Found a great link to a webcast about conditioning your infrastructure for Cloud computing, and maximizing energy efficiency in your business.
Check this out:

https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=138795&sessionid=1&key=E3466C706F0EEF1B2CF0299E4A6AC383&partnerref=IBM01&sourcepage=register

Looks like the webcast is scheduled for April 28. It's probably also available on demand for months afterwards, too.

Saurabh

I agree with my fellow commenters. These companies shouldn't be focused on how the market will affect their costs. Global competition creates innovation and everyone benefits. However we can't lose sight of the bigger picture: as more wind farms are produced, coal/oil power plants need to be phased out or we will never get control of this pollution problem.
-Thomas Payne

I am particularly pleased to learn of wind power companies being successful in India and in China. With both of the countries increasing appetite for coal, wind energy is necessary to help offset the amount of pollution caused from the coal plants. I truly believe that wind energy, along with solar energy, is our power source of the future. If these countries were to start selling globally would be great. Competition makes for better innovations being made more efficiently; in this case greater energy producing wind turbines at a cheaper price. If these turbines were being sold at competitive prices all around the globe, countries would no doubt greatly increase their wind power capacity.

The efficacy of international institutions is well established. Organizations such as NATO and the United Nations provide good examples of successful cooperation among nations, while simultaneously respecting the political sovereignty of all nations involved. International cooperation of an economic nature can thrive under certain constraints as well. Environmentally driven financing among nations may result in unexpected streams of money not normally provided by otherwise normal market forces. Economists may need to adjust their modeling to account for non-market transnational interests.

1. Gansu the next area for wind siting.

I appreciate all these thoughts and ideas, what are great way to intellectually move forward!

It is true that China’s energy efficiency has improved in recent years. China has embarked on programmes like ‘Top 1000 Enterprises’ in 2006, to improve energy efficiency in China’s largest enterprises and eliminating small, inefficient power plants, including ‘250 million tonnes in outdated cement capacity by 2010’ (Lewis, 2007). China's cement industry, which consumes about 5% of all commercial energy, is also a good example of efficiency gains.

However such action to adjust the country’s industrial structure is not entirely plausible in terms of increasing its energy efficiency. This is because it means that China is focusing on replacing small/inefficient to new large/efficient power plants that emit larger GHGs. In fact, China is building a new coal-fired power station every ten days! The magnitude of that imbalance is staggering and the reason for this is coal. Coal is the challenge and the energy of our future.

And leaning coal is very costly. Pursuing a policy of reducing and sequestering coal (burying CO2 rather than emitting it) would take 30-40% of energy. From the Chinese perspective, there is little financial incentive to invest in such technology because China wants as much energy from processing coal, and if it takes much energy to clean it, how does this develop the Chinese economy? How far will leapfrogging take China? The question to pursue here is therefore on technology cost. Coal's low price and its abundance have been such powerful incentive, too. Although Chinese authorities are pushing for cleaner power, clean alternatives in China aren't fully utilized because they are expensive. When alternatives like oil and gas will run out, coal will remain abundant. Suppose China had 100% of efficiency in terms of intensity, China will most likely continue to use coal.

Jessica Macias Bochatay
University of Southampton, UK.