In Mexico, institutional power is most heavily vested in the President and the federal agencies. According to Article 27 of the Constitution, the President is granted the power to regulate the extraction and use of the nation’s waters, to establish areas where water cannot be extracted and, through his designated agents, establish rules for issuance […]

The installed base of solar PV reached 9,151 MW by the end of 2009 and the final figure for 2010 is expected to be 11,520 MW. We now note the development and potential development of a number of large scale installations, the most significant of which are the 54 MW project in Strasskirchen and 53 […]

From total regulation in 1970 the market has evolved into partial deregulation, with varying degrees of market opening at the different stages of the industrial process. This has happened in 3 stages; wellhead deregulation, pipeline reform and finally unbundling gas services. At the retail level, reforms and restructuring have occurred on a piecemeal basis. For […]

Probable reserves are those unproved reserves which analysis of geological and engineering data suggests are more likely than not to be recoverable. In this context, when probabilistic methods are used, there should be at least a 50% probability that the quantities actually recovered will equal or exceed the sum of estimated proved plus probable reserves. […]

After 6 years of marginal growth, the Danish wind industry experienced strong growth in 2009 with 294 MW of new installed capacity. The bulk of this, 209 MW, was new offshore capacity, resulting in a total installed capacity of 3,410 MW at year end. In 2009, the share of total energy production in Denmark for […]

In contrast to the US, most European countries have adopted feed-in tariffs. While RPS policies typically seek to create electricity price competition, feed-in tariffs require utilities to purchase power from renewable energy generators at a fixed price. These fixed prices are structured either in the form of long-term payments based on generation cost (as in […]

Over 90% of the world’s water supply is under public control, mostly municipal or provincial in ownership. Historically, water and sanitation services were developed by both the public and private sectors. In the last century however, there was a tendency for governments to take over these services, for social and financial reasons. The clock is […]

Power supply shortages are nothing new, and regular occur following extreme weather incidents affecting infrastructure, unexpected increases in power demand such as demand for air conditioning on a very hot summers day and failure of generators, transformers etc. As a result of a lack of power supply following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, […]

In Austria, the assets are owned by the municipalities and regional governments, and operations are either conducted directly or by management companies. In Belgium, 6 large provincial inter-municipally owned water companies’ supply 90% of the water; municipalities and communes own small companies. Water management is mostly public, but waste is sub-contracted. The arrangements differ in […]

Biomass is a renewable source of energy and its use does not contribute to global warming. In fact, it can reduce the atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide as it acts as a sink, and soil carbon can also increase. Of all the forms of renewable energy, only hydropower and wind produce similar amounts of electricity […]