBC Radio Kent, which courts a more mature audience and is funded via the licence fee.
And while they split the lion’s share of listeners to local stations in the county, below them are a host of others nibbling at their heels such as KMFM – spawned by the long-established local media company – and financed by selling advertising.
But beneath those are an ever-increasing number of community radio stations operating to clearly defined niche audiences and on a strict not-for-profit basis.
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A new generation is taking power in China. Not the grey graduates of Communist Party committees. But aggressive, entrepreneurial and often colourful internet billionaires. As well as influencing domestic politics, several plan to break out on to the world stage in 2014.
They will be following a trail blazed by Huawei, the telecoms equipment maker. But with products and services that have much less to do with the critical infrastructure and ownership structures more familiar in the West, China’s internet giants are unlikely to hit similar trade and national security barriers.
Leading the charge is Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, an online bazaar that allows a business to sell almost any item to any other business.
On Alibaba you can buy a machine for converting used car tyres into fuel oil, a kilo of “good quality” toad venom extract, or a full-size Sponge Bob bouncy castle. Jeff Bezos wanted Amazon to be “the everything store”, but Ma built it first.
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The National Security Agency scandal exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden has cost American technology companies billions of dollars in lost revenue as governments and companies in its important export markets of Asia refuse to entrust the handling of sensitive data to US companies. An analysis of financial filings from technology giants IBM and Cisco by The Independent on Sunday reveals the two businesses have seen sales slump by more than $1.7bn (£1.03bn) year-on-year in the important Asia-Pacific region since Mr Snowden revealed in June that US companies had been compromised by the NSA's intelligence-gathering in the clandestine Prism programme.
"US companies have seen some of their business put at risk because of the NSA revelations," said James Kelleher of equity research firm Argus Research.
China is high on the list of those countries now shunning US companies. Mr Kelleher said this may be payback for the US government saying it did not trust China-based Huawei to be independent from Chinese military and intelligence agencies. Despite operating in every other major country, Huawei, the world's biggest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment and a privately owned Chinese company, has been prevented from winning major communications contracts in the US.
IBM, one of the world's largest information technology suppliers, saw sales in its Asia-Pacific region drop 15 per cent from mid-August to mid-October, compared with the same period in 2012. That was twice as severe as the decline in "pre-Snowden" quarters.
Revenue declines at Cisco, the San Francisco-based communications manufacturer, were even more pronounced, with sales down 8.75 per cent in the quarter after the Snowden allegations, compared with just 2.84 per cent in the three months before.
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It would be nice to get ahead of the coming energy fight by revealing why there's a fight in the first place. First up, the groups opposing freedom and energy independence by turning logic upside down; choice pegs you as a "freerider:"
Check out the Guardian article here. Second, I had this story in the works just before the Guardian had theirs. From Bloomberg News:
Americans are installing solar panels and lowering their cost for energy. But utility companies are not happy, since they’re still working with the old business model that makes them the monopoly.
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Solar power installations in Massachusetts have increased 80-fold in just six years, outstripping state officials' goals and surprising many.
If you've ever thought solar power was only for the tropics or desserts, think again. In May of this year, Governor Deval Patrick announced that solar installations in Massachusetts - photovoltaic, the electricity-generating panels, not solar hot water - had already reached the goal his administration set for 2017. He then proceeded to raise the goal to 1,600 MW installed by 2020.
Towns, businesses and residents on the Cape and Islands are no small part of the solar surge. Barnstable and Dukes counties are both partner communities in the Department of Energy's Million Solar Roofs. Initiative. Falmouth has more solar installations than any other town in Massachusetts, except Boston. And Wellfleet is in the newest class of Solarize Massachusetts participants.
But nothing is perfect, not even solar power. Here are three things to consider if you're thinking about going solar:
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The Egyptian government announced on Monday that 14 international firms have met the tender specifications for a massive economic development project targeting the Suez Canal region.
Out of 46 applications, 33 consortia were qualified according to the project's specifications, while 14 were picked as among the best applicants. The winner will be declared by mid-2014.
