Peak gas
Worldwide, peak gas is not yet an issue; but the Netherlands have now crossed The Hill. Europe’s largest gas field, discovered some 50 years ago, has been depleted for two thirds. The Dutch will not be able to deplete the remaining third at the same speed, as earthquakes and soil subsidence are becoming a heavy
Thistle biorefinery to reinforce Sardinian economy
If plans work out as projected, Sardinia’s new Matrìca plant in Porto Torres might show the way into a new industrial future for the whole of Europe. The Matrìca project, sized € 500 million, will turn the site of an old petrochemical plant into a modern biorefinery on the basis of a very unpretentious feedstock:
Green chemistry, rather than green energy
Most people, when talking about a sustainable future for Europe, think in terms of energy supply. That is one-sided. It is true: the energy conflict still deepens, as the incumbent powers start to be challenged just recently, forty years after the first oil crisis. But on the other hand: let us not be blinded by
Innovation: the state bears the risk, companies reap the benefits
‘Socialise the risks and privatise the gains’ has been the reigning economic principle in the financial world in the past few years. Now such a mechanism also appears to be functioning in the much less murky innovation process. And here too, at the expense of the tax payer. And in the end, at the expense
Almost until the very end
Why on earth do we human beings have so much difficulty changing our thoughts – and our actions? For instance, change from a fossil economy to a green economy, from an inflexible hierarchical command society to a small-scale grass roots society. The answer: because our brains have got used to hierarchical systems. Organisation, we call
In the middle of the ‘mother of all transitions’
We are right in the middle of the most radical transition that our society can go through: that of a centralistic, fossil-fuelled society to a much more decentralised society mainly on the basis of local resources. Different observers, dependent on their views, would call this transition by different names like circular economy, biobased society, sustainable
