News round-up, March 14, 2023

Editor's thoughts…

Where is the global economy heading? Can Latin America withstand a potential new banking crisis?

With a lot of effort, Latin America has managed to survive this last year's pandemic economically period, in addition to potent sources of political instability, starting with Chile, followed by the giant of the region, Brazil, the infinite crisis in Argentina, and what to say about Peru where presidents unbelievably last milliseconds in office.

And as if that were not enough, with a Venezuela whit unpredictable destiny, Colombia tried vainly to advance the peace process. As always, a colorful and wonderful Mexico in Neruda's words, but always undefined and full of surprises, and Central America that have failed to recover from the ups and downs of the previous century.

And now Latinamerican is relegated by the global geopolitical echos and war crises; its primary focus is Europe, with a second focus on the Formosa Strait, which barely separates Taiwan from Mainland China by 182 kilometers (and 130 at the minimum), whit a third guest whose hobby is to launch fireworks periodically to emphasize that —-he is present there—-, which has forced Japan to abandon its pacifist post-World War II policy.

According to the World Bank's current X-ray of the economic state of the post-pandemic region of Latin America and the Caribbean's recovery from COVID-19, the pandemic was expected to grow by 3% in 2022. Still, global uncertainty and low growth rates of 1.6% and 2.3% are expected in 2023 and 2024. Countries to consolidate recovery, promote growth and reduce poverty and inequality must continue to invest in social programs and infrastructure, improve the efficiency of public spending, and address the effects of climate change. Following crises, opportunities can emerge in the industry sector, such as accelerating digitalization, improving market competitiveness, and increasing economic efficiency. However, if structural factors are addressed, strong and sluggish growth is likely to continue and be sufficient to make progress in the fight against poverty and social tensions. The pandemic has caused an estimated loss of 1.5 years of learning, mainly affecting the youngest and most vulnerable.

Policies for re-enrollment and retention, to recover primary education leveling of learning, prioritization of fundamental competencies, implementation of programs to meet learning goals, and development of teachers' and students' health, psychosocial and emotional well-being are needed. Green growth is an opportunity for the region, as it contributes only 8% of global GHG emissions and has enormous potential in renewable electricity and natural capital. Climate change is causing significant economic and social losses, and the World Bank has doubled its climate finance and initiated country-level diagnostics to support countries' climate and development goals.

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Most read…

Washington’s bank rescue fails to erase all doubts after Silicon Valley Bank collapse

[‘Is this a bailout?’ and six more questions about the weekend bank collapses]

“Banks don’t live or die based on what the stock price is,” she said.

By David J. Lynch and Tony Romm, The Washington Post, TODAY

A Brussels murder mystery: Who knifed the banking union (again)?

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank means questions are again being asked about why the EU can’t tighten its rules.

POLITICO EU by BY HANNAH BRENTON, MARCH 13, 2023 

Oil prices fall $1 as SVB collapse spooks financial markets

"The market had previously expected a strong recovery of the Chinese economy, but the latest February inflation rate was only 1% year-on-year, reflecting the current deflationary state of the Chinese economy and weak demand," he said.

REUTERS By Stephanie Kelly and Emily Chow editing by Germán & Co

EU to revamp power market, aiming to blunt price spikes

By encouraging nations to employ more contracts that lock in stable, long-term power costs, draft versions of the EU plan detail measures to make consumers less vulnerable to short-term volatility in fossil fuel prices.

Reuters By Kate Abnett editing by Germán & Co

EU drafts rules to stop power suppliers cutting off vulnerable consumers

According to the letter, written under the direction of German legislator Michael Bloss, millions of people in Europe presently have to decide between heating their homes or buying food for their families.

REUTERS By Kate Abnett, editing by Germán & Co

Opinion | Is Joe Biden a Stealth Socialist?

Whatever you call him, the Republican attacks won’t work.

POLITICO.COM, Opinion by JEFF GREENFIELD, 03/14/2023

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Image: Germán & Co

Washington’s bank rescue fails to erase all doubts after Silicon Valley Bank collapse

[‘Is this a bailout?’ and six more questions about the weekend bank collapses]

“Banks don’t live or die based on what the stock price is,” she said.

By David J. Lynch and Tony Romm, The Washington Post, TODAY

Washington’s banking rescue had a rocky start Monday on Wall Street, as the government’s response to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank failed to quell doubts about the health of some midsize banks and left investors debating whether the Federal Reserve would be forced to change course in its fight against inflation.

The day began with President Biden at the White House seeking to calm fears of a banking crisis before leaving Washington for a California swing.

“Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe. Your deposits will be there when you need them,” the president said in midmorning remarks from the Roosevelt Room.

In Silicon Valley, relieved customers lined up outside SVB branches to withdraw funds they had feared would be lost. Depositors at the bank’s Menlo Park location said they waited up to two hours to get their money in cashier’s checks. The only evidence of the failed bank’s new owners was a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. new release taped to the door.

On Wall Street, bank stocks were ravaged, with regional institutions hit hardest. First Republic Bank, another midsize bank, saw its share price fall nearly 80 percent before ending the day down 62 percent. The plunge came despite word that the bank had shored up its balance sheet with a capital infusion from JPMorgan Chase.

Even some of the nation’s largest and best-protected banks were shunned. Shares of Citigroup lost more than 7 percent while Wells Fargo fell 6 percent. Broader stock markets were flat.

“Payrolls are being met in Silicon Valley.

There aren’t massive outflows that we can see. So I think that means it has been reasonably successful,” said Lawrence Summers, a former treasury secretary.

“But the financial system suffered a shock and, while the emergency room physicians have done a good job, the patient is not back to full health.”

While the market response was noteworthy, falling stock prices pose no immediate threat to the banks. So long as depositor withdrawals remain at customary levels, healthy banks can continue to operate even as their share prices gyrate, said Karen Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics, a Washington consultancy. Bank health is determined by the amount of capital they hold in reserve to absorb losses and the adequacy of their available assets to meet any depositor withdrawals.

[‘Is this a bailout?’ and six more questions about the weekend bank collapses]

“Banks don’t live or die based on what the stock price is,” she said.

Still, the appearance of cracks in the nation’s regional banks has caused an extraordinary turnabout in financial conditions that has triggered a swift change in investor expectations of Fed interest rate actions.

Less than one week ago, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell told Congress that interest rates might need to go higher than the central bank had expected to bring inflation under control. Wall Street analysts expected the Fed to raise rates by up to half a percentage point at its next meeting March 22 and warned that the Fed’s benchmark lending rate could go as high as 6 percent from the current target of 4.5 percent to 4.75 percent.

Now, 40 percent of investors expect the Fed to leave rates untouched and to start cutting them by midsummer, according to the CME FedWatch tool, which is based on futures prices.

The government is scheduled to release the next consumer price index reading Tuesday. If inflation remains stubbornly high, the Fed will be caught between its anti-inflation mandate and its need to maintain financial stability.

Goldman Sachs late Sunday said it expects the Fed to pause its year-long campaign of rate increases. “Fed officials are likely to prioritize financial stability for now, viewing it as the immediate problem and high inflation as a medium-term problem,” the firm’s economists said in a research note.

Evidence that investors were increasingly skeptical that the Fed will be able to continue raising rates also could be seen in the rush to buy government securities. Investors bought so many two-year Treasury securities that the yield plunged below 4 percent on Monday from more than 5 percent last Wednesday - the sharpest three-day plummet since the 1987 market crash.

Authorities’ remarkable Sunday intervention to safeguard the banking system followed days of mounting concern that the troubles at SVB, the favored bank of tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, would spread to other institutions.

A person leaves one of the Signature Bank branches in New York, Monday, March. 13, 2023. President Joe Biden is telling Americans that the nation’s financial systems are sound. This comes after the swift and stunning collapse of two banks that prompted fears of a broader upheaval. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Ruling that the failure of SVB and a second troubled lender, Signature Bank of New York, posed a “systemic risk” to the economy’s financial plumbing, federal officials closed both banks, guaranteed their deposits beyond the $250,000 statutory limit and removed their management teams.

At the same time, the Fed established a new lending program to allow any other bank to obtain unlimited loans by pledging as collateral assets such as Treasury securities. The effort is designed to address problems many banks have been facing, as a result of the Fed’s interest rate increases and their own investment choices.

Unlike its normal bank lending, the Fed will make loans for up to one year and will value the pledged securities at their original value rather than their depressed market price.

Banks at the end of last year had $620 billion in unrealized losses on such securities, which saw their value erode as the Fed raised interest rates.

Authorities’ intent was to eliminate any doubt about the safety of depositors’ funds. But several regional banks, including Pacific Western Bank in California and Zions Bank in Utah, remain the focus of scrutiny and speculation. Investors worry that some banks might share SVB’s reliance upon a narrow depositor base and assets that have lost value during the past year of rising interest rates.

First Republic said Sunday that it had more than $70 billion in liquid funds, after its recent infusion from JPMorgan. In a joint statement, the bank’s chairman, Jim Herbert, and chief executive Mike Roffler said, “First Republic’s capital and liquidity positions are very strong, and its capital remains well above the regulatory threshold for well-capitalized banks.”

In January, the company reported strong financial results with $1.7 billion in profits on revenue of $5.9 billion.

On Capitol Hill, the administration’s action won backing from the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. The Fed and FDIC have “taken the right approach, and they’ve used their powers in a way that is appropriate,” Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) said in an interview. “I think we have a financial system that is equipped to deal with this, and it is my hope the actions by the FDIC and Fed will calm this current storm.”

On Monday, the plan also drew a qualified endorsement from S&P Global Ratings, which called the Fed initiative “robust” and said it should “reduce the odds that unmanageable deposit outflows spread widely.”

But the ratings agency cautioned that it remained unclear how depositors would respond.

“The jury’s still out,” said Marc Chandler, chief market strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex in New York. “I don’t know if it stops the run.”

In Wall Street computer chatrooms, traders are debating the need for the government to do more. If additional banks suffer deposit runs, the government may need to explicitly guarantee all uninsured deposits in the banking system, some have said, according to Chandler.

In 2008, the FDIC did just that under its Temporary Account Guarantee Program, a measure that remained in force through 2012.

The administration’s approach did not mollify all lawmakers.

In the days before its intervention, the U.S. government received an offer to buy the embattled Silicon Valley Bank, according to Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), a member of the chamber’s banking committee who said he learned about the matter at an FDIC briefing Monday afternoon.

Hagerty said he did not know the bidder. But he said that “evidently they turned the offer down in the hopes of getting something better later.”

The FDIC declined to comment on the situation.

The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported Monday that regulators were planning to make a second attempt to find a buyer for SVB.

Other lawmakers separately said they had pressed the government in recent days for information about the auction, though regulators remained tight-lipped.

“What we should have seen is a properly run auction process. Instead, what they did was hijack the systemic risk exception,” Hagerty said, noting that the burden could fall on local banks, which in some cases are taxpayers, and may owe more in fees.

As officials reiterated that the financial system remained sound, some banking industry veterans were reasonably confident about navigating the storm.

“Things will be bumpy for a couple of days,” said Bert Ely, a banking consultant. “Then - assuming there are no new disruptions - things will calm down.”

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Image: Germán & Co

A Brussels murder mystery: Who knifed the banking union (again)?

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank means questions are again being asked about why the EU can’t tighten its rules.

POLITICO EU by BY HANNAH BRENTON, MARCH 13, 2023 

It's the latest Brussels bubble whodunnit: Which country wielded the knife against the EU's half-formed banking union this time?

As the collapse of U.S. lender Silicon Valley Bank again shines a light on the fragility of the world's financial system, speculation grows within the EU’s corridors of power about who or what prompted the European Commission — at the last minute — to pull a controversial piece of banking legislation.

The plan for tighter rules on bank bailouts mysteriously dropped off the Commission's agenda for last week, and it's now expected to be M.I.A. for at least a month. Or even longer.

And there couldn't have been a worse time for Europe's banking union plan to suffer another flesh wound.

The decision to delay came ahead of the collapse of SVB, which had $209 billion in assets — requiring a U.S. government backstop for all depositors and exposing gaps in the framework for handling failing banks.

While SVB's business model was relatively unusual, and heavily dependent on the tech industry, the bank was a mid-sized lender in the bigger U.S. market.

The on-hold EU rules are aimed at stopping a middle layer of banks from receiving public money in a crisis, and the U.S. decision to rescue all SVB depositors will raise questions about whether Europe's framework could do the same to stop a bank run.

There are plenty of countries with a motive to delay the latest EU proposal. Plenty of other protagonists too. At POLITICO we’ve donned our fedora to investigate the most likely list of suspects, as officials and diplomats point fingers at each other behind the scenes.

While individual countries will often happily claim credit for blocking a reviled piece of EU law, anyone holding up the banking union — one of the EU’s hallmark projects to strengthen banks and build a single market — would be publicly reneging on previous political commitments. And that could now be particularly ill-timed after the events of the weekend.

So, the assailants have been working in the shadows — which in Brussels means writing strongly-worded letters and meeting commissioners in private.

But curtain-twitchers along Rue de la Loi and the Schuman roundabout suggest there are five possible culprits:

Suspect No. 1: Germany

Germany has previous. Berlin last year killed off an EU-wide deposit insurance scheme due to concerns over joint debt and bad flashbacks to the eurozone crisis. That led to the current mandate for Brussels to close loopholes in the bank crisis management and deposit insurance (CMDI) review.

This time round, Germany is likely to want an exemption for its politically sensitive protection schemes for cooperative and savings banks, making it suspect number one.

“It seems clear it is to do with Germany, I don’t know any other [member country] who made blocking concerns at this phase,” said one EU diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussion.

But Berlin isn’t taking the blame. “We’re not requesting a delay or postponement of the CMDI review. The review is an important step in the work of the Banking Union,” said a German diplomat.

Suspect No. 2: France

That brings us to our second suspect. At an EU level, Paris generally fights tooth and nail to protect the interests of its big banks. While the delayed set of reforms are predominantly aimed at smaller lenders, France doesn’t want any more costs imposed on its larger institutions.

But the French, too, say they’re not responsible for CMDI’s disappearance.

“We fully support the principle of an ambitious reform of the crisis-management framework, but we realize that these are positions that are not yet consensual in the Council, and the Commission no doubt judged that it needed a little more time to see what level of ambition to include in the project,” said a French economy ministry official.

Suspect No. 3: Unintentional driveby

And so, there’s a third theory.

Germany and France signed up to a single-page statement with the Netherlands and Finland that was sent to the Commission back in December, raising concerns over the risks involved in expanding the use of national deposit guarantee schemes.

Some Brussels insiders think that gave the Commission pause because the EU executive would immediately face a blocking minority. But a second EU diplomat said it was “not fair” to blame the letter because it reiterated longstanding issues and was not intended to prompt a delay.

The plot thickens. But one thing is clear from our expert sleuthing: the proposal is being held up politically within the Commission. As well as the pressure from EU countries, that could be because of waning appetite at the top of Brussels officialdom.

And that brings us to our fourth suspect.

Suspect No. 4: Ursula von der Leyen

Yes, the European Commission president herself.

With only a little over a year left in this Commission’s five-year term, does von der Leyen really want to bring forward a political contentious reform on the esoteric issue of mid-sized bank bailouts?

“I just get the impression anything controversial is being kicked into touch,” said a third EU diplomat.

Suspect No. 5: Some guy with the documents in his drawer

But the most plausible — and by far the more boring option: Brussels bureaucracy. The Commission knows it will face tough opposition on the content, so its army of officials are making sure its plans are as watertight as possible, and before EU capitals attack them in public.

There may be some frantic rewriting going on. The Commission could also be playing a clever double bluff, by getting EU capitals to clamor for the reforms to come out.

“The Commission remains committed to bringing forward a proposal on CMDI,” said an EU official.

The longer it takes though, the more doubt there is over whether the thing's still alive at all.

And in case you are interested in the forensics ...

The Commission’s plans are expected to bring more mid-sized banks into the resolution framework, a major post-financial crisis reform that means shareholders and creditors rather than taxpayers swallow losses if a bank fails.

Under the missing plans, countries would be able to use their national deposit guarantee schemes — which protect deposits to the tune of €100,000 — upfront to cover losses, rather than only after a collapse, and change their debt ranking.

A middle tier of banks, which until now haven't fit neatly into the resolution regime and have continued to receive public money in a crisis, would then be able to meet conditions to access an EU rainy-day fund that would pay for their exit from the market.

All of that is hugely controversial and risks pitting EU goals of closer integration against national fears of being on the hook for losses in another country. So, our suspects may not have needed much provocation.

Now, the collapse of SVB and its potential implications also throws a wildcard into the mix.

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Image:design by Germán & Co, licensed through Shutterstock

Oil prices fall $1 as SVB collapse spooks financial markets

"The market had previously expected a strong recovery of the Chinese economy, but the latest February inflation rate was only 1% year-on-year, reflecting the current deflationary state of the Chinese economy and weak demand," he said.

REUTERS By Stephanie Kelly and Emily Chow

March 14 (Reuters) - Oil prices fell more than $1 on Tuesday, extending the previous day's slide, as the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank rattled equities markets and sparked fear about a fresh financial crisis.

Brent crude futures were down 87 cents, or 1.1%, at $79.90 a barrel at 0345 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) dropped 85 cents, or 1.1%, to $73.93 a barrel. On Monday, Brent fell to its lowest since early January, while WTI dropped to its lowest since December.

The sudden shutdown of SVB Financial (SIVB.O) triggered concerns about risks to other banks resulting from the U.S. Federal Reserve's sharp interest rate hikes over the last year. It also spurred speculation on whether the central bank might slow the pace of its monetary tightening.

U.S. authorities launched emergency measures on Sunday to shore up confidence in the banking system after fears of contagion from the failure of Silicon Valley Bank led to a sell-off in U.S. assets at the end of last week and state regulators closed New York-based Signature Bank (SBNY.O) on Sunday.

Beyond the Silicon Valley Bank shockwaves, oil prices were also under pressure due to signs of a weaker-than-expected economic recovery in China, despite the lifting of its strict COVID-19 restrictions, said Leon Li, an analyst at CMC Markets.

"The market had previously expected a strong recovery of the Chinese economy, but the latest February inflation rate was only 1% year-on-year, reflecting the current deflationary state of the Chinese economy and weak demand," he said.

China's statistics bureau released data last week showing consumer inflation in the world's second largest economy slowed to the lowest rate in a year in February as shoppers remained cautious even after pandemic curbs were lifted in late 2022.

In U.S. supply news, the American Petroleum Institute is expected to release industry data on U.S. oil inventories on Tuesday.

Six analysts polled by Reuters estimated on average that crude inventories rose by about 600,000 barrels in the week to March 10.

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co

EU to revamp power market, aiming to blunt price spikes

By encouraging nations to employ more contracts that lock in stable, long-term power costs, draft versions of the EU plan detail measures to make consumers less vulnerable to short-term volatility in fossil fuel prices.

Reuters By Kate Abnett editing by Germán & Co

Electrical power pylons of high-tension electricity power lines are seen in Brussels, Belgium, November 24, 2022. REUTERS/ Johanna Geron

BRUSSELS, March 14 (Reuters) - The European Commission is set to propose a revamp of Europe's electricity market rules on Tuesday, aimed at expanding the use of fixed-price power contracts to shield consumers from severe price spikes like those experienced last year.

The European Union vowed to overhaul its electricity market after cuts to Russian gas after its invasion of Ukraine last year sent European power prices soaring to record highs, forcing industries to close and hiking households' bills.

Draft versions of the EU proposal, seen by Reuters, outline measures designed to make consumers less exposed to short-term swings in fossil fuel prices - by nudging countries to use more contracts that lock in stable, long-term electricity prices.

Future state support for new investments in wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower and nuclear electricity, for example, must be done through a two-way contract for difference (CfD).

Two-way CfDs offer generators a fixed "strike price" for their electricity, regardless of the price in short-term energy markets.

Countries would also need to do more to encourage power purchase agreements (PPA) - another type of long-term contract to directly buy electricity from a generator - such as by providing state guarantees for such contracts.

Fossil fuel-powered generators would not receive this support. The aim is to direct support towards the huge investments in renewable energy EU countries need to quit Russian fossil fuels and meet climate change goals.

Other elements aim to push gas out of Europe's energy mix faster - for example, by requiring countries to expand energy storage and other alternatives to replace the role gas plants play in balancing the power grid.

Currently, power prices in Europe are set by the final generator needed to meet overall demand. Often, that is a gas plant, so gas price spikes - like those caused last year by Russia slashing gas deliveries - can send electricity prices soaring.

Despite Brussels pitching the reforms last year as a chance to "decouple" gas and power prices, the draft proposal - which could still change before it is published - avoids the deep electricity market reform that countries, including Spain and France, have called for, opting instead for more limited tweaks to stabilise prices.

Another camp of countries, including Germany, Denmark and Latvia, have warned major changes could scare off investors.

EU countries and the European Parliament must negotiate and approve the final rules, with some pushing for a deal by the end of the year.

Marco Foresti, market design manager at the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E), said the draft proposals had been met with "a bit of a sigh of relief" among those concerned about disrupting the functioning of short-term energy markets.

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Image: Germán & Co

EU drafts rules to stop power suppliers cutting off vulnerable consumers

According to the letter, written under the direction of German legislator Michael Bloss, millions of people in Europe presently have to decide between heating their homes or buying food for their families.

REUTERS By Kate Abnett, editing by Germán & Co

BRUSSELS, March 13 (Reuters) - European Union countries will have to protect vulnerable consumers from being cut off by electricity suppliers if they cannot pay their bills, according to draft EU rules due to be published on Tuesday.

The proposal is part of a broader upgrade of Europe's electricity market rules, which Brussels pledged to rewrite last year when soaring gas and electricity prices, driven by Russia cutting gas supplies to Europe, left consumers across Europe struggling to pay their energy bills.

A draft of the proposed law, seen by Reuters on Monday, said: "Member States shall ensure that vulnerable customers are protected from electricity disconnections."

The draft added that suppliers and national authorities should make measures available to help vulnerable consumers manage their energy use and costs.

EU countries decide which consumers to class as "vulnerable", based on factors such as income level or relying on health equipment that runs on electricity, such as a ventilator.

Currently, there is no explicit legal protection against disconnections, although the EU requires energy suppliers to give consumers information about support like prepayment systems and debt management advice ahead of a planned disconnection.

The article on disconnections was not in a previous draft of the proposal, reported by Reuters last week.

Green members of European Parliament wrote to the European Commission on March 8 urging it to ban disconnections for vulnerable people in the upcoming proposal.

"Millions of people in Europe currently have to make the choice between either buying food for their family or heating their home," said the letter, led by German lawmaker Michael Bloss.

Some governments have already banned disconnections nationally, such as Ireland, which did so this winter for vulnerable consumers struggling with soaring energy bills.

The draft EU power market reform, which could still change before it is published, would also expand the use of long-term fixed-price power contracts, to attempt to shield consumers from price spikes.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: President Joe Biden’s new budget proposal, with high taxes on the mega-rich and expanded medical help for the working- and middle-class, has only fueled the attacks that go back at least to the 2020 campaign. | Wilfredo Lee/AP Photo

Opinion | Is Joe Biden a Stealth Socialist?

Whatever you call him, the Republican attacks won’t work.

POLITICO.COM, Opinion by JEFF GREENFIELD, 03/14/2023

Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

There may be deep divisions within the Republican universe these days — over trade, Ukraine, Trump, Fox News — but there’s one unifying assertion: President Joe Biden is hell-bent on taking the United States down the road to socialism.

Biden’s new budget proposal, with high taxes on the mega-rich and expanded medical help for the working- and middle-class, has only fueled the attacks that go back at least to the 2020 campaign. It was the dominant theme of the GOP convention; it’s how National Review attacks Biden’s student loan forgiveness program; it’s how Nikki Haley and Matt Gaetz decry the president’s budget. Donald Trump, never one for subtlety, simply labels Biden and his supporters “communists.”

In one sense, this is very old wine in not-so-new bottles. Attempts to brand progressive policies as “socialist” go back — literally — for more than a century. Measured by its accuracy and its political impact, it’s not proven all that potent. But given the persistence of the tactic, it might be useful to set down a few key notions:

• Joe Biden is at pains to assert that “I’m a capitalist. I’m not a socialist.”

• A lot of what Biden is proposing would look quite at home in Scandinavia and Western Europe.

• Those nations aren’t really “socialist” at all, even if they’re celebrated by America’s best-known socialist.

• Republicans really, really hate socialism — but will also scream bloody murder if Democrats suggest they want to so much as touch the most obviously socialistic programs of the American government.

Making sense of these assertions does not require squaring a circle; what it does require is an understanding of just how amorphous the term “socialist” is, and why whatever you call Biden’s various policy goals, they are firmly within the American political tradition — and may indeed be very smart politics, at that.

All through his two presidential runs, Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked what it meant that he called himself a “democratic socialist.” Invariably, the Vermont independent would point to the Scandinavian nations and their universal health care, paid family leave and free college education. (He did not call for the government to “control the means of production and distribution,” the classic definition of socialism and an omission at odds with the Democratic Socialists of America, a 92,000-member organization that asserts: “We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.”)

But are Denmark, Sweden and Norway really “socialist” nations? They wouldn’t cut it for the DSA. The private sector is alive and well, businesses have a lighter tax burden than in the U.S., and even their health care systems are far from totally public. In Sweden, by one estimate, some 40 percent of health clinics are private, for-profit enterprises.

Indeed, throughout the industrialized world, the traditional goal of socialism has long since been jettisoned, even as elements of its core philosophy have been embedded in government policy. For example, Germany, whether run by center-right Christian Democrats or center-left Social Democrats, is a resolutely capitalist land, but its laws also require workers to be well represented on large corporations’ supervisory boards, where key decisions are made. In Britain, the Labour Party under Tony Blair renounced nationalization almost 30 years ago. The last Labour leader to embrace the idea, Jeremy Corbyn, presided over a historic walloping at the polls, and current leader Keir Starmer says he would not nationalize the energy industry (though a significant element of the party’s rank and file embraces the notion of “common ownership”).

Ideas like universal health care and expansive workers’ rights have long carried the label of “social democracy”: if not full socialism, then the notion that the government should craft a strong social safety net, impose higher taxes on the wealthy and limit the private sector’s power. (Those who see the hand of Karl Marx in such ideas — as Ronald Reagan did when he assailed the idea of Medicare back in 1964 — need to contend with the fact that the father of government-financed old age and health insurance was the ardent anti-socialist Otto von Bismarck, who first proposed the idea in 1881).

In the 2020 Democratic presidential contest, the left had its champions and Biden was most certainly not among them. But even the most committed Bernie Bro might acknowledge the president’s progress toward nudging the United States toward social democracy.

Consider the elements of Biden’s bipartisan $40 billion investment in semiconductor manufacturing — itself an impressive display of industrial policy. The package comes with strings, the New York Times notes. Companies have to pay union wages; they have to share some of their profits with the government; they have to provide free childcare for their workers; they have to run their plants with environmentally friendly energy sources. These proposals are of a piece with some of the more ambitious Biden policies, some of which, like the expanded child-tax credit, have expired, and some of which, like capping the price of insulin for seniors, remain in place and have been embraced by the private sector. His recent State of the Union address contained a swath of proposals to limit the power of private companies, whether by capping excessive airline baggage fees or hidden credit card charges.

The response to all of this from Republicans has been to raise the specter of “socialism.” Last month, the GOP-controlled House voted 328-86 for a resolution declaring that “socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has time and time again collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and brutal dictatorships. … Congress denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America.” If the goal was to split their opponents, Republicans succeeded: More than 100 Democrats voted for the resolution which, taken literally, would condemn the policies of some of America’s most resolute allies, and which was clearly designed to throw shade at the president.

Of course, almost as vociferous as the GOP’s denunciation of socialism was its fury at the very idea the party might be moving to lay a finger on the two most clearly socialistic elements of U.S. policy — Social Security and Medicare.

When Biden used his State of the Union address to note that “some” Republicans were suggesting cuts in the programs — most specifically Sen. Rick Scott of Florida — GOP lawmakers erupted in anger. Scott, for his part, quickly amended his proposal sunsetting government programs by exempting the popular social insurance systems. It calls to mind the cry of a citizen at a congressional town hall meeting years ago: “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” (Notably, Donald Trump also deserves some credit for steering the GOP away from a free-market orthodoxy intent on gutting retirement programs.)

It’s a little unfair to ascribe cognitive dissonance solely to Republicans. The confusion about what consists of “socialism” is pervasive. Polls show Americans disapprove of “entitlements,” but overwhelmingly approve of Social Security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits — in other words, programs people are entitled to by law. Sanders’ idea of free tuition for public colleges may seem a reach, but a generation or two ago, free college was widely available. City University of New York was famously tuition free from 1847 until 1976, and many state universities once imposed only fees. In some places, community college is still free.

A large majority of Americans see health care as a right, even as majorities of Americans say the government is too powerful and tries to do too much. This dissonance was crystalized by the election victory of Ronald Reagan, who proclaimed in his 1981 Inaugural Address that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” and then presided over a government that was bigger when he left it. (For that matter, Margaret Thatcher never tried to repeal Britain’s national health insurance.)

In this populist moment, Biden has also won applause from the left and right for flexing government’s muscle when it comes to cracking down on Big Tech and the growth of monopolies, be they in the form of airlines or book publishers. Biden is showing his Rooseveltian roots, not just FDR but TR.

A long-running debate exists over why socialism failed to take root in the United States, unlike in Europe. In the near run, the success of Biden’s “social democracy” efforts will stand or fall on whether he can — as many of his Democratic predecessors did — define his policies not as the importation of a foreign ideology, but as part of a continuing effort to make the economic playing field fairer and safer without changing the fundamental rules of the game.

For a century or more, those efforts have met with powerful resistance, even as the political consensus gradually shifts toward a more robust American welfare state. The most recent example: Republicans have given up their efforts to repeal Obamacare after years of pushing to do just that. It turns out that, with a little more modest ambitions, “socialism” has found a home of sorts in this land of individual freedom — as long as you call it something else.

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News round-up, March 13, 2023

Where is the global economy heading?

JP Morgan's research department, meanwhile, has expressed surprise that SVB, for example, has undertaken a bond sale to increase the bank's liquidity so dramatically. In their view, they believe that this is more of a message that its strategy is one of liquidity prudence, given an uncertain outlook in which there could be further adjustments in liquidity needs due to outflows of customer deposits. JP Morgan also acknowledges that it was taken by surprise by the bank's drastic move. "We fully recognise that we did not see these aggressive actions to increase liquidity coming," it said in a report.

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Quote of the day… 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said rules out a politically sensitive scenario of bailing California banks with taxpayers' money.

Thestreet.com by luc olinga

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Most read…

All This Economic Good News is Just Confusing

Many business leaders across the country were hoping for a dismal jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bad jobs numbers would mean that the economy is weakening, and that the Federal Reserve wouldn’t have to keep raising interest rates to get a handle on inflation. If interest rate increases stop, businesses will be able to borrow money more inexpensively.

TIME BY ALANA SEMUELS, MARCH 10, 2023

Janet Yellen Says Government Won't Bail Out Silicon Valley Bank

Treasury Secretary rules out politically sensitive scenario of bailing out California bank with taxpayers' money.

THESTREET by LUC OLINGA

Silicon Valley bank collapses and spreads to Europe: what happened and what are the risks?

The American institution faced liquidity problems, sold bonds at a loss and caused stock market falls across the financial sector. The US regulator yesterday intervened in its assets and will lead the process of selling the firm. The bank warns of the impact of the economic slowdown on SMEs: "Their environment will be more stressed". Silicon Valley Bank, in the United States, is an entity that mainly finances the technology sector. Silicon Valley Bank, in the United States, is an entity that mainly finances the technology sector ABC.

ABC.ES BY DANIEL CABALLERO, MADRID, SPAIN, TODAY

Biden administration to approve major oil project in Alaska -source

The Willow project, led by energy giant ConocoPhillips (COP.N), would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre (93 million-hectare) area on the state's North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.

Reuters By Nichola Groom and Maria Caspani

Britain's tax take risks blowing green energy off target

The British government has set targets for major increases in wind generation, for instance, as it seeks to meet a goal of net zero emissions by 2050 and to become more independent of imported energy following the supply disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Reuters By Susanna Twidale and Shadia Nasralla

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Image: Germán & Co

All This Economic Good News is Just Confusing

Many business leaders across the country were hoping for a dismal jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bad jobs numbers would mean that the economy is weakening, and that the Federal Reserve wouldn’t have to keep raising interest rates to get a handle on inflation. If interest rate increases stop, businesses will be able to borrow money more inexpensively.

TIME BY ALANA SEMUELS, MARCH 10, 2023

But the jobs report was not dismal. The U.S. economy gained 311,000 jobs in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said on March 10, about a third more than the 225,000 jobs predicted by economists polled by the Wall Street Journal. That follows a January gain of half a million jobs. The latest jobs report comes after a few more spots of strong data—U.S. consumer spending rose by the most in nearly two years in January, and there are still nearly two jobs for every unemployed worker, according to a BLS data release on March 8.

The jobs report does suggest that the economy’s breakneck speed of growth is slowing.

For example, the U.S. economy had added, on average, 343,000 jobs on average for the past six months, so February did represent a slight slowdown. Some industries continued to lose jobs, including information, which includes big tech companies, and transportation and warehousing, which includes the people who work in e-commerce. Wage growth appears to be slowing, and the unemployment rate ticked up slightly, to 3.6%.

But there were also some big employment gains in industries like leisure and hospitality, retail, and even construction, despite worries that the housing market is softening.

More than anything, the jobs report presents more confusing data to economists in an era where no one seems to really understand whether or not the U.S. economy is headed south—though many people seem to be salivating for bad economic data. Economists didn’t know what to make of it. “If you squint at the numbers, you might be able to see signs of a slowing labor market,” Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist of Bright MLS, a real estate listing service, wrote in commentary. “February’s job gains beat expectations again in another display of resiliency for this labor market,” another analyst, Cody Harker, head of data and insights from Bayard Advertising, commented.

The average American can take comfort in knowing that despite some gloomy economic predictions, the job market is still strong. Unemployed workers should have no trouble finding a new job.

But this jobs report also means that the Federal Reserve will likely continue to quickly raise interest rates, which is not happy news for any consumer who is trying to borrow money soon. The Fed’s Open Market Committee will release its next decision on interest rates on March 22. Testifying before Congress on March 7, Fed chair Jerome Powell said that the strength of recent economic data “suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.”

What that means for the next few weeks is more business leaders and economists trying to read the tea leaves for any signs of a recession, and arguing the case that the economy is slowing down. Economists keep thinking up reasons why this strong data is a fluke—unseasonably warm weather led to unusual consumer spending in January, all these job gains are just replenishing industries that experienced big cuts during the pandemic, CEOs are pessimistic so hiring can’t continue.

“People want some reassurance that inflation will come down—and some people, especially those who have been around for a while, think that a recession is the only way to permanently reduce those inflation expectations,” says Daniel Altman, chief economist for Instawork, a flexible staffing company.

Already, forecasting groups like the Conference Board, which tracks economic indicators, predict that high inflation and slowing consumer spending will “tip the economy into recession in 2023.” The data don’t show any sign of that yet. But an economic forecaster can continue to hope.

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Image:design by Germán & Co, licensed through Shutterstock

Janet Yellen Says Government Won't Bail Out Silicon Valley Bank

Treasury Secretary rules out politically sensitive scenario of bailing out California bank with taxpayers' money.

THESTREET by LUC OLINGA

The message is clear: the government is not going to bail out Silicon Valley Bank, despite several calls from influential voices in the financial and business communities.

The message was delivered by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during an interview with CBS's "Face the Nation" on March 12. Yellen said regulators were working all weekend "to address the situation in a timely way” in order to avoid the panic some fear in global markets if no resolution is found. 

She however added that a bail out was not an option being considered.

"Let me be clear that during the financial crisis, there were investors and owners of systemic large banks that were bailed out," Yellen told CBS’ s "Face the Nation." "And we're certainly not looking - and the reforms that have been put in place means that we’re not going to do that again. But we are concerned about depositors and we're focused on trying to meet their needs.”

SVB’s failure on March 10, which was the second-largest of a bank in U.S. history, has shaken many investors. It was the result of a bank run, caused by the bank’s announcement that it planned to raise $2.25 billion by issuing new common and convertible preferred shares to shore up its finances, after it sold bonds in its portfolio of investments at a $1.8 billion loss.

'Wide Range of Available Options'

About $42 billion of deposits were withdrawn by the end of March 9, according to a regulatory filing. By the close of business that day, SVB had a negative cash balance of $958 million.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took control and is now the manager of $175 billion in customer deposits, including money from several startups and from some of the biggest names in the technology world.

The regulator also created a new entity, and indicated that unsecured depositors, that is, SVB customers with more than $250,000 in their accounts, will not, for the moment, have access to their money. 

This leaves many uncertainties about the ability of many startups to operate in the coming weeks, since their funds are locked up. The FDIC said it will pay uninsured depositors an "advance dividend within the next week."

The question is how much this "advanced dividend" will amount to. 

Companies with SVB accounts, lines of credit and credit facilities are wondering what this means for them, when they can access their funds, if they will be able to get all their funds out, and whether they will have access to their credit lines. More than 95% of the bank's deposits were uninsured as of December, according to regulatory filings.

As a result, many influential voices on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley worry that the may not enough and are calling on the government to bail out the bank that played such a huge role in the startup and small business ecosystem in the Bay Area.

"I simply want to say that we're very aware of the problems that depositors will have," Yellen said. "Many of them are small businesses that employ people across the country and of course this is a significant concern and working with regulators to try to address these concerns."

Asked whether regulators might be open to a "foreign bank" buying SVB, Yellen responded, "I'm sure they're considering a wide range of available options that include acquisitions."

"This is really a decision for the FDIC, as it decides on what the best course is to resolve this firm,” Treasury Secretary said.

'Corporate Bailouts Must End'

One of the solutions that the FDIC and the Federal Reserve are working on, is the creation of a fund that would allow regulators to backstop more deposits at banks that run into trouble, following the collapse of SVB, reports Bloomberg News.

