Thanks Jerome, for drilling down beneath the press headlines with your critical analysis.

Yes, it seems that Commissioner Piebalgs has promulgated a plan that outlines substantive progress across a number of fronts, integrating several directly and indirectly related topics into a coalescing whole.

Comments like "Mediterranean energy ring, linking Europe with the Southern Mediterranean... to help develop the vast solar and wind energy potential" IMO shows the influence (directly or indirectly) of TOD through articles such as Stuart Staniford's Powering Civilization to 2050. Congratulations, TOD, visions and plans like this make it all worthwhile. And people like you, Jerome, are ones who are carrying these plans through to such fruition. Kudos, kudos, kudos.

A minor quibble I might make refers to the comment "Nabucco (which can be built only if gas is found to fill it, the only credible source right now being Russian gas". Right now, Kazakhstan has reserves and upcoming additional marketable production, and they are seeking Western markets. Until the EU can wean themselves from gas with policies such as the UK's 2016 Net Zero Carbon Building codes and can replace NG in electrical generation and industrial processes, Nabucco will be needed to reduce the growing geopolitical power wielded by the (growling) Sleeping Bear. I would prefer, of course, to see much more wind and solar energy backed by hydro on a smart supergrid, and an all-out pursuit of geothermal power, as it is a desperately needed baseload source.