domingo, mayo 29, 2005

World Bank on Demand Response: Please Read Italics

Energy Week 2005 took place in Washington, DC on March 14-16, 2005. It featured presentations and discussions with leading energy development practitioners and offered networking activities to participants from Governments, NGOs, consultants and World Bank Group staff.

The theme of Energy Week 2005 was Our Energy Future - ensuring affordable and reliable supplies of energy for the 21st century in developing countries is a prerequisite for economic development and poverty reduction. The program featured plenary and breakout sessions addressing the key developments that are shaping the future of energy supply and the kinds of energy services which will be available in developing countries in the future.

DAY 2 Morning Tuesday, March 15
11:00 – 12:30 PARALLEL SESSIONS
Innovative DSM tools to help bridge the supply-demand investment gap -- Luiz Maurer,
World Bank (Moderator). Susan Covino, PJM Interconnection; Ahmad Faruqui, Charles River Associates; and Grayson Heffner, World Bank -- Recent power shortages and blackouts around the world have created renewed interest in using the demand side of electricity markets to avoid or ameliorate such crises. New approaches to demand response involving price and quantity rationing have been proposed and successfully tested in several developed countries. Unfortunately, the Bank's client countries are not fully harnessing the potential of demand response to make their power systems more reliable and to provide affordable electricity. This panel will share some of those experiences and will discuss how developing countries can potentially benefit from innovative demand-side management techniques.

"Power to the people" from the Economist free Edition

SIR – The real answer to worries about energy security throughout the developing world lies not just in global oil markets but equally in energy conservation (“The real trouble with oil”, April 30th). For too long, there has been a presumption that an increase in demand for energy services must lead to an increase in energy consumption. This is nonsense. I have never met anybody who wanted to buy a litre of oil or a kilowatt of natural gas or electricity. What they want to buy is light, heat, motive power. They can have all of these using a fraction of the fuel currently burnt, but only if the most efficient technologies, buildings and vehicles are used. By doing so, societies save both economically and ecologically. Why doesn't such common sense prevail? Why not ask those whose entire business rationale is to sell us more oil, more natural gas, more electricity?

Andrew Warren
Association for the
Conservation of Energy
London

SIR – Your survey on oil focuses partly on the well-known proposition that supply-and-demand factors determine the price of crude oil (April 30th). You recognise that a new complication has arisen, namely that of the institutional pension managers investing in commodity indices, heavily weighted to crude oil, as an asset class. In the United States alone, they invested an estimated $50 billion in 2004, with $100 billion expected in 2005. This is a radical change from the past use of such funds and explains the otherwise paradoxical co-existence of rising inventories and increasing crude oil prices.

It is our own pension funds that are buying millions of barrels of crude oil, holding them in storage “forever”, driving up prices, disrupting monetary policy and sending more and more wealth to oil producers. It could indeed lead to steep oil price hikes, reminiscent of the experience of the 1970s and early 1980s. Until this failure of institutional structure is addressed by government, matters will continue to deteriorate.

Philip Arestis
John McCombie
Warren Mosler
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

Empleos, por favor: Editorial de El Caribe

Dedicado a todas las madres dominicanas y haitianas.

© José Antonio Vanderhorst Silverio, PhD
Semilla Orgánica del GMH

El Editorial de El Caribe presenta una dura realidad: la dificultad de encontrar trabajo, especialmente el empleo bien remunerado en la disciplina que estudió el egresado. Otra realidad que subyace es que los procesos de contratación de personal en la mayoría de las empresas son altamente ineficientes, haciendo que el error de contratación sea el mayor de los riesgos a la ccmpetitividad del sector productivo. Sin temor a equivocarme, aseguro que este riesgo está por encima de los costos de electricidad y todos los acuerdos de libre comercio. No hay en el país un mercado de talento virgen, porque se trata al candidato sin examinar su verdadero potencial. Ver el "Trabajo no es Castigo" en esta Bitácora-Web.

Para las empresas con vocación a transformarse en multinacionales de la Hispaniola: este es realmente el mejor momento para seleccionar el talento que requieren. En ese sentido, es primero necesario transformar el proceso de selección de personal para que el error de contratación sea ínfimo.

A los gerentes: "... none are more important than your belief that hiring great people is the single most important thing you can do to ensure your own success," (Lou Adler´s, "Hire with Your Head").

A los egresados: le sugiero lo que me dijo mi superior de más de 15 años, sean su propia medida. La mayoría de las profesiones que ustedes tienen hoy van a desaparecer. Al menos, como las conocemos hoy. Aseguren primero que ustedes encajan en la organización a la que ingresan y hagan todo lo que no le esté prohibido para progresar.

Hacen Falta Detallistas de Electricidad

José Antonio Vanderhorst Silverio, PhD
Consultor Interdependiente en Electricidad

EL DINERO del Listín Diario publicó ayer el titular "Barrios rechazan propuesta Edeeste para cobrar energía," bajo la firma de Yanet Beltré. En la misma se dice que: "El representante del Foro Interbarrial Permanente (Foinpe), Alexis Peña, informó ayer que no están dispuestos asumir la responsabilidad que plantea atribuirle la Empresa Distribuidora de Electricidad del Este (Edeeste) de administrar el cobro de servicio eléctrico en los sectores que representan. Entiende que ese trabajo puede prestarse a corrupción por lo que creen es un trabajo exclusivo de la empresa."

En efecto esta es una prueba de la necesidad de intermediarios que compitan para satisfacer las necesidades de los clientes-consumidores. Los detallistas son el instrumento que apalancan la solución de problema. No obstante, no se pueden desarrollar si tienen que competir con un monopolio. En el registro archivado en mayo bajo el título "Electricidad al Detalle: Objetivo Esencial para Satisfacer las Necesidades de los Consumidores (Versión 2)," aparecen las mejores razones, especialmente por lo acontecido en España.