Many politicians have already sent the message that taxpayer money should not be used to bail out SVB.

"Taxpayers should absolutely not bail out Silicon Valley Bank," Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said on Twitter. "Private investors can purchase the bank and its assets. It is not the responsibility of the American taxpayer to step in. The era of big government and corporate bailouts must end."

"If there is an effort to use taxpayer money to bail out Silicon Valley Bank, the American people can count on the fact that I will be there leading the fight against it," Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla) tweeted on Mar. 10.

The challenge for the FDIC and the Fed is that any guarantee of the borrowers’ funds might be perceived as a bailout, with taxpayer money being used to protect clients, drawing similarities to the government intervention in the 2008 financial crisis.

"What I'll say about the banking system overall is it's more resilient, and has a better foundation than before the financial crisis. That’s largely due to reforms put in place after the financial crisis. Our Treasury secretary is at the helm and working diligently with regulators," Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said on CNN’s "State of the Union."

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co

Silicon Valley bank collapses and spreads to Europe: what happened and what are the risks?

The American institution faced liquidity problems, sold bonds at a loss and caused stock market falls across the financial sector. The US regulator yesterday intervened in its assets and will lead the process of selling the firm. The bank warns of the impact of the economic slowdown on SMEs: "Their environment will be more stressed". Silicon Valley Bank, in the United States, is an entity that mainly finances the technology sector. Silicon Valley Bank, in the United States, is an entity that mainly finances the technology sector ABC

ABC.ES BY DANIEL CABALLERO, MADRID, SPAIN, TODAY

SVB is an American financial institution, specifically from California. It is not among the ten largest banks in the country; it is a local company with aspirations for the whole world. But those aspirations have been dashed by the collapse it has experienced over the past two days. The effect on the rest of the sector has not been long in coming and the world's largest banks have suffered big falls on the stock market at the end of the week.

SVB stands for Silicon Valley Bank. The bank of Silicon Valley, the cradle of American entrepreneurship and innovation. This firm is one of the major financiers of startups and entrepreneurs looking for an opportunity.

The interest on new operations has more than doubled in just one year due to the ECB's rate hikes

It was destined to achieve huge returns with this business but the world of technology is not what it used to be and the problems of this sector have swallowed up the SVB. The bank has been suffering from a massive flight of customer deposits for three days, draining it of liquidity and forcing it to take drastic internal decisions to try to stay afloat. It announced the sale of a $21 billion portfolio of US Treasury bonds to raise funds, but had to do so at a loss because their value had collapsed due to the rise in interest rates. For this reason, it said it expects to record a loss of $1.8 billion in the first quarter.

Thus, he moved the hole from liquidity... to capital, solvency itself. And it announced a 2.25 billion share sale round to raise funds. That round failed and, according to CNBC, its managers have opted to sell what remains of SVB. It will be difficult to quantify the value of the bank, with its liquidity problems - the flight of deposits continues -, capital and a 60% fall on the stock market on Thursday; in fact, it had to be suspended from trading yesterday because in the 'premarket' (prior to the stock market opening) another fall of almost 70% was already anticipated.

However, such a private sale will no longer be possible. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (similar to the Spanish deposit guarantee fund) intervened yesterday afternoon and took control of Silicon Valley Bank. The US regulator, in a statement, said that "all insured depositors will have full access to their insured deposits no later than Monday morning, March 13, 2023". In this regard, the institution also reported that, as of 31 December 2022, "Silicon Valley Bank had approximately $209 billion in total assets and approximately $175.4 billion in total deposits".

Contagion effect

American and European banks have not been able to avoid the contagion effect on their stock market valuations. JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, three of the world's giants, lost more than 5% on Thursday. In the Old Continent, Banco Santander fell by more than 4% yesterday, as did Deutsche Bank, which fell by more than 7%, and BNP Paribas, which fell by nearly 4%.

The most internationalised institutions with the greatest exposure to public debt were among those that suffered most from the collapse of SVB. But... But what is behind the fact that a local bank dragged down the entire global banking sector?

The issue, beyond the collapse of a relatively small financial institution, is whether there may be further liquidity problems in other US institutions, and especially the negative effect of central bank interest rate hikes.

This is how much SVB's stock market fell on Thursday after the full extent of its crisis became known.

Central to all this is SVB's sale of 21 billion in US Treasury bonds. These were AFS bonds, which are 'available for sale'. When it sold these assets because it needed liquidity, it did so at a loss.

Financial sources point out that what is important here is to know whether the latent losses on sovereign bonds that financial institutions accumulate on their balance sheets could be a problem. And they speak of latent losses - which are adjusted against capital - in all cases arising from the rise in the Fed and ECB's benchmark interest rates; if the price of money rises, the value of the bonds you hold in your portfolio at a lower interest rate falls sharply. Therefore, if you need to sell those bonds, you will do so at a big loss.

Nevertheless, the banking sector believes that there is no reason to panic. They explain that this is a specific situation of the SVB and that the markets have overreacted with stock market crashes against the sector as a whole. But they do warn that some institutions are more exposed to sovereign risk than others.

"All the uncertainty linked to the sector is translating into falls in the European banking sector, especially Italian and Spanish banks, which we see as unjustified. We believe that the market's reading is based on an overreaction to sovereign bond exposure which is not the problem. Moreover, the liquidity of European banks is very high," the banking sector says.

For the moment, the situation is relatively calm in European banks, according to the sources consulted, while waiting to find out how far the SVB crisis may spread. They refer rather to whether other medium-sized institutions could find themselves in liquidity problems of this nature, and materialising latent losses due to rate rises. Even so, they argue that the health of European banks is significantly better than that of US banks in terms of liquidity and solvency.

SVB's fall shows the negative side of rate hikes in banking due to the latent losses accumulated in the portfolio.

Guy de Blonay, investment manager for financial equities at Jupiter AM, adds: "Silicon Valley Bank has a less diversified balance sheet structure than many large global banks and is more exposed to deposit outflows due to a very specific type of client: technology entrepreneurs. We believe that the risk of a large deposit outflow and the resulting bond and equity divestments is low for diversified European banks".

"Still, this development draws attention to changing monetary policy and its potential impact on banks. Rising rates and quantitative tightening that remove liquidity from the financial system may put pressure on asset values and deposits, altering balance sheet structures and affecting net interest income, especially in the US," the Jupiter AM manager continues.

Set of elements

"Given that client money outflows are also likely to be driven by higher interest rates, it is no exaggeration to say that this episode is emblematic of the regime of higher rates for longer that we seem to be in at the start, as well as inverted curves, and a technology industry that has been experiencing much tougher times of late. The perfect storm of all the things we have been worrying about in this cycle," says Jim Reid, strategist at Deutsche Bank, in his daily report.

JP Morgan's research department, meanwhile, has expressed surprise that SVB, for example, has undertaken a bond sale to increase the bank's liquidity so dramatically. In their view, they believe that this is more of a message that its strategy is one of liquidity prudence, given an uncertain outlook in which there could be further adjustments in liquidity needs due to outflows of customer deposits. JP Morgan also acknowledges that it was taken by surprise by the bank's drastic move. "We fully recognise that we did not see these aggressive actions to increase liquidity coming," it said in a report.

Related to this, JP Morgan issues a warning signal: "Given that the company has been quiet since the deal was announced, we are uncertain what caused the company to move to sell virtually its entire AFS bond portfolio before fully exhausting other options.

In this case, the latter firm points out that, in the face of rising interest rates, "banks' bond portfolios have seen an increasing reduction in value, with a growing balance of 'unrealised (latent) losses'" being booked against capital. Adds the investment bank, which is in fact a shareholder in SVB: "This has become a key focus for investors with the message from bank management teams being largely 'not to worry' about these unrealised losses given the multitude of alternative funding options available to banks.

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Image: Germán & Co

Biden administration to approve major oil project in Alaska -source

The Willow project, led by energy giant ConocoPhillips (COP.N), would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre (93 million-hectare) area on the state's North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.

Reuters By Nichola Groom and Maria Caspani

March 12 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden's administration will approve a major and controversial oil drilling project in Alaska on Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The decision to move ahead with the project by authorizing three drill sites in northwestern Alaska would come a day after Biden announced sweeping curbs on oil and gas leasing to protect up to 16 million acres of water and land in the region.

The Willow project, led by energy giant ConocoPhillips (COP.N), would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre (93 million-hectare) area on the state's North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.

The project, announced in January 2017, is expected to produce about 600 million barrels of oil equivalent over its life, peaking at 180,000 barrels of oil per day, ConocoPhillips says on its website.

Earlier on Sunday, the U.S. Interior Department unveiled actions to make nearly 3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean "indefinitely off limits" for oil and gas leasing, building on an Obama-era ban and effectively closing off U.S. Arctic waters to oil exploration.

In addition to the drilling ban, the government will put forward new protections for more than 13 million acres of "ecologically senitive" Special Areas within Alaska's petroleum reserve, the administration said in a statement on Sunday.

The area includes the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay Special Areas.

The new moves come as Biden tries to balance his goals of decarbonizing the U.S. economy and preserving pristine wilderness with calls to increase domestic fuel supply to keep prices low.

Willow has support from the oil and gas industry and state officials eager for jobs, but is fiercely opposed by environmental groups who want to move rapidly away from fossil fuels to combat climate change.

An environmental group said the new protections announced on Sunday did not go far enough and the government should stop oil and gas developments to help fight climate change.

"Protecting one area of the Arctic so you can destroy another doesn't make sense, and it won't help the people and wildlife who will be upended by the Willow project," said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Germán & Co

Britain's tax take risks blowing green energy off target

The British government has set targets for major increases in wind generation, for instance, as it seeks to meet a goal of net zero emissions by 2050 and to become more independent of imported energy following the supply disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Reuters By Susanna Twidale and Shadia Nasralla

LONDON, March 13 (Reuters) - A cap on revenue and the lack of the kind of incentives offered to oil explorers are blocking the development of renewable energy in Britain, say industry officials who are pressing for changes ahead of this week's budget.

The British government has set targets for major increases in wind generation, for instance, as it seeks to meet a goal of net zero emissions by 2050 and to become more independent of imported energy following the supply disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Representatives of the renewable energy sector say those goals could be missed without policy changes, especially as other countries are doing more to attract investment in green power.

Among the most contentious issues is Britain's Electricity Generator Levy (EGL), which the government implemented from the start of this year to combat high energy prices, and which the industry says is a "de facto windfall tax".

Rod Wood, managing director at wind energy developer Community Wind Power, is among those seeking changes to the EGL in Britain's March 15 budget.

“The taxation (EGL) is going to kibosh renewable targets the UK has set,” he said.

Specifically, he wants it to include an investment allowance like the one oil and gas companies receive under their equivalent Energy Profits Levy (EPL).

The EPL includes an investment incentive that means oil and gas firms can offset from their tax bill 91.40 pounds in every 100 pounds spent on new production.

British government targets include increasing offshore wind capacity to 50 gigawatts (GW) from around 14 GW now.

Wood said without tax changes, his company would be forced to halt development of three onshore Scottish projects, totalling 1.2 GW, which by 2025 could be generating enough power for more than a million homes.

“When you look at how much costs have gone up in the UK versus stimulus packages on offer in the U.S., it's not hard to see anyone who can will be relocating business there,” he said.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration last year signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which delivers a support package for clean technology worth $370 billion.

INFLATION, SUPPLY CHAINS, INTEREST RATES

Other developers say the combination of levies, high energy prices, supply chain bottlenecks, inflation and interest rate rises means their projects are under threat.

Denmark's Orsted last week said its Hornsea 3 project in the North Sea, which at around 3 GW would be the world's largest windfarm when built, could be paused unless it gets support such as tax breaks because costs have surged.

Another major project is the Vattenfall group's Norfolk Offshore Wind Zone.

Rob Anderson, its project director, said the British government "must show its support for the sector in next week’s budget through capital allowances”.

Under the EGL, a 45% tax on low-carbon power generators applies to revenue on power generation at an aggregate price above 75 pounds ($89) per megawatt hour (MWh).

With wholesale electricity prices around 120 pounds/MWh, the level at which the tax kicks in is too low, Wood said, citing more generous levies in Europe.

The European Commission has set a revenue cap on electricity companies, requiring them to hand over any excess revenue to national governments they get for selling their non-gas generated power over 180 euros ($190)/MWh.

OIL AND GAS SECTOR UNHAPPY TOO

Oil and gas producers, which have been subject to a windfall tax since May 2022, also want change.

They say the Energy Profit Levy (EPL) windfall tax which last year raised the tax rate to 75%, one of the world's highest, is shrinking producers' access to funding.

Reuters Graphics 

Renewable developers say the oil and gas sector has for years enjoyed tax breaks, while green groups say the sector should no longer be given any incentives given the need to phase out fossil fuel.

The British fossil fuel industry says it is still necessary to invest in the ageing North Sea basin and home-grown fuel is far less polluting than importing oil and gas from distant places where supply might be more easily disrupted.

It also says higher tax rates should kick in only when profits are derived from prices above a yet-to-be-agreed price floor, based on an historic average, rather than the entire profit regardless of price as is currently the case.

The industry also wants the tax to apply to realised prices, which include hedging results, rather than broader market prices.

Many oil and gas producers hedge large chunks of their output to comply with lenders' demands, which means their exposure to market price changes is limited.

Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt, in a meeting in December, rebuffed calls from the oil and gas industry to amend the windfall tax.

Further meetings, including in late February with Treasury officials have taken place, but no change was expected from the March 15 budget, two industry sources said, declining to be named.

Meanwhile, Britain's biggest oil and gas producer Harbour , has announced job cuts and shunned the latest licensing round. TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) cut its UK investment programme by a quarter.

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The ironic side effects of the rapid global energy transition…

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Image: Germán & Co

Regulations that force battery makers to use a minimal amount of recycled material are being considered, especially in countries keen to accelerate their energy transition and develop exportable expertise in the decarbonization space.

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Reuters by Gavin Maguire

LITTLETON, Colorado, March 9 (Reuters) - There's a consensus among some climate advocates that catastrophic global environmental damage can only be avoided by a rapid and comprehensive retooling of the world's energy system and tough caps on emissions for industry.

That view is shared by growing numbers of civilians, businesses and governments as worsening droughts, floods, wildfires and heat waves shore up backing for urgent action to slash pollution and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

This chorus of support for the energy transition has ignited an almost frantic renewable energy development spree across the world, with green energy generation capacity growing at a record pace in every major economy.

For all the good intentions, though, the great green energy revolution has had its share of growing pains, including some rather surprising unintended consequences that in some cases may have caused more environmental harm than good.

CLEANER AIR, BUT WARMER SEAS

One example of a surprising side effect of emissions-cutting policy has been the surge in northern hemisphere water temperatures since strict new pollution regulations came into effect three years ago.

On January 1st, 2020, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) implemented ship emissions standards that slashed the maximum level of sulfur allowed in shipping fuels.

Known as IMO2020, the new rules were aimed at reducing air pollution spewing from the global shipping fleet, with an IMO study claiming that 570,000 premature deaths would be prevented globally between 2020 and 2025 by the cleaner-burning fuel.

The resulting sharp drop in sulphate particles in the atmosphere, however, caused a surge in solar radiation absorbed by the oceans along the world's busiest shipping routes, according to a study by climate researcher Leon Simons.

IMO 2020 impact on sulphur dioxide levels and solar absorbtion levels of oceans

According to Simons, a board member of the Club of Rome - a nonprofit group of intellectuals and business leaders that discusses major global issues - the previously higher levels of sulfur particles had helped reflect some solar radiation. As sulfur levels dropped more radiation was absorbed.

That helped to raise ocean temperatures, with sea surfaces in the northern hemisphere in 2022 averaging 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average from 1979-2000.

"If this trend continues that could mean that the Northern Hemisphere mid latitudes (where many of us live) will warm much more rapidly," Simons said in a recent Twitter post.

GREEN POWER WASTE

Another ironic side effect of the rush into renewable energy has been the build up in components that have reached the end of their useful life but are hard to recycle.

An obvious example is wind turbine blades, which have a design life of roughly 20 years before they need to be replaced due to worn parts or because they are far less efficient than newer blades.

As each blade can stretch more than 100 feet (30.5 m) and weigh over 2 tonnes, the upgrading of entire wind farms can cause headaches for developers, who sometimes resort to burying old blades in landfills.

Some firms are developing blade recycling capabilities, such as Carbon Rivers, LM Wind Power and Veolia (.VIA.PA), but tend to steer clear of the earliest generation of wind blades, which were made from hard-to-process composite materials.

Old solar panels face a similar predicament, especially ones that lack the efficiency of newer models and in the eyes of resellers are not worth collecting from old sites and homes.

Again, there are a growing number of firms that do recycle old panels, but, like wind blade recyclers, they can struggle to economically procure enough stock of discarded components to make operations profitable. They can also face volatile market prices for the recycled and reclaimed materials they do manage to gather.

In contrast, old electric vehicle (EV) batteries are in high demand by firms that produce new batteries, as many of the key ingredients contained in them can be processed and used again.

The problem here is that the lack of conformity in battery shapes, sizes and configurations has made it hard to automate the reclamation process, which can be laborious and expensive to do manually.

That means the cost of materials collected from recycled EV batteries can be far higher than freshly mined or processed alternatives, which can lead battery producers to favor the continued use of new ingredients even though the supply of recycled battery materials is steadily mounting.

Regulations that force battery makers to use a minimal amount of recycled material are being considered, especially in countries keen to accelerate their energy transition and develop exportable expertise in the decarbonization space.

However, as manufacturers need to be competitive against international peers, policymakers that want to intervene must be wary of creating any further unintended and potentially damaging consequences.

News round-up, March 10, 2023

Quote of the day… 

"The amount of renewables that we're going to have to build over the next decade is enormous, and I don't think everybody has really digested the scope of that," said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility giant AES Corp.

REUTERS (CERAWEEK)

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Most read…

Europe's lenders sucked into global banks rout

The global rout in bank stocks was prompted by Silicon Valley Bank, a major banking partner for the U.S. tech sector, being forced to raise fresh capital after losing $1.8 billion selling a package of bonds to meet depositor demands for cash.

REUTERS 

Why Russia Has Such a Strong Grip on Europe’s Nuclear Power

New energy sources to replace oil and natural gas have been easier to find than kicking the dependency on Rosatom, the state-owned nuclear superstore.

NYT by Patricia Cohen, March 10, 2023.

Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely

The former president was told that he could appear before a Manhattan grand jury next week if he wishes to testify, a strong indication that an indictment could soon follow.

NYT by William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich, March 9, 2023

IAEA chief makes plea for Zaporizhzhia safe zone after outage

"Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out," Grossi told the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors.

Reuters by Francois Murphy 

Fears Grow of New Cold War Between U.S. and China

China and the United States are lurching from one crisis to the next. It's not just deep economic interdependence that is at stake, but also global peace. Is there still a way out of this downward spiral?

Spiegel by Ann-Dorit Boy, Georg Fahrion, Christoph Giesen, Christina Hebel and Bernhard Zand, 09.03.2023

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“We’re living in a volatile world…

it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp

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Image:  A trader sits in front of the computer screens at his desk at the Frankfurt stock exchange, Germany, June 29, 2015. . REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

Europe's lenders sucked into global banks rout

REUTERS by Alun John editing by Germán & Co

LONDON/FRANKFURT, March 10 (Reuters) - A dramatic sell-off in U.S. bank stocks spilled over into Europe on Friday, as some of the region's biggest banks saw their shares tumble in their largest decline in nine months.

Europe's STOXX banking index (.SX7P) fell more than 4% and was set for its biggest one-day slide since early June, with declines for most major lenders, including HSBC (HSBA.L), down 4.5%, and Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), down 7.9%.

Shares in Italy's UniCredit (CRDI.MI) and Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI) also fell sharply.

The global rout in bank stocks was prompted by Silicon Valley Bank, a major banking partner for the U.S. tech sector, being forced to raise fresh capital after losing $1.8 billion selling a package of bonds to meet depositor demands for cash.

Neil Wilson, Chief Market Analyst at Markets.com, said that the episode could be the "straw that breaks the camel's back" for banks after worries about ever higher interest rates and a fragile U.S. economy.

The episode underscored the vulnerability of banks, many of which were propped up by taxpayers' cash following the global financial crisis more than a decade ago. That crash and the economic fallout from the pandemic led central banks and governments to print trillions to support the economy but they are now seeking to rein that in.

Investors in SVB's stock had fretted over whether the capital raise would be sufficient given the deteriorating fortunes of many technology startups that the bank serves.

SVB's CEO Gregory Becker had been calling clients to assure them their money with the bank is safe, according to two people familiar with the matter.

But some startups have been advising their founders to pull out their money from SVB as a precautionary measure, the sources added.

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Image: UAE, Dubai - November 28, 2021: exposition in Russian pavilion at World Expo 2020, Germán & Co by Shutterstock

Why Russia Has Such a Strong Grip on Europe’s Nuclear Power

New energy sources to replace oil and natural gas have been easier to find than kicking the dependency on Rosatom, the state-owned nuclear superstore.

NYT by Patricia Cohen, March 10, 2023.

Europe moved with startling speed to wean itself off Russian oil and natural gas in the wake of war in Ukraine. But breaking the longstanding dependency on Russia’s vast nuclear industry is a much more complicated undertaking.

Russia, through its mammoth state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, dominates the global nuclear supply chain. It was Europe’s third-largest supplier of uranium in 2021, accounting for 20 percent of the total. With few ready alternatives, there has been scant support for sanctions against Rosatom — despite urging from the Ukrainian government in Kyiv.

For countries with Russian-made reactors, reliance runs deep. In five European Union countries, every reactor — 18 in total — were built by Russia. In addition, two more are scheduled to start operating soon in Slovakia, and two are under construction in Hungary, cementing partnerships with Rosatom far into the future.

For years, the operators of these nuclear power plants had little choice. Rosatom, through its subsidiary TVEL, was virtually the only producer of the fabricated fuel assemblies — the last step in the process of turning uranium into the nuclear fuel rods — that power the reactors.

Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, some European countries have started to step away from Russia’s nuclear energy superstore.

The Czech Republic’s energy company, CEZ, has signed contracts with Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse Electric Company and the French company Framatome to supply fuel assemblies for its plant in Temelin.

Finland canceled a troubled project with Rosatom to build a nuclear reactor and hired Westinghouse to design, license and supply a new fuel type for its plant in Loviisa after its current contracts expire.

“The purpose is to diversify the supply chain,” said Simon-Erik Ollus, an executive vice president at Fortum, a Finnish energy company.

Bulgaria signed a new 10-year agreement with Westinghouse to provide fuel for its existing reactors. And last week, it moved ahead with plans for the American company to build new nuclear reactor units. Poland is about to construct its first nuclear power plant, which will feature three Westinghouse reactors.

Slovakia and even Hungary, Russia’s closest ally in the European Union, have also reached out to alternative fuel suppliers.

“We see a lot of genuine movement,” said Tarik Choho, president of nuclear fuel unit at Westinghouse, adding that the Ukraine war accelerated Europe's search for new suppliers. “Even Hungary wants to diversify.”

William Freebairn, senior managing editor for nuclear energy at S&P Commodity Insights, said Russia’s march into Ukraine last year in some ways marked “a sea change.”

“Within days of the invasion,” he said, “just about every country that operated a Russian reactor started looking for alternate supply.”

In Ukraine, serious efforts to chip away at Russian nuclear dominance began in 2014 after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia sent troops to occupy territory in Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. Ukraine, whose 15 Soviet-era reactors provided half the country’s electricity, signed a deal with Westinghouse to expand its fuel contract.

It took roughly five years between the start of the design process and the final delivery of the first fuel assembly, according to the International Energy Association.

Ukraine “blazed a commercial trail,” Mr. Freebairn said. In June, Ukraine signed another contract with Westinghouse to eventually provide all its nuclear fuel. The company will also build nine power plants and establish an engineering center in the country.

Still, a worldwide turn away from Russia’s nuclear industry would be a slog: The nuclear supply chain is exceptionally complex. Establishing a new one would be expensive and take years.

At the same time, Rosatom has proved uniquely successful as both a business enterprise and a vehicle for Russian political influence. Much of its ascendancy is due to what experts have labeled a “one-stop nuclear shop” that can provide countries with an all-inclusive package: materials, training, support, maintenance, disposal of nuclear waste, decommissioning and, perhaps most important, financing on favorable terms.

And with a life span of 20 to 40 years, deals to build nuclear reactors compel a long-term marriage.

Russia’s tightest grip is on the market for nuclear fuel. It controls 38 percent of the world’s uranium conversion and 46 percent of the uranium enrichment capacity — essential steps in producing usable fuel.

“That’s equal to all of OPEC put together in terms of market share and power,” said Paul Dabbar, a visiting fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, referring to the oil dominance of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

As with oil and natural gas, the cost of nuclear fuel supplies has risen over the past year, putting more than $1 billion from exports into Russia’s treasury, according to a report from the Royal United Services Institute, a security research organization in London.

The American nuclear power industry gets up to 20 percent of its enriched uranium from Russia, the maximum allowed by a recent nonproliferation treaty, according to the International Energy Association. France imports 15 percent. Framatome, which is owned by state-backed nuclear power operator, Électricité de France, or EDF, signed a cooperation agreement with Rosatom in December 2021, two months before Russia’s invasion, that is still in effect. Framatome declined to comment.

And even with the slate of new fuel agreements in Europe with non-Russian sources, deliveries won’t begin for at least a year, and in some cases several years.

Around a quarter of the European Union’s electricity supply comes from nuclear power. With pending climate disaster prompting a worldwide push to decrease the overall use of fossil fuels, nuclear energy’s role in the future fuel mix is expected to increase.

Still, analysts argue that even without formal sanctions, Russia’s position as a nuclear supplier has been permanently compromised.

At the height of the debate in Germany last year over whether to keep its two remaining nuclear power plants online because of the war, their reliance on uranium enriched by Russia for the fuel rods emerged as one of the arguments against extending their lives. The last two reactors are to be shut down next month.

And when Poland’s Council of Ministers approved the agreement in November for Westinghouse to build the country’s first nuclear power plant, the resolution cited “the need for permanent independence from energy supplies and energy carriers from Russia.”

Mr. Choho at Westinghouse was confident about the company’s ability to compete with Rosatom in Europe, estimating that it eventually could capture 50 to 75 percent of that nuclear market. Westinghouse has also signed an agreement with the Spanish energy company Enusa to cooperate on fabricating fuel for Russian-made reactors.

But outside the European Union and United States, in countries where support for Russia’s government has held up, Rosatom’s one-stop shopping and financing remain enticing. Russian-built reactors can be found in China, India and Iran as well as Armenia and Belarus. Construction has begun on Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, and Rosatom has a memorandum of understanding with 13 countries, according to the International Energy Association.

As a new report in the journal Nature Energy concluded, while the war “will undermine Rosatom’s position in Europe and damage its reputation as a reliable supplier,” its global standing “may remain strong.”

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co by Shutterstock

Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely

The former president was told that he could appear before a Manhattan grand jury next week if he wishes to testify, a strong indication that an indictment could soon follow.

NYT by William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich, March 9, 2023

The Manhattan district attorney’s office recently signaled to Donald J. Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the payment of hush money to a porn star, the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

The prosecutors offered Mr. Trump the chance to testify next week before the grand jury that has been hearing evidence in the potential case, the people said. Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.

In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer questions in the grand jury before they are indicted, but they rarely testify, and Mr. Trump is likely to decline the offer. His lawyers could also meet privately with the prosecutors in hopes of fending off criminal charges.

Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president, and could upend the 2024 presidential race in which Mr. Trump remains a leading contender. It would also elevate Mr. Bragg to the national stage, though not without risk, and a conviction in the complex case is far from assured.

Mr. Trump has faced an array of criminal investigations and special counsel inquiries over the years but has never been charged with a crime, underscoring the gravity of Mr. Bragg’s inquiry.

Mr. Bragg could become the first prosecutor to charge Mr. Trump, but he might not be the last.

In Georgia, the Fulton County District Attorney is investigating whether Mr. Trump interfered in the 2020 election, and at the federal level, a special counsel is scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election results, as well as his handling of classified documents.

The Manhattan inquiry, which has spanned nearly five years, centers on a $130,000 payment to the porn star, Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The payment was made in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign by Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, who was later reimbursed by Mr. Trump from the White House.

Mr. Cohen, who has long said that Mr. Trump directed him to pay Ms. Daniels to keep her quiet, is expected to testify in front of the grand jury, but has not yet done so.

The district attorney’s office has already questioned at least six other people before the grand jury, according to several other people with knowledge of the inquiry.

Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors have not finished the grand jury presentation and he could still decide against seeking an indictment.

Mr. Trump has previously said that the prosecutors are engaged in a “witch hunt” against him that began before he became president, and has called Mr. Bragg, a Democrat who is Black, a politically motivated “racist.”

“The Manhattan District Attorney’s threat to indict President Trump is simply insane,” a spokesman for the former president said in a statement, adding: “It’s an embarrassment to the Democrat prosecutors, and it’s an embarrassment to New York City.”

A spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment.

Mr. Trump, in a long and rambling statement posted on Truth Social said, “I did absolutely nothing wrong.” He again denied having had an affair with Ms. Daniels, and insulted her appearance. And he painted Mr. Bragg’s investigation as part of a broader conspiracy to bring him down, engineered by his political opponents and dating back to his presidency.

“Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the no-collusion Mueller hoax,” Mr. Trump wrote, an apparent reference to investigations into his campaign and presidency. He and his supporters, he wrote, were “victims of this corrupt, depraved, and weaponized justice system” and accused President Biden and his son, without evidence, of “horrendous crimes.”

He alternated those explosive comments with hints of legal arguments that might be deployed if the case is brought, noting, for instance, that alleged crimes in a federal election might make it “a federal case” and referred to the deal with Ms. Daniels as “extortion.”

Even if Mr. Trump is indicted, convicting him or sending him to prison will be challenging. The case against the former president hinges on an untested and therefore risky legal theory involving a complex interplay of laws, all amounting to a low-level felony. If Mr. Trump were ultimately convicted, he would face a maximum sentence of four years, though prison time would not be mandatory.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers are also sure to attack Mr. Cohen, who in 2018 pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money.

The $130,000 payout came when Ms. Daniels’s representatives contacted the National Enquirer to offer exclusive rights to her story about an affair with Mr. Trump. David Pecker, the tabloid’s publisher and a longtime ally of Mr. Trump, had agreed to look out for potentially damaging stories about him during the 2016 campaign, and at one point even agreed to buy the story of another woman’s affair with Mr. Trump and never publish it, a practice known as “catch and kill.”

But Mr. Pecker didn’t bite at Ms. Daniels’s story. Instead, he and the tabloid’s top editor, Dylan Howard, helped broker a separate deal between Mr. Cohen and Ms. Daniels’s lawyer. Mr. Trump later reimbursed Mr. Cohen through monthly checks.

In the federal case against Mr. Cohen, prosecutors said that Mr. Trump’s company “falsely accounted” for the monthly payments as legal expenses and that company records cited a retainer agreement with Mr. Cohen. Although Mr. Cohen was a lawyer, and became Mr. Trump’s personal attorney after he took office, there was no such retainer agreement and the reimbursement was unrelated to any legal services Mr. Cohen performed.

In New York, falsifying business records can amount to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor. To elevate the crime to a felony charge, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.

In this case, that second crime could be a violation of New York State election law. While hush money is not inherently illegal, the prosecutors could argue that the $130,000 payout effectively became an improper donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign, under the theory that because the money silenced Ms. Daniels, it benefited his candidacy.

Combining the criminal charge with a violation of state election law would be a novel legal theory for any criminal case, let alone one against the former president, raising the possibility that a judge or appellate court could throw it out or reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.

This is not the first Manhattan grand jury to hear evidence about Mr. Trump. Before leaving office at the end of 2021, Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had directed prosecutors to begin presenting evidence to an earlier grand jury. That potential case focused on the former president’s business practices, in particular whether he fraudulently inflated his net worth by billions of dollars in order to secure favorable terms on loans and other benefits.

But Mr. Bragg, soon after taking office last year, grew concerned about the strength of that case and halted the presentation, prompting two senior prosecutors leading the investigation to resign.

Still, the portion of the investigation concerned with Mr. Trump’s net worth is continuing, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Defendants rarely choose to testify before a grand jury and it is highly unlikely that Mr. Trump would do so. As a potential defendant, he would have to waive immunity, meaning that his testimony could be used against him if he were charged. Although he could have a lawyer present in the grand jury to advise him, the lawyer would be prohibited from speaking to the jurors, and there would be few limits on the questions prosecutors could ask the former president.

In recent years, Mr. Trump has been wary of answering questions under oath, given the legal intrigue swirling around him. When the New York attorney general deposed him last year in a civil case, Mr. Trump refused to provide any information, availing himself of his Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer questions more than 400 times over the course of four hours. If he testifies about the hush money to this grand jury, he will not have that option.

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Image: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi addresses a news conference during an IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, March 6, 2023. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

IAEA chief makes plea for Zaporizhzhia safe zone after outage

"Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out," Grossi told the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors.

Reuters by Francois Murphy 

VIENNA, March 9 (Reuters) - U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on Thursday appealed for a protection zone around the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine after another outage there, saying he was "astonished by the complacency" around the issue.

"Each time we are rolling a dice. And if we allow this to continue time after time then one day our luck will run out," Grossi told the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors.

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Europe's biggest nuclear power plant lost its last external power line early on Thursday after missile strikes across Ukraine overnight.

The plant is now down to emergency diesel generators, a last line of defence to keep cooling reactor fuel and prevent a potentially catastrophic meltdown.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi addresses a news conference during an IAEA board of governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, March 6, 2023. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

As in previous attacks, Russia and Ukraine blamed each other. Grossi has been trying to get both sides to strike a deal in which they would pledge not to fire at or from the plant and heavy weapons would be removed, diplomats say.

"This is the sixth time – let me say it again sixth time, that ZNPP has lost all off-site power and has had to operate in this emergency mode," Grossi told the board's quarterly meeting, according to an IAEA statement.

"Let me remind you – this is the largest nuclear power station in Europe. What are we doing? How can we sit here in this room this morning and allow this to happen? This cannot go on. I am astonished by the complacency."

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Spiegel

Fears Grow of New Cold War Between U.S. and China

China and the United States are lurching from one crisis to the next. It's not just deep economic interdependence that is at stake, but also global peace. Is there still a way out of this downward spiral?

Spiegel by Ann-Dorit Boy, Georg Fahrion, Christoph Giesen, Christina Hebel and Bernhard Zand, 09.03.2023

In a boxy, pink building in Beijing's diplomatic quarter, sandwiched between the Iranian and the Kazakh embassies, a security guard is standing outside the gate, freezing despite his winter coat. Zhanna Leshchynska's office is located in the building behind him, Ukraine's chargé d'affaires in Beijing. Two years ago, her boss died of a heart attack, and she has been running the diplomatic representation ever since. It's a herculean task: Her country is at war, but no one in China's capital seems much to care.

It takes exactly 27 minutes to walk around the Russian Embassy in Beijing. Several apartment buildings, office towers, a hospital, two sports fields and a park are part of the huge Russian enclave over which Moscow's ambassador in Beijing presides. Until recently, that man was Andrey Denisov. Born in 1952 in Kharkiv in what was then the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, he studied Sinology and later became a key figure in Russian-Chinese relations.

When it came to Ukraine, the apparatus in Beijing preferred to talk to Denisov, a Russian, than to Leshchynska, a Ukrainian.

"Ukraine is Russia's backyard, the Russians understand that best," European diplomats were told by officials at the Foreign Ministry. And that's the view they continue to hold today, a year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Whereas the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington was invited to the Congressional Gallery to watch U.S. President Joe Biden's recent "State of the Union Address" and was celebrated by members of Congress, Leshchynska still has to explain in Beijing who actually attacked whom in this war. "Russia is an aggressive state," she says. "Ukraine is the victim." Time and again, she says, she has approached the Chinese Foreign Ministry and pointed out that "in order to take a neutral position, it is important to talk to both sides." Unfortunately, she says, there is still no sign that the Chinese side is willing to do so.

The completely contrasting treatment of the two diplomats in Beijing and Washington is demonstrative of the enormous tension that the Ukraine war has injected into the relationship between the two superpowers. It was far from an easy relationship even before the war, but Putin's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a geopolitical constellation that many, like former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, have been warning about for years: a "new Cold War."

The term is controversial because the politically and economically fragmented world of the 21st century is different from that of the post-World War II bloc. The nuclear arms race between China and America has not yet reached dimensions that can been compared to the one between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. in the 20th century. And in contrast to the Soviet Union, the U.S. continues to maintain brisk trade relations with China, whose central bank holds $867 billion worth of U.S. bonds.

Ideological Ossification

Since February 2002, though, three developments have unfolded that are quite reminiscent of the Cold War: First, Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine is increasingly perceived as a kind of proxy conflict of the kind fought last century. Not in Ukraine itself, where a nation is simply defending itself against an aggressor, but in Moscow and Beijing, where it is portrayed as a defense against a West that is "striving for hegemony," and also in Washington, where it is understood as part of a global struggle between democracies and autocracies. At a meeting of European Union officials in Strasbourg, France, some seemed to hold that opinion, as well. Speaking there, Germany's foreign minister – likely unintentionally – said: "We are fighting a war against Russia."

Second, since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, major powers have been doing what they can to line up partners and allies. Each side is rallying its "troops" – in debates and votes at the United Nations, with diplomatic missions conducted by individual politicians or through large-scale aid and economic programs. The countries that are being courted most heavily right now are those that were considered "non-aligned" during the Cold War and are now roughly grouped under the term "Global South," including India, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa.

Third, the struggle has been accompanied by an ossification of ideologies – one that has been extreme in Russia, but also increasingly in Sino-American relations. The trajectory of the war has so far confirmed for Beijing and Washington the image that they had of each other: as that of an ideological adversary with whom understanding is almost no longer possible. This ideological component is much stronger today. Previously, the rivalry had been more in the realm of the power-political, the military and technology.

