European gas oil prices set a new high above $1,000 a tonne on Tuesday, boosted by a fire in a key European refinery last week and unexpectedly strong demand. Power blackouts in South Africa, Chile and China have forced many companies to run diesel generators to offset electricity supply interruptions, while a harsh winter in south-east Asia has boosted heating oil demand. ICE April gas oil futures hit a record $1,017 a tonne on Tuesday, up 1.3 per cent on the day and 21.2 per cent since the start of the year.

Britain's electricity market suffers from a lack of transparency and liquidity that may mean customers are paying too much for their power, some companies and industry experts have said. Competitors to the "big six" energy suppliers have urged Ofgem, the regulator, to focus on wholesale market problems in the inquiry it launched in February. If one of the leading suppliers such as Electricit

Whenever Kanta Devi's family in Anu village of Shimla district aren't busy looking after their small apple orchard, they sit down to watch TV

RHETORIC is a sad fact of political life, and most voters are smart enough to know that grand promises made in the heat of a parliamentary debate or an election battle should be taken with a pinch of salt. But on energy policy the gap between claim and reality is now wide enough to be embarrassing.

An ambitious cross-subsidy scheme has given rise to a new industry

The Electricity Supply Board has urged government to consider various ways in which different modes of transport could be powered by electricity as a way of reducing Ireland's carbon emissions and meeting EU targets. Speaking at the Irish Management Institute national conference, ESB chief executive Padraig McManus said that the ESB was working towards having zero net carbon emissions by 2035. He estimated that it would take 2,000 megawatts a day to power all of Ireland's cars, noting that this could easily be supplied by electricity companies during the night, when demand is low.

Even allowing for the low expectations we bring to any lame duck president's final state of the Union address

The growth rate of six of the country's key infrastructure industries' accelerated to 8.7 per cent in February against 7.6 per cent in the same month a year ago, reviving hopes that industrial production would speed up and help arrest the current economic slowdown. However, the overall growth rate of these sectors for the 11 months from April to February 2007-08 remained lower at 5.6 per cent than 8.7 per cent for the corresponding period of fiscal 2006-07, due to below 5 per cent growth in the preceding four months.

Bharat Nirman, the Centre's massive four-year

On the first day of the new financial year, there was a sense of d