With a market share year-to-date of 40%, Endesa is further cementing its status as Spain's leading electricity supplier.
Endesa and ASCER (the Spanish Association of Ceramic Tile Manufacturers) have renewed their framework agreement, establishing new economic and service conditions for the supply of electricity to ASCER member companies.
The agreement, which also covers the members of ANFFECC (National Association of Ceramic Frits, Glazes and Ceramic Pigments) and ASEBEC (Spanish Manufacturers of Machinery for the Ceramics Industry), was signed by the president of ASCER, Joaqun Pin, and the account manager for Price and Demand at Endesa, Juan Jos Muoz. Nearly 234 companies throughout Spain with annual consumption of over 1,000 GWh will benefit from the agreement.
The agreement is valid until 31 December 2012, extending the pact originally signed in November 2006. Over the last five years, this arrangement has enabled the ceramics industry power to receive electricity at highly competitive and stable prices..
In addition, the agreement entails various innovative price schemes that will enable ceramics makers to become even more cost competitive.
This deal is in addition to the one signed by ASCER and Endesa last April for the supply of natural gas to ASCER members which remains in force until December 2012 and means Endesa will remain the key energy supplier for the Spanish ceramics industry in 2012.
Elsewhere, Endesa and ASCER have developed lines of action that are providing ASCER affiliates with tools for boosting efficiency and achieving energy savings. Since 2007, Endesa has carried out over forty energy audits for ASCER members and will again offer this service in conjunction with the assistance programmes offered by the Valencia Energy Agency.
This energy audit work has yielded promising RDI initiatives and Endesa is currently working on heat recovery projects for sector companies that are expected to cut overall energy consumption by around 20%. Endesa and ASCER are also working together to optimise co-generation by association members. This agreement highlights once again the bargaining power wielded by ASCER on behalf of the Spanish ceramics industry in energy matters which are vital to the sector's future.
Under the scope of these energy agreements, Endesa will also sponsor the Tile of Spain Awards for Architecture and Interior Design organised by Ascer and the association's Network of Ceramic Tile Studies Departments, in particular the collaboration with the University of Alicante with a focus on sustainable construction and restoration.
Meanwhile, the deal guarantees Endesa reasonable medium-term remuneration on the generation assets it plans to earmark to supply the ceramics industry, while bolstering its position as leading power supplier in Spain, where it boasts a year-to-date market share of 40%.
ASCER represents over 98% of Spanish ceramic production. In 2010 a total of 178 countries accounted for 68.5% of the Spanish ceramic tile and paving manufacturing industry's sales. The sector's aggregate turnover stood at 2.59 billion. The ceramics industry is the second biggest contributor to the Spanish trade balance (1.65 billion) with exports exceeding imports by almost 2,000%, and in 2010 its exports represented almost 1% of the Spanish total. It is one of the finest examples of industry clustering in Spain and indeed Europe. The nature of the industry, its economic and social importance within the region, its ability to innovate and grow and its global leadership make the Castellón ceramic cluster a benchmark for a unique, competitive and sustainable industry at the heart of Europe.
2011年11月16日星期三
2011年10月16日星期日
Natrona activist artist makes his mark, worldwide
Richly colored fabric mosaics of fish, birds and other familiar figures ride the wind at the Smoky Hill Arts Festival in Salina, Kansas, and other parts of the world.
These banners by Natrona artist Bill Godfrey celebrate all things — from community to nature to religion to art.
It might seem unlikely that Natrona, the industrial town that once thrived on salt mines, coal mines and steel mills would produce original and sustainable artwork.
Godfrey's process of creating the huge custom banners works like a well-honed process in a factory, but more whimsical and soulful. Godfrey creates his fabric pieces of art for corporate giants like Alcoa, including a fabric educational maze that has been exhibited on every continent.
Godfrey is not just the funky resident artist in Natrona, but the resident activist who is using art to change the face of the beleaguered town.
