Oil price

I saw this news today in fox/CNN
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/12/27/oil-exec-predicts-gallon-gas-energy-shortages-decades-end/?test=latestnews

and I am wondering about its impact.. could it make us to increase our domestic oil supply or domestic electric vehicle supply? or will it be impacted by the world trend of more alternate fuel options?

Some numbers

This morning, I saw some numbers and news' I found interesting:

1. SunTech 3rd Quarter revenue up by 19% - $743.7 million.
2. Italian Govt. just suspended its emissions trading market under the suspicion of some VAT fraud.
3. Pikes Research stated that around 57.9 million smart meters will be installed by more than 90 utilities in the country, 21 million of which are expected to be online by the end of the year. Another highlight was Texas-New Mexico Power’s selection of SmartSynch, which only managed to have 1 percent market share in the second quarter, resulting in the largest residential advance metering infrastructure deployment using a public wireless network in the United States.
   
   In short, as we saw earlier in this blog market at this point is focusing fairly around Smart Grid/Meter/Related Software, Wind Turbine and large-to-medium solar. I guess we all noticed it: but the solar market in NA is slightly different than in EU/APAC. What I meant to say is: beyond NA, we see a lot of individual/private small scale buyers of renewables (farmers/ residents). 

In contract, in NA, I guess the economics of the market in future will probably tend towards having large energy firms (solar/wind/geo..) which will serve the residential market. In that context, having cellular/regional renewable energy firm + local grids might help than having each individual customer trying to become energy efficient. That's so far an idea. Such local grids will off course tap into National infrastructure and so forth for energy trading purpose. But, one factor we need to consider that, it may not be profitable for a firm in IL to trade energy with a firm in OR simply because of the rent they need to pay to the distribution chain. Thus, probably a consortium commodity trading based model will emerge in this sector someone will buy some anticipated future energy production capacity and sell that to another firm in another location (the sell will include distribution cost).