Chinese and Russian Interests Correspond

Whereas Moscow and Beijing were enemies for much of the Cold War, they are closer today than they have been since the founding years of the People's Republic. Like Stalin and Mao Zedong back then, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping today share their fundamental rejection of a U.S.-dominated world order – and even a deeply internalized anti-Americanism. From that perspective, Western support for Ukraine appears to be a U.S.-driven plan to expand its sphere of influence eastward. The West, Putin claimed in his February 21 address to the nation, is using Ukraine as a "battering ram against Russia" and a military "training ground." The U.S., Beijing's Foreign Ministry spokesperson seconded two days later, is the "No. 1 warmonger in the world."

It's thus not surprising that experts on Russian-Chinese relations have no illusions about the "peace plan" recently presented by Beijing. "Any random Foreign Ministry employee can put something like this together," says Russian China expert Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He says the paper ultimately confirms how closely aligned China's and Russia's interests actually are. Beijing isn't pushing Moscow to do anything it doesn't want to do anyway, he argues.

The fact is: China's "peace plan" isn't even a document that specifies which party should take which steps and when or how violations should be punished. It's a declaration of principles that reiterates China's anti-Western positions, goes easy on the aggressor Russia, calls for a cease-fire instead of a Russian troop withdrawal – and a lifting of all sanctions not enacted by the UN Security Council (where Russia, as a veto power, de facto makes such sanctions impossible).

"The fact that China has started talking about Ukraine is not bad."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy commented on the Chinese initiative as positively as possible for a document that neither condemns Russia's war of aggression nor outlines a concrete path to an agreement. "I believe that the fact that China has started talking about Ukraine is not bad," he said on the first anniversary of the start of the war. The question is what will follow those words. Chinese leader Xi has met his Russian counterpart Putin around 40 times in total, most recently in September. He has spoken just a single time with Zelenskyy on the phone. That was in 2021, the year before the war. Xi has never met Zelenskyy in person.

In the short term, Ukraine has three concerns for China, former Foreign Minister Pavlo told DER SPIEGEL: That it not provide Russia with military support; that it not provide Russia with technology that can also be used militarily; and third, he said, it must be clear to Moscow "that the use of weapons of mass destruction is out of the question."

Klimkin argues that China's "peace plan" isn't even primarily about Ukraine or Russia. "China is using this moment more to present itself as a decisive player on the world stage and to fundamentally challenge the Western international order."

China's "Global Security Initiative"

Three days before the Ukraine paper, Beijing unveiled a much more detailed document laying out its "Global Security Initiative." The plan, announced by Xi almost a year ago, is a political continuation of the Silk Road Initiative, Beijing's nearly global economic and development program.

The text, heavily infused with party jargon, nonetheless provides fairly clear information about China's security policy plans. Similar to the Ukraine paper, it argues against "unilateralism, bloc confrontation and hegemonism" and advocates guaranteeing security not by means of military alliances but through individual agreements. At the same time, the text identifies where the focus of Chinese foreign policy will lie in the future: in the countries of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific island nations.

These are precisely the regions of the Global South where the U.S. and Europe have been trying to curry favor since the start of the Russian invasion. As German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's recent visit to Brazil demonstrated, this has only been partially successful. President Lula de Silva is reluctant to supply ammunition to Ukraine and has made reference to China's "peace plan." With 141 affirmative votes for the Ukraine resolution adopted on Thursday, the number of its supporters in the UN General Assembly remains very high. Russia gained only two, Mali and Nicaragua, in addition to its usual four allies (North Korea, Syria, Belarus and Eritrea).

Among the countries that abstained, and among those wary of going along with the sanctions imposed by the West, China has possible partners. Which isn't particularly surprising: Beijing has increased its diplomatic presence in almost all of these countries. For many of them, China is the largest trading partner – and many of them have also grown tired of an often arrogant West that fails to adhere to its own moral standards.

Beijing is even more adept at stirring up such sentiment at home. Political discourse in China had begun radicalizing even before the pandemic, but that process was accelerated by the country's post-2020 self-isolation. The perception of many Chinese is that the West, America especially, has become a caricature of itself: power-hungry, self-serving and focused exclusively on keeping China down. This radicalization can be observed not only in the state media and on the internet, but also in top diplomacy. China, the deputy foreign minister recently tweeted, "never engages in slaughter, predation or racial genocide of its ethnic minorities" like the U.S.

Though the conditions are quite a bit different, this shift in China is echoed by the debate in the U.S., where moderate voices have all but vanished. Each new event becomes a "China crisis," whether it's the intrusion of a Chinese spy balloon, the banning of the social network TikTok on government mobile phones or the debate about the origins of the coronavirus. Did the virus originate in a Chinese lab, as two American studies suggest? In any case, the chairman of a newly formed committee in the House of Representatives dedicated to countering China says that America is facing an "existential struggle." China has become an issue where politicians can score points domestically.

The Next Crises Are Looming

The "perception gap" has become so significant "that the two sides appear to genuinely no longer be able to understand each other," writes Zhao Tong, a Beijing native and Princeton University research on nuclear and disarmament issues. The direct lines of communication have also broken off. When officials at the Pentagon called Beijing after the balloon crisis, no one there picked up. A short time before, the U.S. secretary of state had cancelled his first visit to China.

A way out of the downward spiral in Sino-American relations, which has been accelerating since the start of the Ukraine war, seems increasingly difficult – especially since further conflicts are looming or already pre-programmed: This spring, Chinese leader Xi plans to travel to Moscow. That trip promises to ease the situation about as much as the planned trip to Taiwan by U.S. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. China considers Taiwan to be part of its own territory. Beijing responded to a visit last summer by McCarthy's predecessor Nancy Pelosi with several days of military exercises.

The latest economic figures look like some strangely outdated legacy of a bygone era. Whereas the volume of trade between China and Russia rose by 30 percent last year to around $190 billion, that between China and the U.S. is more than three times greater – and more than ever before. And America's European allies conduct even more business with China - to the tune of more than $900 billion.

All of that will be at stake if the suspicions expressed by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony two weeks ago are confirmed: that China is thinking about providing Russia with "lethal aid" – that is, supplying weapons, munitions or combat drones .

If that were to happen, Blinken said, it "could cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship" – and would likely result in an economic war that could dwarf anything that has preceded it. Mikko Huotari, head of the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), has spoken of a "mega disaster," and a "meltdown" of the global economy if that were to happen.

It's a bitter irony, but also probably true: The Cold War, until now a horror vision for Sino-American relations, may end up being a comparatively harmless scenario.

News round-up, March 9, 2023

Quote of the day… 

The White House described Hersh’s story as “utterly false and complete fiction.” The article certainly included some dubious claims, not least that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has “cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War.” Stoltenberg, born in 1959, was 16 years old when the war ended.

The washington post

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Most read…

God, oh God! Who detonated NORD STREAM?

Not me… Who then was it?

There are four potential explanations….

POLITICO EU BY CHARLIE COOPER, EDITING BY GERMÁN & Co,  MARCH 8, 2023 .

Georgian opposition calls for more protests against government

Tbilisi dropped a bill on 'foreign agents' that triggered massive protests earlier this week but opposition parties are calling for a new rally on Thursday evening.

Le Monde with AFP, on March 9, 202311h00, updated at 11h01 on March 9, 2023.

CERAWEEK-Big Oil on hydrogen: forget the rainbow, just make it profitable

Hydrogen as a potential alternative to natural gas, coal or oil burned in heavy industry or shipping is seen as key to reducing emissions in industries in which electrification is not practical. Hydrogen is often described by color and many in the industry call it a "rainbow renewable" but the most important color for executives at the conference was green -- as in cash.

REUTERS By Stephanie Kelly editing by Germán & Co

Inside the simmering feud between Donald Trump and Fox News

Donald Trump got a tip-off on Saturday that the Fox News Channel would be taking his Conservative Political Action Conference speech live, a switch from the network’s largely indifferent posture toward the former president since he helped send it into crisis after the 2020 election.

Story by Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Sarah Ellison/ The Washington Post

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”We’ll need natural gas for years…

—

but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says…

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Image: Germán & Co

God, oh God! Who detonated NORD STREAM?

Not me… Who then was it?

There are four potential explanations….

POLITICO EU BY CHARLIE COOPER, EDITING BY GERMÁN & Co,  MARCH 8, 2023 .

Nearly six months on from the subsea gas pipeline explosions, which sent geopolitical shockwaves around the world in September, there is still no conclusive answer to the question of who blew up Nord Stream.

Some were quick to place the blame squarely at Russia’s door — citing its record of hybrid warfare and a possible motive of intimidation, in the midst of a bitter economic war with Europe over gas supply.

But half a year has passed without any firm evidence for this — or any other explanation — being produced by the ongoing investigations of authorities in three European countries.

Since the day of the attack, four states — Russia, the U.S., Ukraine and the U.K. — have been publicly blamed for the explosions, with varying degrees of evidence.

Still, some things are known for sure…

As was widely assumed within hours of the blast, the explosions were an act of deliberate sabotage. One of the three investigations, led by Sweden’s Prosecution Authority, confirmed in November that residues of explosives and several “foreign objects” were found at the “crime scene” on the seabed, around 100 meters below the surface of the Baltic Sea, close to the Danish Island of Bornholm.

Now two new media reports — one from the New York Times, the other a joint investigation by German public broadcasters ARD and SWR, plus newspaper Die Zeit — raised the possibility that a pro-Ukrainian group — though not necessarily state-backed — may have been responsible. On Wednesday, the German Prosecutor’s Office confirmed it had searched a ship in January suspected of transporting explosives used in the sabotage, but was still investigating the seized objects, the identities of the perpetrators and their possible motives.

In the information vacuum since September, various theories have surfaced as to the culprit and their motive:

Theory 1: Putin, the energy bully

In the days immediately after the attack, the working assumption of many analysts in the West was that this was a brazen act of intimidation on the part of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spelt out the hypothesis via his Twitter feed on September 27 — the day after the explosions were first detected. He branded the incident “nothing more [than] a terrorist attack planned by Russia and act of aggression towards the EU” linked to Moscow's determination to provoke “pre-winter panic” over gas supplies to Europe.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also hinted at Russian involvement. Russia denied responsibility.

The Nord Stream pipes are part-owned by Russia’s Gazprom. The company had by the time of the explosions announced an “indefinite” shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 pipes, citing technical issues which the EU branded “fallacious pretences.” The new Nord Stream 2 pipes, meanwhile, had never been brought into the service. Within days of Gazprom announcing the shutdown in early September, Putin issued a veiled threat that Europe would “freeze” if it stuck to its plan of energy sanctions against Russia.

But why blow up the pipeline, if gas blackmail via shutdowns had already proved effective? Why end the possibility of gas ever flowing again?

Simone Tagliapietra, energy specialist and senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank, said it was possible that — if it was Russia — there may have been internal divisions about any such decision. “At that point, when Putin had basically decided to stop supplying [gas to] Germany, many in Russia may have been against that. This was a source of revenues.” It is possible, Tagliapietra said, that “hardliners” took the decision to end the debate by ending the pipelines.

Blowing up Nord Stream, in this reading of the situation, was a final declaration of Russia’s willingness to cut off Europe’s gas supply indefinitely, while also demonstrating its hybrid warfare capabilities. In October, Putin said that the attack had shown that “any critical infrastructure in transport, energy or communication infrastructure is under threat — regardless of what part of the world it is located" — words viewed by many in the West as a veiled threat of more to come.

Theory 2: The Brits did it

From the beginning, Russian leaders have insinuated that either Ukraine or its Western allies were behind the attack. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said two days after the explosions that accusations of Russian culpability were “quite predictable and predictably stupid.” He added that Moscow had no interest in blowing up Nord Stream. “We have lost a route for gas supplies to Europe.”

Then a month on from the blasts, the Russian defense ministry made the very specific allegation that “representatives of the U.K. Navy participated in planning, supporting and executing” the attack. No evidence was given. The same supposed British specialists were also involved in helping Ukraine coordinate a drone attack on Sevastopol in Crimea, Moscow said.  

The U.K.’s Ministry of Defence said the “invented” allegations were intended to distract attention from Russia’s recent defeats on the battlefield. In any case, Moscow soon changed its tune.

Theory 3: U.S. black ops

In February, with formal investigations in Germany, Sweden and Denmark still yet to report, an article by the U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh triggered a new wave of speculation. Hersh’s allegation: U.S. forces blew up Nord Stream on direct orders from Joe Biden.

The account — based on a single source said to have “direct knowledge of the operational planning” — alleged that an “obscure deep-diving group in Panama City” was secretly assigned to lay remotely-detonated mines on the pipelines. It suggested Biden’s rationale was to sever once and for all Russia’s gas link to Germany, ensuring that no amount of Kremlin blackmail could deter Berlin from steadfastly supporting Ukraine.

Hersh's article also drew on Biden’s public remarks when, in February 2022, shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion, he told reporters that should Russia invade “there will be no longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

The White House described Hersh’s story as “utterly false and complete fiction.” The article certainly included some dubious claims, not least that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has “cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War.” Stoltenberg, born in 1959, was 16 years old when the war ended.

Russian leaders, however, seized on the report, citing it as evidence at the U.N. Security Council later in February and calling for an U.N.-led inquiry into the attacks, prompting Germany, Denmark and Sweden to issue a joint statement saying their investigations were ongoing.

Theory 4: The mystery boatmen

The latest clues — following reports on Tuesday from the New York Times and German media — center on a boat, six people with forged passports and the tiny Danish island of Christiansø.

According to these reports, a boat that set sail from the German port of Rostock, later stopping at Christiansø, is at the center of the Nord Stream investigations.

Germany’s federal prosecutor confirmed on Wednesday that a ship suspected of transporting explosives had been searched in January — and some of the 100 or so residents of tiny Christiansø told Denmark’s TV2 that police had visited the island and made inquiries. Residents were invited to come forward with information via a post on the island’s Facebook page.

Both the New York Times and the German media reports suggested that intelligence is pointing to a link to a pro-Ukrainian group, although there is no evidence that any orders came from the Ukrainian government and the identities of the alleged perpetrators are also still unknown.

Podolyak, Zelenskyy's adviser, tweeted he was enjoying “collecting amusing conspiracy theories” about what happened to Nord Stream, but that Ukraine had “nothing to do” with it and had “no information about pro-Ukraine sabotage groups.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned against “jumping to conclusions” about the latest reports, adding that it was possible that there may have been a “false flag” operation to blame Ukraine.

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service said only that their investigation was ongoing, while a spokesperson for Sweden’s Prosecution Authority said information would be shared when available — but there was “no timeline” for when the inquiries would be completed.

The mystery continues…

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Image: Germán & Co by Shutterstock

Georgian opposition calls for more protests against government

Tbilisi dropped a bill on 'foreign agents' that triggered massive protests earlier this week but opposition parties are calling for a new rally on Thursday evening.

Le Monde with AFP, on March 9, 202311h00, updated at 11h01 on March 9, 2023.

A man waves a Georgian flag in front of a burning barricade as other protesters stand behind, not far from the Georgian parliament building in Tbilisi, Georgia, Thursday, March 9, 2023. ZURAB TSERTSVADZE / AP

Georgian opposition parties vowed on Thursday, March 9, to continue protesting despite the ruling party's promise to revoke a controversial new law on "foreign agents" that sparked large rallies and international outcry.

The ruling Georgian Dream party said it was halting plans to introduce the bill seen as reminiscent of Russian legislation used to silence critics.

"For as long as there are no guarantees that Georgia is firmly on a pro-Western course, these processes will not stop," a group of opposition parties said in a joint statement, adding a fresh rally was scheduled for Thursday evening in Tbilisi.

"We demand that dozens of protesters that were arrested be immediately released," Tsotne Koberidze of the opposition Girchi party said, reading out the statement to reporters.

Georgia's Parliament gave its initial backing to the legislation earlier this week in a move that triggered mass protests on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Police fired water and tear gas at thousands of demonstrators and issued a dispersal order. The demonstrations later grew into wider protests against the Georgian government's perceived pro-Kremlin drift.

The European Union and the United States criticized the legislation as a blow to Georgian democracy and the Black Sea nation's bid to join the EU and NATO with concern growing that the former Soviet republic is taking an authoritarian turn and moving ever more closer to the Kremlin.

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Pipes of a gas blending station are pictured in Oehringen, south western Germany, February 8, 2023, a site for testing gas and hydrogen mixtures, where some 30 properties will shortly near a targeted ratio of 30% green hydrogen and 70% natural gas in their heating fuel. REUTERS/Timm Reichert/File Photo

CERAWEEK-Big Oil on hydrogen: forget the rainbow, just make it profitable

HOUSTON, March 8 (Reuters) - Governments worldwide need to simplify rules around hydrogen supply to attract investment and scale it up to become competitive enough to substitute fossil fuel use in heavy industry, energy executives said this week.

Hydrogen as a potential alternative to natural gas, coal or oil burned in heavy industry or shipping is seen as key to reducing emissions in industries in which electrification is not practical. Hydrogen is often described by color and many in the industry call it a "rainbow renewable" but the most important color for executives at the conference was green -- as in cash.

REUTERS By Stephanie Kelly editing by Germán & Co

Hydrogen can be made in many ways, some cleaner than others. Among methods that produce what is known as green hydrogen are electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using power from renewables. Hydrogen can also be made from natural gas. When carbon emissions from the process are captured and stored, it is known as blue hydrogen.

The industry is still in a nascent stage and the fuel is relatively expensive to produce, so governments worldwide are seeking ways to facilitate rapid development to make it an economic alternative to fossil fuels in industry.

Provisions in U.S. President Joe Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and legislation in the European Union have incentivized the development of hydrogen but need further clarification, and government mandates may be required to encourage industries such as steel and shipping to embrace hydrogen, energy industry executives said at the CERAWeek energy conference this week in Houston.

"The market for hydrogen and people's willingness to pay a premium for low-emissions fuels I think hasn't quite taken off yet," Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) Chief Executive Darren Woods said.

Though the IRA is incentivizing production of green and blue hydrogen, Woods said the associated costs are making it difficult for Exxon's partners to sell either into Europe and Asia.

Discussions and rules around classifying hydrogen made from renewable fuels or natural gas should be secondary to making the fuel affordable for consumers, said Colin Parfitt, vice president of Midstream for Chevron Corp.

"There is way too much conversation about if it is blue or green," Parfitt said. "The challenge is how do you create hydrogen as a business."

Transporting hydrogen is currently not commercially viable nor affordable for consumers, Parfitt said.

The technology for shipping hydrogen is still in early stages of development, said Chevron's vice president of hydrogen Austin Knight.

DEMAND FOR HYDROGEN

The most obvious and near-term demand for hydrogen is in industries that currently use so-called grey hydrogen that is produced from fossil fuels, Spanish energy producer Cepsa SA (CPF.GQ) Chief Executive Maarten Wetselaar told Reuters. Grey hydrogen is currently consumed by fertilizer, refining, and iron and steel units.

About 30-35% of the total energy system will need hydrogen to decarbonize, he said.

For industries such as shipping, government mandates are needed to make hydrogen cost competitive with cheaper petroleum-based fuel oil, Wetselaar said.

By 2030, Cepsa plans to produce 600,000 tons of green ammonia per year, produced using hydrogen made from renewable energy, for green marine fuel and begin green ammonia exports by 2027. Cepsa could begin selling green ammonia to ships by 2026, Wetselaar told Reuters.

Meanwhile, low-carbon hydrogen fuels used for transportation need more infrastructure, such as refueling stations, to support and scale the market, said Plug Power Chief Executive Andy Marsh.

ADDED COMPLEXITIES

Green hydrogen could quickly be brought to market with the right rules around production, said CEO John Ketchum of the world's top renewable power generator NextEra.

NextEra is working with the U.S. Treasury on rules that govern what can be considered green hydrogen, he said. The process is complicated by the variability of renewable power supply from wind and solar, he said.

If power from those sources dropped, then an electrolyzer producing hydrogen would need to switch to power from the grid, which may or may not be renewable, he added. If hydrogen producers could no longer classify hydrogen as green and had to switch off electrolyzers, the cost of producing the fuel would go up and make it uneconomical. The solution would be to offset the use of non-renewable power with carbon credits, he said.

Otherwise, "we will have an out-of-the-money product," he said.

More regulation, certifications and standards are needed for handling hydrogen, along with supply contracts to access infrastructure and new ideas on transporting hydrogen, company officials said Wednesday.

"The IRA has not been fully implemented yet in the U.S., so after that contract terms and clear standards will have to be tackled," said Juancho Eekhout, vice president of business development at Sempra Infrastructure.

Further, the trade of hydrogen also has complexities that will need to be addressed, said Margaux Moore, head of the Energy Transition Research Group at Trafigura.

Depending on how hydrogen is produced, the fuel has different carbon intensity scores in different countries, she said.

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Image: by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post

Inside the simmering feud between Donald Trump and Fox News

Donald Trump got a tip-off on Saturday that the Fox News Channel would be taking his Conservative Political Action Conference speech live, a switch from the network’s largely indifferent posture toward the former president since he helped send it into crisis after the 2020 election.

Story by Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Sarah Ellison/ The Washington Post

Trump decided he could not pass up the opportunity to send a message.

“I hope Fox doesn’t turn off, but we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016,” he said in an apparent reference to the false election claims that were at the center of many of the network’s controversies, including a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News that has led to a massive release of internal company documents.

It was just another volley in a low-grade war — some of it public, much of it hidden — that has emerged as one of the defining dynamics in the Republican Party as the 2024 presidential campaign gets underway. Trump’s advisers see in Fox News leadership a clear adversary in their march back to the White House and have sought to foster a divide between executives and “the brave and patriotic” opinion hosts with whom he continues to have relationships.

Trump attacked Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch by name this month, calling him and his executives a “group of MAGA hating Globalist RINOS” who are “aiding & abetting the destruction of America.” Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. — noting that he had not been invited on the network in six months — accused Fox News leaders last week of harboring an “America Last, war forever, garbage, fold-to-the-Democrats agenda.” Other allies, such as Stephen K. Bannon, have shredded the network in public.

Documents uncovered by ongoing litigation have also revealed the extent of the ongoing hostility toward Trump from Murdoch and other top executives, both before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Fox News boss emailed a former company executive in early 2021 that the goal was “to make Trump a non person.” Fox News board member Paul D. Ryan, a former Republican House speaker, told another Fox executive around the same time that he had communicated to both Rupert Murdoch and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch that there was a “huge inflection point to keep Trump down and move on.”

“Both Rupert and Lachlan agree fully,” Ryan wrote.

Since then, the network has dismissed Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as a contributor because of the network’s supposed ban on political activity. But the policy applies typically to people who themselves are declaring a candidacy, as happened with Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and former presidential candidate Ben Carson when they ran for political office.

Fox now also frowns upon letting Trump appear on the network by phone, once a standard way for hosting him on the network until he left office, according two people familiar with the situation who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal details. His events and rallies are rarely covered live — and often not at all.

At the same time, Murdoch’s media outlets have lavished attention and praise on Trump’s principal rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who publicly credits the network in his new book — which is published by another company controlled by Murdoch — with aiding his rise in politics. The DeSantis book was heavily promoted last week when the governor made at least five live appearances on the network, according to a tally by Media Matters for America, a liberal group that monitors Fox News programming.

Four takeaways from the new Fox-Dominion lawsuit documents

Exclusive excerpts from the DeSantis book ran in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, and on FoxNews.com, all of which are controlled by Murdoch. DeSantis has separately given recent interviews to the New York Post and the Times of London, which is also controlled by Murdoch, while spurning requests from other print outlets.

It’s a standoff with billions of dollars in revenue at stake for the nation’s most successful cable news broadcaster, not to mention the outcome of the Republican primary battle.

“Whether it’s the New York Post or the Wall Street Journal or Fox, you can clearly see the company is eager not to repeat the mistakes of 2016,” said Chris Stirewalt, a longtime Fox political editor who was ousted after the election. “But it will test the resolve of the network to maintain that posture if there are ratings consequences, if they become too much a target from his folks, that they will stick with it.”

Some in both camps have been seeking a truce before more damage is done. Several of Fox News’s most high-profile figures continue to speak to the former president and work with his team. Trump acknowledged his existing relationships during his CPAC speech, praising Fox hosts Mark Levin, Gregg Jarrett, Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Tucker Carlson.

Well, the 2024 presidential election may be more than 19…

Among those most invested in securing better coverage on Fox for Trump is Jason Miller, his longtime on-again, off-again spokesman. Miller called Fox allies ahead of CPAC, asking for them to show the speech, and has worked individual producers at the network to try to convince the shows to carry Trump more, according to people familiar with the situation.

“You can’t ignore the party front-runner, and the Fox base wants to see President Trump. Many involved in the network would like to see President Trump covered more by the network. He’s ratings gold, and he’s the dominant front-runner for the Republican nomination,” Miller said.

At times, Trump gets livid watching all the positive DeSantis coverage, particularly on topics that he says he took on first, according to advisers.

“It’s not ideal, but we have to remember in 2016, it wasn’t glowing at first, either. You have to get through it. They’ll come around when he’s the nominee,” one adviser said. “What are they going to do? Not show the Republican nominee on their channel?”

Advisers have tried to temper his frustration by telling him that many supporters are watching other channels. The former president still watches Fox all the time, according to the advisers. He eats dinner with Chris Ruddy, who runs rival network Newsmax, at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, but Fox News often still plays on the televisions and Sean Hannity talks to Trump and his team often, they said.

Trump’s team and Carlson’s show discussed arranging an interview late last month, but discussions broke down over logistics, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump “did not want to appear in a box because former presidents don’t appear in boxes,” one of these people said, and Carlson did not want a phone interview. Hannity later showed an interview of Trump, but it was taped earlier for his radio show.

Internal Fox messages revealed in court filings Tuesday as part of a defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems showed Carlson vacillating on his support for Trump after the 2020 election. After initially calling for a Fox News reporter to be fired for accurately reporting that Trump’s election fraud claims were false, Carlson texted with a colleague in early 2021 that his show was “very very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.” Carlson added of the then-president, “I hate him passionately.”

Republicans who have spoken to Carlson say he agrees with Trump on many topics, particularly foreign policy — but has grown frustrated at times with his behavior, rhetoric and approach. Trump has told others that Carlson is not as reliable as Hannity and other hosts at defending him but that he respects his influence in the Republican Party and ability to secure high television ratings.

As the documents were released Tuesday night, Trump signaled that he was happy with Carlson’s recent arguments that the Jan. 6 attack was not a “deadly insurrection.” A Capitol Police officer, Brian D. Sicknick, died after suffering multiple strokes a day after fighting with protesters, a death that the Capitol Police chief has attributed to the violence. Multiple people have been convicted in federal court of seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack.

“GREAT JOB BY TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT,” Trump wrote after the Carlson text message about passionately hating him was released.

Former president Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Fort Washington, Md., on Saturday night. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Preston Padden, a former Fox News executive whose emails with Murdoch were quoted in the Dominion filing, said the differences in the private musings released about Trump and the public posturing is jarring. He said that for nine months, he’d emailed with Murdoch in 2020 and 2021, and Murdoch made clear he believed the election was not stolen.

“It makes you wonder: Who’s in charge?” he said.

A former Fox executive said producers closely watched the cover of the New York Post and the writings of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board to understand what Murdoch was thinking. The New York Post covered Trump’s campaign announcement with the diminutive cover line, “Florida man makes announcement,” and an article identified the former president as a “retiree” and “avid golfer.” A separate cover of the tabloid, after the midterm elections last year, described him as “Trumpty Dumpty” who “couldn’t build a wall” and “had a great fall.”

“The Trumpty Dumpty thing was the declaration of war. Once producers saw that, they did not wonder: How are we playing that?” a former Fox executive said.

Some of Trump’s advisers have studied DeSantis’s appearances on Fox to see how many interviews and how many minutes of positive coverage he has received, a person familiar with the work said.

In his new book, DeSantis describes Fox News’s production of his 2018 Republican primary debate as a decisive moment that helped him win his party’s gubernatorial nomination in Florida. On screen, Fox producers ran a chyron during the debate highlighting DeSantis’s Trump endorsement, Ivy League degrees and military service, while suggesting that his opponent was a career politician who had been endorsed by former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R).

“This is exactly the contrast we were looking to draw!” DeSantis wrote.

Stirewalt said that in 2016, Fox had a decision to make about Trump after he publicly attacked star host Megyn Kelly. Traditionally, he said, if you’re attacking Fox and the Fox personalities, you aren’t going to get “juicy segments and high visibility stuff.”

“He publicly attacked one of our lead anchors and dropped out of our debate, and the consequence was basically nothing. That’s when I knew the dynamic was out of whack because the shows and the producers knew what a ratings bonanza Trump was,” he said.

Fox and the Trump White House long had a symbiotic and intertwined relationship. Several Trump aides went to become executives at Fox Corp. after leaving the White House, including former spokesman Raj Shah and Hope Hicks, a longtime Trump confidante. Trump often had Fox News hosts call into his White House meetings or visit the Oval Office — frustrating some of his aides — and the network’s coverage would frequently influence his positions on topics, former advisers said. Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive, served as a senior communications adviser to Trump in the White House.

Fox is pitching to secure Republican debates, a person familiar with the matter said. In their pitch to Republican National Committee officials, Fox executives did not mention Trump or DeSantis by name, people with knowledge of the presentation said. One Republican official said Fox is likely to get at least one debate, if not multiple ones.

Another employee said that Fox would often mobilize defenders of the network and scramble when under criticism from conservative media — and that pressure from Trump to air him more would matter more if it was echoed by conservative media.

“Fox is a company” acting rationally to cater to its viewers and “pander” to their desires, the former employee said. “If he doesn’t go away in polling, Fox is going to have to cover him more.”

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News round-up, March 8, 2023

Quote of the day… 

Without a doubt, Ukraine is absolutely not involved in the excesses on the pipelines," Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Zelenskiy, said in a statement.

REUTERS by NYT

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Most read…

Pro-Ukraine group sabotaged pipelines, intelligence suggests - NYT

"It does not make the slightest bit of sense."

Reuters by Olena Harmash, source NYT

India's oil deals with Russia dent decades-old dollar dominance

The country is the world's number three importer of oil and Russia became its leading supplier after Europe shunned Moscow's supplies following its invasion of Ukraine begun in February last year.

Reuter by Nidhi Verma and Noah Browning

Time Women of the Year 2023: Quinta Brunson, Cate Blanchett, more honored

“Our annual Women of the Year list examines the most uplifting form of influence by spotlighting leaders who are using their voices to fight for a more equal world,” Time Executive Editor Naina Bajekal and Senior Editor Lucy Feldman said in a statement. “Many of them have faced immense challenges that inspired them to push for change.”

EDWARD SEGARRA   | USA TODAY

CERAWeek - Russia wild card to keep oil markets on edge, execs warn

"There is very small spare capacity available so small changes in supply have impact," said Anders Opedal, Chief executive of Norwegian energy giant Equinor (EQNR.OL). "It is easy for the market to move in either direction."

Reuters by Stephanie Kelly and Erwin Seba

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”We’ll need natural gas for years…

—

but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says…

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Imagen: Germán & Co

Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton was a French entrepreneur and designer whose name has become iconic in the fashion world.

Who Was Louis Vuitton?

Napoleon's wife engaged Louis Vuitton to be her personal packer and box maker after he became the Emperor of France in 1852. As the Louis Vuitton brand developed into the well-known luxury leather and lifestyle brand it is today, and this gave Vuitton access to elite and royal clients who would use his services throughout his life.

Early Life

Vuitton was born on August 4, 1821, in Anchay, a small hamlet in eastern France's mountainous, heavily wooded Jura region. Descended from a long-established working-class family, Vuitton's ancestors were joiners, carpenters, farmers, and milliners. His father, Xavier, was a farmer, and his mother, Coronne Gaillard, was a milliner.

Vuitton's mother passed away when he was only ten, and his father soon remarried. As legend has it, Vuitton's new stepmother was as severe and wicked as any fairy-tale Cinderella villain. A stubborn and headstrong child, antagonized by his stepmother and bored by the provincial life in Anchay, Vuitton resolved to run away for the bustling capital of Paris.

On the first day of tolerable weather in the spring of 1835, at 13, Vuitton left home alone and on foot, bound for Paris. He travelled for over two years, taking odd jobs to feed himself and staying wherever he could find shelter as he walked the 292-mile trek from his native Anchay to Paris. He arrived in 1837, at the age of 16, in a capital city in the thick of an industrial revolution that had produced a litany of contradictions: awe-inspiring grandeur and abject poverty, rapid growth, and devastating epidemics.

Become More Prominent

The successful box maker and packer Monsieur Marechal took in the young Vuitton as an apprentice in his store. Making and packing boxes was a highly regarded and fashionable craft in 19th-century Europe. All packages were built specifically to fit the items being stored and were personally loaded and emptied. It only took Vuitton a few years to establish himself as one of the city's leading practitioners of his new trade among Paris' stylish class.

Sixteen years after Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Paris, on December 2, 1851, he staged a coup d'état. He took on the regal name Napoleon III and became the Emperor of France precisely one year later. Putting back in place the showing the same stubborn, can-do spirit he displayed by walking almost 300 miles alone at the age of 13, Vuitton immediately devoted himself to restoring his business. Within months he had built a new shop at a new address, 1 Rue Scribe. Along with the new address also came a new focus on luxury. Located in the heart of the new Paris, Rue Scribe was home to the prestigious Jockey Club and had a decidedly more aristocratic feel than Vuitton's previous location in Asnieres. In 1872, Vuitton introduced a new trunk design featuring beige canvas and red stripes. The simple yet luxurious new design appealed to Paris' new elite and marked the beginning of the Louis Vuitton label's modern incarnation as a luxury brand.

Legacy and Death

Vuitton ran his business out of 1 Rue Scribe for the following 20 years, inventing high-end, opulent luggage until his death on February 27, 1892, at 70. However, the Louis Vuitton brand survived the end of its namesake creator. The Louis Vuitton brand expanded under his son Georges, who designed the company's distinctive LV monogram and subsequent generations of Vuittons, becoming the well-known luxury leather and lifestyle brand it is today. 

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Image: Germán & Co

Pro-Ukraine group sabotaged pipelines, intelligence suggests - NYT

Reuters by Olena Harmash, source NYT

Editing by Germán & Co

KYIV, March 8 (Reuters) - Intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials indicates that a pro-Ukrainian group was behind last year's attacks on the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, but there was no evidence of the Kyiv government's involvement, the New York Times reported.

The undersea explosions, seven months into the Russia-Ukraine conflict, on the pipelines between Russia and Germany occurred in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark in the Baltic Sea. Both countries have concluded the blasts were deliberate, but have not said who might be responsible.

Tuesday's New York Times report cited U.S. officials as saying there was no evidence that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy or his top aides were involved or that the perpetrators were acting at the behest of any Ukrainian government officials.

"Without a doubt, Ukraine is absolutely not involved in the excesses on the pipelines," Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Zelenskiy, said in a statement.

"It does not make the slightest bit of sense."

The United States and NATO have called the Sept. 26 attacks "an act of sabotage", while Russia has blamed the West and called for an independent probe. Neither has provided evidence.

Reuters could not independently verify the report.

On the battlefront, Russian forces continued to pound Bakhmut and nearby regions in a push to secure their first major victory in more than half a year.

Zelenskiy, who has vowed to defend the besieged eastern Ukrainian city, repeated a familiar message on Tuesday that reclaiming occupied territory was his major goal.

"We are doing everything to liberate our land as quickly as possible, to put a historic end as quickly as possible to attempts to deny freedom to our country and our people," Zelenskiy said in a video address that he has delivered nightly since Russia invaded on Feb. 24 last year.

RUSSIA'S 'LAST SHOT'

Ukrainian forces repelled attacks on Bakhmut and Ivanivske, on the town's western approaches, as well as on Klishchiivka, on its southern approaches, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said in a statement on Tuesday.

There were 37 attacks alone on the road leading to Sloviansk, a major town in Donetsk region to the west of Bakhmut, Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said on YouTube.

"The Russian command has taken a decision ... to bring in as much artillery as possible. But the number of artillery attacks has declined as there has been a gradual decline in the amount of ammunition available," Zhdanov added.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia's Wagner mercenary group which has been spearheading the battle for Bakhmut, has accused Russia's defence ministry of deliberately starving his men of ammunition, an accusation the ministry rejects.

In a post on Telegram, Prigozhin made pointed reference to the defence minister Sergei Shoigu, saying he "had not seen him in Bakhmut" and that Wagner forces were coming up against well-equipped Ukrainian forces.

While Russia has made gains in recent weeks around Bakhmut, its winter offensive has otherwise been a failure, yielding no significant gains in major assaults further north and south.

Shoigu said capturing Bakhmut would allow Moscow's forces to mount further offensive operations deeper inside Ukraine, while Kyiv has vowed to continue defending the city.

"The main task of our troops in Bakhmut is to grind the enemy's fighting capability, to bleed their combat potential," Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesperson for Ukraine's eastern military command, told the Ukrainian public television.

Russian losses in Bakhmut are between five and eight times greater than Ukraine's, military expert Pavlo Narozhniy told Ukrainian NV Radio. "It is critical to inflict heavy losses."

He expects a Ukrainian counter-offensive to get underway in earnest over April-May when the weather is better and more military aid arrives, including heavy battle tanks.

Elsewhere, Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian-held town of Nikopol opposite the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, the General Staff statement said.

Reuters was unable to verify battlefield accounts.

DIPLOMACY

U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron and discussed Russia's invasion and challenges posed by China, the White House said.

Moscow accuse the United States and its allies of using Ukraine to wage war against it. Rejecting that claim, Kyiv and the West say that Ukraine is fighting against an attempted land grab by Russia.

China has proposed a peace plan that Russia is paying close attention to, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Responding to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang's remark that the Ukraine crisis seemed to be driven by an "invisible hand", Peskov said "this is not an invisible hand, this is the hand of the United States of America."

Separately, President Vladimir Putin issued special thanks to female military personnel, saying their courage amazes even the "most hardened fighters", in a message to mark International Women's Day on March 8, a public holiday in the country.

