Coal energy isn't quite dead yet

We talk about Big oil and how we are suffocating with the O&G industry... seems that coal has been doing quite good since Germinal and is not showing a down pacing at all. See for yourself:

This infografics is taken from MIT Technology Review. I do not have any credit on it.

(Lost) energies

Lately there has been quite a lot of protests in Brazil against a lot of things, amongst them is better quality of (health) services and cheaper bus fares... but not only. End of corruption in the government was part but it was felt that there a general anger in the brazilian citizen seeing its own energy been wasted in useless things.
Take that colleague of mine working in the HR department: she is a graduating student in administration and works in my building. I'll describe her day as best as I can:
- 4h30: wake up for the working day
- 5h30: takes the bus to work
- 7h00: starts her working day
- 17h30: end of working day
- 19h00: starts university
- 22h00: ends university
- 23h30: arrives home (average 30min before or after)
If you add the dinner she gies to bed (at best) at 00h30 meaning she sleeps 4h max a night... all week.
That is not a particular example but a general trend in Brazil due to bad organization coupled with bad traffic and lack of bus routes. She could start her working day later but cant because the most direct route for her is that early and that late. We finish the working day at 4pm but she cannot go home because she would not have time to go back to university.
To conclude I would say she is spending a huge amount of energy to go through the day when that coyld be avoided by better city organization... one of Brazil's biggest issue and definitely one of brazilian's underlying protests

European youth unemployment: nowhere near 25 per cent

This article is straight from FT.com, but I am not sure whether or not it will stay at the same link, pass into the subscriber zone or whatever, therefore I decided to import it to my blog. I do not have any credits in this one, I just found it so relevant! You can find it in this link, it has links to other related articles too.

Youth unemployment is a hot topic at the moment. Both the OECD and the UN have warned that the spiralling rates across many advanced economies will have severe consequences. Nearly a quarter of European under-25s are now unemployed, the latest reported figures show. And concerns reached a new pitch last week when it was revealed that Italian youth unemployment had topped 40 per cent. But are these figures really all they are cracked up to be? My colleague James Mackintosh was spot-on when he Tweeted last week that youth unemployment figures are meaningless without understanding what proportion of a country’s young people are economically active. This vital bit of information leads to quite a different picture on youth unemployment across Europe. The point was also well-made last year by Alan Beattie – but it’s worth re-visiting. Here are the raw unemployment rates, as you might see reported in some places:

 They look pretty bad, right? Over 50 per cent in Greece and Spain, 40 per cent in Italy and Portugal. But wait a minute. Unemployment figures only reflect the proportion of the population who are economically active – i.e looking for a job, but who are unable to find one. Among young people in particular, inactivity rates can be expected to be very high – many are in either education or training. What do the figures look like if we take into account the economically inactive population? Far less bad, actually, even with the caveat that some individuals will go into training or educations because of the lack of jobs.

 So, are nearly a quarter of European young people unemployed? No. Fewer than 10 per cent are.

All credits go to Kate Allen.

Worlwide electricity consuption

There is this link to a map that Shell and National Geographics are showing that is quite nice.

For a little while now Shell is on a teasing mission with the public in general and the technical public. Could it be to have them being prefferred by public opinion or taking some interesting ideas from the mass and patent it I do not know yet. Nevertheless that source of information is quite interesting. Confer the website!