President of the civic group, Natrona Comes Together, Godfrey recently shepherded the creation of columns of mosaics in the town's park to start to remake Natrona into an "art town," a destination that people will visit one day.
He inhabits a renovated building that once sprouted ivy growing through holes inside the roof and ceiling a few decades ago.
What seems an anomaly is rapidly become part of Natrona's fabric: A silver fish is broken in half and embedded in a cement sidewalk at Godfrey's studio, which is flanked by a perennial garden overflowing with colorful artifacts like a cherry trellis and bright blue chairs, all nestled among carefully chosen perennial grasses.
The artist's studio is awash in color, contrast and shapes.
"Bill's sense of color is unbelievable," says Norman Brown, retired art teacher from CAPA high school and Godfrey's college roommate at Edinboro University. "He has an incredible eye."
There are unsigned Salvador Dali sketches hanging not too far away from a circa 1960s Oleg Cassini red couch that Godfrey snapped up for $5 a few decades ago, "when no one wanted this stuff."
Interestingly, when he bought the couch, he did not know that it was a Cassini, just as he did not know that other furniture he bought was affiliated with great artists and designers.
"I was attracted to the shape," he says. "I love the Art Deco period. It was a time of optimism when design could change the course of humanity."
Just as Godfrey can seem out of reach as an aesthete artist, who traveled the world, taking in the pyramids and the Great Wall of China, he always comes back down to earth, quickly.
"Bill is the most unpretentious artist," Brown says. "He is just a kind person. Probably one of the most honest people."
As Godfrey surveys his lot of treasures bought for a few single dollars years ago, he says, "I could never afford this stuff now." But the art collection is stuff now, taking up space.
"You need more objects when you are younger to find out who you are," he says. "When you are older, you become who you are, and you don't need the objects."
Besides, re-using those objects is much more fun. Godfrey renovated his studio using materials from torn down buildings and resale shops.
His ceramic-tile wall with a simple geometric pattern came from a Fox Chapel home. He scooped up blue glass near PPG's Creighton plant and installed it around a skylight, with the glass projecting different colors and shapes throughout the day.
What people don't want or have forgotten became Godfrey's province, including a bank of lockers in his laundry room, hidden behind a curved wall of corrugated tin.
Growing up in Tarentum, Godfrey moved to Pittsburgh after college to find his niche in the art community, taught at Carnegie Museum of Art for 13 years and traveled around the world.
He made his way back to the Alle-Kiski Valley to settle into a studio in Natrona to concentrate on his large-scale fabric installations. But he grew tired of the increasing blight around him and the drug dealers just a few doors down.
"We were surrounded by urban decay. It was getting scary," he says. "I thought enough is enough."
Godfrey and several neighbors formed the local community group Natrona Comes Together six years ago. The group has been responsible for transforming many aspects of the community, including the public park, plans for a walking trail, concerts and programs for local youth -- all aimed at change.
"All the residents down there have made a lot of progress in terms of cleaning the areas up around town, and crime is down," says George Conroy, chairman of the Harrison commissioners. "There's a definite improvement."
The group is working with Pittsburgh History and Landmarks to develop a museum in one of the abandoned row houses on Federal Street and is working with the Pittsburgh nonprofit Friends of the River Front for a canoe and kayak launch.
Big-picture-wise, Godfrey is planning an industrial memorial sculpture park. But most immediate is breaking ground for
These banners by Natrona artist Bill Godfrey celebrate all things — from community to nature to religion to art.
It might seem unlikely that Natrona, the industrial town that once thrived on salt mines, coal mines and steel mills would produce original and sustainable artwork.
Godfrey's process of creating the huge custom banners works like a well-honed process in a factory, but more whimsical and soulful. Godfrey creates his fabric pieces of art for corporate giants like Alcoa, including a fabric educational maze that has been exhibited on every continent.