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Image: A view shows a one Russian rouble coin inside a bulb with crude oil at a laboratory in the Yarakta Oil Field, owned by Irkutsk Oil Company (INK), in Irkutsk Region, Russia in this picture illustration taken March 12, 2019. Picture taken March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko/Illustration/File Photo

India's oil deals with Russia dent decades-old dollar dominance

Reuter by Nidhi Verma and Noah Browning

Editing by Germán & Co

NEW DELHI/LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - U.S.-led international sanctions on Russia have begun to erode the dollar's decades-old dominance of international oil trade as most deals with India - Russia's top outlet for seaborne crude - have been settled in other currencies.

The dollar's pre-eminence has periodically been called into question and yet it has continued because of the overwhelming advantages of using the most widely-accepted currency for business.

India's oil trade, in response to the turmoil of sanctions and the Ukraine war, provides the strongest evidence so far of a shift into other currencies that could prove lasting.

The country is the world's number three importer of oil and Russia became its leading supplier after Europe shunned Moscow's supplies following its invasion of Ukraine begun in February last year.

Top 5 increases of Russian oil cargoes

India's top crude oil suppliers since 2011

After a coalition opposed to the war imposed an oil price cap on Russia on Dec. 5, Indian customers have paid for most Russian oil in non-dollar currencies, including the United Arab Emirates dirham and more recently the Russian rouble, multiple oil trading and banking sources said.

The transactions in the last three months total the equivalent of several hundred million dollars, the sources added, in a shift that has not previously been reported.

The Group of Seven economies, the European Union and Australia, agreed the price cap late last year to bar Western services and shipping from trading Russian oil unless sold at an enforced low price to deprive Moscow of funds for its war.

Some Dubai-based traders, and Russian energy companies Gazprom and Rosneft are seeking non-dollar payments for certain niche grades of Russian oil that have in recent weeks been sold above the $60 a barrel price cap, three sources with direct knowledge said.

The sources asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Those sales represent a small share of Russia's total sales to India and do not appear to violate the sanctions, which U.S. officials and analysts predicted could be skirted by non-Western services, such as Russian shipping and insurance.

Three Indian banks backed some of the transactions, as Moscow seeks to de-dollarise its economy and traders to avoid sanctions, the trade sources, as well as former Russian and U.S. economic officials, told Reuters.

But continued payment in dirhams for Russian oil could become harder after the United States and Britain last month added Moscow and Abu Dhabi-based Russian bank MTS to the Russian financial institutions on the sanctions list.

MTS had facilitated some Indian oil non-dollar payments, the trade sources said. Neither MTS nor the U.S. Treasury immediately responded to a Reuters request for comment.

An Indian refining source said most Russian banks have faced sanctions since the war but Indian customers and Russian suppliers are determined to keep trading Russian oil.

"Russian suppliers will find some other banks for receiving payments," the source told Reuters.

"As it is, the government is not asking us to stop buying Russian oil, so we are hopeful that an alternative payment mechanism will be found in case the current system is blocked."

FRIENDLY VERSUS UNFRIENDLY

Paying for oil in dollars has been the nearly universal practice for decades. By comparison, the currency's share of overall international payments is much smaller at 40%, according to January figures from payment system SWIFT.

Daniel Ahn, a former chief economist at the U.S. State Department and now a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, says the dollar's strength is unmatched, but the sanctions could undermine the West's financial systems while failing to achieve their aim.

"Russia's short-term efforts to try and sell things in return for currencies other than the dollar is not the real threat to Western sanctions," he said.

"(The West) is weakening the competitiveness of their own financial services by adding yet another administrative layer."

The price cap coincided with an EU embargo on imports of Russian seaborne oil, rounding off a year of bans and sanctions, including largely expelling Russia from the SWIFT global payments system.

Around half of its gold and foreign exchange reserves, which stood near $640 billion, were frozen.

In response, Russia said it would seek payment for its energy in the currency of "friendly" countries and last year ordered "unfriendly" EU states to pay for gas in roubles.

For Russian firms - as payments were blocked or delayed even if they were not violating any sanctions, due to overly zealous compliance - dollars became potentially a "toxic asset", independent analyst and former adviser at the Bank of Russia Alexandra Prokopenko, said.

"Russia desperately needs to trade with the rest of the world because it's still dependent on its oil and gas revenues so they are trying all options they have," she told Reuters.

"They're working on building a direct infrastructure between the Russian and Indian banking systems."

India’s largest lender State Bank of India has a nostro, or foreign currency, account in Russia. Similarly, many banks from Russia have opened accounts with Indian banks to facilitate trade.

IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath said in the month after Russia's invasion of Ukraine that sanctions on Russia could erode the dollar's dominance by encouraging smaller trading blocs using other currencies.

"The dollar would remain the major global currency even in that landscape but fragmentation at a smaller level is certainly quite possible," she told the Financial Times. The IMF did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Beyond Russia, tensions between China and the West are also eroding the long-established norms of dollar-dominated global trade.

Russia holds a chunk of its currency reserves in renminbi while China has reduced its holdings of dollars, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said in September Moscow had agreed to sell gas supplies to China for yuan and roubles instead of dollars.

INDIA DISPLACES EUROPE

India in the last year displaced Europe as Russia's top customer for seaborne oil, snapping up cheap barrels and increasing imports of Russian crude 16-fold compared to before the war, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Russian crude accounted for about a third of its total imports.

Fossil fuel shipment departures

India's oil imports from various regions

While India does not recognise the sanctions against Moscow, the majority of purchases of Russian oil in any currency have complied with them, trade sources said, and almost all sales have taken place at levels below the price cap.

Even so, most banks and financial institutions are cautious about clearing any payments to avoid unwittingly breaching any international law.

For Indian refiners that in recent weeks started settling some Russian oil purchases in roubles, according to the trade sources, payments have been processed in part by the State Bank of India via its nostro roubles account in Russia.

Those transactions are mostly for oil purchases from Russian state energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft, the sources added. Bank of Baroda and Axis Bank have handled most of the dirham payments, the sources added.

The banks, Gazprom and Rosneft did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

India has prepared a framework for settling trade with Russia in Indian rupees should rouble transactions be cut off by further sanctions, the sources said.

Asked for comment, the U.S. Treasury referred to the assertion by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen two weeks into the war: "I don’t think the dollar has any serious competition, and is not likely to for a long time."

Reporting By Noah Browning and Nidhi Verma, Additional reporting by Sidhhi Nayak; Editing by Veronica Brown and Barbara Lewis

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Time

Time Women of the Year 2023: Quinta Brunson, Cate Blanchett, more honored

“Our annual Women of the Year list examines the most uplifting form of influence by spotlighting leaders who are using their voices to fight for a more equal world,” Time Executive Editor Naina Bajekal and Senior Editor Lucy Feldman said in a statement. “Many of them have faced immense challenges that inspired them to push for change.”

EDWARD SEGARRA   | USA TODAY

Time magazine released its annual Women of the Year list, which highlights influential women across society, from “activism and government, to sports and the arts.” A handful of female entertainers, including actress-producer Quinta Brunson and Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers, have been selected as honorees for their unique impact.

“Our annual Women of the Year list examines the most uplifting form of influence by spotlighting leaders who are using their voices to fight for a more equal world,” Time Executive Editor Naina Bajekal and Senior Editor Lucy Feldman said in a statement. “Many of them have faced immense challenges that inspired them to push for change.”

Check out the women being spotlighted for their game-changing star power.

Quinta Brunson, from left, Cate Blanchett, Angela Bassett and Phoebe Bridgers are honorees featured on Time magazine's 2023 Women of the Year list.  

Quinta Brunson’s ‘Abbott Elementary’ diversity is women-led

The “Abbott Elementary” creator and star, who made her TV debut in the 2015 mini-series “You Do You,” has become a comedic force thanks to her work on the ABC sitcom about a ragtag group of public schoolteachers, which she executive produces and writes.

“The mockumentary’s satirical yet loving portrayal of teachers, janitors, principals and parents trying to make ends meet at an underfunded public school is a homage to their real counterparts everywhere,” Brunson’s Women of the Year profile reads.

Brunson credits the diversity of the series to her primarily female writers’ room.

“We hear each other out on what we think makes these characters layered,” Brunson told Time. “Everyone’s open to taking the lead and taking charge on these stories.”

Cate Blanchett shows women are ‘imperfect creatures’ through film

The Oscar-winning actress is up for Academy Awards gold again this year, receiving a best lead actress nomination for her performance in the music drama “Tár,” in which Blanchett plays embattled orchestra director Lydia Tár.

Blanchett is “drawn to multi-shaded characters who don’t court our approval…but Lydia Tár, in all her self-destructive glory and compelling unlikability, is like no one else we’ve ever seen onscreen,” the actress’ Women of the Year profile reads.

Depicting the multifaceted nature of womanhood authentically is important, Blanchett explained.

“We’re all imperfect creatures. And sometimes we don’t want to look at the unthinking, unintentional, inexplicable, ambiguous sides of being female,” Blanchett told Time. “We are brave, we are noble, we are generous, we are collaborative. But we are also the dark side of that because women are complex beings.”

Cate Blanchett says 'Tár' is her 'hardest film' to talk about. It could also win her a third Oscar.

Phoebe Bridgers hopes abortion advocacy ‘makes a difference’

The indie rock princess who burst onto the scene with 2017’s “Stranger in the Alps” has used her platform to advocate for women’s rights, including access to abortion.

In June, the “Kyoto” singer led an explicit chant against the “irrelevant” Supreme Court at Glastonbury Festival for “telling us what to do with our (expletive) bodies.”

“I hope it makes a difference,” Bridgers told Time, noting that she’s witnessed parents take their children out of her concerts when she’s spoken about abortion. “I hope those parents are going to lose the battle with that kid’s opinions and belief systems.”

Angela Bassett has learned ‘it’s important to give to yourself first’

Actress Angela Bassett, who starred as Ramonda in Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” earned a best supporting actress nomination at this year’s Oscars for her performance in the adventure drama.

Bassett said the characters she’s played over the years have taught her about the complexity and deeper humanity of being a woman.

“Women are called upon to be wives, sisters, friends, mothers, community leaders, activists, and we have it in our core to be these things,” Bassett told Time. “But it’s important to give to yourself first, and then you have more to share with the world.”

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Image: Germán & Co

CERAWeek - Russia wild card to keep oil markets on edge, execs warn

Reuters by Stephanie Kelly and Erwin Seba

Editing by Germán $ Co

HOUSTON, March 7 (Reuters) - Executives and officials from some of the world's top oil and gas companies said on Tuesday energy markets are balanced now, but could easily be disrupted due to tight spare production capacity and supply uncertainties related to Russia's war in Ukraine.

The comments at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston show the industry remains on edge after weathering the initial aftermath of one of the biggest shocks to global energy flows in recent memory. A temperate winter helped by giving major consumers in Europe a reprieve from typically high demand for heating fuels.

"There is very small spare capacity available so small changes in supply have impact," said Anders Opedal, Chief executive of Norwegian energy giant Equinor (EQNR.OL). "It is easy for the market to move in either direction."

Opedal predicted natural gas supply uncertainty faced by Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine and cut off regional supplies will continue in 2024 and likely 2025. Tighter global crude supplies are also possible after the Kremlin's threat last month to cut 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of supply from March.

On Monday, U.S. energy executives and top OPEC officials discussed concerns about a lack of spare oil production capacity at a private dinner on the sidelines of the conference, an executive who attended said.

"We may have gotten through this winter surprisingly well, but I don't think we're out of the woods yet," said Michael LaMotte, senior managing director of investment firm Guggenheim Partners. "And things actually could get worse before they get better."

Algeria, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, is in the process of investing $40 million in upstream business to satisfy demand, especially demand in Europe, said Mohamed Arkab, the country's minister of energy and mines.

PRICE CAP ON RUSSIA WORKING

Tight spare capacity makes it critical for governments sanctioning Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine to put a price cap on Russian oil instead of capping the country's ability to export crude, said Frederic Lasserre, Gunvor's global head of research and analysis.

U.S. energy envoy Amos Hochstein said the price cap - designed to reduce Russian revenues without slowing its exports - was working well, as Russian oil was still finding its way to market.

The Group of Seven countries, the European Union and Australia implemented the price cap on seaborne cargoes of Russian oil on Dec. 5, setting it at $60 a barrel.

On Feb.5, the G7 and allies also implemented a price cap on Russian fuel sales.

On Tuesday, the Kremlin said it did not recognize the price cap.

Though Russian oil is still getting to market, it is at different costs, as ships must travel longer distances to get the crude to countries that have not imposed sanctions, said Chevron CEO Mike Wirth.

OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais said on Tuesday that he was not concerned about the rerouting of Russian crude exports to countries such as China and India.

A STABLE OIL MARKET?

Officials including chief executives from Gunvor and Kuwait Petroleum Corp have reassured attendees at CERAWeek that the oil market has stabilized and reached balance, leaving behind fears of shortages this winter of crude, gas and fuel.

However, the oil market outlook later this year becomes murkier as companies, consumers and governments wrestle with factors ranging from fears of a potential global recession and higher interest rates to growing energy demand from China as it exits coronavirus restrictions.

China's oil demand will grow 500,000 to 600,000 barrels per day in 2023, OPEC's Al Ghais said, while global oil demand growth is expected to grow 2.3 million barrels per day in 2023.

Crude prices may rise in the second-half of the year as Chinese demand returns to the market, Gunvor Chief Executive Torbjorn Tornqvist said on Monday.

On Tuesday, U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers the central bank will likely need to raise interest rates more than expected to control inflation.

"This year is going to be a harder environment... driven by wider macro economics, also combined with what is going on with flows from Russia," said Savvas Manousos, CEPSA's executive vice president of global trading.

*Reporting by Stephanie Kelly, Simon Webb, Ron Bousso and Richard Valdmanis in Houston; Editing by David Gregorio

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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News round-up, March 7, 2023

Quote of the day… 

"We made some changes internally and created a focused hydrogen organisation, a focused offshore wind organisation," Dotzenrath said in an interview. "I'm (now) just reviewing the onshore renewables part - so the onshore wind and solar part."

REUTERS EBERGY NEWS

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Most read…

China says U.S. should change attitude or risk conflict

"The United States' perception and views of China are seriously distorted," said Qin, a trusted aide to President Xi Jinping and until recently China's ambassador in Washington.

Reuters by Ryan Woo

Inside BP's plan to reset renewables as oil and gas boom

The oil major isn't backing away from renewables though, its green chief Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath stresses, it's simply changing the terms of the relationship.

Reuters by Ron Bousso

EU hopes Macron will budge on Latin American trade deal

‘We all expect a shift in Paris but this has not been tested politically yet,’ says one EU diplomat.

BY GIORGIO LEALI, CAMILLE GIJS AND SARAH ANNE AARUP, MARCH 6, 2023 

EU hopes Macron will budge on Latin American trade deal

‘We all expect a shift in Paris but this has not been tested politically yet,’ says one EU diplomat.

BY GIORGIO LEALI, CAMILLE GIJS AND SARAH ANNE AARUP, MARCH 6, 2023 

CERAWEEK Eni CEO says gas market will be "difficult" for Europe through 2025

"This next year, and also in 2024 and 2025, will be more difficult because last year until July we relied on about 80% of the Russian gas," he told the CERAWeek conference in Houston.

Reuters

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”We’ll need natural gas for years…

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but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says…

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Image: Germán Toro Ghio

China says U.S. should change attitude or risk conflict

"The United States' perception and views of China are seriously distorted," said Qin, a trusted aide to President Xi Jinping and until recently China's ambassador in Washington.

Reuters by Ryan Woo

US must stop suppressing China or risk 'conflict' - FM

BEIJING, March 7 (Reuters) - The United States should change its "distorted" attitude towards China or "conflict and confrontation" will follow, China's foreign minister said on Tuesday, while defending its stance on the war in Ukraine and defending its close ties with Russia.

The U.S. had been engaging in suppression and containment of China rather than engaging in fair, rule-based competition, Foreign Minister Qin Gang told a news conference on the sidelines of an annual parliament meeting in Beijing.

"The United States' perception and views of China are seriously distorted," said Qin, a trusted aide to President Xi Jinping and until recently China's ambassador in Washington.

"It regards China as its primary rival and the most consequential geopolitical challenge. This is like the first button in the shirt being put wrong."

Relations between the two superpowers have been tense for years over a number of issues including Taiwan, trade and more recently the war in Ukraine but they worsened last month after the United States shot down a balloon off the U.S. East Coast that it says was a Chinese spying craft.

The U.S. says it is establishing guardrails for relations and is not seeking conflict but Qin said what that meant in practice was that China was not supposed to respond with words or action when slandered or attacked.

"That is just impossible," Qin told his first news conference since becoming foreign minister in late December.

Qin's comments struck the same the tough tone of his predecessor, Wang Yi, now China's most senior diplomat after being made director of the Foreign Affairs Commission Office at the turn of the year.

"If the United States does not hit the brakes, and continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailment, which will become conflict and confrontation, and who will bear the catastrophic consequences?"

U.S. officials often speak of establishing guardrails in the bilateral relationship to prevent tensions from escalating into crises.

Qin likened Sino-U.S. competition to a race between two Olympic athletes.

"If one side, instead of focusing on giving one's best, always tries to trip the other up, even to the extent that they must enter the Paralympics, then this is not fair competition," he said.

'JACKALS AND WOLVES'

During a nearly two-hour news conference in which he answered questions submitted in advance, Qin made a robust defence of "wolf warrior diplomacy", an assertive and often abrasive stance adopted by China's diplomats since 2020.

"When jackals and wolves are blocking the way, and hungry wolves are attacking us, Chinese diplomats must then dance with the wolves and protect and defend our home and country," he said.

Qin also said that an "invisible hand" was pushing for the escalation of the war in Ukraine "to serve certain geopolitical agendas", without specifying who he was referring to.

He reiterated China's call for dialogue to end the war.

China struck a "no limits" partnership with Russia last year, weeks before its invasion of Ukraine, and China has blamed NATO expansion for triggering the war, echoing Russia's complaint.

China has declined to condemn the invasion and has fiercely defended its stance on Ukraine, despite Western criticism of its failure to single Russia out as the aggressor.

China has also vehemently denied U.S. accusations that it has been considering supplying Russia with weapons.

ADVANCING RELATIONS WITH MOSCOW

Image: Germán & Co

Qin said China had to advance its relations with Russia as the world becomes more turbulent and close interactions between President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, anchored the neighbours' relations.

He did not give a definite answer when asked if Xi would visit Russia after China's parliament session, which goes on for one more week.

Since Russia invaded its southwestern neighbour a year ago Xi has held talks several times with Putin, but not with his Ukrainian counterpart. This undermines China's claim of neutrality in the conflict, Kyiv's top diplomat in Beijing said last month.

Asked whether it was possible that China and Russia would abandon the U.S. dollar and euro for bilateral trade, Qin said countries should use whatever currency was efficient, safe and credible.

China has been looking to internationalise its currency, the yuan, which gained popularity in Russia last year after Western sanctions shut Russia's banks and many of its companies out of the dollar and euro payment systems.

"Currencies should not be the trump card for unilateral sanctions, still less a disguise for bullying or coercion," Qin said.

*Reporting by Yew Lun Tian, Laurie Chen, Ryan Woo and the Beijing Newsroom; Writing by Martin Quin Pollard; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Tom Hogue

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Image: Solar panels are seen in this drone photo at the Impact solar facility in Deport, Texas, U.S., July 15, 2021. REUTERS/Drone Base

Inside BP's plan to reset renewables as oil and gas boom

The oil major isn't backing away from renewables though, its green chief Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath stresses, it's simply changing the terms of the relationship.

Reuters by Ron Bousso

LONDON, March 7 (Reuters) - BP hasn't fallen out of love with renewables. It just wants to have more power.

CEO Bernard Looney's pursuit of green energy outstripped all rivals three years ago when he outlined a radical blueprint to move away from fossil fuels. Last month he applied the brakes, slowing BP's planned cuts in oil and gas and scaling back planned renewables spending in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

The oil major isn't backing away from renewables though, its green chief Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath stresses, it's simply changing the terms of the relationship.

Dotzenrath told Reuters BP was reviewing its solar and onshore wind businesses as part of a revamp that will see it move away from selling the clean electricity it produces, and instead keep hold of most of it to supply its growing electric vehicle charging network and production of low-carbon fuels.

The onshore renewables scrutiny, which hasn't been previously reported, follows reviews by Dotzenrath of BP's offshore wind and hydrogen businesses over the past year which led to overhauls that saw the company install new managers, hire staff, scrap some projects and seek to revise terms of others.

"We made some changes internally and created a focused hydrogen organisation, a focused offshore wind organisation," Dotzenrath said in an interview. "I'm (now) just reviewing the onshore renewables part - so the onshore wind and solar part."

BP's head of renewables and gas didn't elaborate on the nature of the latest review. The green stakes are high, though, given solar alone comprises more than half of BP's 43-gigawatt renewables project pipeline.

Dotzenrath also put the first numbers to BP's rebalancing act, which comes amid deteriorating profits in renewables power generation, telling Reuters that the company aimed to retain 80% of the power produced to supply the global EV network and to make "green" fuels such as hydrogen, seen by many transition experts as a key fuel of the future.

She did not give a timeframe for the shift, which represents a major pivot given the vast majority of BP's renewables output is currently linked to power grids. BP will continue to build some projects under traditional power supply deals, she added.

"We will not grow renewables for the sake of growing wind and solar," said Dotzenrath, who is marking a year in the job after joining BP shortly after Russia's invasion undermined Europe's energy security, fuelled bumper profits for oil and gas and changed the calculus of the energy transition.

"Our strategy is not necessarily about asset ownership in renewables, but it comes as a consequence. It is really about securing access to cheap - the cheapest - green electron," she added, referring to electricity from renewable sources.

IN FOCUS: VENTURE WITH EQUINOR

The most eye-popping change in the strategy update last month was BP slowing its planned cuts in oil and gas output from 40% to 25% by 2030 compared with 2019 levels.

It also lowered its projected annual spending on renewables to up to $5 billion by 2030 out of a total group budget of up to $18 billion, from $6 billion out of $16 billion under its previous update in 2022, according to a Reuters analysis.

While BP's move to produce more oil and gas for longer puts it more in line with its peers, its 25% annual reduction goal is still more ambitious than any of its global rivals.

The paring of green ambitions has been cheered by the market, with BP shares leaping about 17% since the Feb. 7 strategy update, much more than any other rival Western major.

By contrast, BP had significantly underperformed rivals since Looney outlined his industry-leading transition plans three years ago, remaining largely flat until the announcement compared with a 20% gain for Shell and 84% rise for Exxon.

The renewables revamp reflects an acknowledgement that the company won't be able to sufficiently compete with traditional power generators if it simply sells the energy produced by its wind and solar projects, according to Dotzenrath.

"It's a critical feedstock," she said. "If it is not integrated with our other businesses, we will not do this because we don't believe that we have a competitive edge."

The company's new trajectory has placed its flagship U.S. offshore wind joint venture with Norway's Equinor in the focus of managers, five sources familiar with the matter separately told Reuters.

BP executives, including Dotzenrath, have held several meetings with Equinor in London in recent weeks to discuss ways to give the oil major greater clout in the venture, said the two BP and three Equinor sources, who are close to the talks and declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

BP wants more of its staff involved in the Oslo-based venture, the people said. One of the Equinor sources with direct knowledge of the operations said BP currently had more than 20 people working on the JV projects out of a total of over 270.

Equinor declined to comment on any "speculation" about changes to the venture sought by BP. It said it looked forward to applying their combined expertise to develop projects on the U.S. East Coast. Dotzenrath also declined to comment on this.

"I am very happy with the joint venture and the progress we are making with the projects," Dotzenrath said. "These are very, very complex, large, mega projects ... we have much more ability to support Equinor in the delivery of these projects."

THAT'S THE BRUTAL REALITY

When BP paid $1.1 billion for its 50% stake in the venture to enter offshore wind in 2020, it was more reliant on the know-how of Equinor, which had over a decade of experience and specialism in the sector.

Over the past two years, though, BP has brought in hundreds of staff from renewables firms. It has also broken from its tradition of developing leaders internally and hired senior executives such as Dotzenrath, a former CEO of Germany's RWE Renewables, and an offshore wind chief from Danish giant Orsted.

The UK major surprised many investors and analysts in December when it decided not to join Equinor in bidding on a floating wind project off California. Floating offshore wind is a nascent technology that remains significantly more expensive than turbines fixed to the seabed.

"This was a portfolio decision," Dotzenrath said. "The North Sea is much more important to us and our integration story than California. I think that's the brutal reality at the moment."

THE NEW NORMAL IN NUMBERS

BP's renewables revamp is underpinned by its projections about how much money it can make from the production and sale of green power versus higher-margin low-carbon businesses within its own integrated operations.

The company's outlook for its average core earnings from oil and gas in 2030 grew by around $10 billion to $42.5 billion over the course of last year, and by a meagre $1.5 billion to $11 billion from energy-transition businesses including renewables.

BP expects a return on investment of at least 15% on bioenergy including biogas as well as from combining EV charging with retail stores. Hydrogen is seen bringing in 10% returns, with renewables lagging at a maximum of 8% under the current model dominated by power sales.

While BP had a stated target in 2020 of trading 500 terawatt hours of electricity by 2030 – twice the volume in 2019 - no such target featured in its 2023 strategy update.

Dotzenrath said growth in renewables capacity would be in service to green hydrogen and other businesses it supplied internally with clean power.

"We take the green electron and do something with it," she added. "Access and control over the green electron is key because the world is short of green electrons."

*Reporting by Ron Bousso, Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Pravin Char

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co by shutterstock.com

EU hopes Macron will budge on Latin American trade deal

‘We all expect a shift in Paris but this has not been tested politically yet,’ says one EU diplomat.

BY GIORGIO LEALI, CAMILLE GIJS AND SARAH ANNE AARUP, MARCH 6, 2023 

PARIS — The planets now seem aligned to finally push a trade deal between the EU and Latin American countries over the finish line. Well, all planets but one — Jupiter, France’s nickname for Emmanuel Macron.

EU negotiators are traveling to Buenos Aires this week for a final stretch of trade talks with the Latin American Mercosur countries. But the main opponent of the deal is less than a 90-minute rail trip away from Brussels, in Paris. The French government says it wants to wait and see before signing off on the deal. But currently it’s mostly waiting. 

The discussions could get tricky, as Brussels will only sign on the dotted line if Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay agree to extra climate commitments that it has now put to the Mercosur countries in writing for the first time.

Publicly, there are few signs that France will budge. “I have held a firm position and I will continue to hold it,” Macron told farmers in late February.

In Brussels, though, several EU diplomats said that Paris’ opposition to the deal has become less vocal. They see this as a sign that France could change its mind as geopolitical tensions following the war in Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic strengthen the case for the 27-nation bloc to diversify its trading relationships.

“We all expect a shift in Paris but this has not been tested politically yet,” said an EU diplomat, predicting that “this year will be the real test” for France after the election last year of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva installed a leader in Brazil with whom Europe can do business.

The political context in Paris has changed, too, since Macron won reelection last year for a second and final term as president, another EU diplomat said, meaning he faces less pressure to please France’s globalization-skeptic voters.

Paris wants the Mercosur bloc to commit to stop illegal deforestation in the Amazon, to comply with the Paris climate agreement, and to apply the same environmental and sanitary standards as EU farmers. “We are still far from that,” a French official said.

It's a message that Macron drove home last week, albeit indirectly, on a trip to Africa where — posing before a scenic backdrop of rainforest in Gabon, on Central Africa's Atlantic coast — he emphasized the importance of primary tropical rainforests in soaking up carbon emissions.

One more thing ...

The European Commission has to assuage the concerns of France, the European Parliament and NGOs, and it has been working on a legally-binding addendum on how to include extra environmental criteria from the Mercosur countries without having to reopen the original trade deal and make changes to it.

The secret document has yet to be published, and the French government hasn’t yet taken a position on it. But the same French official conceded that France’s worries could be addressed without reopening the deal itself — a sign that the additional protocol could be enough to persuade Paris to change its mind.

Supporters of the deal stress that much has changed since it was first struck in 2019, including the fact that the EU now has new rules banning the import of goods whose production entails deforestation. Also, last year, the EU implemented a new carbon border tax that would hit polluting competitors around the world.

Farmer Julien Georges at the Salon de l’Agriculture | Giorgio Leali for POLITICO

Former EU trade commissioner and WTO chief Pascal Lamy said the Commission should be brave and defy Paris in a vote amongst EU capitals. 

“At the end of the day, the Commission should ask the Council for a vote, saying that we have spent a lot of time trying to get everyone to agree and that there is not a blocking minority of member states. I had to do it myself when I was commissioner," said Lamy, noting that the trade section of the deal doesn’t need the unanimous support of EU capitals to pass.  

Opposition to the Mercosur deal is almost unanimous in France, with all political groups and the country’s powerful farm lobby FNSEA constantly describing it as a threat to farmers and consumers. 

Backing the deal could mean losing the support of French farmers, who could then swing towards Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, Macron’s arch-nemesis.

“Many small farmers switched to the National Rally, it’s the pressure of the National Rally,” as Lamy put it. 

Healthy diet

When Macron in late February visited the Salon de l’Agriculture, a major farming event on the outskirts of Paris, he spent most of his day with livestock breeders and had lunch with meat industry representatives worried that the Mercosur deal would open the floodgates to imports of South American beef. 

“Feeding the French people with merde (shit) so that we can export other products to South America is inadmissible,” farmer Julien Georges, who owns a herd of 140 Charolais cattle in the Lorraine region, told POLITICO as Macron stood nearby.

But not everyone is against the deal in France. Business organizations in France and Europe in the past repeatedly urged Brussels and Paris to unlock the deal. 

“We are unable to defend the agreement. Even if we are in favor of it, politically it does not pass,” said a French industry representative, who refused to speak publicly, stressing the political sensitivity of the deal in France.

The French government is gearing up to face additional pressure as Brussels is moving faster to push the deal beyond the finish line. Officials from the economy and trade ministries are testing the waters, for instance by setting up meetings with industry representatives. 

“We know very well that some want to make progress on [the deal], we will see what balances can evolve,” said one official from the French prime minister's office, requesting anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. 

For Lamy, the former trade commissioner, the time has come for Paris to finally be pragmatic and back a deal where Europe has more to gain than to lose.

“If you think that you can open that market without having to pay something when it comes to agriculture … you must be dreaming!”

Giorgio Leali reported from Paris, and Camille Gijs and Sarah Anne Aarup from Brussels. Additional reporting by Barbara Moens.

*This story corrects the attribution of a quote to farmer Julien Georges.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image:Eni Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi attends a signing ceremony as QatarEnergy joins TotalEnergies and Eni to explore Lebanon's offshore oil and gas, in Beirut, Lebanon January 29, 2023. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo

CERAWEEK Eni CEO says gas market will be "difficult" for Europe through 2025

Reuters

Eni Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi attends a signing ceremony as QatarEnergy joins TotalEnergies and Eni to explore Lebanon's offshore oil and gas, in Beirut, Lebanon January 29, 2023. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo

HOUSTON, March 7 (Reuters) - Eni (ENI.MI) CEO Claudio Descalzi said on Tuesday that the natural gas market will be "more difficult" for Europe this winter through 2025 due to a lack of supply from Russia.

"This next year, and also in 2024 and 2025, will be more difficult because last year until July we relied on about 80% of the Russian gas," he told the CERAWeek conference in Houston.

"Now there's no Russian gas at all."

*Writing by Richard Valdmanis

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News round-up, March 6, 2023

Quote of the day… 

European Commission chief von der Leyen says the EU has seen ‘no evidence’ that China is considering sending arms to Russia.

POLITICO EU BY GABRIEL RINALDI AND HANS VON DER BURCHARD

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Most read…

Germany’s Scholz says China ‘declared it will not deliver’ weapons to Russia

European Commission chief von der Leyen says the EU has seen ‘no evidence’ that China is considering sending arms to Russia.

POLITICO EU BY GABRIEL RINALDI AND HANS VON DER BURCHARD, MARCH 5, 2023

The Republicans Begin to Eye 2024

It’s been a winter of garish factional disputes in the G.O.P., and Donald Trump remains a seismic force of instability.

The New Yorker By Steve Coll, March 5, 2023

Kremlin: Nord Stream's future is decision for all shareholders

Reuters

Modi’s India demands good news only

Narendra Modi’s government has muzzled India’s media through arrests, tax raids and other uses of arbitrary powers. Only a few brave independent news sources still resist.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Samrat Choudhury

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”We’ll need natural gas for years…

—

but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says…

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Image: Germán Toro Ghio by shutterstock.com

Germany’s Scholz says China ‘declared it will not deliver’ weapons to Russia

European Commission chief von der Leyen says the EU has seen ‘no evidence’ that China is considering sending arms to Russia.

POLITICO EU BY GABRIEL RINALDI AND HANS VON DER BURCHARD, MARCH 5, 2023

MESEBERG, Germany — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday said China had declared it won’t supply Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine, suggesting that Berlin has received bilateral assurances from Beijing on the issue.

Scholz was speaking at a press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who told reporters that the EU has received “no evidence” so far from the U.S. that Beijing is considering supplying lethal support to Moscow.

Senior U.S. officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken have expressed deep concern in recent weeks that China could provide weapons such as kamikaze drones to Russia, which in turn triggered warnings to Beijing from EU politicians. Scholz himself urged Beijing last week to refrain from such actions and instead use its influence to convince Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukraine.

Yet speaking at Sunday’s press conference, which was held at the German government retreat in Meseberg north of Berlin, Scholz claimed that China had provided assurances that it would not send weapons to Russia.

“We all agree that there should be no arms deliveries, and the Chinese government has declared that it will not deliver any either,” the chancellor said in response to a question by POLITICO. “We insist on this and we are monitoring it,” he added.

Scholz later told CNN that if China were to aid Russia: “I think it would have consequences, but we are now in a stage where we are making clear that this should not happen, and I’m relatively optimistic that we will be successful with our request in this case, but we will have to look at and we have to be very, very cautious.”

Scholz’s comments about Beijing came as a surprise because China has not publicly rejected the possibility of weapons deliveries to Russia. The chancellor appeared to suggest that Beijing had issued such reassurances directly to Germany.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell received similar private assurances last month. Borrell told reporters that China’s top diplomat Wang Yi had told him in a private discussion at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February that China “will not provide arms to Russia.”

“Nevertheless, we have to remain vigilant,” Borrell said.

Von der Leyen, who attended the first day of a two-day German government retreat in Meseberg, told reporters that the EU still had not seen any proof that China is considering sending arms to Russia.

“So far, we have no evidence of this, but we have to observe it every day,” the Commission president said. She did not reply to the question on whether the EU would support sanctions against China should there be such weapon deliveries, saying that was a “hypothetical question” she would not answer.

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Image: Germán & Co

The Republicans Begin to Eye 2024

It’s been a winter of garish factional disputes in the G.O.P., and Donald Trump remains a seismic force of instability.

The New Yorker By Steve Coll, March 5, 2023

On August 6, 2015, Donald Trump appeared at the first Republican Party primary debate of the 2016 Presidential cycle, hosted by Fox News. Bret Baier asked all the candidates onstage if they would endorse the eventual Republican nominee, whomever that might be, and rule out running as an Independent. Trump alone declined, stating, “I cannot say.”

Come next August, another season of Republican Presidential-primary debates is set to begin, and candidate Trump is again a seismic force of instability in the G.O.P. Last week, the Republican National Committee chair said that, during the 2024 cycle, all participants in its televised primary debates should first sign a “loyalty pledge” promising to support whichever candidate is finally selected to take on the Democratic nominee—presumably Joe Biden. Trump has not indicated that he will sign such a pledge; last month, he told the radio host Hugh Hewitt that his support for the Republican standard-bearer in 2024 “would have to depend on who the nominee was.” Some of Trump’s most ardent Republican opponents feel similarly; Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas, who is considering joining the race, told the Washington Post that he has doubts about promising to back Trump if he becomes the nominee.

This has been a winter of garish factional disputes among Republicans, starting in January with the fifteen-ballot shouting match required to elect Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House of Representatives. McCarthy’s difficulties highlighted the power of hard-right extremists and social-media egoists among the fragile Republican majority in the House. Yet the context for that imbroglio was Trump’s continuing grip on the Party’s base, his legitimizing of the country’s far right, and the institutional G.O.P.’s ongoing failure to hold him accountable for his lies about election fraud in 2020 or his attempted subversion of the Constitution on January 6, 2021.

Holed up in his gilded bunker at Mar-a-Lago, Trump might not appear to be the political force he once was, and he has clearly lost some mojo since the Republicans’ disappointments in the midterm elections, which followed his endorsement of weak and extremist candidates in key races. By Trump’s robust standards, his fund-raising since the midterms has been anemic. His love-hate relationship with Fox News has been aggravated by a lawsuit’s recent revelations that Rupert Murdoch and some of his network’s personalities seem to have privately thought that Trump’s claims of election fraud were nonsense. As the primary field for 2024 takes shape, G.O.P. establishment figures are calling Trump a liability. “If we nominate Trump again, we’re going to lose,” the former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan said late last month.

Yet Trump remains the top choice for 2024 among likely Republican primary voters, often by sizable margins, according to many national polls, including two released last week. Among other possible contenders, only Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, attracts double-digit support. And, although he and other high-profile Party leaders such as former Vice-President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are testing the waters, for now the only other prominent figure to have officially declared is Nikki Haley, who has served as both U.N. Ambassador and governor of South Carolina.

Of the undeclared contenders, nobody triggers Trump like DeSantis, who won a thumping reëlection victory last November and has become a star attraction for Republican donors. Trump’s take is that DeSantis owes his political success to the fact that Trump backed him in the 2018 gubernatorial primary. If he is to be believed, DeSantis had “tears coming down from his eyes” at a meeting where he begged Trump for an endorsement, only to betray his mentor after he lost to Biden. These days, on his social-media site, Trump has been highlighting DeSantis’s past support for cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits (which the Governor has since walked back). “he is a wheelchair over the cliff kind of guy,” Trump posted last week.

