CO2 free electricity in 2010?

My stomach turns when I read these news about the coming of the CO2 free car driving on electricity as announced in Politikken today. Is the electricity produced by the electricity company CO2-free when the car us due to launch in 2010? I think it is a vulgar management trick to claim a car propelled by electricity CO2-free, when only a tiny fraction of the energy provided by power companies produce is just that!

If the electric car is producing the electricity itself (eg. by sun, water or other), the story is different. But when I read Shai Agassis (promoter of the car) blog, his vision for Denmark is that windmills nightly output could, and would, supply the energy to power the cars in Denmark. Now that is visionary! However the article by Poltikken does not mention this.

So, cars driven by electricity - no thank you! Cars driven by continuous and pollutant free energy sources - yes thank you!

Hypocrits or users of an unvisonary system?

Politikken (DK) writes today that Eurobarometer shows 65% of Danes are worried about global warming, but the CO2 production is still rising according to recent data from Energistyrelsen (Danish Energy Authority). A paradox indeed, but the article does not indicate if the increased CO2 is caused by private or industry, and how the CO2 is calculated. So from all we know, we may change our habits, but it could be diluted in the big production line interacting with each other.

I raised this problem in my blog on the conference of Renewable Energy Resources. I see two problems with the CO2 in the mentioned article.
First, why make people responsible for the CO2 production, when you can easily improve the situation with simple political adjustments? People don't stop smoking because it kills them, or buy less exotic wood for the floors and furniture because it wipes out wild life, do they? A recent example is that now all new houses built in Denmark has to be consuming a minimum amount of energy. Good, but it could be much more concrete than that!
Secondly, as I wrote in the blog entry on renewable energy, CO2 can also be a new puff of good intentions. Meaning, switching to renewable energy as "cleaner" energy, also includes firewood that produce CO2. And if you turn off your oil furnace and install a heat pump without changing insulation of the house - you still use electricity - made by power suppliers burning for example coal. But in your mind you have switched to a greener solution. It is as narrow sighted as buying an electrical car and thinking it automatically makes the world greener. There electricity comes from somewhere, and only a fraction from clean sources such as windmills!

Would a vision like all new houses by 2018 has to be self supplying with non-polluting heat and electricity, not be slightly more visionary, and create new jobs and markets? There are many examples of people doing this already on their own (look up the books in Amazon), without goverment support, by their own initiative and brain power. Also in the urban areas.

Denmark is going to host the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, but the vision of being a host country with vision and a source for inspiration is doubtful as best these days (not just my words). I do not envy Connie Hedegaard, the Minister of Climate and Energy.

Yesterdays Frontier

August last year I wrote about stopping light in my entry Science Fiction, or the next frontier that Lene Vetergaard stopped light and created a new frontier in what is possible. Today the Danish newspaper Politikken announced Vestergaards team newest budge to the border of what is possible. Experiments in Boston Harvard University show that it is also possible, not to just bend, but to move the path of the light. So I repeat, can your ego define the boundaries of what is possible by defending facts that are constantly altered?