At a press conference on Monday attended by Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi, head of the Suez Canal Authority Mohab Memish, who is tasked with managing the projects, outlined the details of the long-awaited development plans.
The project, which retains many of the features of a planned project under the government of former president Mohamed Morsi, includes the development of four seaports in the three canal-bordering provinces – Suez, Ismailia and Port Said – in addition to a seaport in Al-Arish, the capital of North Sinai governorate.
It will also feature a number of large-scale projects, including a 'Technology Valley' in Ismailia which will host several technology projects along with a new industrial zone west of the Gulf of Suez.
Work will begin on the infrastructure of the project in 2015.
Ever used one of those Burger King soda fountains that lets you create your own drink? It’s actually the brainchild of the Coca-Cola company, and it’s connected to the internet.
They’re known as Freestyle machines. You’ll find more than 2,000 of them inside the world’s Burger Kings, and many other restaurants and movie theaters throughout the United States and the United Kingdom have them as well. They’re all connected to the internet, so that Coca-Cola can track what drinks people are making and how often.
That’s one reason Coca-Cola now owns 16 million unique network identifiers usually reserved for Wi-Fi cards and other networking equipment. This week, many people were surprised to learn that a soda company controls that many network IDs, with the geeks at Slashdot, a popular online hangout for techies, launching an epic discussion about what the company would do with all those addresses. But we already know a bit about Coke’s plans, and as we approach “The Internet of Things,” the fact of the matter is that this sort of network ID grab is par for the course.
Coca-Cola’s network ID stash isn’t that unusual, according to John Matherly, the man behind Shodan, a search engine for The Internet of Things — the ever-growing array of devices that tap into our global network. First off, Coca-Cola has owned these identifiers since at least 2010. And while 16 million may sound like a lot, it’s actually the smallest number of these unique identifiers you can reserve at one time.
Coca-Colla did not respond to a request for an interview about its Internet of Thing ambitions. But in all likelihood, these addresses are already being used in the company’s Freestyle machines as well as the internet-connected vending machines it’s testing in Texas. That said, the decision to secure a block of addresses en masse may hint at even larger online ambitions for the company.
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Approximately three quarters of the hundreds of millions of dollars that go to US climate change denial organisations is from unidentifiable sources, according to new research in the journal Climatic Change.
Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University in the US, set himself the challenge of trying to identify the financial backers who bankrolled more than 100 US organisations that make up what he calls the “climate change counter movement”.
He did so, he reports, because in the US the level of understanding of climate change as a serious and imminent problem remains low, despite urgent pronouncements from national academies and international agencies.
“In response to a survey question in the fall of 2012: Do scientists believe that Earth is getting warmer because of human activity? 43% replied no, and another 12% didn’t know. Only 45% of the U.S. public accurately reported the near-unanimity of the scientific community about anthropogenic climate change. This result reflects a broad misunderstanding of climate science by the general public”, he writes.
One major factor driving this misunderstanding was what he calls a “deliberate and organised effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public’s understanding of climate change.”
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A chilly Arctic summer has left 533,000 more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 29 per cent.
The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013.
Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.
The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific has remained blocked by pack-ice all year. More than 20 yachts that had planned to sail it have been left ice-bound and a cruise ship attempting the route was forced to turn back.
Some eminent scientists now believe the world is heading for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of this century – a process that would expose computer forecasts of imminent catastrophic warming as dangerously misleading.
The disclosure comes 11 months after The Mail on Sunday triggered intense political and scientific debate by revealing that global warming has ‘paused’ since the beginning of 1997 – an event that the computer models used by climate experts failed to predict.
In March, this newspaper further revealed that temperatures are about to drop below the level that the models forecast with ‘90 per cent certainty’.
The pause – which has now been accepted as real by every major climate research centre – is important, because the models’ predictions of ever-increasing global temperatures have made many of the world’s economies divert billions of pounds into ‘green’ measures to counter climate change.
Those predictions now appear gravely flawed.
