Iceland, with a population of a quarter of a million souls, is a tenth the size of Wales but has the political independence that allows her to have some say in her energy future. She is already gung-ho for the Rifkin option. Within 20 years Iceland will have virtually eliminated fossil-fuel energy from the country and be running the entire economy on hydrogen. The plan is to first convert the country's fleet of cars, buses, trucks and trawlers to hydrogen and then use hydrogen to generate electricity and provide heat, light and power for Iceland's factories, offices and homes.

Behind this transformation of the country's energy infrastructure is Iceland New Energy which is the type of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) much beloved by New Labour and by the governmental participants in the Johannesburg Earth Summit. This particular PFI is a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell, Daimler-Chrysler and Norsk Hydro who have gone into partnership with six Icelandic participants: The Reykjanes Geothermal Power Plant, the Reykjavik Municipal Power Company, a fertilizer plant, the University of Iceland, the Iceland Research Institute, and the New Business Venture Fund. The Icelandic participants control 51.01% of the venture. 'Well,' as Private Eye is wont to say, 'that's alright then!'

But unfortunately what this all comes down to is a choice between the lesser of four evils with each one being pushed by a different cabal of wealth and power grubbing global interests. Is there a fifth option that might allow us to say none of the above? I think there is, because whichever way the global cabals dodge and weave they cannot get away from Nature's truth which is that as much energy arrives at the Earth from the sun in forty minutes as the planet uses in a year. Haldane was making a similar point when remarking that '...if a windmill in one's back garden could produce a hundredweight of coal daily (and it can produce its equivalent in energy), our coalmines would be shut down to-morrow...'

Energy is not a scarce resource and never will be. The energy problem, like the water problem, is to get the right amount in the right place at the right time and in the right form. And virtually everything that needs to be said about the right form of energy was said by Avory Lovins in Soft Energy Paths fifty years ago and is embedded in the concept of energy quality. The real political struggle is always between interests and locality, but where energy is concerned the gods have thrown their weight on the side of locality. Local energy catchment has enormous economic advantages over any piping system the monopolists might come up with.