Godfrey is not just the funky resident artist in Natrona, but the resident activist who is using art to change the face of the beleaguered town.
President of the civic group, Natrona Comes Together, Godfrey recently shepherded the creation of columns of mosaics in the town's park to start to remake Natrona into an "art town," a destination that people will visit one day.
He inhabits a renovated building that once sprouted ivy growing through holes inside the roof and ceiling a few decades ago.
What seems an anomaly is rapidly become part of Natrona's fabric: A silver fish is broken in half and embedded in a cement sidewalk at Godfrey's studio, which is flanked by a perennial garden overflowing with colorful artifacts like a cherry trellis and bright blue chairs, all nestled among carefully chosen perennial grasses.
The artist's studio is awash in color, contrast and shapes.
"Bill's sense of color is unbelievable," says Norman Brown, retired art teacher from CAPA high school and Godfrey's college roommate at Edinboro University. "He has an incredible eye."
There are unsigned Salvador Dali sketches hanging not too far away from a circa 1960s Oleg Cassini red couch that Godfrey snapped up for $5 a few decades ago, "when no one wanted this stuff."
Interestingly, when he bought the couch, he did not know that it was a Cassini, just as he did not know that other furniture he bought was affiliated with great artists and designers.
"I was attracted to the shape," he says. "I love the Art Deco period. It was a time of optimism when design could change the course of humanity."
Just as Godfrey can seem out of reach as an aesthete artist, who traveled the world, taking in the pyramids and the Great Wall of China, he always comes back down to earth, quickly.
"Bill is the most unpretentious artist," Brown says. "He is just a kind person. Probably one of the most honest people."
As Godfrey surveys his lot of treasures bought for a few single dollars years ago, he says, "I could never afford this stuff now." But the art collection is stuff now, taking up space.
"You need more objects when you are younger to find out who you are," he says. "When you are older, you become who you are, and you don't need the objects."
Besides, re-using those objects is much more fun. Godfrey renovated his studio using materials from torn down buildings and resale shops.
His ceramic-tile wall with a simple geometric pattern came from a Fox Chapel home. He scooped up blue glass near PPG's Creighton plant and installed it around a skylight, with the glass projecting different colors and shapes throughout the day.
What people don't want or have forgotten became Godfrey's province, including a bank of lockers in his laundry room, hidden behind a curved wall of corrugated tin.
Growing up in Tarentum, Godfrey moved to Pittsburgh after college to find his niche in the art community, taught at Carnegie Museum of Art for 13 years and traveled around the world.
He made his way back to the Alle-Kiski Valley to settle into a studio in Natrona to concentrate on his large-scale fabric installations. But he grew tired of the increasing blight around him and the drug dealers just a few doors down.
"We were surrounded by urban decay. It was getting scary," he says. "I thought enough is enough."
Godfrey and several neighbors formed the local community group Natrona Comes Together six years ago. The group has been responsible for transforming many aspects of the community, including the public park, plans for a walking trail, concerts and programs for local youth -- all aimed at change.
"All the residents down there have made a lot of progress in terms of cleaning the areas up around town, and crime is down," says George Conroy, chairman of the Harrison commissioners. "There's a definite improvement."
The group is working with Pittsburgh History and Landmarks to develop a museum in one of the abandoned row houses on Federal Street and is working with the Pittsburgh nonprofit Friends of the River Front for a canoe and kayak launch.
Big-picture-wise, Godfrey is planning an industrial memorial sculpture park. But most immediate is breaking ground for
2011年6月1日星期三
Royal Danish Ballet review: Superb 'Sylphide'
Cal Performances kept a long-delayed date with living history Tuesday evening at Zellerbach Hall. The glorious Royal Danish Ballet, absent from local stages for a half century, returned with an engrossing production of August Bournonville's "La Sylphide," its culture's most familiar and venerable (1836) ballet, given here in an expansive 2003 staging by artistic director Nikolaj Hübbe and Anne Marie Vessel Schlüter.