The continuing furore caused by The Mail on Sunday’s revelations – which will now be amplified by the return of the Arctic ice sheet – has forced the UN’s climate change body to reconsider its position.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was due in October to start publishing its Fifth Assessment Report – a huge three-volume study issued every six or seven years. It will hold a pre-summit in Stockholm later this month.
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In at least four states that have nurtured the nation's energy boom, hundreds of complaints have been made about well-water contamination from oil or gas drilling, and pollution was confirmed in a number of them, according to a review that casts doubt on industry suggestions that such problems rarely happen.
The Associated Press requested data on drilling-related complaints in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Texas and found major differences in how the states report such problems. Texas provided the most detail, while the other states provided only general outlines. And while the confirmed problems represent only a tiny portion of the thousands of oil and gas wells drilled each year in the U.S., the lack of detail in some state reports could help fuel public confusion and mistrust.
The AP found that Pennsylvania received 398 complaints in 2013 alleging that oil or natural gas drilling polluted or otherwise affected private water wells, compared with 499 in 2012. The Pennsylvania complaints can include allegations of short-term diminished water flow, as well as pollution from stray gas or other substances. More than 100 cases of pollution were confirmed over the past five years.
Just hearing the total number of complaints shocked Heather McMicken, an eastern Pennsylvania homeowner who complained about water-well contamination that state officials eventually confirmed.
"Wow, I'm very surprised," said McMicken, recalling that she and her husband never knew how many other people made similar complaints, since the main source of information "was just through the grapevine."
The McMickens were one of three families that eventually reached a $1.6 million settlement with a drilling company. Heather McMicken said the state should be forthcoming with details.
Over the past 10 years, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has led to a boom in oil and natural gas production around the nation. It has reduced imports and led to hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue for companies and landowners, but also created pollution fears.
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Parts of the US and Canada are braced for potentially record-breaking low temperatures as a blast of arctic air blows across North America.
A winter storm has already blanketed areas of Canada and the north-eastern US with up to 2ft (60 cm) of snow.
More than 3,000 flights were cancelled on Monday, on top of thousands grounded over the weekend.
Schools have been closed in several US states and residents urged to stay indoors for their own safety.
The storm and the deep cold have been blamed for 16 deaths in recent days.
In developments across the region:
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The Turner Radio Network (TRN) has issued a report regarding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant stating that it is expected to affect the entire Northern Hemisphere.
According to the report: “Persons residing on the west coast of North America should IMMEDIATELY begin preparing for another possible onslaught of dangerous atmospheric radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster site in Japan.”
TEPCO has confirmed via camera surveillance, that steam has begun to pour from Reactor 3, although they have “not been identified abnormal plant conditions.”
TEPCO is reporting that “radioactive steam has suddenly begun emanating from the previously exploded nuclear reactor building #3 at the Fukuishima disaster site in Japan.”
The corporation is not clear on the details of the sudden change at Reactor 3 because of “lethal radiation levels in that building.”
Summations from experts conclude that this may “be the beginning of a ‘spent fuel pool criticality (melt down)’ involving up to 89 TONS of nuclear fuel burning up into the atmosphere and heading to North America.” Steam has been viewed coming from Reactor 3.
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The government plans to join this year with private companies to develop technologies for exploring for seabed mineral resources using unmanned underwater vehicles and remotely controlled devices.
The government hopes to take advantage of such domestic natural resources as seafloor hydrothermal deposits, which are believed to be abundant in Japanese territorial waters.
Part of the economic growth strategy that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration announced in June last year, the project is expected to be put into practical application in five years.
National research institutions and four private firms, including an oil resources development company, will participate in the project, according to government sources. The institutions belong to four ministries—the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry; the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry; the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry; and the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.
This year, several billion yen will be allocated to the project from the ¥50 billion budget of the government’s strategic innovation creation program, a research and development program undertaken through joint ministerial efforts.
Beneath Japanese coastal waters, a series of discoveries have revealed seafloor hydrothermal deposits and rare earths, reportedly including a high concentration of elements indispensable for the high-tech industry. Securing abundant resources would reduce Japan’s dependence on rare earths imported from China, leading to a more stable supply and helping to keep prices down.
