  We assess the performance of a recently proposed renormalized adiabatic local
density approximation (rALDA) for \textit{ab initio} calculations of electronic
correlation energies in solids and molecules. The method is an extension of the
random phase approximation (RPA) derived from time-dependent density functional
theory and the adiabatic connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem and
contains no fitted parameters. The new kernel is shown to preserve the accurate
description of dispersive interactions from RPA while significantly improving
the description of short range correlation in molecules, insulators, and
metals. For molecular atomization energies the rALDA is a factor of 7(4) better
than RPA(PBE) when compared to experiments, and a factor of 3(1.5) better than
RPA(PBE) for cohesive energies of solids. For transition metals the inclusion
of full shell semi-core states is found to be crucial for both RPA and rALDA
calculations and can improve the cohesive energies by up to 0.4 eV. Finally we
discuss straightforward generalizations of the method, which might improve
results even further.