The DeSantis surge raises the question of whether, in today’s G.O.P., only a quasi-Trumpist can defeat Trump. The Governor promotes his record in Florida as a model for the nation, and he has a lustrous résumé—Yale, Harvard Law, Navy service. Yet he has positioned himself as a fists-up culture warrior, choosing Disney as a foil for his anti-woke posturing and championing censorious laws in Florida to regulate the teaching about gender identity and Black history. On tour last week to promote a new book, DeSantis renewed his crusade against “the ruling class” and recounted for a Fox News interviewer how he managed to stave off liberal indoctrination at Yale. He recalled turning up on campus in jean shorts and flip-flops, only to experience “major, major culture shock” as he encountered “kids from Andover and Groton,” as well as classroom discourse that involved “attacking God, attacking the United States.” (DeSantis captained Yale’s baseball team and graduated magna cum laude.)

Other contenders, including Haley and Pence, might try to run against Trump as unifiers, eschewing populist battle cries. In past Republican eras of orderly succession, Pence would likely have been an early front-runner, but Trump has excoriated him for refusing to go along with the January 6th coup plot, and he has lagged in early primary polls.

The R.N.C. might wish for normalcy and party discipline, but an unregulated brawl is the only kind of campaign that Trump knows how to mount. During last week’s litany of attacks, he complained about the “Marxist Thugs” who are out to get him, by which he meant the federal and state prosecutors who have been investigating his finances, his intimidation of election officials, his role on January 6th, and his handling of classified documents. He described America under President Biden as a “Third World Failing Nation” whose rescue urgently requires his maga revival and his restoration to the White House.

Our two-party apparatus of Presidential primaries—absurdly long, media-saturated, corrupted by big money—can hardly be justified as a model of democratic decision-making. Yet it does allow Republicans and Democrats to resolve their factional conflicts in the open, and it gives motivated partisan voters at the grass roots a say. The Republican primaries will offer an early measure of whether our constitutional system remains strong enough to expunge by democratic means the anti-democratic movement that Trump continues to mobilize. ♦

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co

Kremlin: Nord Stream's future is decision for all shareholders

Reuters

MOSCOW, March 6 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday it was for all shareholders to decide whether Nord Stream gas pipelines damaged in blasts last year should be mothballed.

Sources familiar with the plans told Reuters last week that the ruptured Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, built by Russia's state-controlled Gazprom (GAZP.MM), were set to be sealed up and mothballed as there are no immediate plans to repair or reactivate them.

Asked about the report at a regular briefing, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "Of course, this is a decision that should be taken collegially by all shareholders."

He also said the Kremlin would not issue any recommendations to Gazprom regarding the future of the undersea pipelines.

Apart from Gazprom, shareholders in Nord Stream AG, the Swiss-based operator of Nord Stream 1, are Engie (ENGIE.PA), Gasunie (GSUNI.UL), Wintershall DEA (WINT.UL) (BASFn.DE) and E.ON (EONGn.DE).

Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, each consisting of two pipes, were built by Gazprom to pump 110 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas a year to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

Three of the four pipes were ruptured by unexplained blasts in September, and one of the Nord Stream 2 pipes remains intact.

Gazprom has said it is technically possible to repair the ruptured lines, but two sources familiar with plans said Moscow saw little prospect of relations with the West improving enough in the foreseeable future for the pipelines to be needed.

Europe has drastically cut its energy imports from Russia over the past year after Moscow's decision to send hundreds of thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin Editing by Gareth Jones

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Germán Toro Ghio by shutterstock.com

Modi’s India demands good news only

Narendra Modi’s government has muzzled India’s media through arrests, tax raids and other uses of arbitrary powers. Only a few brave independent news sources still resist.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Samrat Choudhury

Around midday local time on 14 February 2023 the staff of the British Broadcasting Corporation in Delhi and Mumbai were surprised to see men march into their offices. They were told to hand over their mobiles and assemble in one place: it was a ‘survey’ by the Indian government’s income tax department. Although the official reason for the survey was suspected tax evasion, journalists were questioned and their computers were also ‘surveyed’. Paramilitary soldiers in combat fatigues brandishing assault rifles guarded the gate during the three-day operation. The taxman’s visit came weeks after the release of a BBC documentary, The Modi Question, that did not go down well with its subject, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and his government (1).

The two-part documentary looks at Modi’s role as chief minister of Gujarat during riots in that state in 2002 in which at least a thousand people, most of them Muslims, were killed. The on-screen captions mention that ‘More than 30 people in India declined to take part in this series because of fears about their safety. The Indian government declined to comment about the allegations made in this film.’ After the first episode of the two-part series was broadcast by BBC Two on 17 January, the government banned the documentary, even though the BBC did not show it in India, and there were no plans to show it there.

Kanchan Gupta, a former journalist who is now senior advisor at the ministry of information and broadcasting, wrote in a Twitter thread on 21 January, ‘Important. Videos sharing @BBCWorld hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage, disguised as “documentary”, on @YouTube and tweets sharing links to the BBC documentary have been blocked under India’s sovereign laws and rules.’ Gupta added that the government had used emergency powers under its new Information Technology Rules, framed in 2021, since multiple government ministries had found it to be ‘vile propaganda’ which was ‘undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India, and having the potential to adversely impact India’s friendly relations with foreign countries as also public order within the country.’

This position was repeated stridently by the army of social media handles run by Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and by most mainstream Indian news channels, which have in recent years largely become public relations wings of the party. For years, TV news anchors have been Modi cheerleaders. After the tax raid on the BBC, journalists close to unnamed sources in the government swiftly began circulating through WhatsApp groups an unsigned, undated press release with no letterhead or attribution, which said, ‘Today, the Income Tax authorities conducted a survey on the BBC’s premises in Delhi in view of the BBC’s deliberate non-compliance with the Transfer Pricing Rules and its vast diversion of profits.’ Most Indian media outlets ran it, as part of their nationalist duty.

The Indian media’s relationship with the Modi government is one of deep love, though the affection has not been fully returned. Since the start of his tenure in 2014, the prime minister has held only one press conference in India and on that occasion, in 2019, he did not answer a single question. He has given rare interviews to TV news anchors known to be fans; in 2018 he spoke to the Zee News channel, answering questions like, ‘At this age, how do you have so much energy?’ Those who ask harder questions about him, his party or any aspect of his government are accused not so much of being anti-Modi or anti-BJP (both legal in a multi-party democracy) as of being ‘anti-national’. For them, Modi is India and India is Modi.

Accused of being ‘anti-national’

Being called ‘anti-national’ can have serious consequences, as several journalists have discovered in recent years. In 2020 there was a gang-rape of a girl in Hathras in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which is run by a Hindu nationalist monk from the BJP, Yogi Adityanath (2). Siddique Kappan, a journalist who was on his way to report on this, was arrested, charged with crimes including sedition under emergency anti-terrorism laws and imprisoned without trial for more than two years before finally getting bail. After his release, he told independent news portal The Wire, ‘It was easy for them to call me a terrorist, because I am a Muslim.’

The crackdown against journalists has not been restricted to Muslims. In 2020 a journalist in the state of Manipur, Kishorchandra Wangkhem, spotted the wife and girlfriend of a local government minister having a fight on Instagram. He posted this on Facebook; soon after, he was arrested and jailed for crimes including sedition (3). It was his second stint in jail for a Facebook post; in 2018 he had been jailed for 133 days after posting a rant against the state’s BJP chief minister, Biren Singh, himself a former journalist.

There is a growing tendency to monitor every news report and social media post and crack down on anything critical. The official press release is the only acceptable version. Any departure is treated as heresy. This is done by appointing government officials as ‘fact checkers’. Several state governments, run by parties across the political spectrum, have tasked the police with the job of curbing ‘fake news’. While India does indeed have a fake news problem, politicians and government officials keen on protecting their own image have found it convenient to suppress any unfavourable coverage by labelling it as fake.

Covid deaths uncovered

In 2020 in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, the editor of the small Gujarati-language web news portal Face of Nation, Dhaval Patel, ran a news item saying the state’s chief minister, Vijay Rupani of the BJP, was likely to be replaced by the party’s central leadership. Patel’s story was derided as fake news and he was jailed for sedition. The following year, Rupani was indeed replaced (4). The state had been in the throes of a terrible Covid wave. The death toll had shot up, and efforts to suppress the news had finally failed when one Hindi-language newspaper, Dainik Bhaskar, and its Gujarati-language subsidiary, Divya Bhaskar, ran investigative stories that showed massive undercounting of the deaths including a front cover report headlined ‘Government data on deaths is a lie, these burning pyres are telling the truth’.

The Dainik Bhaskar publications ran reports revealing the horrendous state of affairs in India during the second wave of Covid, when hospitals overflowed and patients in intensive care died after medical oxygen ran short. They subsequently experienced a harsher version of what the BBC is now getting — tax raids across 30-odd locations including not just offices but also the home of its owner, Sudhir Agarwal (5).

With Indian media reduced to compliance or silence, solid journalism about India appears in the foreign press, to government consternation

Mainstream Indian media companies, especially TV channels, realised that safety lay in abandoning investigative journalism. They now strictly avoid criticising the government and attack the opposition instead. Since the government is a major advertiser, this brings significant revenues (the ads get withdrawn before the taxman comes). Uncompliant journalists have lost their jobs or been sidelined within organisations; columnists who are critical of Modi have had their columns dropped. A sizeable number of once secular, liberal journalists have saved their jobs by becoming loud cheerleaders for him and Hindu nationalism. Others have simply fallen silent. The number of prominent Indian journalists who still speak truth to power is low. And mainstream TV channels that still produce proper journalism are all but gone: NDTV, the last such channel, was bought up in December 2022 by Gautam Adani, a controversial billionaire from Gujarat with close ties to Modi.

What little journalism worthy of the name still exists in India is published by small, independent websites. Not even these have escaped police raids or tax ‘surveys’. The decline in press freedom has been reflected in India’s global ranking on the annual press freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders. In 2022 India was ranked 150th out of 180 countries, a little ahead of Russia, at 155th. With Indian media reduced to compliance or silence, solid journalism about India slowly started appearing in the foreign press, to the government’s consternation. The taxman’s visit to the BBC offices is only the latest episode in a simmering row.

The BBC is not the only foreign news organisation to face the Indian government’s ire. On 13 January Deutsche Welle (DW) Asia released a video report headlined ‘Is communal violence in India here to stay in 2023?’ (6). In a promotional tweet, DW said, ‘After numerous instances of communal clashes between Hindus and Muslims in 2022, new research suggests that such violence could increase across India in 2023. Many see growing Hindu extremism as a threat to India’s principles of secularism, diversity and democracy’ (7). Reacting to this, Kanchan Gupta, cited above, described it as ‘Further drivel and trash from DW’. He added that ‘DW’s hostile agenda is to attack India in G20 year. That apart, this unhinged report stinks of anti-Hindu hate. It’s reflective of DW’s jaundiced reportage out of India’ (8).

There is one kind of story that the media can safely tell from India. All journalists are free to say or write anything they like in praise of Modi and the happy state of affairs under his rule.

Samrat Choudhury is a journalist and author, and former newspaper editor.

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Greta Thunberg - Who is this enigmatic icon?

When everyone believes they are correct despite the extreme reality…

GERMÁN & CO

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A year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, one of the shattering realities explained in this headline from the Spanish newspaper El País:

..."Households must spend 38 % of their income on mortgage payments, the most in 10 years.  

…”CaixaBank Research forecasts a rise of more than four points in the mortgage stress rate due to the rise in the cost of financing, although it will ease at the end of 2023. 

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No one is willing to give away their natural gas currently… 
 

Norway does not consider as an auxiliary international economic aid to lower the price of natural gas, statements by the first Norwegian, Jonas Gahr Støre, on his official visit to Sweden on Sunday, August 28, 2022. 

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How American energy helped Europe best Putin

Moscow bet its energy shipments to Europe would stifle the opposition to its invasion of Ukraine. Instead, it sparked a backlash that has dramatically altered global trade.

…”The Russian troops who poured into Ukraine a year ago had a seemingly powerful weapon to keep Kyiv’s would-be allies cowed — Moscow’s dominance of Europe’s oil and gas supplies.

A year later, that strategy has backfired.

Instead, a flow of American energy has given the United States a growing role in the continent’s economy, while pushing Russia to the side.

U.S. companies provided 50 percent of Europe’s liquefied natural gas supplies in 2022, along with 12 percent of its oil. Russian oil and gas shipments to the continent have shriveled by half, beset by boycotts, sanctions and an EU price cap. Global oil and gas trade routes have been redrawn and renewable energy development has received a massive financial and political shot in the arm.

POLITICO EU By BEN LEFEBVRE, 02/23/2023

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Sweden's Greta Thunberg and other young climate activists from the "Nature and Youth" and "Norwegian Samirs Riksforbund Nuorat" groups block the entrance of Norway's Energy ministry in Oslo, on February 27, 2023. 

Source: DN Ole Berg-Rusten—NTB

Why Greta Thunberg and Other Climate Activists Are Protesting Wind Farms in Norway…

The scene in downtown Oslo this week is hardly unusual in the era of climate protest: chained to doorways and bundled up in thick blankets, Greta Thunberg and dozens of other young activists are blocking the entrance to Norway’s energy and finance ministries to challenge government climate policy. But this time, their target may surprise you: wind farms. 

TIME BY CIARA NUGENT, FEBRUARY 28, 2023 

…”Thunberg and other climate campaigners are joining a demonstration led by the Saami community, an Indigenous group whose traditional lands stretch across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and western Russia. The protest, which kicked off Monday, aims to pressure the Norwegian government to take down 151 turbines that make up two wind farms in the Fosen region of central Norway. Completed in 2020, the wind farms sit on lands that the Saami use for reindeer herding—a central part of their lifestyle. Herders say their animals are terrified by the noise and sight of the turbines, which are 285 ft. tall, leaving the lands unsuitable for grazing and the fate of the area’s Saami in jeopardy. 

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What happens will happen because fate willed it. Things can also occur in public affairs due to a well-planned PR and communication media strategy…

Germán & Co

Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 3, 2003. Greta, then 15, stepped into the spotlight outside Stockholm's Parliament building on Monday, August 20, 2018, and sat down with a homemade placard that read, "School strike for the climate" in large handwritten letters. 

Belongs to a well-known artistic family... 

Sara Magdalena Ernman, better known as Greta's mother, Malena Ernman, is a 49-year-old opera singer. In 1997, she debuted as a mezzo-soprano as Princess Cecilia in the opera Liten Karin. Malena has performed all over the world since then, from the Royal Opera in Stockholm with a leading role in The Barber of Seville to her most famous performance, representing Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow in 2009. Svante Thunberg, her father, is a 50-year-old actor and theater producer. However, he gave up his career years ago to care for his wife's and daughters' careers. 

Source: Elisabet Hoglund wrote in her blog in Sweden on October 16, 2019. 

In weeks, Greta Thunberg became one of the world's most well-known and talked-about figures. She has appeared on the covers of the world's most prestigious weekly magazines and luxury publications. She has spoken at the United Nations, the Davos Economic Summit, and the Katowice Climate Summit in Poland. Greta Thunberg has received numerous honors and awards, including the Right Livelihood and Alternative Nobel prizes. Her popularity grew to the point where she was considered for the Nobel Peace Prize too. 

How does this miracle take place? 

Greta Thunberg is constantly portrayed as the lonely little child fighting for the climate, shouldering the world's responsibilities, and doing it all alone. This image is emphasized in the media: the little, deeply committed girl with long braids and blue trainers fighting alone against forces infinitely stronger than her. We don't know if she wants to be portrayed in that light. 

The truth is, however, that is how she has been and still is described: the lonely, weak heroine who lives in constant mortal fear of the ravages of climate change and who tries, alone and by any means necessary, to stop the imminent destruction of the earth. In this matter, the problem is that the image of Greta is false. It is a pure fabrication of the media and the organizations and forces that have decided to exploit Greta Thunberg to satisfy their interests in the climate issue. Elisabet Hoglund wrote in her blog in Sweden on October 16, 2019. 

What organizations and forces have —supposedly— decided to use Greta Thunberg to further their goals? 

Greta has had good help from the beginning, aside from her parents. It was not even her idea to stage a climate strike in front of Stockholm's Parliament building. One of these forces is understood to be Mr. Bo Thorén,  

Mr. Bo Thorén lives in the small village of Ånimskog in Dalsland. He is a consultant, civil engineer from Gothenburg. Since 2013, he has been committed to the climate issue. He was therefore involved in founding an organization called "Fossil Free Dalsland," which is part of the global group "Fossile Free." 

However, Bo Thoren realized that the climate fight would only gain traction if young people could participate in it. So, from the end of 2017, he began contacting people in order to connect with young people interested in becoming climate activists. 

According to the Norwegian YouTube channel Mediekanalen on January 7, 2019, M. Bo Thorén sent emails to PR agencies and environmental profiles in the first two weeks of January 2018 to find free aid. He requested assistance locating young people interested in participating in the fight for a sustainable society. Young people would be used to form opinions on climate change. At the same time, they would learn more about climate issues and become more acquainted with them. 

Bo Thorén had ambitions to become some informal leader of the Swedish climate movement only in the background shadows.

Why?   

In the spring of 2018, he contacted Malena Ernman, herself a dedicated environmental activist for several years and the mother of Greta Thunberg. To Ernman, Bo Thorén explained that engaging young people as catalysts in the climate issue could be brilliant. Malena Ernman has confirmed that she has been in contact with Bo Thorén. 

Malena Ernman's eldest daughter Greta, 15, participated in a climate writing competition organized by Svenska Dagbladet in the spring of 2018. Greta came second in the competition. Bo Thorén realized at that moment that he might have found the wishful thinking that could become the catalyst for the climate issue he was so eagerly looking for. He contacted Greta Thunberg because he saw her as a suitable candidate to carry the climate message forward. 

Mr. Bo Thorén told reporter Marcus Gårne on P4 Radio in Sweden on 7 January this year: 

"Last spring I worked on trying to find and mobilise young people on the climate issue because they were a voice that was missing and needed. In connection with this, Greta had written an opinion piece in Svenska Dagbladet that was very good. So I sought contact with Greta." 

At the time, Greta was at a large online meeting on climate change with teachers and students organized by Bo Thorén's organization "Fossilfritt Dalsland" to try to find out how to mobilize young people. Then Bo Thorén says something exciting in the interview: 

"Then I put forward the suggestion that maybe we could start a school strike before the elections and that was something that turned Greta on." 

Greta was very enthusiastic about the idea of a school strike, which she started to do a few months later. So Bo Thorén came up with the idea of a school strike, not Greta Thunberg. 

Asked by radio reporter Marcus Gårne whether Bo Thorén had no reservations about a school strike, given that schooling is compulsory in Sweden, Thoren replied: 

"I have no reservations at all. We need to do a lot in a very short time. Greta has also asked herself what is the point of going to school if they are not going to use this knowledge anyway?" 

So much for Mr. Bo Thorén, a person entirely unknown to the vast majority of swedes, who thus became Greta Thunberg's self-appointed inspirer when it came to starting the school strike; it was not Greta Thunberg's idea to go on strike. The idea came from this completely unknown engineer in Dalsland, an engineer who managed to make -Greta a world celebrity in a few weeks. 

Even Thunberg herself admits that it was BoThorén who gave her the idea to go on a school strike: 

"Thanks to everyone who came to the climate march today! And thanks to @bothoren from Fossilfree Dalsland who gave me the idea to go on a school strike. #riseforclimate#climatemarchse#climatestrike#climatestrike" 

Ingmar Rentzhog, the PR genius behind the internet platform "Wedonthavetime.org" 

Nevertheless, another person also played a crucial role in matching Greta Thunberg to the climate march. His name is Ingmar Rentzhog, and he is the CEO of the company/internet platform "Wedonthavetime.org," a web-based company that runs online climate campaigns financed by advertisements. 

"Wedonthavetime.org" was founded in 2017 by PR expert Ingmar Rentzhog. He planned to build a social network to save the climate. Mr. Ingmar Rentzhog has claimed that it was he who discovered Greta Thunberg. 

Rentzhog "discovered" the then-unknown Greta. He took several pictures of her. With an emotionally charged text, he published the pictures on Facebook and Instagram later that day, a text with a clear message about the climate. The posts had an immediate impact. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet covered Greta's school strike in a big way. After that, one media outlet after another managed to make Greta Thunberg a world celebrity in a matter of days. 

However, it was no coincidence that Mr. Ingmar Rentzhog passed through Mynttorget that day. He had known Greta's mother for several months. They had met at a climate seminar in Stockholm on May 4 that year, where Rentzhog was one of the speakers. 

In addition, Bo Thorén had already informed Ingmar Rentzhog about Greta Thunberg's planned school strike. So the PR man Rentzhog knew what he was doing when he "happened" to bump into Greta on Mynttorget that Monday. Nothing happens by magic... 

This note does not intend to delve into the Bermuda Triangle in search of hidden interests, which have been the subject of much debate; instead, it is to retrace Plato's thoughts on how different we see the reality. This note does not intend to delve into the Bermuda Triangle in search of hidden interests, which have been the subject of much debate; instead, it is to retrace Plato's thoughts on how different we see the reality. 

On August 8, 2017, Eric Merkley and Dominik Stecula published an article titled Newsweek: "Al Gore, Climate Change, and An Inconvenient Truth About An Inconvenient Truth," which have exciting reflection: …" We have studied in detail how the media covered the issue of climate change since the 1980s and how it may have played a role in polarizing the American public. The commonly observed pattern is that public opinion tends to follow, rather than lead, debate among political elites.

Without a doubt, protecting the planet is humanity's most important task, as is protecting our pensioners, who, with this insane war already destroying their meager economy, must now see if they can survive on half a month's worth of supplies. 

…”these men were chained to pillars and could only see shadows cast on the back wall of the cave by a fire burning behind them. The men in the cave prided themselves on their sight and their interpretative skills, yet all the time they were looking at shadows, mere illusions.

Plato

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News round-up, March 3, 2023

Quote of the day… 

"I told the foreign minister ... `End this war of aggression. Engage in meaningful diplomacy that can produce a just and durable peace,'" Blinken said at a news conference during a Group of 20 summit in India.

USTODAY

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Most read…

Blinken, Lavrov meet for first time since Russia's invasion of Ukraine

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that he urged his Russian counterpart to begin serious discussions to end the war in Ukraine and to return to implementing a nuclear arms treaty with the U.S.

USA TODAY by KIM HJELMGAARD ,  MAUREEN GROPPE  

Russian sub launches cruise missile from Sea of Japan in a drill

Russia, locked in a decades-old territorial dispute with Tokyo over a chain of Pacific islands, said an undisclosed number of its Pacific Fleet ships, jets and drones were also involved in the drill, securing the perimeter.

Reuters

France mounts ‘aggressive’ nuclear push with eye on EU industrial plan

Paris looks out for its atomic industry as the sector faces a crossroads.

POLITICO EU BY VICTOR JACK

Why Lebanon Is Having a Surprising Solar Power Boom

According to Pierre Khoury, director of the government-affiliated Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation (LCEC), the state-run Electricité du Liban (EDL) has a generation capacity of around 1,800 megawatts, compared to the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts the country required prior to the crisis. However, EDL only provides about 200 to 250 megawatts today because the government is struggling to pay for the imported fuel used to power the country's two main power plants due to the economic downturn. 

TIME BY ADAM RASMI/BEIRUT, LEBANON, MARCH 2, 2023 

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”We’ll need natural gas for years…

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but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says…

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Source: Media

Blinken, Lavrov meet for first time since Russia's invasion of Ukraine

USA TODAY by KIM HJELMGAARD ,  MAUREEN GROPPE  

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that he urged his Russian counterpart to begin serious discussions to end the war in Ukraine and to return to implementing a nuclear arms treaty with the U.S.

"I told the foreign minister ... `End this war of aggression. Engage in meaningful diplomacy that can produce a just and durable peace,'" Blinken said at a news conference during a Group of 20 summit in India.

The surprise encounter between Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was their first since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago.  The discussion lasted 10 minutes, according to White House spokesman John Kirby.

“It was an opportunity that Secretary Blinken took advantage of," he said.

Russia's foreign ministry denied the top diplomats held a one-on-one meeting.

Ukraine's top military spy: Russia will be out of 'military tools' by spring

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed in a statement provided to Russian state media that the meeting "could not have taken place" because of the "position of the U.S.," which she said was "in favor of escalating conflicts" globally.

Blinken and Lavrov last had direct contact last summer, when they spoke by phone about a U.S. proposal for Russia to release U.S. detainees Paul Whelan and formerly detained WNBA star Brittney Griner. Griner was released in a prisoner swap in December. Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, has been imprisoned since 2018.

What did Blinken and Lavrov discuss?

• Ukraine war: Blinken said Ukraine has put forward a peace plan, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has "demonstrated zero interest in engaging" unless Ukraine gives up territory. 

• Nuclear arms treaty: Blinken said he urged Russia to return to implementing the New START Treaty, which limits the number of long-range nuclear warheads that Russia and the U.S. can have. "Mutual compliance is in the interest of both our countries," Blinken told reporters. "It's also what people around the world expect from us as nuclear powers."

• Paul Whelan: Blinken said Moscow should accept the U.S. proposal to release Whelan, a former corporate security executive who was convicted of espionage after a closed-door trial in 2020 and is serving a 16-year sentence at a labor camp in Russia. The U.S. has declared him wrongfully detained.

Why is a meeting between the U.S. and Russia important?

The U.S. is leading the world in keeping up its support for Ukraine as the war moves into its second year with no end in sight.  At the same time, the repercussions of a move away from the START treaty is significant, and the U.S. wants to keep Russia engaged on that front.

If the last remaining arms treaty between the world’s two largest nuclear powers collapses, there will be no limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces for the first time since the 1970s. The risks of a nuclear launch – intentional or otherwise – would rise.

Without arms control, the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals could double in size, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

Blinken said he told Lavrov that regardless of what else is happening, the U.S. will always be ready to engage on arms control, just as it did with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

Dig deeper: Nuclear warfare? China arming Russia? Fears of new Cold War rise.

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Image: by ABC.es

Russian sub launches cruise missile from Sea of Japan in a drill

Reuters

March 3 (Reuters) - A Russian submarine in the Sea of Japan has hit a land target over 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) away with a Kalibr cruise missile in a drill, Russia's defence ministry said on Friday, the same type of missile Moscow uses in the Ukraine conflict.

The ministry published a video showing the missile emerging from under the water and then hitting a target at a training area in Russia's eastern Khabarovsk region.

Russia, locked in a decades-old territorial dispute with Tokyo over a chain of Pacific islands, said an undisclosed number of its Pacific Fleet ships, jets and drones were also involved in the drill, securing the perimeter.

Moscow has used Kalibr missiles to attack multiple targets in Ukraine, including power stations, by launching them from ships and submarines in the Black Sea.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co

France mounts ‘aggressive’ nuclear push with eye on EU industrial plan

Paris looks out for its atomic industry as the sector faces a crossroads.

POLITICO EU BY VICTOR JACK, FEBRUARY 17, 2023 

With its atomic industry at a crossroads, France is mounting a lobbying blitz to put nuclear energy on par with renewables in EU climate legislation — and unlock benefits from the bloc’s upcoming plans to boost green industries.

Paris argues that if the ultimate goal of the EU's climate targets is to decarbonize the bloc, that should mean nuclear plants, with their negligible CO2 emissions, have a key role to play alongside renewables.

But that push — and attempt to reposition nuclear as a green technology — is also a strategy to strengthen Paris’ hand down the line in accessing cash from the bloc’s upcoming mammoth industrial strategy, six diplomats told POLITICO.

“They’re trying to get nuclear everywhere where it doesn’t fit … to have policy lock-in,” said one EU diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding: “Everybody is a little annoyed at the French — it’s very aggressive.”

The move is designed to “build leverage for other arguments” down the line, a second EU diplomat said.

Asked whether France expects nuclear to be counted as a “clean technology” in the upcoming industrial plan and therefore benefit from it, a senior French energy ministry official told POLITICO that “the [EU sustainable investment rules] recognize the fact that nuclear … is a technology that contributes to the transition.” 

“So in absolute terms, it seems to us that this question already has an answer.”

Small victory, bigger problem

Paris notched a first victory last week on the EU’s long-awaited rules governing what counts as “renewable hydrogen.”

Unlike most other countries, hydrogen producers in France will be able to count the electricity taken from the grid as renewable as long as they also sign a long-term power contract with an existing renewables provider. The exception was made because 70 percent of France's electricity comes from low-emissions nuclear.

But this promotion of nuclear-powered hydrogen — also known as “pink” or “low-carbon” hydrogen — is only one part of France’s broader push to inject atomic energy into EU green policy files, in which it has so far been less successful.

In late January, Paris attempted to insert low-carbon hydrogen into a renewables cooperation partnership with Ukraine, but was ultimately overruled.

It also led a push alongside eight other EU countries this month for pink hydrogen to be included in the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive, arguing that it should contribute toward 2030 targets for greening transport and industry.

The Golfech EDF nuclear plant at night in southwestern France | Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

When it didn’t get its way, France accused Spain and Germany of reneging on promises to recognize the role of low-carbon hydrogen.

“It would not be understandable for Spain and Germany to take different positions in Brussels and not keep their commitments,” French Energy Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher told reporters last week.

Atomic needs

The push comes as experts predict France’s electricity demand will rise sharply as the country electrifies to meet its climate goals, and its ageing nuclear fleet declines. 

Historically an exporter of electricity to its EU neighbors, France last year was forced to import power to meet its consumption needs as half its nuclear fleet was forced into maintenance due to corrosion and other technical problems.

And with the country’s largest utility EDF announcing a nine-month halt to another nuclear reactor earlier this month, that leaves two-fifths of its reactors still out of action.

“A lot of these nuclear reactors are ageing,” said Carlos Torres Diaz, senior vice president and head of power at Rystad Energy, a consultancy, who predicts some will be decommissioned already “in the next decade.”

Add to that French electricity demand is set to rise from 417 to 715 terawatt-hours by 2030, Torres Diaz said, meaning “there will need to be some investments.”

Paris is clearly aware of the challenge. In a sharp U-turn from his previous policy, President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to build six new reactors last February, with an eye on building eight more.

But that won’t come cheap, with new nuclear plants typically costing “billions,” Torres Diaz said. “If they need to renew all this ageing capacity then they will need to get the funding ... If it’s not a green source of energy they will struggle to get some financing.”

That's where the EU’s Green Industrial Plan comes in.

Announced last month, the upcoming plan is Brussels' attempt to help the bloc go toe-to-toe with the United States’ $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act with a range of tax relaxations and new industrial benchmarks for 2030.

From the proposed European Sovereignty Fund, to more state aid allowances and potentially a competitive auction for a 10-year fixed-rate renewable hydrogen contract, there’s ample opportunity for France to cash in.

With the discussion still in its early days and specific language on policy not yet nailed down, that gives France an opening to stake out its position.

In the planned Net-Zero Industrial Act, for example, which aims to slash red tape on “net-zero” technologies, the “precise product scope [of the technologies] remains to be defined,” according to the European Commission.

Marion Labatut, EDF’s deputy director of EU affairs, agreed “it would be good” if nuclear were included in the upcoming strategy. She added that the utility would be interested in accessing the Commission’s hydrogen auction, for example.

And while France is likely to face resistance from nuclear-skeptic countries including Germany and Luxembourg, recent diplomatic efforts indicate Paris is not likely to give up easily.

In fact, pink hydrogen was on the agenda during the first official meeting between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne on Thursday.

Overall, this push “is very unsurprising,” a third EU diplomat said. “The French are very skilled at using crises to push their own strategic policies ahead.”

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Source: Solar panels at Sagesse University, in Furn El-Chebbak, a suburb southeast of Beirut

Why Lebanon Is Having a Surprising Solar Power Boom

According to Pierre Khoury, director of the government-affiliated Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation (LCEC), the state-run Electricité du Liban (EDL) has a generation capacity of around 1,800 megawatts, compared to the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts the country required prior to the crisis. However, EDL only provides about 200 to 250 megawatts today because the government is struggling to pay for the imported fuel used to power the country's two main power plants due to the economic downturn. 

TIME BY ADAM RASMI/BEIRUT, LEBANON, MARCH 2, 2023 

About 2,300 ft. above Beirut in the Matn District mountains, Roger Mazloum and his brother Elias greet me on an unusually balmy winter day as they chop wood to help keep their early 20th century home warm before the cold returns. I’m no match for these burlier Lebanese men, who grew up in Broummana, a town of 15,000 people about a dozen miles east of the Lebanese capital, but I politely take my turn, meekly swinging an ax at the tree stump before us. Despite a lackluster start, and plenty of patience from the pair, something akin to firewood begins to splinter off after a few attempts.

Mazloum takes me through the family home’s front door—past a living room with traditional Lebanese floor tiles and artwork dedicated to the late Umm Kulthum, the Egyptian titan of Arabic music—and up the stairs to the roof. The pine-covered mountains and a foggy glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea are a pleasant distraction, but the real purpose of the tour is to see the 18 solar panels slightly obscuring the vista. Like tens of thousands of other Lebanese people, the Mazloums have turned to solar power to generate reliable—and cost-effective—electricity in a country where the crisis-stricken state provides as little as one or two hours of power a day.

“In the past, even when the situation was normal, we used to have five, six, seven hours of power cuts a day,” says Mazloum, as the three of us sip Arabic coffee on their balcony. He is referring to the period before an economic crisis began in 2019 that has seen the Lebanese Lira lose more than 98% of its value against the U.S. dollar.

The state-run Electricité du Liban (EDL) has a generation capacity of around 1,800 megawatts, according to Pierre Khoury, the director of the government-affiliated Lebanese Center for Energy Conservation (LCEC), compared to the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 megawatts the country needed before the crisis. But EDL only provides around 200 to 250 megawatts today, because the economic collapse means the government struggles to pay for the imported fuel used to power the country’s two main electricity plants.

I lean over as Elias, a civil engineer by training, pulls out his Android phone. As the TBB Nova app he uses to manage the Mazloums’ solar power system shows, the 18 panels are generating over one kilowatt per hour, a rate that’s enough to power a large home where several generations of Mazloums live. He says that the solar panels and battery system, which were installed in July 2020, are saving the entire family between $3,000 and $4,000 a year in electricity and generator bills. (They spent over $10,000 to install them.) “But the main thing is reliability,” Elias says. “For the last two years, we basically didn’t have power cuts… Even in the really difficult times we were still up and running.”

The Mazloums are hardly alone in Lebanon. Solar panels have been cropping up across the country over the past two years, from the rooftops of rural households to urban apartments, and from atop family-run businesses to buildings housing national and multinational organizations.

Lebanon went from generating zero solar power in 2010 to having 90 megawatts of solar capacity in 2020. But the major surge happened when a further 100 megawatts were added in 2021 and 500 megawatts in 2022, according to the LCEC’s Khoury. The Lebanese government committed in 2018 to an ambitious target to source 30% of its energy from renewables by 2030, and reaffirmed that pledge at the U.N.’s COP27 climate summit last year. Khoury says that the LCEC believes the target “could be achieved,” with solar power being “one major contributor.”

Atop several campus buildings at Sagesse University in Furn El-Chebbak, a suburb southeast of Beirut, beams row upon row of solar panels under the bright afternoon sun. The Catholic university, which is home to some 3,500 students, is one of the many organizations in Lebanon that has turned to solar power. When I visit, Salim Nasr, a project manager at ME Green and electrical engineer by training, is overseeing the last few steps of the installation of around 460 solar panels to cover the university’s needs. “We are talking about 300 kilowatts peak, on a sunny day like this,” Nasr says, which can be used to power everything, including “lights, chillers, A/Cs, refrigerators, coolers, heaters.”

The team at ME Green, a renewable energy company set up in 2010, has spent four months installing the solar panel system at Sagesse University. Unlike the Mazloums, the university has opted not to install a battery, to help keep the costs down for such a large-scale project. The campus still relies on generators but the panels cut their use by around 70%—an enormous financial saving—not to mention the green benefits of not having them spewing as much diesel. “The return on investment is less than one year,” says Abdo Kmeid, founder of A.K. architects, who consulted for the project.

As we make our way downstairs, we’re greeted by Lara Boustany, the president of Sagesse University. She says that the decision to install the solar power system is part of a wider green initiative on campus. “But we started with solar energy sooner than expected, because of the lack of electricity in Lebanon,” she says. “Actually, both the lack of electricity and the fuel problems in Lebanon. Sometimes we are short of fuel. We are also paying a lot for fuel.”

ME Green was one of the early solar power companies in Lebanon, but the sector has ballooned, from around 150 registered businesses in 2020 to more than 800 today, according to the LCEC’s Khoury. These companies work on everything from small household systems—which start at $2,000-$3,500—to projects involving hundreds of panels or more.

“We wanted to start in Lebanon because you have an energy problem, and you have renewable energy resources, with more than 300 days of sunshine,” says Philippe El Khoury, CEO and co-founder of ME Green, which has offices in Lebanon and Belgium. Yet El Khoury—and others quoted in this story—have mixed feelings about the solar power boom. On the one hand, they say, it has undeniable environmental benefits. On the other hand, EDL’s failure to provide electricity, coupled with a lack of large-scale solar farms and green infrastructure, means Lebanon relies even more on heavily-polluting diesel generators. “The amount of CO2 you are reducing from using solar panels, you are also turning on diesel generators for longer,” says Marc Ayoub, an energy expert at the American University of Beirut.

For this reason, Ayoub says, the real green solution needs to come at “the community level—villages, municipalities, regions. This is where you start having a big environmental impact.”

But these kinds of projects need a level of investment that Lebanon’s cash-strapped government can’t deliver. Foreign lenders could step in but experts say most are reluctant until Lebanon finalizes a deal with the International Monetary Fund; talks over a $3 billion loan that are contingent on reforms have been sluggish.