It’s been a rough few months for the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the federal agency that hammers out U.S. trade policy. By year’s end, negotiators were expected to be putting the finishing touches on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an agreement covering Pacific Rim economies such as Australia, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia, while quietly making progress on a brand-new, long-heralded trade pact with the European Union: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
But public awareness of the TPP—a sweeping, secretive deal that critics call “NAFTA on steroids”—quickly evolved into public backlash. That uproar, in turn, helped fuel a mini-rebellion in Congress. Last month, 151 House Democrats signaled their opposition to fast-tracking the deal, stymying any hope that the TPP—or an eventual trade pact with the EU—will pass in the form that negotiators want. Meanwhile ongoing revelations of the United States’ global spying habits have thrown an unexpected wrench into negotiations with Europe. As the European Parliament moves to draft new stricter rules on data protection, the tech industry and its allies in Congress are pressing American negotiators to combat “digital protectionism.”
It was in this delicate context that negotiators met in Washington on December 16 for the third round of TTIP talks.
Much like the TPP, the TTIP isn’t about eliminating traditional trade barriers such as tariffs. U.S. and EU tariffs already average less than 3 percent, some of the lowest in the world. Instead, the buzz phrase that TTIP advocates like to use is “regulatory harmonization.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, for its part, calls for “regulatory coherence” and “regulatory cooperation.” Essentially, it’s all about better matching up U.S. and European regulations on a broad range of matters: financial services, environmental issues, labor relations, car safety, online data protections and even the chemical make-up of cosmetics—though it remains unclear what exactly would be covered in any final agreement.
On the face of it, standardizing regulations isn’t inherently bad. The European Union, after all, has some of the most progressive regulations on the globe. But critics on both sides of the Atlantic are worried the agreement will eventually settle for the lowest common denominator—some kind of nightmarishly corporate-friendly mix of European financial regulations (there’s no Dodd-Frank in the EU) and American regulations on the environment and food safety (the EU bans GMOs, hormone-treated beef and chlorine-washed poultry products).
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“Of the average $4.93 per watt cost of a residential rooftop solar system, over 60 percent of the total is attributable to ‘soft costs,’” according to Reducing Solar PV Soft Cost: Focus on Installation Labor, a joint report from Rocky Mountain Institute and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. “U.S. installers incur median installation costs of $0.49 per watt [but] a composite ‘best of the best’ virtual U.S. installation that draws upon the fastest observed individual installation activities across all U.S. installations would incur installation costs of only $0.29 per watt,” the report concludes.
By comparison, the study reports, the median German installation labor cost is $0.18 per watt.
Researchers used classic time-and-motion study methods to directly observe and document costs incurred by installation labor; permitting, inspection, and interconnection; customer acquisition; financing costs; and installer-integrator margin factors.
According to the report, the biggest cuts in U.S. installation labor costs tend to stem from:
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What is to be done with Europe? As The New York Times wrote just two days ago, there are not enough people in Europe qualified to fill all the technology jobs available. At the same time, Europe is not producing really big platforms to take on the global players. Too much of European technology has been caught up producing client-driven businesses in enterprise. As it is often said, where are the platforms like Google, Facebook and or Twitter in Europe? We can’t recycle stories about Skype forever. There are some amazing companies coming though. But more are needed.
So it is that the European Commission wants European member states to develop ‘a new generation of web services’, and of course, reap the economic benefits from those.
Of course, the Commission is not the magic bullet, or the super hero to save the day. But it wants to try.
There’s no getting around it. For a long time Europeans have looked with envy upon the sheer scale of technology innovation coming out of places like the USA (in software and internet platforms) and Asia (in hardware). The Commission, quite rightly, wants to help do something about this.
So back in May 2013 it introduce a set of ’6 actions’ by the EC VP for Industry & Entrepreneurship, Antonio Tajani as part of its grandly titled “Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan”. The little unit inside the Commission to deliver this is one year old, which, in EU Commission terms, is a teeny tiny baby.
So the question is, can they do it, and what the hell is their action plan?
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