Got prices for that?

The answer will probably be to burn more coal, ruin the scottish countryside with windmills and to import surplus energy from France and Germany - like the Italians are doing.

But there's one thing I really don't get. Why aren't the southern Europeans (Spain, Italy and Greece) going all out on solar power? Why not subsidize it big time, like the Germans are doing? Why does this foggy old country think they need to show the rest of the world what to put on the roofs of the barns and houses?

One could, of course, organize this big time:
http://www.trecers.net

Rail sounds great, BUT it needs an enormous amount of infrastructure. It's great for the larger population centers (like here in Munich) and is continuing to be expanded. There's only one enormous problem with rail. It's not very flexible.

A car can travel from house to house (point to point - ppt in IT terms). A car can use almost any width of road. A car can drive on the sideburn or even in the grass on the side of the road, if an accident has blocked the intersection in front of you. Or turn around and find a different route. A car can travel on poor and non-paved roads. Only a horse beats the automobile (whether sedan, small truck, van, SUV or whatever) in flexibility! And a car can carry one to many passengers with or without luggage.

A train is not point to point and can only be used in combination with other means. Trains are great! But limitted.

When thinking about alternatives to a car, we have to replace the solutions that the car has offered us over the last century. Remember, the car more or less replaced the train in many (especially the less densly populated) countries.

Whether with internal combustion or electric or whatever really doesn't matter. Think PPT to come up with solutions! By the way, I think cars and trucks will definitely rely at least in part on cars and trucks - even if they don't look like the ones populating the roads today.

Cheers, Dom

By that measure, Spain is much worse. Tourism is the biggest industry (~50M visitors a year), mainly Britons and Germans in, yes, cheap flights.

There is a lot of investment going on on renewable energy (Spaniards think that windmills are cool, ¿why are the British so squeaky about them?). There is even a law mandating thermal solar on every new building, and electric companies buy any excess photo voltaic electricity generated by homes at five times the normal rate.

Greece isn't as poor as some of the official numbers say, as it is just about the only economy in the EU that is not yet fully controlled by the surveillance state one sees elsewhere. hence, lots of off-books economic activity still takes place there. In addition, greece has very recently discovered the addictive narcotic power of modern consumerism, and they
have gone off the deep end in a way more extreme and more
damaging than i've seen in most any other country. Twenty years ago you saw nothing which wasn't fully paid for, whereas now greeks are almost as in debt with ridiculous consumer
goods as americans are. it's been several years that the
country as a whole has been financing its excessive and
absurd hyperconsumer culture on credit. energy consumption
in greece, though, is only a tiny share of the import bill.
probably more is spent on importing fashionable shoes
or mobile phones.. and another feature.. armaments. greece is a small country with very populous agressive neighbors
with a history of territorial expansionism. The geopolitical
breakdown of the eastern mediterranean being what it is,
even though greece is an EU and a NATO country, it is often
the case that the USA is more accomodating to turkey and
greece is on its own for matters of defense. So, a great
deal of greece's import bill is also expensive western weaponry, and the greeks have to pay for it in cash, to
keep up with aforementioned aggressive neighboring states
who have huge loads of us military assistance.

It is basically a not-very-sophisticated tax-dodge.

Microsoft can "move" its profits wherever it wishes and Ireland has extremely low corporate tax rates. This means also that a lot of Ireland's export and import figures are bunkum.

Software is imported to Ireland at a low price and exported at a much higher price. You can guess for yourselves how much "value" has been added by Ireland in the interim. :=)

Obviously, all of that can go into reverse pretty quickly and the "celtic tiger" can turn into a rather wet pussy cat.

Thanks Chris, for sorting out table.

Of course Portugal, Greece and to a lesser extent Spain, are recipients of much income from foreign tourism. Much of this is low-cost tourism which could well suffer badly in an economic downturn, combined with peak oil starting to bite. A friend of mine who went to university in UK and has lived and worked (often as a sustainability consultant to the EU) in Portugal for nearly 20 years, recently said to me that "$100 oil would kill Portugal" even while expecting effects of such a price to be minor in Britain.

In Portugal at least, public transport is very poor, most people either stay put or drive. They have a rapidly expanding motorway network, especially in the southern half of the country. Rural areas have very scattered populations which make driving necessary to get anywhere. This applies to Ireland also, but they have the advantage of wealth and a (currently) successful economy. Another colleague in Portugal said of global warming predictions, that they would "roast", with southern areas threatened with desertification.

"Petrodollars have to go somewhere, now don't they?!"

PeakPlus,
Exactly right. This is Europe's strongest suit by the way. and those who know me or have read my prior posts know that I am not one to fawn over the EU's contributions to the world, but the Euro nations are simply the best in the world at high value added products, no way around it. Everythng from trucks to autos to high class furniture and artwork, electronics and upmarket food and fashion, they are the best. And make no mistake, the petro money (we should say, because as the world changes, it may be dollars, it may be yen, it may be Euros, it may be rubles, etc) does go for a great deal of high value added product. When your on the roll the OPEC countries have been on, you can afford the best. For the Americans, this shows in sales of our construction equipment and large Diesel and turbine engines. Caterpiller, John Deere, Cummins, can compete head on with anybody, and it shows in their sales and stock price. I recently did a comparison on TOD studying the stock price return to shareolders of fossil fuel consuming companies such as John Deere, Cummins, Caterpiller, etc, with oil producing companies such Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, etc.

Care to guess who which has returned more money to shareholders after the giant runup in crude oil and natural gas prices?

The fossil fuel consuming equipment makers won hands down. Despite the myth, there has NOT been a great return to the investors who bet on oil and natural gas. If they will actually look at the whole market, the S&P 500 and many other sectors have matched or beat most oil and gas companies. Sorry to have to tell folks that there simply has been no great run up in comparison to the rest of the economy. Oil at $65 to $70 a barrel is simply assuming it's correct price in relation to the real world economy.

Another point we should mention is that OPEC nations are setting themselves up to compete in more value added areas with the money they get from oil and gas, by moving into the petrochemical areas. This is a brilliant move on their part, an opportunity for European, Japanese and U.S.equipment manufacturers and a great opportunity for Western contractors. The Petro currency is right now driving the world economy even more so than the Chinese or Indian growth bubbles. The Chinese bubble is showing signs of getting overinflated, as we have seen recently. If it pops, the OPEC growth in all areas may be the only thing that keeps the world economy away from a severe contraction. Unless....you assume a rapid leveling and then decline of OPEC oil production soon (ala the North Sea)
Now....no one around here would assume such a thing.....would they? ;-)

The one last interesting thing: if the opposite occured, and the price of oil dropped to say $25 to $30 per barrel, it would create a contraction in the OPEC countries, and leave OPEC buyers of Western high value added goods and chemical and other technology starved for cash and canceling projects.
Get this, a sudden large drop in oil and nat gas prices could actually slow the world economy! Folks the American SUV gas hogs and suburbanites hate to admit it, but it's true....$60 plus dollars a barrel is actually the sweet spot, and anything up to $100 will do little or no harm to the world economy, as long as supply is available (no actual shortages), and may actually do the world some good (conservation, reduced greenhouse gases, greater financng of alternatives, etc....

Roger Conner Jr
Remember we are only one cubic mile from freedom

CERA when they talk to their paying customers, CFR, CIA, the list goes on,