In the meantime, ME Green and other small companies are continuing to encourage solar power in Lebanon. El Khoury, the ME Green executive, sees every installation that his company completes as a victory against diesel-spewing generators. “Every time I kill a generator, I’m very happy. This is my mission: kill the generator,” he says.

That goal of encouraging renewable energy in Lebanon has been aided by the fact that solar power is now the most affordable way to generate electricity around the world. The cost has dropped by more than 90% over the past decade, amid rapid technology improvements and a glut in solar panel production.

Back at the Mazloum’s balcony, as we have our last sips of coffee, Elias is touting solar power in ways that would thrill not just El Khoury but renewable advocates everywhere. He says they hardly use generators anymore because “one, the sound; two, the maintenance; and three, you know, you have to get the”—Roger interjects, “diesel is expensive”—“it’s not as efficient and reliable as the solar system.”

As Elias points out, it’s a conclusion many in Lebanon have come around to, regardless of the environmental considerations. “People are seeing the real benefits,” he says. “Look, at the end of the day, we are becoming green without even noticing it.”

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News round-up, March 2, 2023

By the way, on the enigmatic Havana Syndrome… 

…”Cuba was amid that real litmus test christened the "Special Period." It was a challenging time that drastically affected the island's constantly tormented macro-economy. The entire country was in total rationing, exacerbated by the suspension of aid from the collapsed Soviet Union in 1989.  Without exaggeration, everyone was essentially walking. A few people rode bicycles. The majority of patients anticipated the miracle of a sporadic "camel" appearing. 

Cubans created the "camels" during the "Special Period." They were camel-shaped, enormously long buses that were being pulled by a trailer truck. I had an odd sighting the day before.

One of those events occurred that nobody could have predicted or expected. At the Hotel Nacional "Comedor de Aguiar" in Havana, I would have lunch.  The dining room of the Hotel Nacional is an immense rectangular space; its lateral borders are arches and a carved wooden ceiling. The atmosphere is fantastic, but what's most amazing is how often it was empty. 

But on that day, the "Comedor de Aguiar" had been hijacked by about 70 or so Jews worldwide. It was an occasion to celebrate and to meet their fellow Cubans. The Jewish colony of Cuba distinguished itself without difficulty from the rest of its paisanos (countrymen). From their excited faces, they were all young people and were even incredulous at such an occasion. Each one, of course, wore the kippah, a tiny cap worn by male Jews at the peak of their heads. They wore it with great pride, accompanied by their girlfriends or wives. As in every Jewish party, dancing and singing were necessary. And then came "The Hour," the most famous dance in Jewish tradition. So on that Monday at noon, the spirit of Lecuona graciously gave the soul of the "Aguiar" to the Hebrew visitors.  

With these fresh images, I remember that the newspaper Granma announced the visit of John Paul II to Cuba. I needed to see the cathedral. So I set off for Old Havana. I walked through the small Plaza de Armas, crowded with people; I wandered through its stalls, arcades, lucetas, and sun gates.  Then I looked at the baroque façade of the cathedral, which was contradictorily naked and comprised of various lines and columns. The air was infused with port, cleaning products, vital mud, and tropical fruits. Time, the ongoing crises, salt, and the murmur of the sea, which is disturbed and causes waves to crash on the seawall, all corroded the nearby structures. 

The owners of —No Man's Land — and Other Stories by Germán & Co, 2013

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Most read…

Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds

After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is ‘very unlikely’ an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment 

WP by Shane Harris  and  John Hudson, March 1, 2023. 

In Beijing, Belarusian President Lukashenko approves Chinese plan to resolve 'Ukrainian crisis'

The West sees the meeting of the Belarusian leader, an ally of Moscow, with Xi Jinping as a new sign of support for Russia.

Le Monde by Frédéric Lemaître (Beijing (China) correspondent on March 2, 2023 

Why Greta Thunberg and Other Climate Activists Are Protesting Wind Farms in Norway

Norway is leading the green transition by promoting sustainable energy sources that require more land, such as coastal wind, electric grid expansions, mines, batteries and electric vehicles and forestry initiatives. Since 2018, the nation's onshore wind capacity has increased by three times to 4.8 GW, whit Europe's largest onshore wind project, including the two Fosen wind farms.  

The New Yorker bY CIARA NUGENT,  FEBrUARY 28, 2023 

Breakthrough close on France-Spain undersea electricity link -sources

The interconnection would enable the two nations to quadruple their energy exchange capacity to 5,000 megawatts, enough to power 5 million homes. It had been planned to be built by the power grid operators RTE of France and REE of Spain by 2025. 

Reuters by Belén Carreño, , Benjamin Mallet and Kate Abnett

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”We’ll need natural gas for years…

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but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says…

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Image:The owners of —No Man's Land — and Other Stories by Germán & Co, 2013  

Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds

After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is ‘very unlikely’ an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment 

WP by Shane Harris  and  John Hudson, March 1, 2023. 

The mysterious ailment known as “Havana syndrome” did not result from the actions of a foreign adversary, according to an intelligence report that shatters a long-disputed theory that hundreds of U.S. personnel were targeted and sickened by a clandestine enemy wielding energy waves as a weapon.

The new intelligence assessment caps a years-long effort by the CIA and several other U.S. intelligence agencies to explain why career diplomats, intelligence officers and others serving in U.S. missions around the world experienced what they described as strange and painful acoustic sensations. The effects of this mysterious trauma shortened careers, racked up large medical bills and in some cases caused severe physical and emotional suffering.

What to know about ‘Havana syndrome’

Many of the afflicted personnel say they were the victims of a deliberate attack — possibly at the hands of Russia or another adversarial government — a claim that the report contradicts in nearly every respect, according to two intelligence officials who are familiar with the assessment and described it to The Washington Post.

Seven intelligence agencies participated in the review of approximately 1,000 cases of “anomalous health incidents,” the term the government uses to describe a constellation of physical symptoms including ringing in the ears followed by pressure in the head and nausea, headaches and acute discomfort.

Five of those agencies determined it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary was responsible for the symptoms, either as the result of purposeful actions — such as a directed energy weapon — or as the byproduct of some other activity, including electronic surveillance that unintentionally could have made people sick, the officials said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the findings of the assessment, which had not yet been made public.

One agency, which the officials did not name, determined that it was “unlikely” that a foreign actor was at fault, a slightly less emphatic finding that did not appreciably change the consensus. One agency abstained in its conclusion regarding a foreign actor. But when asked, no agency dissented from the conclusion that a foreign actor did not cause the symptoms, one of the intelligence officials said.

The symptoms were first reported at the U.S. Embassy in Havana in 2016.

The officials said that as analysts examined clusters of reported cases, including at U.S. embassies, they found no pattern or common set of conditions that could link individual cases. They also found no evidence, including forensic information or geolocation data, that would suggest an adversary had used a form of directed energy such as radio waves or ultrasonic beams. In some cases, there was no “direct line of sight” to affected personnel working at U.S. facilities, further casting doubt on the possibility that a hypothetical energy weapon could have been the culprit, one of the officials said.

One of the officials said that even in geographic locations where U.S. intelligence effectively had total ability to monitor the environment for signs of malicious interference, analysts found no evidence of an adversary targeting personnel.

“There was nothing,” the official said. This person added that there was no intelligence that foreign leaders, including in Russia, had any knowledge of or had authorized an attack on U.S. personnel that could explain the symptoms.

The second official, who described a frustrating “mystery” as to why longtime colleagues had become ill, said analysts spent months churning data, looking for patterns and inventing new analytic methodologies, only to come up with no single plausible explanation.

Both officials said the intelligence community remained open to new ideas and evidence. For instance, if information emerged that a foreign adversary had made progress developing the technology for an energy weapon, that might cause analysts to adjust their assessments.

But they essentially foreclosed the possibility that Russia or another adversarial government or nonstate actor was behind the mysterious syndrome.

“One always wants to be humble,” one official said. “And we looked at what [additional information] we would need” to change the conclusions. The official added that some work on finding a source for the health conditions continues, notably at the Defense Department, and that intelligence agencies were prepared to lend their support to that effort.

In a statement, CIA Director William J. Burns said analysts had conducted “one of the largest and most intensive investigations in the Agency’s history. I and my leadership team stand firmly behind the work conducted and the findings.”

Current and former CIA personnel who have suffered symptoms have praised Burns for ensuring their claims were taken seriously and that they received medical treatment, whether or not their illness could be attributed to a foreign actor or any other cause.

“I want to be absolutely clear: these findings do not call into question the experiences and real health issues that US Government personnel and their family members — including CIA’s own officers — have reported while serving our country,” Burns said. “We will continue to remain alert to any risks to the health and wellbeing of Agency officers, to ensure access to care, and to provide officers the compassion and respect they deserve.”

“Needless to say, these findings do not call into question the very real experiences and symptoms that our colleagues and their family members have reported,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said in a statement.

The intelligence assessment also examined whether an adversary possessed a device capable of using energy to cause the reported symptoms. Of the seven agencies, five determined that it was “very unlikely,” while the other two said it was “unlikely.”

Over the years, government agencies including the State Department and FBI were unable to substantiate the use of an energy weapon.

But the new assessment is at odds with the view of an independent panel of experts, which last year found that an external energy source plausibly could explain the symptoms. The panel, which was convened by the intelligence community, suggested that a foreign power could have harnessed “pulsed electromagnetic energy” that made people sick.

The expert panel’s findings also were consistent with earlier conclusions of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which found that “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases.”

David Relman, who headed the National Academies investigation and co-chaired the intelligence community experts panel, and had not reviewed the final intelligence assessment, said the energy weapon hypothesis remains viable.

“There are multiple possible explanations for the apparent discrepancy between the failure to identify a malefactor and the plausibility of directed energy as a mechanism. One should not necessarily discount the latter,” Relman told The Post.

The new intelligence report may represent the official word on the strange health ailment, but it probably won’t be the last word on the matter.

Representatives and lawyers for people suffering with symptoms lambasted the new report as incomplete and opaque. They called on intelligence agencies to disclose more information about how they reached their conclusions and to investigate other leads they said remained poorly examined.

“Until the shrouds of secrecy are lifted and the analysis that led to today’s assertions are available and subject to proper challenge, the alleged conclusions are substantively worthless,” Mark S. Zaid, an attorney representing more than two dozen people experiencing symptoms, said in a statement.

An advocacy group composed of current and former officials also took aim at the intelligence report’s findings, saying it “does not track with our lived experiences, nor does it account for what many medical professionals across multiple institutions have found in working with us. Our doctors have determined that environmental or preexisting medical issues did not cause the symptoms and traumatic injuries to our neurological systems that many of us have been diagnosed with,” the group Advocacy for Victims of Havana Syndrome said in a statement.

Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) and Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, stopped short of endorsing the report, but didn’t dispute its findings. In a statement they said would “seek to ensure the review was conducted with the highest degree of analytical rigor and that it considered all the available intelligence and perspectives, documenting all substantial differences in analysis.”

Some current and former officials whose conditions remained unexplained say that the CIA and other intelligence agencies did not sufficiently investigate the possibility that an energy weapon was used against them. They argue that analysts could have done more to find correlations between, say, the travel histories of suspected Russian intelligence operatives and the times and places where symptoms were reported.

Intelligence officials counter that analysts looked closely at that possibility and devoted extraordinary resources to the search for a possible cause. A dedicated group staffed by seasoned analysts and led by a senior CIA officer was set up to study the issue. People involved in the analysis have described it as the most complex and difficult challenge of their careers. In the end, they found no pattern to connect reported cases to a potential cause.

The CIA and other agencies also devoted more resources to providing medical care for afflicted personnel, a move that some sufferers applauded, saying that in the first years that symptoms were reported, they were treated skeptically by their managers and medical experts.

A senior official said on Wednesday that the Biden administration would continue to ensure personnel receive medical care and that it would process requests under a law that compensates government employees who experienced symptoms and in some cases had to stop working. Some individuals will be eligible for payments in the six-figure range.

“Nothing is more important than the health and wellbeing of our workforce,” Maher Bitar, the senior director for intelligence programs on the National Security Council, said in a statement.

“Since the start of the Biden-Harris Administration, we have focused on ensuring that our colleagues have access to the care and support they need. … Our commitment to the health and safety of U.S. Government personnel remains unwavering,” said Bitar, who is the interagency coordinator for the response to anomalous health incidents.

Early in the Biden administration, officials encouraged government employees who thought they were experiencing symptoms associated with the health incidents to come forward. That, the intelligence officials acknowledged, led to a flood of reported cases, most of which were attributed to other factors, such as preexisting medical conditions.

The final report’s conclusions are in keeping with an earlier interim assessment by the same group of agencies, which found that the health incidents probably were not the work of another country mounting a global attack.

“We assess it is unlikely that a foreign actor, including Russia, is conducting a sustained, worldwide campaign harming U.S. personnel with a weapon or mechanism,” a senior CIA official said at the time.

Intelligence analysts had reviewed cases that were reported on every continent except Antarctica. The vast majority of them were attributed to preexisting medical conditions or environmental or other factors, the official said.

The earlier, interim assessment had left open the possibility that a few dozen individuals whose symptoms remained unexplained, which the official called “the toughest cases,” might have been targeted in isolated attacks. “Our work is continuing, and we are not done yet,” the official said at the time.

Many of those afflicted were serving in U.S. embassies or diplomatic facilities or were traveling overseas when they fell ill. Children of U.S. government personnel also have reported symptoms.

But in the end, the final intelligence report found that medical experts could not attribute the symptoms to an external cause separate from a preexisting condition or environmental factors, including conditions such as clogged air ducts in office buildings that could cause headaches, the officials aid.

Over time, the state of medical understanding about the condition has evolved in ways that point away from a foreign adversary’s involvement, the officials said.

State Department personnel serving in U.S. embassies are among those who have reported symptoms over the years.Despite the new conclusions, Secretary of State Antony Blinken remains of the view that something happened to those employees who have reported significant ailments, and he is committed to making sure they are cared for, said a person familiar with Blinken’s thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a divisive topic within the department.

Blinken has long doubted that personnel are suffering from mass hysteria or some psychogenic event, officials have said. Previous investigations, notably by the FBI, had raised the possibility that the symptoms had a psychological origin, not a physical one, outraging many sufferers who felt their pain had been marginalized and their claims not taken seriously by medical personnel. Experts have emphasized that even if the illnesses were psychogenic, that doesn’t mean sufferers are imagining their symptoms.

“Those who have been affected have real stories to tell — their pain is real,” Blinken wrote to all U.S. diplomats when the CIA previewed its interim findings. “There is no doubt in my mind about that.” Blinken called the symptoms described by people he met with as “gut wrenching.”

The independent experts panel also cast doubt on a psychological cause. “Psychosocial factors alone cannot account for the core characteristics, although they may cause some other incidents or contribute to long-term symptoms,” they wrote.

Some proponents of the hypothesis that a foreign actor is to blame and who were familiar with the new report’s findings said they felt frustrated and weren’t ready to abandon the possibility that a foreign government, probably Russia, was at work. They have pointed out that the drop in recent reported symptoms has coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suggesting that the Kremlin’s resources were spread too thin to continue a possible campaign against U.S. personnel.

“The timing is deeply suspicious,” a State Department official said.

There have been no accounts of Russia introducing a new type of energy weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine.

At the height of public concern about Havana syndrome, U.S. officials who questioned or were even neutral on the possible cause faced significant scrutiny.

The CIA recalled its top officer in Vienna in 2021 after he was accused of not taking claims seriously enough, among other criticisms.

Also that year, the State Department’s top official overseeing cases, Ambassador Pamela Spratlen, left her position after six months amid calls for her resignation. Spratlen had held a teleconference with sufferers who asked about the FBI study that determined that the symptoms were psychogenic. Spratlen declined to say whether she believed the FBI study was accurate, angering diplomats who say their symptoms are the result of an attack, said people familiar with the matter.

Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co

In Beijing, Belarusian President Lukashenko approves Chinese plan to resolve 'Ukrainian crisis'

The West sees the meeting of the Belarusian leader, an ally of Moscow, with Xi Jinping as a new sign of support for Russia.

Le Monde by Frédéric Lemaître (Beijing (China) correspondent on March 2, 2023 

The Belarusian President Lukashenko began a three-day state visit to China, during which he was received on Wednesday, March 1, by President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang. "Belarus is actively campaigning for peace proposals and fully supports your initiative for international security," Lukashenko assured his hosts, according to the official Belarusian news agency Belta.

On February 24, Beijing published its "position for a political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis," which calls for a ceasefire and negotiations. This very general document, which China itself does not call a "peace plan," was rejected by the West. The reason is because it does not name Moscow as the aggressor in the war in Ukraine. Russia waited three days before Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made a statement on February 27. "For the time being, we do not see the beginnings of a peaceful path for this matter. (...)

The special military operation [in Ukraine] is continuing." For Lukashenko, his visit to China "is taking place during a very difficult period that requires new and unusual approaches and responsible political decisions. They should seek above all to avoid a global confrontation that will have no winners."

In power since July 1994, Lukashenko is on his thirteenth visit to China. In September 2022, the two countries decided to raise their relationship to the level of a "comprehensive strategic partnership under all conditions." The West fears that this new visit could be an opportunity for Beijing to support Russia indirectly by helping a nearby country that is also subject to sanctions. According to the Chinese daily Global Times, agreements are expected to be signed in many areas: "politics, economy, trade, finance, industry, agriculture, science and technology, sports, tourism, health, interregional cooperation and the media."

'Many Chinese investments in Belarus'

At a time when the United States believes that China is "considering" selling arms to Russia, could these arms come through Belarus? Officially, this does not seem to be the case. But cooperation between the two countries was extended to military equipment a few years ago. According to the online magazine The Diplomat, Belarus announced in 2017 that Beijing was delivering new armored trucks.

Russia and China established diplomatic ties in 1995, which have grown stronger since Xi took office in late 2012. That same year, the two countries announced the construction of an industrial park of more than 110 square kilometers on the outskirts of Minsk, with tax incentives. Then Belarus was one of the first countries to join China's "New Silk Road" investment program, launched in September 2013.

"There are many Chinese investments in Belarus," said Zhao Long, a professor at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. "The bilateral relationship does not depend solely on what happens in Russia, although the Belarusian president expects China to help him mitigate the effect of Western sanctions, including through loans. This visit should not be seen as indirect support for Moscow. Besides, Lukashenko, unlike Russia, is in favor of a cease-fire."

Since his hotly contested reelection in August 2020, Lukashenko has violently repressed all those who denounced the election. This has made a significant number of civil society activists go into exile. While the Belarusian leader has been a pariah in Europe since then, China obviously does not have the same reservations about him. Lukashenko is visiting Beijing a few days after the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raissi.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Source: Media

Why Greta Thunberg and Other Climate Activists Are Protesting Wind Farms in Norway

Norway is leading the green transition by promoting sustainable energy sources that require more land, such as coastal wind, electric grid expansions, mines, batteries and electric vehicles and forestry initiatives. Since 2018, the nation's onshore wind capacity has increased by three times to 4.8 GW, whit Europe's largest onshore wind project, including the two Fosen wind farms.  

The New Yorker bY CIARA NUGENT,  FEBrUARY 28, 2023 

The scene in downtown Oslo this week is hardly unusual in the era of climate protest: chained to doorways and bundled up in thick blankets, Greta Thunberg and dozens of other young activists are blocking the entrance to Norway’s energy and finance ministries to challenge government climate policy. But this time, their target may surprise you: wind farms.

Thunberg and other climate campaigners are joining a demonstration led by the Saami community, an Indigenous group whose traditional lands stretch across Norway, Sweden, Finland, and western Russia. The protest, which kicked off Monday, aims to pressure the Norwegian government to take down 151 turbines that make up two wind farms in the Fosen region of central Norway. Completed in 2020, the wind farms sit on lands that the Saami use for reindeer herding—a central part of their lifestyle. Herders say their animals are terrified by the noise and sight of the turbines, which are 285 ft. tall, leaving the lands unsuitable for grazing and the fate of the area’s Saami in jeopardy.

Protesters claim Norway is breaking the law by keeping the turbines running. In October 2021, Norway’s Supreme Court ruled that their construction violated the Saami’s protected cultural rights under a U.N. treaty and that the energy ministry’s decision to license them was “invalid.” But it stopped short of ordering the removal of the turbines—which are owned by Norwegian energy companies Statkraft and TrønderEnergi, German utility Stadtwerke Muenchen, and Denmark’s Nordic Wind Power DA. More than 500 days later, the turbines are still running, as the energy ministry continues to investigate whether it can modify them in some way to allow them to operate while also satisfying the Saami’s rights.

The comes amid a global land crunch triggered by the fight against climate change. Norway, the world’s 11th largest oil producer, has launched full-tilt into a green transition, expanding clean energy sources that require a lot more land than fossil fuels. The country has tripled its onshore wind capacity since 2018, to 4.8 GW. The two Fosen wind farms are part of Europe’s largest onshore wind development. Adding to land demand, Norway is also planning major electric grid expansions, new mines to provide minerals needed for batteries and electric vehicles, and forestry projects to absorb carbon dioxide from the air.

The resulting pressure is worsening an already fraught relationship between the state and Saami groups. “We need to be better at having a dialogue with Saami interests,” says Amund Vik, state secretary for the energy and petroleum ministry. “But there’s also no doubt that we need to produce more energy and build more grids, to allow for industrial activity, employment opportunities, reasonable electricity prices all over the country, and to meet our climate targets.” 

Indigenous leaders say governments around the world are failing to strike a balance between those interests and their own. It’s fueling increasing pushback to the projects officials are necessary to decarbonization. Just last week in the U.S., the National Congress of American Indians called for an immediate halt to the development of the U.S.’ burgeoning offshore wind industry, arguing that its members are not being adequately consulted. Indigenous and climate activists from Latin America to Africa have also staged protests challenging a U.N. backed goal to conserve 30% of the world’s lands by 2030, which many fear will lead to the co-opting of Indigenous territories.

Norway and other countries are repeating the exploitative dynamics of previous, fossil-fueled eras of industrial development, says Åsa Larsson Blind, vice president of the Saami Council, who grew up in a reindeer-herding community in Sweden. “We call it green colonialism, because it’s in the name of combating climate change, but on the ground, for affected communities, the consequences are the same.”

Saami and other communities, she says, are being asked “to give up their culture and their children’s possibilities to continue their way of life,” so that “other societies” can decarbonize their own high-consumption lifestyles. “Is that fair?”

A Stalled Way Forward

Vik, the energy ministry official, says there are many options on the table to bring the wind farms in line with the government’s obligations to the Saami. That includes full decommissioning, removing a few turbines, or removing some roads. There may also be a way to address the reindeer herders’ needs by creating new grazing areas, or offering more monetary compensation than they were initially given.

But Knut Helge Hurum, a lawyer who represents one group of herders, says the only solution is for the turbines to be torn down. He claims the consultation process between the government and herders since the 2021 verdict has been “like talking to a wall. … They have had 500 days and very little has been produced from their side.”

The reindeer herders first began mounting their legal challenges in 2014, before construction began. Some Saami activists argue that the government should adopt a policy halting construction of wind turbines to allow legal challenges like theirs run their course.

Vik, however, says that would be impractical—in part because many other groups, such as landowners, file similar lawsuits over the expropriation of land and compensation for green energy projects. “If you’re going to wait for all those legal battles, nothing will be built, or everything will take a very long time.”

Indigenous Tokenization

Time is certainly a factor when it comes to clean energy. By 2030, the Paris-based International Energy Agency says the world needs to have installed 1,200 GW of solar, wind, and other clean energy sources—four times the amount that existed in 2022. If we don’t, global warming will intensify to catastrophic levels, which would also be disastrous for many Indigenous communities’ ways of life.

While Indigenous communities have made inroads in the global climate conversation in recent years, winning recognition in the media and at U.N. climate summits for the outsize contribution that they have made to protecting nature, activists say they are still being ignored when it comes to actual decision making about energy and biodiversity. In Tanzania, for example, authorities drove Masaai people out of their lands last year to make way for a nature reserve. On Friday, legislators in Finland blocked a vote on legislation that would have granted its Saami representatives a say over clean energy and mining projects in their territories.

Protests like the ones in Oslo this week are disrupting that kind of tokenization, says Larsson Blind, the Saami council member. “People will see that it’s no longer possible to only include Indigenous peoples when it comes to showing [off] their cultures at [summits],” she says.

The hope, she adds, is to set a precedent ahead of future decisions on mining and grid expansion projects coming down the pipeline in Norway. “We will assert our human rights. And we are getting stronger and stronger.”

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Spanish Minister for the Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera speaks as she takes part in an extraordinary meeting of European Union energy ministers in Brussels, Belgium July 26, 2022. REUTERS/Johanna Geron

Breakthrough close on France-Spain undersea electricity link -sources

The interconnection would enable the two nations to quadruple their energy exchange capacity to 5,000 megawatts, enough to power 5 million homes. It had been planned to be built by the power grid operators RTE of France and REE of Spain by 2025. 

Reuters by Belén Carreño, , Benjamin Mallet and Kate Abnett

MADRID/PARIS/STOCKHOLM, March - France and Spain are poised to announce a breakthrough this week in a long-running impasse over hefty costs of what would be their first undersea electricity link, a minister and sources in both countries told Reuters.

Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera told Reuters earlier she expected a final agreement this week, without specifying further details on the project to double the interconnection capacity, which both countries last year agreed to speed up amid Europe's energy crisis.

However, since the initial announcement of the project in 2017, the estimated cost of the 400 km-long (250 mile-long) cable link from Spain’s northern coast to France’s western coast through the Bay of Biscay has nearly doubled around to 3.2 billion euros ($3.42 billion), according to a Spanish source with knowledge of the matter.

That was due to unforeseen seabed instability on the French side that required costly re-routing, and rising costs of raw materials.

The project was designed to double existing transmission capacity between the countries and would allow Spain to feed its bountiful renewable energy into a wider European grid, which makes it growingly important after Russia's invasion of Ukraine unleashed an energy crisis in Europe last year.

Two sources familiar with the matter said France's Energy Regulatory Commission and the Spanish competition watchdog CNMC should give the go-ahead on Thursday or Friday to the project, whose budget has been increased. They did not specify the terms of the deal.

The French regulator had no immediate comment. Spain's CNMC said only the negotiations were still ongoing.

Spain is a growing producer of renewable energy that it exports to France and it wants its neighbour to pay most of the extra costs. That had led to disagreement amid wider tensions between them about pipeline connections and protectionism.

Two sources with knowledge of the negotiations said the likely cost-sharing deal was part of a political discussion of contentious issues, including France's campaign for nuclear hydrogen to be considered a renewable source, which Spain opposes.

One of them said that when the project was first conceived, France had an electricity surplus and was exporting to Spain, so Spain had agreed to pay part of the costs on the French side, but now the tables have turned.

Spanish sources said the go-ahead would likely mean that France, whose nuclear power industry has been beset by problems, finally agreed to pay more.

The interconnection, that had been slated to be built by the power grid operators RTE of France and Spain's REE by 2025 and is now likely to suffer delays, would allow the two countries to double their electricity exchange capacity to 5,000 megawatts, enough to provide power for 5 million homes.

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News round-up, Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Quote of the day…

“The rest of the world’s rajahs are saying coal must stop,” said Pradhan. “But we are the rajah of our own country.”

Washington Post

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China predicts new arms race

Japan abandons its old strategy of pacifism

Japan has announced a massive increase in its military spending, which will allow it to project its power region-wide in response to China’s ‘strategic challenge’. Its neighbours aren’t happy.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Jordan Pouille

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In the debate in Berlin over Ukraine, many are concerned that by supplying weapons, Germany has become party to the war. In an interview, international law expert Claus Kress dispels false arguments and discusses how Russian President Vladimir Putin could be brought to justice.

Spiegel, Interview Conducted by Ralf Neukirch and Rafael Buschmann

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Image by Le Monde Diplomatique: Intelligence-gathering mission: troops listen to a speech by defence minister Taro Kono in Naha, southern Japan, 11 January 2020

China predicts new arms race

Japan abandons its old strategy of pacifism

Japan has announced a massive increase in its military spending, which will allow it to project its power region-wide in response to China’s ‘strategic challenge’. Its neighbours aren’t happy.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Jordan Pouille

Kyodo News · Getty

On 27 November 2021 prime minister Fumio Kishida visited Camp Asaka, the Ground Self Defense Force (Japanese army) base north of Tokyo. He told the troops, ‘I will consider all options [for strengthening Japan’s defence capabilities], including a so-called enemy base strike capability ... The security environment surrounding Japan is changing at an unprecedented pace. Things that used to happen only in science fiction novels have become reality.’ Last December Kishida announced plans to double Japan’s defence budget to $315bn over five years, making it the world’s third largest after those of the US and China, and equivalent to 2% of GDP, in line with the NATO target.

These announcements, which fall within the framework of a new National Security Strategy released last August, have radically changed the armed forces’ remit: they will no longer be limited to defending Japan but will have the means to counterattack, and even neutralise military bases in unfriendly countries.

This hardly comes as a surprise. Last August Itsunori Onodera, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)’s national security research committee chairman, who is close to Kishida and served as defence minister under his predecessor Shinzo Abe, led a wargame with Taku Otsuka, an LDP member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of Japan’s National Diet), to determine what Japan should do if China invaded Taiwan. The Nikkei Asia’sdiplomatic correspondent Moriyasu Ken said, ‘They talked about what to do if China simultaneously invaded Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands [also claimed by China as the Diaoyu Islands]. “Oh my goodness, what should we do? Should we start by evacuating Japanese nationals from Taiwan? Do we have time to help the Americans with Taiwan?” It was total chaos. Eventually, they thought it would be best to focus on the Senkakus.’

At the time, the atmosphere in Japan was tense. A couple of days after US House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, five ballistic missiles launched by the Chinese military during exercises around Taiwan landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Ken said, ‘China clearly wants to test the US-Japan alliance over the next few years. Washington’s official position is that the slightest attack on Japanese territory — say on Yonaguni Island [just 100km east of Taiwan, at the tip of the Okinawa archipelago] would be equivalent to dropping a bomb on New York.In practice, it’s not that clear-cut.’

What the Japanese know

From satellite surveillance, Japan knows the Chinese military have been training in the Gobi desert for an attack on an air base, using a mock-up of the US base at Kadena, in Okinawa. Masashi Murano of the Hudson Institute thinktank in Washington believes they would first neutralise the Kadena base if they invaded Taiwan. They would ‘[neutralise] airstrip networks in Okinawa and Kyushu early in the conflict with a salvo of ballistic and cruise missiles, along with cyber and electromagnetic disruption campaigns’ (1). The US insists that its 30,000-strong military presence in Okinawa is vital, if only to protect local residents. Last October the US ambassador to Tokyo visited the Marine Corp’s Camp Hansen to open a farmers’ market, as a source of fresh produce for military families. That may not be enough to win over the local population, who mostly oppose US bases.

A recent Japanese defence ministry white paper describes China as an ‘unprecedented strategic challenge’ and a competitor, disrupting the region’s geopolitical and military balance and threatening the Senkaku Islands and Taiwan, which Japan insists it willdefend (after occupying it from 1895 to 1945) (2). Also identified as adversaries are North Korea, which test-fired intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) near Japan throughout 2022, and since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia. Japan’s dispute with Russia over the Kuril Islands, which the Soviet Union annexed at the end of the second world war, is still unresolved.

The security environment surrounding Japan is changing at an unprecedented pace. Things that used to happen only in science fiction novels have become realityFumio Kishida

However, public opinion is by no means unanimously behind the new strategy. Ken says China has indeed increased its defence budget (by 7.1% or $229bn in 2022, compared with $768bn for the US) but believes ‘Xi Jinping didn’t strengthen his grip on power in order to make war — he did it because he’s getting ready to introduce measures to combat inequality that will be very unpopular ... with China’s wealthy, who behave like Saudi princes, with their Lamborghinis and villas in California. Xi wants Taiwan to reunite with China of its own volition, and nothing suggests that he plans to invade. A war on Taiwan will only drain China’s economy as China doesn’t have oil like Russia does, so they can’t afford to do anything silly. Xi hasn’t out ruled military intervention, but his core message is of a return to the roots of communism,’ which, according to Xi, is incompatible with war.

What the LDP’s opponents criticise most is the scale of the increase in military spending and the new strategy’s offensive element. Japan remains attached to the pacifist constitution the US imposed after it surrendered in 1945 and especially to article nine, which states: ‘The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes ... In order to accomplish [this aim], land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.’

Regular pacifist protests

Pacifist defenders of this principle regularly demonstrate outside the Diet building in Tokyo. One afternoon in mid-November I watched 6,000 protestors, a few with megaphones, face Japanese police equipped with little plastic speaking trumpets. Everyone remained behind lines painted on the ground and police tape. One charity worker had pockets full of pamphlets with slogans such as ‘Peace cannot be achieved by force’, ‘Military expansion is a one-way street’ and ‘Don’t let our islands become a fortress’. He was disappointed that most of the demonstrators were elderly.

‘Young people here are quite insular. Very few speak a foreign language,’ said a doctor from a large hospital in the university quarter of Gotanda.‘They live in a vacuum, focussed on their own day-to-day concerns. They aren’t aware of the real external threats. They agree with the government when it says we need to increase our defence capabilities, but tell themselves that, at the end of the day, our big strong US allies will save us.’ A youth planning to study law said that although he understood the government’s position in wanting to help the US protect Taiwan, ‘Japan’s young people won’t want to fight. Helping the Americans see off the Chinese is not for us.’ Although Japan doesn’t have compulsory military service, he could see himself joining the Self Defense Forces as a reservist: ‘If the Chinese invade Taiwan, Okinawa will be next, then Kyushu. We’ll have to defend ourselves.’

The Japanese and their government see the US as the lynchpin of national security. Kimitoshi Morihara, executive committee member in charge of foreign affairs for the Japanese Communist Party (which won 7.6% of the vote in the 2021 House of Representatives election), told me the LDP ‘don’t care’ whether Japan makes its own decisions and ‘feel no shame about being the junior partner in the alliance with the US. However, one success of long-standing propaganda by the LDP is that half the population blames the constitution for being “US-made”, written and imposed by US to strip Japan of the right to have an army ... they claim. Nationalists do care about the fact Japan cannot show its power by sending troop abroad like other prosperous countries.’

When the Communists (passionate defenders of constitutional pacifism and fiercely opposed to the new defence strategy and the US nuclear umbrella) hold a big meeting, their headquarters in Tokyo’s Sendagaya district is guarded by police. The day I met Morihara, buses filled with far-right ultra-nationalists kept driving past, with Japanese Imperial standards and Ukrainian flags fastened to their sides, broadcasting propaganda through loudspeakers.

Threats to Japan

The Japanese press talk of rallying to the US cause as if it were the obvious thing to do. Onodera says Russia invaded Ukraine believing it was a weak nation with no one to defend it: ‘Japan will not be attacked if it is strong and has allies to defend it’ (3). It’s an old saw spread overseas by Keio University professor Tomohiko Taniguchi, former speechwriter and foreign policy advisor to Abe. Last November, Taniguchi was invited to address both Asia Society Switzerland and the Council of Europe’s World Forum for Democracy in Europe, in Strasbourg. Just before that, I heard him lecture at Keio University, in Tokyo. His message was impassioned: ‘Russia, North Korea, China... Never before has Japan faced three hostile nuclear powers in series, three non-democratic countries. This coincides with the fact that our country is ageing, its population is shrinking, and the economy is not growing fast enough. It’s almost impossible for Japan alone to grow as fast as China to counterbalance its power. The only rational option would be for Japan to work closely with likeminded peers, such as our long-standing ally the US, but also with Australia and India. And increasingly with European countries, especially France, because it has the world’s largest EEZ after the US, thanks to its territories in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.’

The fact is Japan is a US client state — militarily, economically and diplomaticallyKimitoshi Morihara

Taniguchi referred to the Indo-Pacific alliance, which Abe described in a 2007 speech to the Indian parliament on need to counter China’s growing military strength (4). Abe spoke of a ‘broader Asia’ spanning the whole Pacific, including Australia and the US. Morihara explained that this would be ‘an axis of democracies allied with the US against China. So when Japan acquires powerful long-range missiles as “deterrents” to China, these will be integrated into the US’s Indo-Pacific defence strategy. Washington will never allow us to use them independently: the fact is Japan is a US client state — militarily, economically and diplomatically.’To reduce this asymmetry, the Japanese government has, however, agreed to jointly develop a fighter aircraft with Italy and the UK by 2035 (5).

A dangerous development

Japan’s new closer relationship with the US echoes the security treaty signed in 1951, at the end of the US occupation. The official Chinese press see it as a dangerous development. Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated sharply in 2012, after the Japanese government bought three of the Senkaku Islands from their private (Japanese) owner, and Chinese naval incursions into their territorial waters became more frequent (6). Abe’s regular visits to Yasukuni Shrine, dedicated to the 2.5 million Japanese who died in the second world war, including some convicted war criminals, did not help.

Things have been calmer in recent years. Following Abe’s assassination last July, Xi even stated that they had ‘reached [an] important consensus’ on building ‘China-Japan relations that meet the requirements of the new era’ (7). But since Japan announced its new defence strategy, the tone has changed. The daily Global Times, which closely follows the Chinese government line, said, ‘Given the devastation caused by Japan’s prior defence and military upgrading in history, particularly during WWII, the present policy change will have an impact on the whole area, as many nations will have to raise their military spending, leading to a new arms race in Northeast Asia’ (8).

China is not alone in being concerned about the new policy. South Korea has bitter memories of Japanese occupation from 1910 to 1945. Old disputes are resurfacing, including the matter of ‘comfort women’ — Korean women forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese army. The historical facts are disputed by war crime deniers, whose numbers in Japan are rising. Since 2017 the governor of Tokyo has refused to attend the annual commemoration of the 1923 massacre of at least 2,600 Korean immigrants falsely accused by the Japanese population(with police and army backing) of having poisoned wells and planned violence in the aftermath of an earthquake that killed 100,000 and destroyed much of Tokyo and Yokohama. The government has recently increased the budget for ‘strategic dissemination of information overseas’ (9), channelling some of it through thinktanks tasked with conveying ‘the historical truth about Japan’.

