China’s green skyscraper

updated version: China’s green skyscraper: The Pearl River Tower
China tries to greenwash its image of being the major polluter on the planet. Eco-architecture is part of that effort. Combined with China’s fondness for mammoth projects, a new flagship project is born: The Pearl River Tower will probably be one of the most environmentally friendly buildings in [...]

WTO talks collapse is adverse for all…

check out an updated version on my new blog: http://www.whatmattersweblog.com/global-economy/
The latest attempt to liberalize international trade failed. That’s pretty bad news for business people, blue and white collar workers and farmers in industrialized as well as developing nations. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha Round negotiations which were started seven years ago were aimed at making global [...]

Air batteries could lead to the breakthrough of electric cars

Toyota has again proven to be the technology and innovation leader among car makers. The company’s research department in Japan announced a car battery that relies on pure air for generating electricity. With great foresight, Toyota established an own department for battery development as the company saw the point that in the future, the batteries [...]

Emirates welcomes its first A380 superjumbo

Emirates Airline, the largest airline in the Middle East, has become a major global carrier. It’s been an extremely profitable airline since its inception with only one year without a profit. The overall performance of the airline is astonishing. It sets the trend in many respects – on board the airline’s A380s, first class passengers [...]

Gasoline prices in the U.S. have recently hit record levels, but there are many countries where drivers are paying much more

According to the Energy Information Administration, the average U.S. retail gasoline price was $4.064 last week. This is especially painful as gasoline prices have almost doubled since January 2007:
Chart from the EIA:

Despite the recent price hike, gasoline prices in the U.S. are much lower than in most European countries where drivers in some cities have to pay three [...]

First German offshore wind farm shows the huge potential of electric cars in terms of efficiency and stability of the power grid

The building work for Germany’s first offshore wind power park will start next week. The wind farm called Alpha Ventus is a joint venture of the utilities E.ON, Vattenfall Europe and EWE and will cost about €180 million. The German government will contribute€50 million to the research project that should provide insights so that numerous [...]

India’s Tata Motors and the Malaysian national carmaker Proton to launch electric cars soon

Even though people around the world are breathing a sigh of relief after the oil price fell below $125 per barrel for the first time in months, oil prices are still substantially higher than last year and in the medium term, we cannot expect oil prices down again where they once were. Drivers in the U.S. and [...]

China to raise taxes on large cars

China makes a lot of effort to present itself in the best light ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Last week, Beijing introduced a new enforcement that should take half of Beijing’s cars off the road for the time of the Games in order to reduce air pollution and traffic congestion on the [...]

Preparing the introduction of the cars of the future

The electrification of car traffic is inevitable and essential to maintain our mobility, address climate change, reduce pollution and reduce our reliance on fossil fuel imports. That’s the only way to guarantee secure and affordable energy in the future.
Slowly, the upcoming transition becomes obvious to the people. Policymakers, automakers, battery manufacturers and utility companies are [...]

China, India and other countries subsidizing gasoline to keep domestic prices down are forced to embrace electric cars

updated version: Auto Industry in Transition II
Take a look at the graph…. Today, crude oil costs about $131 per barrel and it was already close to $150 per barrel early this month. Ten years ago, the average price for crude oil was about $12 per barrel. There’s much talk of a bubble in the oil [...]