The U.S. (California in particular) is a leader in installing a smart grid, so vital to getting the most out of charging electric vehicles in a cheap and more green way. California may be leading, but they are certainly not running alone. There's Boulder, for one. And we covered the UK's pricey discussion earlier this month. Now Michael Setters, the director of Smart Electric News, puts the broader European efforts into perspective.

Saying there are a "host of initiatives across Europe" focusing on one day installing smart grids, Setters' article announces that "dramatic change is coming" to the European grid. He describes how the EDP is working on InovGrid, a project that combines the communication abilities of a smart grid with micro-generation, and how Iberdrole is busy with "a new open, public and non-proprietary telecom architecture to support not only smart metering functionality but also to progress towards the electricity networks of the future." Now, that's a good idea.

There are also initiatives coming in Ireland and from companies ZigBee, Pepco, Gazprom, Siemens and eMeter about the smart grid in Europe. Someone's going to have to spend time and money on this, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimated that over $16 trillion (U.S.) will be spent around the world between 2003 and 2030 on designing, building and installing smart grids.

[Source: RenewableEnergyWorld]

Ireland looks set to join the rush to switch their vehicle registration taxes to a system based on CO₂ emissions. Currently, Irish registration fees are based on engine size. The engine size determines what percentage of the car's value has to be paid as a registration fee. Starting July 1, 2008, <sub>Ireland will begin using the same CO2 emissions bands as the UK with Band A being cars with less than 120 g/km of emissions. Band A car drivers will only have to pay a 14 percent tax while drivers of Band G cars (over 226 g/km) will have to pay 36 percent. Starting January 1, series production electric cars will be exempt from the registration tax altogether.

[Source: Auto Industry UK]</sub>

Marking the start of the European Union's Green Week, Dublin Bus announced yesterday that they will be henceforth be using biodiesel in the company's Dublin Bus Tour buses. The company is not providing very specific information on what percentage biodiesel it will be using, or how many of its tour buses will use the fuel (Dublin Bus will not use biodiesel in its standard buses, yet), but does say that Dublin Bus used 25,000 tonnes of fuel in 2005. One reason for the switch to biodiesel is that fuel in Ireland is expected to cost twice as much this year than it did in 2003, and that costs will continue to go up. Dublin Bus has been investigating the possibility of using biodiesel since at least September of last year.

[Source: Dublin Bus via Ireland On-line]