Korea’s main concern relates to the fact that Japan is clearly envisaging the possibility of using its ‘counterstrike’ capabilities to ‘attack enemy bases’, including those of North Korea — since South Korea would then face a direct threat. The South Korean centrist daily Hankyoreh asked, ‘How are we supposed to accept this reality in which Japan designates the Korean Peninsula — constitutionally our sovereign territory [under article 3 of South Korea’s constitution] — as a target for pre-emptive strikes? (10)’Even South Korea’s conservative president Yoon Suk-yeol, who is keen to build closer relations with the US and Japan, distanced himself: ‘In matters that directly affect the security of the Korean Peninsula, or our national interest, it is clear that we must be closely consulted or that our prior consent must be sought’ (11).

There is nothing to suggest that North Korea is impressed by Japan’s threats. President Kim Jong-un regularly orders test launches of ICBMs, which land in Japan’s EEZ, off Hokkaido, more than 1,000km from their launch site. But according to Morihara, the aim is not really to intimidate Japan: ‘The North Koreans are desperate to talk to the US.Theyhave an insatiable need for attention.’ Though the Self Defense Forces don’t attempt to shoot down the missiles, the Japanese people are kept informed of the threat via their smartphones and information displays on subway and bullet trains (with apologies for the delay to their journey). The authorities also keep Japanese cryptocurrency companies informed of threats from the Lazarus Group, North Korea’s largest hacking organisation. Japan’s talks with North Korea, like those of the US, are currently deadlocked.

Though Russia is now a designated foe, that was not always the case. During his first term of office (2012-20), Abe played five rounds of golf with Donald Trump but met Vladimir Putin 27 times; there were many promises of economic cooperation, though no agreement to resolve the Kuril Island dispute. The islands form a barrier between the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk, patrolled by Russian nuclear submarines; in 2016 Russia deployed a coastal missile system on the islands. It would see handing them back to a US ally as diminishing its own security.

Strategic partnership with Russia

Though Kishida backed sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine, he has maintained a strategic partnership with Russia on energy. Unlike ExxonMobil, Japanese investors have kept their stakes in Russian offshore gas exploration and production company Sakhalin-2. Japan buys around 60% of the 10 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas the company produces, meeting 10% of its energy needs. Kishida emphasises that Sakhalin-2’s gas and oil fields in the Sea of Okhotsk are extremely important for Japan’s energy security.

In Asia, Japan’s new defence strategy may damage trade relations with neighbours on which it is heavily reliant. In 2008 Japan signed a free trade agreement with the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries (12), helping Japanese manufacturers to offshore production. Asics has made most of its sports shoes in Cambodia since 2013; Sony has a Home Cinema System factory in Malaysia; Mitsubishi has acquired two companies that provide consumer loans via smartphone apps, in Indonesia and the Philippines, to make it easier for customers in those countries to buy its locally built cars. There are also some surprising cultural links: the city of Itami in Hyogo Prefecture recently donated an organ to St Joseph’s Cathedral in Hanoi, Vietnam. Japan is now the second largest foreign investor in Vietnam, after Singapore, and the largest importer of seafood from Vietnam.

This can sometimes lead to Japan supporting countriesthat are in difficulties on the international scene. Last October it abstained on a UN Human Rights Council resolution on alleged human rights violations by Sri Lanka. Japan is Sri Lanka’s second largest creditor after China. In return, the Sri Lankan authorities muted its response in March 2021, when Wishma Sandamali, a university graduate and English teacher in her home country who had entered Japan on a student visa planning to teach English to children in Japan, died in her cell at an immigration detention centre in Nagoya after being denied adequate medical care. She had been held for several months after it was discovered that her visa had expired when she visited a local police station to file a complaint about domestic violence.

Unlike the ASEAN countries, India has not attracted Japanese investors keen to build factories. Megha Wadhwa, a visiting fellow at Sofia University in Tokyo, notes that ‘these two nations do not have a history of serious conflict and yet ... their relationship has never risen above the level of lukewarm’ (13), even though many Indians are working in Japan. Thousands of English-speaking IT engineers have joined Japanese startups on ‘technical intern training’ visas, an immigration scheme designed to help small and medium enterprises bypass Japan’s zero-immigration policy. According to Wadhwa, ‘Indian migrants have definitely contributed to creating awareness about India in Japan and Japan in India. Over the years, India has become the IT country, one of the upcoming powers [whereas in the past] it was just about curry, snakes and Ayurveda.’ Japan and India also have a joint space programme that aims to explore the far side of the moon by 2030 — to compete with China, which landed a robotic spacecraft there in 2019.

‘It’s not necessarily high-tech’

Although Japan has aligned itself with the US strategic vision, it is affected by the US’s economic sanctions against China. Sony, which dominates the global market for CMOS image sensors used in smartphone cameras, can no longer sell them to Huawei. Yet Japan is still a bellwether of what the Chinese middle class are likely to buy.

‘And it’s not necessarily high-tech. If it does well in Japan — design, packaging, fashion, cosmetics, you name it — then Chinese consumers, and consumers in Taiwan, Korea and Thailand, will want it too. That’s a given,’ said Jérôme Chouchan, chairman of the French chamber of commerce and president of chocolate maker Godiva’s Japan and South Korea operations. Casual wear retailer Uniqlo is a striking example: of its 1,600 stores worldwide, 900 are in China, where it has been opening up to a hundred more each year. The company’s owner Tadashi Yanai, 73, is Japan’s richest person with an estimated net worth of $28bn, and keeps the Chinese government sweet by not getting involved in geopolitics or other divisive issues.

Since Hong Kong and its hedge funds lost their shine for foreign and even wealthy Chinese investors, the Japanese government has been trying to improve Tokyo’s attractiveness as a financial centre through tax incentives. It is still lagging some way behind Singapore, but the government hopes it will be a fallback for Western entrepreneurs who once saw China as the Asian Eldorado. Jack Ma, former boss of Alibaba, seems happy there.

By suddenly turning its back on pacifism, Japan has put itself at odds with China, which already has a strong presence across the region. Many Asian countries are reluctant to choose between China and the US (which promises to protect them). What will be their attitude towards Tokyo now?

Jordan Pouille

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co

The Special Tribunal Debate"An Arrest Warrant against Putin Would Be Immense"

In the debate in Berlin over Ukraine, many are concerned that by supplying weapons, Germany has become party to the war. In an interview, international law expert Claus Kress dispels false arguments and discusses how Russian President Vladimir Putin could be brought to justice.

Spiegel, Interview Conducted by Ralf Neukirch and Rafael Buschmann

About Claus Kress

Claus Kress, 56, is a professor of international law and criminal law and the director of the Institute of International Peace and Security Law at the University of Cologne. He previously served as a member of the German government delegation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) negotiations. He is a judge ad hoc at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case against the government of Myanmar for alleged genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group.

DER SPIEGEL: Professor Kress, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has justified his long hesitation in supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine by saying that he wanted to prevent Germany from becoming a party to the war. Under international law, do we become a party to war by sending increasingly powerful weapons?

Kress: For a long time, I had the impression that German policy was hiding behind international law. The legal situation is clear: Germany is allowed to help Ukraine defend itself. Germany would actually be allowed to do even more.

DER SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

Kress: On the basis of the right to collective self-defense, Germany could intervene directly in the conflict alongside Ukraine. The question at the center of the German debate, "war party, yes or no," has nothing whatsoever to do with the question regarding the extent to which Germany may support Ukraine. It is a political determination, and one which can be easily politically justified.

DER SPIEGEL: The kinds of weapons that Germany supplies to Ukraine is irrelevant under international law?

Kress: I was disturbed by the fact that German politicians gave currency to the idea that Germany could violate international law by supplying weapons – and that this in turn would entitle Russia to take action against Germany. That is wrong so long as Ukraine is using these weapons for defense, which is allowed.

DER SPIEGEL: At what point would Germany become a party to the war?

Kress: The question should be asked on the basis of the prohibition of violence and the right to self-defense: At what point does supporting Ukraine's individual self-defense become a use of force by Germany requiring the invoking of the collective right of self-defense? This would certainly be the case if Germany deployed its own soldiers – if, for example, the German air force or German tanks manned by German soldiers were deployed in Ukraine. Then Germany would also be a party to the war.

DER SPIEGEL: The U.S. has reportedly transmitted the coordinates of Russian ammunition depots and barracks on Ukrainian soil to Kyiv. Does that cross the line?

Kress: Involvement in the planning of concrete Ukrainian military operations could become a tipping point.

DER SPIEGEL: What consequences might that have?

Kress: The exercise of the right of collective self-defense would have to be reported to the UN Security Council. Such a letter, though, would likely be just as politically undesirable as the status of war party that would also then be implied. But again: There is no doubt about the permissibility of the collective defense of Ukraine under international law. If Russia were to respond to such collective self-defense with military attacks against targets aimed at the defenders, it would again violate the prohibition on the use of force.

"The unleashing of the war of aggression is the original sin that opened the door for all further evils."

DER SPIEGEL: A discussion is currently underway over how to prosecute those responsible for the war of aggression. Why is that so difficult? The International Criminal Court is investigating war crimes and crimes against humanity – and possibly genocide as well.

Kress: These investigations cover a significant part of the injustice; they are very important. But without the crime of aggression, a central dimension is omitted: The decision by the Russian leadership to start this war, thus trampling on the prohibition against the use of force under international law. The unleashing of this war of aggression is the original sin that opened the door for all further evils. This includes the countless killings of Ukrainian soldiers in combat, which cannot be prosecuted as war crimes. Unlike other crimes under international law, the International Criminal Court's own statutes unfortunately prohibit it from investigating the suspected crime of aggression in this case.

DER SPIEGEL: So, it would primarily be about the political dimension?

Kress: For the direct victims of aggression, it is surely of fundamental importance to hold the perpetrators of such a war responsible. But there's more at stake: It is imperative that the prohibition against the use of force under international law be confirmed for the future. After Germany's aggression during World War II, the Americans, and indeed the Soviet Union, pushed to use the Nuremberg trial to set a strong international precedent against wars of aggression in the future.

DER SPIEGEL: Which Russian officials would likely be the focus of a special tribunal focused on crimes of aggression?

Kress: The focus would be Russia's leadership circle. This could also include those who, without a relevant post under the constitution, have a significant influence on the planning, preparation, initiation and/or execution of the war of aggression.

DER SPIEGEL: People like Yevgeny Prigozhin, for example, the head of the private mercenary unit known as the Wagner Group?

Kress: If the investigation were to substantiate the suspicion that he had a say in the aggression, then he would be among those who would have to answer to a special tribunal.

DER SPIEGEL: Still, it seems rather unrealistic that the leadership cadre surrounding Vladimir Putin will ever have to face an international court.

Kress: From today's perspective, it seems rather unlikely. Because for that to happen, Putin and his adherents would have to show up at the trial, and they won't do that. But there could be a change of government in Russia at some point. If the new people in power then wanted to come to terms with the injustice committed, the arrest and deportation of suspects could become a possibility.

DER SPIEGEL: There is nothing to indicate that such a thing might happen.

Kress: This was also said frequently before the trials of Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić over the Yugoslav war. But things turned out differently. Incidentally, international investigations alone would send an important message to the international community. And what symbolic power would an arrest warrant and a well-substantiated, publicly accessible indictment against Putin and Co. have? It would be immense!

DER SPIEGEL: A few days ago, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock proposed the establishment of a kind of hybrid special tribunal. What do you think of the idea?

Kress: Not much.

DER SPIEGEL: Please explain?

Kress: The "hybrid" court that the minister has in mind would not be an international court. It would be a Ukrainian court located in The Hague, and it would administer Ukrainian law. And there would be a risk that it would end in disappointment.

DER SPIEGEL: Why?

Kress: Under current international law, Putin would enjoy immunity as acting head of state in a tribunal that is essentially Ukrainian. How do you intend to convince the Ukrainian people of the utility of establishing a tribunal at considerable expense that cannot even take action against the primary suspect Moreover, a tribunal must send an effective message reaffirming the universal ban on violence. But such a message can only be sent by an international tribunal that is part of the Nuremberg tradition and applies the international definition of aggression.

DER SPIEGEL: Baerbock has a master's degree in international law. What do you think of the fact that she, of all people, favors the hybrid model?

Kress: I suspect there are political reasons, not least the closing of ranks with France and Britain. Both are in favor of the "hybrid" model.

DER SPIEGEL: Is it possible that Paris and London don't want to see the crime of aggression prosecuted because they themselves have waged wars of aggression?

Kress: I fear it is because the governments of these two countries do not want a strong international precedent against aggression that would put them on the spot themselves in the future. Both governments have so far refused to subject their own use of military force to international scrutiny. These countries do not object to legal action against the crime of aggression, as long as it is directed at the Russians. But the uncomfortable thing about international criminal law is precisely that it must be applied to everyone. That, by the way, is precisely the promise made by the American prosecutor Robert Jackson at the opening of the Nuremberg trials.

"The question of the West's credibility is unfortunately justified, especially when it comes to crimes of aggression."

DER SPIEGEL: You advocate an international tribunal against those responsible in Russia. But the Global South is certain to point out that the West is quick to use international law when it comes to condemning others, but is wary of submitting to international jurisprudence itself.

Kress: The question of the West's credibility is unfortunately justified, especially when it comes to crimes of aggression. That's why a two-pronged strategy should be adopted, one that entails saying: Now we will set up a special court because we need to send the message quickly under international law in this dramatic emergency. At the same time, the loophole in the statute of the International Criminal Court, which is unprincipled, must be closed for the future. This is, to be sure, a process that will take time. But Minister Baerbock already spoke out in The Hague in favor of addressing it.

DER SPIEGEL: How do you propose establishing legitimacy for an international tribunal?

Kress: There is a clear model for this: The United Nations and Ukraine conclude a treaty. That treaty shall be concluded by the secretary-general on behalf of the UN upon request by the UN General Assembly.

DER SPIEGEL: Some claim that only the UN Security Council, in which Russia has a veto, is entitled to do so.

Kress: That's not a convincing argument. Hans Corell, the long-time legal adviser to the United Nations, has strongly affirmed that the General Assembly can participate in the establishment of an international tribunal as described. Here, too, alleged doubts about international law serve to camouflage a lack of political will.

DER SPIEGEL: There is also a political argument against this tribunal: It is unclear whether the support of a majority of countries can be found for it.

Kress: I'm not in favor of setting up a special tribunal at any price. I am only in favor of this if a convincing majority can be won for it in the General Assembly. So far, however, no attempt has been made to try to assemble such a majority. Lacking such an attempt, references to the high majority hurdle seem like a prophecy designed to be self-fulfilling.

DER SPIEGEL: It would help if you had the most important European partners, namely the French and the British, on your side.

Kress: Yes, but Germany is also allowed to take the lead for once in the service of a good cause. That is the position taken by the German government in the last 25 years in negotiations over the crime of aggression, always with a view to Germany's special historical responsibility. Incidentally, Europe would by no means be alone in taking this next step. Among most Europeans who have participated in the discussion intensively so far, there is strong support for an international special tribunal as part of the two-pronged strategy just outlined. Twelve European and non-European states, including Ukraine, recently expressed their support in a paper.

DER SPIEGEL: It has now taken German politicians almost a year to even come up with a position. What is your assessment of that hesitation?

Kress: I didn't understand it. It was basically clear on February 24, 2022, the day of the unleashing of the war of aggression: The crime of aggression must now be placed on the international agenda. Unfortunately, this crime not only played no role in German politics, but also in Western politics as a whole in the long run-up to the war of aggression.

DER SPIEGEL: What would that have changed?

Kress: Even someone like Putin is interested in ensuring that his international reputation doesn't plunge into the deepest abyss. There is a difference between just sending out the message that a war of aggression against Ukraine would be a political mistake and saying that it would be a crime under international law. Generally speaking, if the criminalization of aggression under international law is to gain preventive relevance in the medium and long term, then it must be addressed at the international level just as consistently as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

DER SPIEGEL: At some point, the end of the war will have to be negotiated. Is it possible to conduct such negotiations with a president that you also want to bring to court?

Kress: International criminal law does not ignore the painful dilemmas of international relations. Humanitarian or political reasons may force one to say that criminal law must now take a back seat.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: An overview of the Bhubaneswari coal mine in Angul district in the Indian state of Odisha 

In India, ‘phase down’ of coal actually means rapid expansion of mining

A tripling of size is planned at the fastest-growing coal mine in India

WP by Karishma Mehrotra

TALCHER, India — Pungent fumes wafted from the deep pit that cuts across the landscape like a small, blackened version of the Grand Canyon. Trucks with sooty cargo rumbled along roads snaking toward the rim, far in the hazy distance.

Dibyajiban Si pointed excitedly at a map. Soon, this vast canyon — the fastest-growing coal mine in India — will stretch even farther into the surrounding plains.

“It will expand beyond this horizon. … This is the fastest excavation of 300 million tons in India,” said Si, the project manager of the Bhubaneswari mine. “Whatever targets they give us, we achieve it ahead of time.”

Here in eastern India, the Bhubaneswari mine is a testament to India’s vast coal reserves, among the largest in the world. The mine’s rapid expansion also is vivid evidence that the world’s second-largest consumer of coal is not ready to give it up, despite urgent concerns about the toll its use is taking on the climate. If anything, India’s coal production is accelerating, according to Coal Ministry data.

At the 2021 global climate forum in Glasgow known as COP26, India publicly promised a “phase down” of coal. But that doesn’t actually mean that India will use less — only that it will gradually generate a smaller proportion of its overall energy with coal. In absolute terms, the country expects its coal production and consumption to expand dramatically as its energy needs skyrocket in the coming decades because of economic growth.

In recent years, the Indian government has reopened old coal mines, carved out new ones, and, perhaps most telling, extended contracts to private mining companies for longer periods, suggesting that the country’s leaders won’t be ready to give up coal for at least 25 years, government officials and coal industry executives say.

“Our energy needs are first and foremost. The share of other sectors like renewable energy is not keeping up with our energy demand. Therefore, our dependence on coal is established,” Indian Coal Secretary Amrit Lal Meena said in an interview. “Whatever we produce is consumed. Every coal mine matters.”

The country committed itself last year at COP27 in Egypt to rely on fossil fuels for no more than half of its power capacity by 2030. But the share of electricity generated using sources other than fossil fuels has not increased for more than a decade and remains below a fifth of total power generation, according to data from the Power Ministry.

“When you take a step back and ask, ‘Is renewable energy [hitting] the targets?’ The answer is, unfortunately, no,” said Rahul Tongia, the author of the book “The Future of Coal in India.” “The backstop remains coal, even more so.”

The Indian government has set a target of producing 1 billion tons of coal in fiscal 2024, which ends in March 2024, up from 700 million tons produced so far in the current fiscal year ending next month. It is urging mining companies to excavate coal as quickly as possible because electricity demand is projected to soar. India is still connecting millions of remote homes to the power grid and, over the next two decades, expects to add as much new power generation as the amount now used by the entire European Union, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

“Keep it in the ground is a very Western concept,” said Rohit Chandra, an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi who studies energy. “New renewable energy can only supply part of this growth for now. … We are decades away from coal playing an insignificant role in India’s power system.”

Pressure to accelerate mining

The Bhubaneswari mining site, near the town of Talcher, is estimated to contain 1 billion tons of relatively shallow coal, beyond the 300 million tons being excavated. The government plans over the next 25 years to triple the size of the mine to 3,700 acres and swallowing up 17 adjacent villages in the process. At the current rate of mining, the coal should last 35 years.

The government in 2011 awarded a 15-year extraction contract to Essel Mining, part of the Aditya Birla conglomerate. This was a new approach in India, and it has since then become much more common, with the government seeking to hasten coal production by turning operations at publicly owned mines over to private companies, mostly under 25-year contracts. Companies also have been given permission to own mines themselves, furthering the privatization of the sector.

After the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, when fuel supplies at Indian power plants ran low, the government gave the coal industry even more incentive to ramp up production by easing regulations.

A worker monitors the loading of coal onto a train near the Bhubaneswari mine on Feb. 1. (Rebecca Conway for The Washington Post)

At the Bhubaneswari mine, public officials and company executives say there is palpable pressure from the government to accelerate extraction operations. “The pressure is coming,” said Si, the project manager, a mustachioed man wearing a white hard-hat. He added, “As long as there is demand, we have to take it out. And that will remain for at least 20, 30 years.”

During colonial times, India’s British rulers ran three mines in the Talcher area. After Indian independence in 1947, there was little coal exploration in the surrounding area, now known as Odisha state, and only in recent years did it become a site of renewed mining activity.

Today, officials in New Delhi, the Indian capital, are enthusiastic about the Bhubaneswari mine because of its immense size and the easy access to its shallow — albeit low-quality — coal. In the surrounding villages, residents boast that they can dig two feet to find coal, which they call “fire stone” in the local language.

Outside the nearby Hingula mine, villagers frequent a temple built around a fire from an underground source, said by believers to be the Hindu goddess Hingula herself. Other locals say the fire is most likely the result of coal being exposed to oxygen and spontaneously igniting.

“It’s the natural gift of this place,” said Rajinder Singh Malhotra, an Essel Mining executive in Odisha.

A villager in an abandoned building in the village of Hensmul, which remains partially inhabited while residents wait to be relocated so the land can be absorbed into the Bhubaneswari coal mine. (Rebecca Conway for The Washington Post)

Lives and livelihoods tied to coal

Indian officials say they have no option but to mine. While energy companies have begun investing in renewable sources, the amount of funding is not nearly enough to make a substantial dent in the use of fossil fuel. And although India is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon in absolute terms, it is one of the lowest emitters per capita and bears little responsibility for the past century’s emissions, which have been pumped into the atmosphere mostly by industrialized countries, officials note.

Moreover, coal mining is essential to the livelihoods of many thousands of Indians. “Talcher’s mines are now at their heyday of productivity,” said Suravee Nayak, a researcher with the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research who is from the Talcher region and has focused on coal mining there for a decade. “The local communities’ futures for generations are very much entangled with the existence of the coal mines.”

Around Talcher, many of the public buildings were constructed by Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd. (MCL), a state-affiliated company that owns much of the region’s mines. Schools and hospitals often bear its logo. Most of the workers in the area are employed in the mines or in businesses that support the mines and their labor force. Everyone says living standards have risen since mining arrived, driving economic growth evident in plush hotels and glass-walled restaurants.

Of course, there is also the mining dust.

“But no one wants the dust to end. The day the dust settles, that means the mines have died down,” said Soubhagya Pradhan, a Talcher-based retired union official and MCL employee. “The day the mines die down, that’s the day our home stoves will also die down.”

There is no doubt that coal mining over the past decade has taken a toll on many villagers and their surroundings. At the hamlet of Arakhpal, because of the dust, the palm trees have turned black and farming has ceased. Locals complain about new illnesses. And Arakhpal is about to lose 100 acres of land to the mine, adding more families to the 12,000 that Nayak, the think tank researcher, says have lost land to mining in the Talcher area. But mining still has wide support.

“Our national resource is coal. My land is only six feet deep. Whatever is below is the government’s. The quicker you take it, the better,” said Dinabandhu Pradhan, the head of the Arakhpal village government.

Unlike many villagers near mines elsewhere in India, almost all of the residents interviewed in the Talcher area say they actually wish more of their land was taken for the mine. They complain that the land with which they have been left is no longer arable and that they deserve the new employment and compensation that further acquisitions would offer.

In the village of Hensmul, which is perched on a long peninsula jutting into the pit with a panoramic view of the canyon below, residents say they will not move until promises of new homes and compensation are fulfilled. But, even there, villagers say coal is a source of national pride.

Pradhan says it is not up to foreign leaders — which he called “rajahs,” or rulers — to tell India what to do with its resources.

“The rest of the world’s rajahs are saying coal must stop,” said Pradhan. “But we are the rajah of our own country.”

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Image: Fluence

Hoping to make India a supply base for our global energy storage needs: Julian Nebreda CEO of Fluence 

The company's 150 MWh BESS will be commissioned by July-August in Karnataka.

MONEYCONTROL.COM BY SWETA GOSWAMI & RACHITA PRASAD

FEBRUARY 24, 2023 

The joint venture (JV) between ReNew, one of India’s largest renewable energy companies, and Fluence Energy, a US-based energy storage and digital applications company, is going to scale up the manufacture of battery energy storage systems (BESS) in India, said Julian Nebreda, President and CEO, Fluence.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, Nebreda and Jan Teichmann, Regional President, APAC, at Fluence, said the JV will focus on localising products related to BESS in India as well as in other countries.

Fluence is a global leader in energy storage and digital applications for renewables, and the JV with ReNew was firmed up last December.

Our plan is to localise all our products in India. Probably by the end of 2024, we would have done the majority of product localisation of energy storage systems. The localisation of batteries, however, will be subject to the availability of local supplies. But, hopefully by 2026-2027, depending on how battery manufacturing capabilities get built in India, we will have 100 percent localisation of products,” said Nebreda.

Teichmann explained that Fluence would be responsible for the product and engineering knowhow in the JV, and ReNew will be responsible for the renewable energy projects for which the BESS will be built. “We are also hoping to make India a supply base for our global needs. So, India could export to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) nations and potentially, Europe. We are already doing projects in India,” he said.

Teichmann also stated that going by the current pace of projects, it might take India 3-4 years to actually start adding 5 GWh of battery storage annually to meet its goal of 50 GWh of domestic capacity by 2030. India plans to generate 50 percent of its electricity from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030. Further, it aims to achieve net zero by 2070.

India’s battery storage schemes will boost EVs

Nebreda said the push for electric vehicles (EV) in India will automatically make the country an attractive manufacturing location for energy storage systems. “That's one element. The second element is that the Indian government’s energy storage programme was also driven by the EV push. This will catalyse the production of batteries in India. Since gas is expensive and renewable energy is intermittent, energy storage systems are the natural solution,” he added.

As part of India’s EV Vision 2030, the government has targeted 30 percent electric vehicle (EV) penetration by 2030.

On May 12, 2021, the union government approved a production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the manufacture of advanced chemistry cell (ACC) battery storage. The total outlay of the scheme is Rs. 18,100 crore over a period of five years.

Also, in her budget speech on February 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that BESS projects will be offered viability gap funding (VGF) for a total capacity of 4,000 MWh.

First 150 MWh BESS of the JV to be ready by July-August

Teichmann informed that a 150 MWh BESS will be commissioned by July-August in Karnataka. “This will be the biggest at present. But bigger BESS’ from others are set to come up very soon. However, this is not our first project in India. Our first project was a 10 MWh system in Delhi in 2019.”

Next, he said, the company will set up a 50 MWh BESS by the end of this year. “But there will be more soon. We also have Fluence’s cloud-based asset performance management software, which we plan to apply on every system globally, including our projects in India,” he added.

Teichmann said the asset performance management software helps monitor the system up to the cell level of the batteries. “What is the temperature, what is the performance, what is the status of the system (in order to predict output)? It tells all that. It also predicts service needs in real time. It is a very detailed monitoring system, which helps improve system performance,” he explained.

He added that the company is also attracted to the commercial and industrial (C&I) market and is exploring corporate power purchase agreements (PPAs). “We are trying to figure out how big that market really is. It is an interesting segment,” Teichmann said.

News round-up, Tuesday, February 28, 2023

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Editor's thoughts…

—-”According to the journal Plos Pathogens from the University of Kent (England), the SARC-COv-2 virus was discovered for the first time on Friday, 17 November 2019, in Wuhan, China. An organism with a simple structure composed of proteins and nucleic acids can reproduce only within specific living cells, using its metabolism.

Our effective behaviours are the cruellest change that humanity has undergone because of the Coronavirus. This little —monster— certainly aroused the paranoia of terror in us in a very evil way... let us know.  It certainly did, that we would die if we were in the company of other individuals of our kind, who were then already submerged by the sophistication of the 2.0 world, where genuine expressions of affection, handshakes, and hugs ... which do so much good for the intangible parts of the so-called soul, have been replaced by intangible faces flowing at an infinite density —billions— per second, without any compassionate human contact whatsoever.

What cruelty have we been subjected to ... How many of our loved ones are not with us today?  Why?  Because —perhaps—, of a human error in a laboratory in the isolated province of Wuhan in millennium China”.

THE DROUGHT BY GERMÁN & CO, SEPTEMBER, 2022

Most read…

Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on covid-19 origins

Small shift in favor of ‘lab leak’ theory was prompted by new data and group of weapons-lab scientists

WP BY JOBY WARRICK, ELLEN NAKASHIMA AND  SHANE HARRIS

Bank finance for cleaner energy grows, but still lags fossil fuels - report

Several climate scenarios suggest that to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the world needs to be investing $4 in renewable energy for every $1 invested in fossil fuels by 2030.

REUTERS

The EU and UK have a Northern Ireland deal — so what’s in it?

The key concessions and single market safeguards in the newly-unveiled Windsor framework.

POLITICO EU BY CRISTINA GALLARDO, FEBRUARY 27, 2023

LNG expansion in Europe opposes climate goals, says research

Researchers warn the doubling down on long-term liquefied natural gas deals in Europe threatens to derail decarbonization efforts.

reuters BY BEATRICE BEDESCHI, WRITING FOR GAS OUTLOOK

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”We’ll need natural gas for years…

— but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says…

AES chief says we’ll need natural gas for next 20 years

From the United States to the European Union, major economies around the world are laying out plans to move away from fossil fuels in favor of low and zero-carbon technologies.

It’s a colossal task that will require massive sums of money, huge political will and technological innovation. As the planned transition takes shape, there’s been a lot of talk about the relationship between hydrogen and natural gas.

During a panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of energy firm AES offered up his take on how the two could potentially dovetail with one another going forward.   

“I feel very confident in saying that, for the next 20 years, we need natural gas,” Andrés Gluski, who was speaking Wednesday, said. “Now, what we can start to do today is … start to blend it with green hydrogen,” he added.

“So we’re running tests that you can blend it up to, say 20%, in existing turbines, and new turbines are coming out that can burn … much higher percentages,” Gluski said.

“But it’s just difficult to see that you’re going to have enough green hydrogen to substitute it like, in the next 10 years.”

Change on the way, but scale is key

The planet’s green hydrogen sector may still be in a relatively early stage of development, but a number of major deals related to the technology have been struck in recent years.

In December 2022, for example, AES and Air Products said they planned to invest roughly $4 billion to develop a “mega-scale green hydrogen production facility” located in Texas.

According to the announcement, the project will incorporate around 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar and be able to produce more than 200 metric tons of hydrogen every day.

Despite the significant amount of money and renewables involved in the project, AES chief Gluski was at pains to highlight how much work lay ahead when it came to scaling up the sector as a whole.

The facility being planned with Air Products, he explained, could only “supply point one percent of the U.S. long haul trucking fleet.” Work to be done, then.

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Image: Germán & Co

Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on covid-19 origins

Small shift in favor of ‘lab leak’ theory was prompted by new data and group of weapons-lab scientists

WP BY JOBY WARRICK, ELLEN NAKASHIMA AND  SHANE HARRIS

February 27, 2023

U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said Feb. 27 that China needs to be more honest about “what happened three years ago in Wuhan” with covid-19’s origin.

The theory that covid-19 started with a lab accident in central China received a modest boost in the latest U.S. intelligence assessment after the work of a little-known scientific team that conducts some of the federal government’s most secretive and technically challenging investigations of emerging security threats, current and former U.S. officials said Monday.

An analysis by experts from the U.S. national laboratory complex — including members of a storied team known as Z-Division — prompted the Energy Department to change its view earlier this year about the likely cause of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak, the officials said. Though initially undecided about covid-19’s origins, Energy officials concluded as part of a new government-wide intelligence assessment that a lab accident was most likely the triggering event for the world’s worst pandemic in a century.

But other intelligence agencies involved in the classified update — completed in the past few weeks and kept under wraps — were divided on the question of covid-19’s origins, with most still maintaining that a natural, evolutionary “spillover” from animals was the most likely explanation. Even the Energy Department’s analysis was carefully hedged, as the officials expressed only “low confidence” in their conclusion, according to U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a classified report.

The overall view — that there is as yet no definitive conclusion on the virus’s origin — has not changed since the release of an earlier version of the report by the Biden administration in 2021, according to the officials.

“The bottom line remains the same: Basically no one really knows,” one of the officials said.

Still, the news that Energy had shifted its view reignited what was already an intense debate on social media and in Washington, where members of Congress are preparing for hearings — some as early as Tuesday — exploring the circumstances behind the outbreak.

“To prevent the next pandemic, we need to know how this one began,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in response to news of the updated assessment, first reported Sunday by the Wall Street Journal. “The administration must move with a sense of urgency and use every tool at its disposal to ensure that we understand the origins of covid-19.”

U.S. officials confirmed that an updated assessment of covid-19’s origins was completed this year, and said the document was based on fresh data as well as new analysis by experts from eight intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council.

But the agencies are united, the official said, in the view that the virus was not man-made or developed as a bioweapon.

“‘Lab’ does not equal ‘man-made,’ the official said. “Even if it was a leak from a lab, they still think it would be a naturally occurring virus.”

Among the nine intelligence entities involved in the assessment, only the FBI had previously concluded, with “moderate” confidence, that covid-19 started with a lab accident. The Energy Department was the only agency that changed its view, while the CIA and one other agency remained undecided, lacking enough compelling evidence to support one conclusion over the other, officials said.

Even at low confidence, however, the Energy Department’s analysis carries weight. For its assessment, the department drew on the expertise of a team assembled from the U.S. national laboratory complex, which employs tens of thousands of scientists representing many technical specialties, from physics and data analysis to genomics and molecular biology.

The labs were established as part of the U.S. nuclear weapons program and operate largely in the classified realm. The department’s cadre of technical experts includes members of the Energy Department’s Z-Division, which since the 1960s has been involved in secretive investigations of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threats by U.S. adversaries, including China and Russia.

The Energy Department is “a technical organization with tens of thousands of scientists,” said a former energy official. “It’s more than just physics. It’s chemical and biological expertise. And they have a unique opportunity to look at intelligence from the technical aspect.”

Both the Energy Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the revised assessment. It was unclear what, precisely, prompted officials at Energy to see a lab leak as the more probable explanation for how covid-19 began.

Neither of the leading theories — a natural spillover or a lab leak — have been conclusively validated, in part because of China’s refusal to allow independent investigators access to environmental samples and other raw data from the earliest weeks of the outbreak.

Many scientists — and, at least for now, the majority of U.S. intelligence agencies — favor the spillover hypothesis, which holds that the virus jumped from bats to humans, perhaps at a Chinese market, and presumably after passing through a third species that had come to harbor what became known as the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Yet, three years after the outbreak began, the search for the elusive “carrier” species has produced no firm leads. The bats that naturally harbor viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 are native to Southeast Asia and southern China, about 1,000 miles from Wuhan, where the first cases of covid-19 were reported.

Likewise, no hard evidence of a lab leak has emerged. Supporters of the leak theory note that the outbreak began in a city that happens to be the world’s leading center for research on coronaviruses. China has had previous lab accidents, including an incident in 2004 in which lab workers were inadvertently exposed to the original SARS virus, and subsequently spread the pathogen outside the lab, resulting in multiple illnesses and at least one death, according to a World Health Organization probe.

China has repeatedly denied that an accident occurred. On Monday, Beijing denounced the new report linking Chinese labs to the pandemic, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning demanding that the United States “stop defaming China.”

“Covid tracing is a scientific issue that should not be politicized,” she said.

The Biden administration on Monday emphasized the inclusive nature of the evidence so far. National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby, speaking at a White House briefing, said the new intelligence assessment was part of an ongoing “whole of government” effort to investigate how covid-19 began, although he acknowledged that firm conclusions have remained elusive.

“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how covid started,” Kirby told reporters. “That work is still ongoing, but the president believes it’s really important that we continue that work and that we find out as best we can how it started so that we can better prevent a future pandemic.”

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is scheduled to testify at a Senate worldwide threats hearing next week and probably will be asked to address the matter. The House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic was set to hold a roundtable exploring early covid-19 policy decisions on Tuesday.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Germán & Co

Bank finance for cleaner energy grows, but still lags fossil fuels - report

Reuters

LONDON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Banks gave 81 cents in financing support to low carbon energy supply for every dollar they provided to fossil fuels in 2021, a report showed on Tuesday, but they will need to ramp up their commitments much further for the world to hit its climate goals.

Several climate scenarios suggest that to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the world needs to be investing $4 in renewable energy for every $1 invested in fossil fuels by 2030.

Energy analysts BloombergNEF compiled data from 1,142 banks for what it calls an "Energy Supply Banking Ratio" to assess whether banks are aligning their financing to the real economy and the 1.5 degrees target.

In 2021, bank financing for energy supply totalled $1.9 trillion, just over $1 trillion of which went to fossil fuels and $842 billion to low carbon energy projects and companies, according to the report.

The bank financing ratio, of 81 cents to $1, was below the global energy supply investment ratio of 90 cents to $1.

The latter ratio has been climbing in recent years from around 0.45:1 between 2011 and 2015.

"While a bounce in fossil-fuel investment is expected to counter the disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the underlying economics of low-carbon energy supply mean its growth will be sustained," said BloombergNEF CEO Jon Moore, noting 2022's 15% rise in low carbon energy supply investment.

Individual banks' financing ratios varied. The Royal Bank of Canada had a 0.4 ratio and JP Morgan 0.7, against BNP Paribas' 1.7 and Deutsche Bank's 2.2, according to BloombergNEF, which said differences reflect geographic focus, client bases and strategies.

JP Morgan and RBC did not respond to requests for comment.

The report's findings differ from another study published by environmental groups last month which said the share of bank financing going to renewables had stagnated.

BloombergNEF said its research covered financing from far more banks than other studies.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

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Image: Germán & Co

The EU and UK have a Northern Ireland deal — so what’s in it?

The key concessions and single market safeguards in the newly-unveiled Windsor framework.

POLITICO EU BY CRISTINA GALLARDO, FEBRUARY 27, 2023

LONDON — After four months of intense talks (and plenty of squabbling before that), the EU and U.K. have a deal to resolve their long-running post-Brexit trade row over Northern Ireland.

