Next week there will be a new president in the United States and his credentials are firmly pegged on finding the US more renewable sources of energy. He appointed Stephen Chu, an admired physicist and Nobel Prize winner, as his Energy Secretary. Some of Chu's first public comments have been about energy efficiency.
Energy efficiency is nothing new but it is overlooked. Modern society wastes too much energy and very little, except for the odd advertisement and manufacturer statement, is being done to get people to cut energy use.
It couldn’t be in a more sensitive area. The days are long gone when the Seine ran like an open sewer; it has now caught up with the Thames in having a salmon run, and its banks are home to crayfish, another pollution barometer. And that could potentially cause Renault a problem. The factory’s environmental manager, Yves Galliou, shows me around with obvious pride, pointing out the features that put this tiny splinter of massive Renault at the forefront of its eco2 environmental initiative. And in a sense, he saves the best until last.