This is one of the world's most distinctive and enduring classical dance traditions, one in which speed, airiness, softness and humanity dominate every gesture. Bournonville's only tragic work, a moral fable on the perils of pursuing fantasy at the cost of worldly contentment, encompasses an encyclopedia of emotions, translated throughout into an exhilarating pageant of linked steps and mime that epitomize this legendary choreographer's movement style and philosophy. With Bournonville, one cannot separate the two.
Every fresh staging of his works prompts a measure of consternation among Bournonville savants, who regard the loss of a traditional detail as a major crime. Not to worry here: this production sustains the narrative thread, highlights the iconic set pieces and finds particular pleasure in the ensembles of the wedding guests and 16 attendant sylphs. In Mads Blangstrup's James, the Danes have brought us a superb protagonist, an arrogant Scots fellow who engineers his dire destiny. In Blangstrup's buoyancy, smoothness in transitions and quicksilver emotional responses, one finds the best of the tradition. The Sylph of veteran (American-born) Caroline Cavallo maintains a lovely teasing quality and sustains the awesome balances, although at this stage of her career, her elevation seems circumscribed.
Nicolai Hansen dispatched the hapless Gurn with wondrous specificity of gesture; Camilla Ruelkkye Holst was the uncomprehending Effy. And Lis Jeppesen, in earlier decades a haunting Sylph, has transitioned to Madge, the witch whose ravaged beauty, sense of injustice and emotional yearning precipitate the tragedy; a brilliant portrayal. In the pit, Henrik Vagn Christensen conducted the Berkeley Symphony in a stout reading of the Lovenskiold score.
To open this long but infinitely rewarding evening, Hübbe revived former artistic director Flemming Flindt's "The Lesson," that eerie 1964 number about the homicidal dance master who cannot abide imperfection. Thomas Lund delivered a stunningly deranged characterization. Ida Praetorius' leggy, annoyingly pert student, made an ideal foil.
This is one of the world's most distinctive and enduring classical dance traditions, one in which speed, airiness, softness and humanity dominate every gesture. Bournonville's only tragic work, a moral fable on the perils of pursuing fantasy at the cost of worldly contentment, encompasses an encyclopedia of emotions, translated throughout into an exhilarating pageant of linked steps and mime that epitomize this legendary choreographer's movement style and philosophy. With Bournonville, one cannot separate the two.
Every fresh staging of his works prompts a measure of consternation among Bournonville savants, who regard the loss of a traditional detail as a major crime. Not to worry here: this production sustains the narrative thread, highlights the iconic set pieces and finds particular pleasure in the ensembles of the wedding guests and 16 attendant sylphs. In Mads Blangstrup's James, the Danes have brought us a superb protagonist, an arrogant Scots fellow who engineers his dire destiny. In Blangstrup's buoyancy, smoothness in transitions and quicksilver emotional responses, one finds the best of the tradition. The Sylph of veteran (American-born) Caroline Cavallo maintains a lovely teasing quality and sustains the awesome balances, although at this stage of her career, her elevation seems circumscribed.
Nicolai Hansen dispatched the hapless Gurn with wondrous specificity of gesture; Camilla Ruelkkye Holst was the uncomprehending Effy. And Lis Jeppesen, in earlier decades a haunting Sylph, has transitioned to Madge, the witch whose ravaged beauty, sense of injustice and emotional yearning precipitate the tragedy; a brilliant portrayal. In the pit, Henrik Vagn Christensen conducted the Berkeley Symphony in a stout reading of the Lovenskiold score.
To open this long but infinitely rewarding evening, Hübbe revived former artistic director Flemming Flindt's "The Lesson," that eerie 1964 number about the homicidal dance master who cannot abide imperfection. Thomas Lund delivered a stunningly deranged characterization. Ida Praetorius' leggy, annoyingly pert student, made an ideal foil.
订阅：
博文 (Atom)