Dear IFRTT Forum subscriber, 

it has been an unusually gloomy start of the year here in the Stockholm area. Short 
days, the inclination of the axis of Tellus is to blame, and grey skies with very 
little sun, no one willing to take the responsibility. I feel this period of the 
year is getting worse, probably because of the well-known "grey hair mood" (GHM) 
effect that comes from spending too much energy on irrelevant and frustrating things. 

The GHM effect should certainly be given much more attention. It might, since 
Universities now seem to direct their strategic plans towards life sciences and the 
"greenhouse gas" (GHG) effect. The prevailing IT and Nano mantras in research policies 
are changing. That is good, we need more diversification in public research funding. 

As I predicted several years ago, the debate on energy and fuels is now getting close 
to a stage of chaos. Every time there is a proposal to try out some new supply of 
energy or fuel there is always someone shouting: "you cannot do this because .." or 
"nuclear power is no long term solution". I want to shout back: "take time out for 
reflection, please". 

Cheap energy, not the least from oil, has created the modern democratic well-fare 
society and its high degree of mobility of goods and people. Fossil fuel is consumed 
at a rate of a million or more compared to its rate of generation. Stating that 20 
percent or so of this should be replaced by renewable fuels by 2020 is no simple thing 
that will not have adverse effects. And there is no simple "fusion fix" on the 
horizon: human, political, time scales are not compatible with geological and 
cosmological time scales. Two basic results follow: save energy, "no waste", and try 
out a spectrum of energy conversion methods. 

Starting out with "no waste of energy" is a mind-setter that opens up for innovative 
thinking also in the field of transport technology. For instance when I first learned 
about the Australian Performance Bases Standards (PBS) approach, I thought this will 
never work in Europe, the European Union countries are by tradition strictly 
prescriptive. Well, cross-border freight of general cargo might be a case for 
prescriptive vehicles, but there are lots of other road transports that would benefit 
from a different approach. 

Let us challenge the GHM and GHG effects and drive safely, 

Anders Lundström, IFRTT president 

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