Tag Archives: Netherlands

European utilities scared of renewable energy

Another reason

Southern Company needs to get on with a smart grid,
using its

biggest private R&D outfit in the U.S.
Now that

solar has reached grid parity with everything
including

natural gas
(and years since

it passed nuclear), if the utilities
don’t get out in front, they’re going to be left behind.

Derek Mead wrote for Motherboard yesterday,

European Utilities Say They Can’t Make Money Because There’s Too Much Renewable Energy,



Renewable energy has been on a tear the past few years, with growth in many countries spurred by subsidies for
wind and solar power. Now the heads of 10 European utility companies
say EU subsidies should end, because they've got more renewable
energy than they know what to do with.

The 10 CEOs in question, who refer to themselves as the Magritte
group because they first met in an art gallery, represent companies
that control about half the power capacity of Europe. The group gave
a press conference today—

Reuters says that 10 such executives
giving a joint public statement is “unprecedented”—to hammer
home a message they’ve been trumpeting ahead of an EU energy summit
in 2014: There’s too much energy capacity, which has driven prices
down so far that they can’t make any money.



As long as there are nukes or coal plants, there’s too much capacity.
European utilities need to get on with things like Continue reading →

Dutch closing prisons for lack of prisoners

Imagine that!

Huffpost UK wrote 26 June 2013,



Netherlands Close Eight Prisons Due To Lack Of Criminals,

As prison populations surge in the UK, with overcrowded cells and
repeat offenders, the opposite in happening in the Netherlands.

The country is actually to close eight prisons because of a lack of
criminals, the Dutch justice ministry has announced.

Declining crime rates in the Netherlands mean that although the
country has the capacity for 14,000 prisoners, there are only 12,000
detainees, reported the nrc.nl.

The decrease is expected to continue, the ministry said, with Deputy
justice minister Nebahat Albayrak saying that natural redundancy and
other measures should counter any forced lay-offs.


112 prisoners per 100,000 people in the Netherlands,
vs. 715 in the U.S.
Somebody remind me, what do we get in the U.S. for spending
all that extra money locking people up?

-jsq