But as U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak works to sell the so-called “Windsor framework” on the Northern Ireland protocol to Brexiteers and unionists, lawmakers on both sides of the English Channel and of the Irish Sea are getting to grips with the details.

From paperwork to plants, let POLITICO walk you through the new agreement, asking: Who has given ground, and how exactly will the deal thrashed out by EU and U.K. negotiators aim to keep the bloc’s prized single market secure?

Customs paperwork and checks

For businesses taking part in an expanded “trusted trader scheme,” the Windsor framework aims to considerably cut customs paperwork and checks on goods moving from Great Britain but destined to stay in Northern Ireland. 

These goods will pass through a “green lane” requiring minimal paperwork and be labeled “Not for EU,” while those heading for the EU single market in the Republic of Ireland will undergo full EU customs checks in Northern Ireland’s ports under a “red lane.”

Traders in the green lane will only need to complete a single, digitized certificate per truck movement, rather than multiple forms per load.

Sunak has already claimed that this means “any sense of a border in the Irish Sea” — deeply controversial among Northern Ireland’s unionist politicians — has now been “removed.”

However, it’s by no means a total end to Irish Sea red tape. An EU official said that although the deal delivers a “dramatic reduction” in the number of physical food safety checks, for example, there will still be some — those seen as “essential” to avoid the risk of goods entering the single market.

These checks will be based on risk assessments and intelligence, and aimed at preventing smuggling and criminality.

U.K. public health and safety standards will meanwhile apply to all retail food and drink within the U.K. internal market. British rules on public health, marketing, organics, labeling, genetic modification, and drinks such as wines, spirits and mineral waters will apply in Northern Ireland. This will remove more than 60 EU food and drink rules in the original protocol, which were detailed in more than 1,000 pages of legislation.

Supermarkets, wholesalers, hospitality and food producers are likely to welcome the new arrangements. Many had stopped supplying to Northern Ireland because the cost of filling out hundreds of certificates for each consignment was deemed too high for a market as small as Northern Ireland. 

Export declarations have been removed for the vast majority of goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.

The EU’s safeguards: While offering to drastically reduce the volume of checks carried out, the EU has toughened its criteria to become a trusted trader under the expanded scheme. The EU will now have access to databases tracking shipments of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in real time. The system was tested through the winter, helping build trust in Brussels, and is being fed with data from traders and U.K. authorities. The European Commission will be able to suspend part or all of these trade easements if the U.K. fails to comply with the new rules.

The timeline: The U.K. government said it will consult with businesses in the “coming months” before implementing the new rules. The green lane will come into force this fall. Labels for meat, meat products and minimally-processed dairy products such as fresh milk will come into force from October 1, 2024. All relevant products will be marked by July 1, 2025. “Shelf-stable” products like bread and pasta will not be labeled.

Governance

A key plank of the deal is the bid to address complaints by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — currently boycotting the power-sharing assembly in the region in opposition to the protocol — that lawmakers there did not have a say in the imposition of new EU rules in the region.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the Commission will have to give the U.K. government notice of future EU regulations intended to apply in Northern Ireland. According to Sunak, Stormont will be given a new power to “pull an emergency brake on changes to EU goods rules” based on “cross-community consent.”

Under this mechanism, the U.K. government will be able to suspend the application in Northern Ireland of an incoming piece of EU law at the request of at least 30 members of the assembly — a third of them. But if unionist parties in Northern Ireland want to trigger the new “Stormont brake,” they must first return to the power-sharing institutions which they abandoned last May. The EU and the U.K. could subsequently agree to apply such a rule in a meeting of the Joint Committee, which oversees the protocol.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this new tool remains an emergency mechanism that hopefully will not need to be used. A second EU official said it would be triggered “under the most exceptional circumstances and as a matter of last resort in a well-defined process” set out in a unilateral declaration by the U.K. These include that the rules have a “significant and lasting impact on the everyday lives” of people in the region.

If the EU disagrees with the U.K.’s trigger of the Stormont brake, the two would resolve the issue through independent arbitration, instead of involving the Court of Justice of the EU.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s courts will consider disputes over the application of EU rules in the region, and judges could decide whether to consult the CJEU on how to interpret them. In a key concession, the Commission has agreed not to unilaterally refer a case to the CJEU, although it retains the power to do so.

The EU’s safeguards: The CJEU will remain the “sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law” and will have the “final say” on EU single market disputes, von der Leyen stressed. Whether Brexiteers and the DUP are willing to accept that remains the million-dollar question.

Tax, state aid and EU rules

The U.K. government will now be able to set rules in areas such as VAT and state aid that will also apply in Northern Ireland — two major wins for Sunak that were rejected by the Commission in previous rounds of negotiations with other U.K. prime ministers.

It will, Sunak was at pains to point out Monday, allow Westminster to pass on a cut in alcohol duty that previously passed Northern Ireland by.

But London has had to give up on its idea of establishing a dual-regulatory mechanism that would have allowed Northern Ireland businesses to choose whether they would follow EU or British rules when manufacturing goods, depending on whether they intended to sell them in the EU single market or in the U.K. The whole idea was deemed by Brussels as impossible to police.

The EU’s safeguards: Northern Irish businesses producing goods for the U.K. internal market will only have to follow “less than 3 percent” of EU single market rules, a U.K. official said. But the nature of these regulations remains unclear, and there will be increased market surveillance and enforcement by U.K. authorities to try and reassure the EU.

The timeline: The U.K. government will be able to exercise these powers as soon as the Windsor framework comes into force.

Parcels

The EU and the U.K. have agreed to scrap customs processes for parcels being sent between consumers in Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

The EU’s safeguards: Parcels sent between businesses will now move through the new green lane, as is the case for other goods destined to stay in Northern Ireland. That should allow them to be monitored, but remove the need to undergo international customs procedures. Parcel operators will share commercial data with the U.K.’s tax authority, HMRC, in a bid to reduce risks to the EU single market.

Timeline: These new arrangements will take effect September 2024.

Pets

Residents in Great Britain will be able to take their dogs, cats and ferrets to Northern Ireland without having to fulfill a requirement for a rabies vaccine, tapeworm treatment and other checks.

Pets traveling from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and back will not be required to have any documentation, declarations, checks or health treatments.

The EU’s safeguards: Microchipped pets will be able to travel with a life-long pet travel document issued for free by the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Pet owners will tick a box in their travel booking acknowledging they accept the scheme rules and will not move their pet into the EU.

The timeline: The new rules will take effect fall 2023.

Medicines

Drugs approved for use by the U.K.’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, will be automatically available in every pharmacy and hospital in Northern Ireland, “at the same time and under the same conditions” as in the U.K., von der Leyen said. 

Businesses will need to secure approval for a U.K.-wide license from the MHRA to supply medicines to Northern Ireland, rather than having to go through the European Medicines Agency. The agreement removes any EU Falsified Medicines Directive packaging, labeling and barcode requirements for medicines. This means manufacturers will be able to produce a single medicines pack design for the whole of the U.K., including Northern Ireland.

Drugs being shipped into Northern Ireland from Great Britain will be freed of customs paperwork, checks and duties, with traders only being required to provide ordinary commercial information.

The EU’s safeguards: Medicines traveling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will do so via the new green lane, which will have monitoring to protect the single market built in.

The timeline: The U.K. government said it will engage with the medicines industry soon on these changes.

Plants

The deal lifts the protocol’s ban on seed potatoes entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, and its prohibition on trees and shrubs deemed of “high risk” for the EU single market. This will enable garden centers and other businesses in Northern Ireland to sell 11 native species to Great Britain and some from other regions.

The Windsor framework also removes sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks on all these plants, and ditches red tape on their shipment into Northern Ireland.

The EU’s safeguards: Supplying businesses will have to obtain a Northern Ireland plant health label, which will be the same as the plant passport already required within Great Britain, but with the addition of the words “for use in the U.K. only” and a QR code linking to the rules.

Russia’s strategy of plunging the country into darkness and cold has, if not outright failed, certainly not succeeded, either. Public opinion has not shifted as a result of the blackouts—polls in recent months have shown that more than eighty per cent of respondents in Ukraine want to continue the fight, the same number as before the attacks on the energy grid began. Over time, Ukraine’s air defenses have improved, and its technicians have got faster at repairing the electrical grid. Russia’s stock of long-range missiles, meanwhile, has dwindled, leading to less frequent attacks.

The onset of spring will bring lower electricity consumption, and Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, expects that the Ukrainian grid will soon stabilize. “Russia did not achieve its ultimate goal,” he said. “Yes, they managed to create problems for nearly every Ukrainian family.” But that is only half the story: “Instead of making us scared and unhappy, it made us angry, more resolved to win. They did not lower the morale of the nation; they mobilized the nation.”

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Image: Germán & Co

LNG expansion in Europe opposes climate goals, says research

Researchers warn the doubling down on long-term liquefied natural gas deals in Europe threatens to derail decarbonization efforts.

reuters BY BEATRICE BEDESCHI, WRITING FOR GAS OUTLOOK

FEBRUARY 8, 2023 5:00 AM CET

The raft of new liquefied natural gas (LNG) import projects being planned in Europe, as well as the long-term gas deals being signed by buyers in recent months are incompatible with decarbonization targets and risk jeopardizing the continent’s energy transition, a report by nonprofit research organization Global Energy Monitor (GEM) has warned.

The Ukraine war has led to a massive boost in import capacity across Europe, with 195 billion cubic meters/year lined up for commissioning between 2022 and 2026.

Some of this new capacity is already online, including the Krk floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) in Croatia, the Revithoussa LNG Terminal in Greece and the Eemshaven FSRU in the Netherlands, as well as the Wilhelmshaven and Lubmin FRSUs in Germany, which started receiving cargoes between December and January.

In 2021, the EU imported 155 billion cubic meters of gas from Russia, including LNG.

While some short-term supplies have been secured at a high price this winter, the vast majority of the new capacity will become available too late to address security issues for this winter and the next, which is when they’re most needed, the report argued.

The main concern is that all that planned capacity probably won’t be needed in the future.

While “LNG growing capacity could be in contrast with decarbonization targets… The main concern is that all that planned capacity probably won’t be needed in the future as the demand for LNG is not expected to grow at the same pace as the LNG future facilities are expected to be built,” Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, Europe energy analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) told Gas Outlook.

“For the last 10 years or more the gas demand in Europe hasn’t increased and if these new patterns in demand persist, the demand won’t be expected to grow in the future,” she said.

“As a result, it is likely that these new LNG terminals will become stranded assets in the future.”

Germany considers re-export option

At the same time, 15-20 year-long gas deals signed recently run contrary to EU law, which implies a 35 percent decrease in gas demand to 2035, the report said.

“Because it is a sellers’ market, sellers have the upper hand and buyers are being forced to consider longer-term contracts, even if they do not expect strong demand in the future,” Jaller-Makarewicz said.

Long-term agreements signed include Polish PGNiG’s 20-year deal with U.S. major Sempra for four billion cubic meters/year starting in 2027; and French Engie’s 15-year agreement also with Sempra for 1.2 billion cubic meters/year from 2027.

Moreover, Bulgaria’s state-owned Bulgargaz and Turkey’s Botas signed a deal in January granting Bulgaria access to Botas’ LNG and transit pipelines for 13 years.

The vast majority of contracts announced recently were however between U.S. exporters and German buyers.

“Fifteen years is great… I wouldn’t have had anything against 20 [years] or longer contracts,” Germany’s economy minister Robert Habeck was quoted as saying in November, commenting on Conoco Phillips’ deal with Qatar.

Habeck added in the future the need to meet climate targets and therefore to reduce gas volumes would result in German companies having to deliver the volumes to other countries.

Redirecting the volumes in the 2030s is an imperative for EU member states that are serious about hitting climate targets and reducing gas demand.

“Redirecting the volumes in the 2030s is an imperative for EU member states that are serious about hitting climate targets and reducing gas demand,” the GEM report’s author, Greig Aitken, told Gas Outlook. However, he said the “fundamental issue is that by entering long-term contracts at all, EU countries are potentially giving producer countries such as the U.S. the guarantees they need to continue production of fracked gas for export via new export terminals.”  

These need “longer-term contract guarantees to be financially feasible. The rush for new, non-Russian supplies”, he said, is likely to create “unnecessary gas lock-in for too long, however countries try to mitigate against this by rerouting supplies.”

Andy Flower, independent consultant at FlowerLNG, told Gas Outlook: “New U.S. projects typically require a 20-year contract to support the raising of funds to support the investment in liquefaction facilities, but the contracts have destination flexibility so cargoes can be traded to alternative markets if not needed in Europe to offset the cost.

“Non-U.S. project like Qatar are typically looking for a long-term contract with little or no destination flexibility, which makes it a major commitment for a European buyer when the EU is legislating for the reduction and eventual elimination of natural gas use.”

On the other hand, the fact many new terminals are relying on FSRUs means these “can be moved to other locations if no longer needed as has already happened with FSRU-based terminals in, for example, the USA, Brazil, Egypt and Israel, or used to trade as LNG carriers”, Flower said. “So the developers of these terminals are not making a 20-year or longer commitment to use them as FSRUs.”

Stranded asset risk for these is being downplayed by promoters with their claims about future conversion to green hydrogen.

The potential repurposing of these terminals for ammonia or hydrogen imports in later years has also been suggested as a way to address the risk of stranded assets.

However, “the economics and practicalities of these conversions are still very uncertain” and the “stranded asset risk for these is being downplayed by promoters with their claims about future conversion to green hydrogen,” Aitken said.

This article was originally published by Gas Outlook.

News round-up, Tuesday, February 28, 2023. (copia)

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Editor's thoughts…

—-”According to the journal Plos Pathogens from the University of Kent (England), the SARC-COv-2 virus was discovered for the first time on Friday, 17 November 2019, in Wuhan, China. An organism with a simple structure composed of proteins and nucleic acids can reproduce only within specific living cells, using its metabolism.

Our effective behaviours are the cruellest change that humanity has undergone because of the Coronavirus. This little —monster— certainly aroused the paranoia of terror in us in a very evil way... let us know.  It certainly did, that we would die if we were in the company of other individuals of our kind, who were then already submerged by the sophistication of the 2.0 world, where genuine expressions of affection, handshakes, and hugs ... which do so much good for the intangible parts of the so-called soul, have been replaced by intangible faces flowing at an infinite density —billions— per second, without any compassionate human contact whatsoever.

What cruelty have we been subjected to ... How many of our loved ones are not with us today?  Why?  Because —perhaps—, of a human error in a laboratory in the isolated province of Wuhan in millennium China”.

THE drought by germán & co, september, 2022

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Most read…

Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on covid-19 origins

Small shift in favor of ‘lab leak’ theory was prompted by new data and group of weapons-lab scientists

WP by Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima and  Shane Harris

Bank finance for cleaner energy grows, but still lags fossil fuels - report

Several climate scenarios suggest that to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the world needs to be investing $4 in renewable energy for every $1 invested in fossil fuels by 2030.

Reuters

The EU and UK have a Northern Ireland deal — so what’s in it?

The key concessions and single market safeguards in the newly-unveiled Windsor framework.

POLITICO EU BY CRISTINA GALLARDO, FEBRUARY 27, 2023

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…”We’ll need natural gas for years…

— but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says

cnbc.com, Anmar Frangoul

PUBLISHED MON, JAN 23 

AES chief says we’ll need natural gas for next 20 years

From the United States to the European Union, major economies around the world are laying out plans to move away from fossil fuels in favor of low and zero-carbon technologies.

It’s a colossal task that will require massive sums of money, huge political will and technological innovation. As the planned transition takes shape, there’s been a lot of talk about the relationship between hydrogen and natural gas.

During a panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of energy firm AES offered up his take on how the two could potentially dovetail with one another going forward.   

“I feel very confident in saying that, for the next 20 years, we need natural gas,” Andrés Gluski, who was speaking Wednesday, said. “Now, what we can start to do today is … start to blend it with green hydrogen,” he added.

“So we’re running tests that you can blend it up to, say 20%, in existing turbines, and new turbines are coming out that can burn … much higher percentages,” Gluski said.

“But it’s just difficult to see that you’re going to have enough green hydrogen to substitute it like, in the next 10 years.”

Change on the way, but scale is key

The planet’s green hydrogen sector may still be in a relatively early stage of development, but a number of major deals related to the technology have been struck in recent years.

In December 2022, for example, AES and Air Products said they planned to invest roughly $4 billion to develop a “mega-scale green hydrogen production facility” located in Texas.

According to the announcement, the project will incorporate around 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar and be able to produce more than 200 metric tons of hydrogen every day.

Despite the significant amount of money and renewables involved in the project, AES chief Gluski was at pains to highlight how much work lay ahead when it came to scaling up the sector as a whole.

The facility being planned with Air Products, he explained, could only “supply point one percent of the U.S. long haul trucking fleet.” Work to be done, then.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

Sourrce by MERCADO Dominican Republic

28 JUNE 2022

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

Armando Rodríguez, vice president and executive director of Seaboard, joins us for this Mercado Interview to talk about the company's contributions to the Dominican Republic's electricity sector. "Our plants have been strategically located by the authorities of the electricity sector to make it possible to reduce blackouts in Santo Domingo and save foreign currency for all Dominicans," he explains.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Germán & Co

Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on covid-19 origins

Small shift in favor of ‘lab leak’ theory was prompted by new data and group of weapons-lab scientists

WP by Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima and  Shane Harris

February 27, 2023

U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said Feb. 27 that China needs to be more honest about “what happened three years ago in Wuhan” with covid-19’s origin.

The theory that covid-19 started with a lab accident in central China received a modest boost in the latest U.S. intelligence assessment after the work of a little-known scientific team that conducts some of the federal government’s most secretive and technically challenging investigations of emerging security threats, current and former U.S. officials said Monday.

An analysis by experts from the U.S. national laboratory complex — including members of a storied team known as Z-Division — prompted the Energy Department to change its view earlier this year about the likely cause of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak, the officials said. Though initially undecided about covid-19’s origins, Energy officials concluded as part of a new government-wide intelligence assessment that a lab accident was most likely the triggering event for the world’s worst pandemic in a century.

But other intelligence agencies involved in the classified update — completed in the past few weeks and kept under wraps — were divided on the question of covid-19’s origins, with most still maintaining that a natural, evolutionary “spillover” from animals was the most likely explanation. Even the Energy Department’s analysis was carefully hedged, as the officials expressed only “low confidence” in their conclusion, according to U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a classified report.

The overall view — that there is as yet no definitive conclusion on the virus’s origin — has not changed since the release of an earlier version of the report by the Biden administration in 2021, according to the officials.

“The bottom line remains the same: Basically no one really knows,” one of the officials said.

Still, the news that Energy had shifted its view reignited what was already an intense debate on social media and in Washington, where members of Congress are preparing for hearings — some as early as Tuesday — exploring the circumstances behind the outbreak.

“To prevent the next pandemic, we need to know how this one began,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in response to news of the updated assessment, first reported Sunday by the Wall Street Journal. “The administration must move with a sense of urgency and use every tool at its disposal to ensure that we understand the origins of covid-19.”

U.S. officials confirmed that an updated assessment of covid-19’s origins was completed this year, and said the document was based on fresh data as well as new analysis by experts from eight intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council.

But the agencies are united, the official said, in the view that the virus was not man-made or developed as a bioweapon.

“‘Lab’ does not equal ‘man-made,’ the official said. “Even if it was a leak from a lab, they still think it would be a naturally occurring virus.”

Among the nine intelligence entities involved in the assessment, only the FBI had previously concluded, with “moderate” confidence, that covid-19 started with a lab accident. The Energy Department was the only agency that changed its view, while the CIA and one other agency remained undecided, lacking enough compelling evidence to support one conclusion over the other, officials said.

Even at low confidence, however, the Energy Department’s analysis carries weight. For its assessment, the department drew on the expertise of a team assembled from the U.S. national laboratory complex, which employs tens of thousands of scientists representing many technical specialties, from physics and data analysis to genomics and molecular biology.

The labs were established as part of the U.S. nuclear weapons program and operate largely in the classified realm. The department’s cadre of technical experts includes members of the Energy Department’s Z-Division, which since the 1960s has been involved in secretive investigations of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threats by U.S. adversaries, including China and Russia.

The Energy Department is “a technical organization with tens of thousands of scientists,” said a former energy official. “It’s more than just physics. It’s chemical and biological expertise. And they have a unique opportunity to look at intelligence from the technical aspect.”

Both the Energy Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the revised assessment. It was unclear what, precisely, prompted officials at Energy to see a lab leak as the more probable explanation for how covid-19 began.

Neither of the leading theories — a natural spillover or a lab leak — have been conclusively validated, in part because of China’s refusal to allow independent investigators access to environmental samples and other raw data from the earliest weeks of the outbreak.

Many scientists — and, at least for now, the majority of U.S. intelligence agencies — favor the spillover hypothesis, which holds that the virus jumped from bats to humans, perhaps at a Chinese market, and presumably after passing through a third species that had come to harbor what became known as the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Yet, three years after the outbreak began, the search for the elusive “carrier” species has produced no firm leads. The bats that naturally harbor viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 are native to Southeast Asia and southern China, about 1,000 miles from Wuhan, where the first cases of covid-19 were reported.

Likewise, no hard evidence of a lab leak has emerged. Supporters of the leak theory note that the outbreak began in a city that happens to be the world’s leading center for research on coronaviruses. China has had previous lab accidents, including an incident in 2004 in which lab workers were inadvertently exposed to the original SARS virus, and subsequently spread the pathogen outside the lab, resulting in multiple illnesses and at least one death, according to a World Health Organization probe.

China has repeatedly denied that an accident occurred. On Monday, Beijing denounced the new report linking Chinese labs to the pandemic, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning demanding that the United States “stop defaming China.”

“Covid tracing is a scientific issue that should not be politicized,” she said.

The Biden administration on Monday emphasized the inclusive nature of the evidence so far. National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby, speaking at a White House briefing, said the new intelligence assessment was part of an ongoing “whole of government” effort to investigate how covid-19 began, although he acknowledged that firm conclusions have remained elusive.

“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how covid started,” Kirby told reporters. “That work is still ongoing, but the president believes it’s really important that we continue that work and that we find out as best we can how it started so that we can better prevent a future pandemic.”

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is scheduled to testify at a Senate worldwide threats hearing next week and probably will be asked to address the matter. The House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic was set to hold a roundtable exploring early covid-19 policy decisions on Tuesday.

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Image: Germán & Co

Bank finance for cleaner energy grows, but still lags fossil fuels - report

Reuters

LONDON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Banks gave 81 cents in financing support to low carbon energy supply for every dollar they provided to fossil fuels in 2021, a report showed on Tuesday, but they will need to ramp up their commitments much further for the world to hit its climate goals.

Several climate scenarios suggest that to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the world needs to be investing $4 in renewable energy for every $1 invested in fossil fuels by 2030.

Energy analysts BloombergNEF compiled data from 1,142 banks for what it calls an "Energy Supply Banking Ratio" to assess whether banks are aligning their financing to the real economy and the 1.5 degrees target.

In 2021, bank financing for energy supply totalled $1.9 trillion, just over $1 trillion of which went to fossil fuels and $842 billion to low carbon energy projects and companies, according to the report.

The bank financing ratio, of 81 cents to $1, was below the global energy supply investment ratio of 90 cents to $1.

The latter ratio has been climbing in recent years from around 0.45:1 between 2011 and 2015.

"While a bounce in fossil-fuel investment is expected to counter the disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the underlying economics of low-carbon energy supply mean its growth will be sustained," said BloombergNEF CEO Jon Moore, noting 2022's 15% rise in low carbon energy supply investment.

Individual banks' financing ratios varied. The Royal Bank of Canada had a 0.4 ratio and JP Morgan 0.7, against BNP Paribas' 1.7 and Deutsche Bank's 2.2, according to BloombergNEF, which said differences reflect geographic focus, client bases and strategies.

JP Morgan and RBC did not respond to requests for comment.

The report's findings differ from another study published by environmental groups last month which said the share of bank financing going to renewables had stagnated.

BloombergNEF said its research covered financing from far more banks than other studies.

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Source: The New Yorker

The EU and UK have a Northern Ireland deal — so what’s in it?

The key concessions and single market safeguards in the newly-unveiled Windsor framework.

POLITICO EU BY CRISTINA GALLARDO, FEBRUARY 27, 2023

LONDON — After four months of intense talks (and plenty of squabbling before that), the EU and U.K. have a deal to resolve their long-running post-Brexit trade row over Northern Ireland.

But as U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak works to sell the so-called “Windsor framework” on the Northern Ireland protocol to Brexiteers and unionists, lawmakers on both sides of the English Channel and of the Irish Sea are getting to grips with the details.

From paperwork to plants, let POLITICO walk you through the new agreement, asking: Who has given ground, and how exactly will the deal thrashed out by EU and U.K. negotiators aim to keep the bloc’s prized single market secure?

Customs paperwork and checks

For businesses taking part in an expanded “trusted trader scheme,” the Windsor framework aims to considerably cut customs paperwork and checks on goods moving from Great Britain but destined to stay in Northern Ireland. 

These goods will pass through a “green lane” requiring minimal paperwork and be labeled “Not for EU,” while those heading for the EU single market in the Republic of Ireland will undergo full EU customs checks in Northern Ireland’s ports under a “red lane.”

Traders in the green lane will only need to complete a single, digitized certificate per truck movement, rather than multiple forms per load.

Sunak has already claimed that this means “any sense of a border in the Irish Sea” — deeply controversial among Northern Ireland’s unionist politicians — has now been “removed.”

However, it’s by no means a total end to Irish Sea red tape. An EU official said that although the deal delivers a “dramatic reduction” in the number of physical food safety checks, for example, there will still be some — those seen as “essential” to avoid the risk of goods entering the single market.

These checks will be based on risk assessments and intelligence, and aimed at preventing smuggling and criminality.

U.K. public health and safety standards will meanwhile apply to all retail food and drink within the U.K. internal market. British rules on public health, marketing, organics, labeling, genetic modification, and drinks such as wines, spirits and mineral waters will apply in Northern Ireland. This will remove more than 60 EU food and drink rules in the original protocol, which were detailed in more than 1,000 pages of legislation.

Supermarkets, wholesalers, hospitality and food producers are likely to welcome the new arrangements. Many had stopped supplying to Northern Ireland because the cost of filling out hundreds of certificates for each consignment was deemed too high for a market as small as Northern Ireland. 

Export declarations have been removed for the vast majority of goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.

The EU’s safeguards: While offering to drastically reduce the volume of checks carried out, the EU has toughened its criteria to become a trusted trader under the expanded scheme. The EU will now have access to databases tracking shipments of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in real time. The system was tested through the winter, helping build trust in Brussels, and is being fed with data from traders and U.K. authorities. The European Commission will be able to suspend part or all of these trade easements if the U.K. fails to comply with the new rules.

The timeline: The U.K. government said it will consult with businesses in the “coming months” before implementing the new rules. The green lane will come into force this fall. Labels for meat, meat products and minimally-processed dairy products such as fresh milk will come into force from October 1, 2024. All relevant products will be marked by July 1, 2025. “Shelf-stable” products like bread and pasta will not be labeled.

Governance

A key plank of the deal is the bid to address complaints by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — currently boycotting the power-sharing assembly in the region in opposition to the protocol — that lawmakers there did not have a say in the imposition of new EU rules in the region.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the Commission will have to give the U.K. government notice of future EU regulations intended to apply in Northern Ireland. According to Sunak, Stormont will be given a new power to “pull an emergency brake on changes to EU goods rules” based on “cross-community consent.”

Under this mechanism, the U.K. government will be able to suspend the application in Northern Ireland of an incoming piece of EU law at the request of at least 30 members of the assembly — a third of them. But if unionist parties in Northern Ireland want to trigger the new “Stormont brake,” they must first return to the power-sharing institutions which they abandoned last May. The EU and the U.K. could subsequently agree to apply such a rule in a meeting of the Joint Committee, which oversees the protocol.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this new tool remains an emergency mechanism that hopefully will not need to be used. A second EU official said it would be triggered “under the most exceptional circumstances and as a matter of last resort in a well-defined process” set out in a unilateral declaration by the U.K. These include that the rules have a “significant and lasting impact on the everyday lives” of people in the region.

If the EU disagrees with the U.K.’s trigger of the Stormont brake, the two would resolve the issue through independent arbitration, instead of involving the Court of Justice of the EU.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s courts will consider disputes over the application of EU rules in the region, and judges could decide whether to consult the CJEU on how to interpret them. In a key concession, the Commission has agreed not to unilaterally refer a case to the CJEU, although it retains the power to do so.

The EU’s safeguards: The CJEU will remain the “sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law” and will have the “final say” on EU single market disputes, von der Leyen stressed. Whether Brexiteers and the DUP are willing to accept that remains the million-dollar question.

Tax, state aid and EU rules

The U.K. government will now be able to set rules in areas such as VAT and state aid that will also apply in Northern Ireland — two major wins for Sunak that were rejected by the Commission in previous rounds of negotiations with other U.K. prime ministers.

It will, Sunak was at pains to point out Monday, allow Westminster to pass on a cut in alcohol duty that previously passed Northern Ireland by.

But London has had to give up on its idea of establishing a dual-regulatory mechanism that would have allowed Northern Ireland businesses to choose whether they would follow EU or British rules when manufacturing goods, depending on whether they intended to sell them in the EU single market or in the U.K. The whole idea was deemed by Brussels as impossible to police.

The EU’s safeguards: Northern Irish businesses producing goods for the U.K. internal market will only have to follow “less than 3 percent” of EU single market rules, a U.K. official said. But the nature of these regulations remains unclear, and there will be increased market surveillance and enforcement by U.K. authorities to try and reassure the EU.

The timeline: The U.K. government will be able to exercise these powers as soon as the Windsor framework comes into force.

Parcels

The EU and the U.K. have agreed to scrap customs processes for parcels being sent between consumers in Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

The EU’s safeguards: Parcels sent between businesses will now move through the new green lane, as is the case for other goods destined to stay in Northern Ireland. That should allow them to be monitored, but remove the need to undergo international customs procedures. Parcel operators will share commercial data with the U.K.’s tax authority, HMRC, in a bid to reduce risks to the EU single market.

Timeline: These new arrangements will take effect September 2024.

Pets

Residents in Great Britain will be able to take their dogs, cats and ferrets to Northern Ireland without having to fulfill a requirement for a rabies vaccine, tapeworm treatment and other checks.

Pets traveling from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and back will not be required to have any documentation, declarations, checks or health treatments.

The EU’s safeguards: Microchipped pets will be able to travel with a life-long pet travel document issued for free by the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Pet owners will tick a box in their travel booking acknowledging they accept the scheme rules and will not move their pet into the EU.

The timeline: The new rules will take effect fall 2023.

Medicines

Drugs approved for use by the U.K.’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, will be automatically available in every pharmacy and hospital in Northern Ireland, “at the same time and under the same conditions” as in the U.K., von der Leyen said. 

Businesses will need to secure approval for a U.K.-wide license from the MHRA to supply medicines to Northern Ireland, rather than having to go through the European Medicines Agency. The agreement removes any EU Falsified Medicines Directive packaging, labeling and barcode requirements for medicines. This means manufacturers will be able to produce a single medicines pack design for the whole of the U.K., including Northern Ireland.

Drugs being shipped into Northern Ireland from Great Britain will be freed of customs paperwork, checks and duties, with traders only being required to provide ordinary commercial information.

The EU’s safeguards: Medicines traveling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will do so via the new green lane, which will have monitoring to protect the single market built in.

The timeline: The U.K. government said it will engage with the medicines industry soon on these changes.

Plants

The deal lifts the protocol’s ban on seed potatoes entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, and its prohibition on trees and shrubs deemed of “high risk” for the EU single market. This will enable garden centers and other businesses in Northern Ireland to sell 11 native species to Great Britain and some from other regions.

The Windsor framework also removes sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks on all these plants, and ditches red tape on their shipment into Northern Ireland.

The EU’s safeguards: Supplying businesses will have to obtain a Northern Ireland plant health label, which will be the same as the plant passport already required within Great Britain, but with the addition of the words “for use in the U.K. only” and a QR code linking to the rules.

Russia’s strategy of plunging the country into darkness and cold has, if not outright failed, certainly not succeeded, either. Public opinion has not shifted as a result of the blackouts—polls in recent months have shown that more than eighty per cent of respondents in Ukraine want to continue the fight, the same number as before the attacks on the energy grid began. Over time, Ukraine’s air defenses have improved, and its technicians have got faster at repairing the electrical grid. Russia’s stock of long-range missiles, meanwhile, has dwindled, leading to less frequent attacks.

The onset of spring will bring lower electricity consumption, and Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, expects that the Ukrainian grid will soon stabilize. “Russia did not achieve its ultimate goal,” he said. “Yes, they managed to create problems for nearly every Ukrainian family.” But that is only half the story: “Instead of making us scared and unhappy, it made us angry, more resolved to win. They did not lower the morale of the nation; they mobilized the nation.”

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News round-up, Tuesday, February 28, 2023.

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Editor's thoughts…

—-”According to the journal Plos Pathogens from the University of Kent (England), the SARC-COv-2 virus was discovered for the first time on Friday, 17 November 2019, in Wuhan, China. An organism with a simple structure composed of proteins and nucleic acids can reproduce only within specific living cells, using its metabolism.

Our effective behaviours are the cruellest change that humanity has undergone because of the Coronavirus. This little —monster— certainly aroused the paranoia of terror in us in a very evil way... let us know.  It certainly did, that we would die if we were in the company of other individuals of our kind, who were then already submerged by the sophistication of the 2.0 world, where genuine expressions of affection, handshakes, and hugs ... which do so much good for the intangible parts of the so-called soul, have been replaced by intangible faces flowing at an infinite density —billions— per second, without any compassionate human contact whatsoever.

What cruelty have we been subjected to ... How many of our loved ones are not with us today?  Why?  Because —perhaps—, of a human error in a laboratory in the isolated province of Wuhan in millennium China”.

THE drought by germán & co, september, 2022

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Most read…

Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on covid-19 origins

Small shift in favor of ‘lab leak’ theory was prompted by new data and group of weapons-lab scientists

WP by Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima and  Shane Harris

Bank finance for cleaner energy grows, but still lags fossil fuels - report

Several climate scenarios suggest that to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the world needs to be investing $4 in renewable energy for every $1 invested in fossil fuels by 2030.

Reuters

The EU and UK have a Northern Ireland deal — so what’s in it?

The key concessions and single market safeguards in the newly-unveiled Windsor framework.

POLITICO EU BY CRISTINA GALLARDO, FEBRUARY 27, 2023

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…”We’ll need natural gas for years…

— but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says

cnbc.com, Anmar Frangoul

PUBLISHED MON, JAN 23 

AES chief says we’ll need natural gas for next 20 years

From the United States to the European Union, major economies around the world are laying out plans to move away from fossil fuels in favor of low and zero-carbon technologies.

It’s a colossal task that will require massive sums of money, huge political will and technological innovation. As the planned transition takes shape, there’s been a lot of talk about the relationship between hydrogen and natural gas.

During a panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of energy firm AES offered up his take on how the two could potentially dovetail with one another going forward.   

“I feel very confident in saying that, for the next 20 years, we need natural gas,” Andrés Gluski, who was speaking Wednesday, said. “Now, what we can start to do today is … start to blend it with green hydrogen,” he added.

“So we’re running tests that you can blend it up to, say 20%, in existing turbines, and new turbines are coming out that can burn … much higher percentages,” Gluski said.

“But it’s just difficult to see that you’re going to have enough green hydrogen to substitute it like, in the next 10 years.”

Change on the way, but scale is key

The planet’s green hydrogen sector may still be in a relatively early stage of development, but a number of major deals related to the technology have been struck in recent years.

In December 2022, for example, AES and Air Products said they planned to invest roughly $4 billion to develop a “mega-scale green hydrogen production facility” located in Texas.

According to the announcement, the project will incorporate around 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar and be able to produce more than 200 metric tons of hydrogen every day.

Despite the significant amount of money and renewables involved in the project, AES chief Gluski was at pains to highlight how much work lay ahead when it came to scaling up the sector as a whole.

The facility being planned with Air Products, he explained, could only “supply point one percent of the U.S. long haul trucking fleet.” Work to be done, then.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

Sourrce by MERCADO Dominican Republic

28 JUNE 2022

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

Armando Rodríguez, vice president and executive director of Seaboard, joins us for this Mercado Interview to talk about the company's contributions to the Dominican Republic's electricity sector. "Our plants have been strategically located by the authorities of the electricity sector to make it possible to reduce blackouts in Santo Domingo and save foreign currency for all Dominicans," he explains.

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Image: Germán & Co

Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on covid-19 origins

Small shift in favor of ‘lab leak’ theory was prompted by new data and group of weapons-lab scientists

WP by Joby Warrick, Ellen Nakashima and  Shane Harris

February 27, 2023

U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said Feb. 27 that China needs to be more honest about “what happened three years ago in Wuhan” with covid-19’s origin.

The theory that covid-19 started with a lab accident in central China received a modest boost in the latest U.S. intelligence assessment after the work of a little-known scientific team that conducts some of the federal government’s most secretive and technically challenging investigations of emerging security threats, current and former U.S. officials said Monday.

An analysis by experts from the U.S. national laboratory complex — including members of a storied team known as Z-Division — prompted the Energy Department to change its view earlier this year about the likely cause of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak, the officials said. Though initially undecided about covid-19’s origins, Energy officials concluded as part of a new government-wide intelligence assessment that a lab accident was most likely the triggering event for the world’s worst pandemic in a century.

But other intelligence agencies involved in the classified update — completed in the past few weeks and kept under wraps — were divided on the question of covid-19’s origins, with most still maintaining that a natural, evolutionary “spillover” from animals was the most likely explanation. Even the Energy Department’s analysis was carefully hedged, as the officials expressed only “low confidence” in their conclusion, according to U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a classified report.

The overall view — that there is as yet no definitive conclusion on the virus’s origin — has not changed since the release of an earlier version of the report by the Biden administration in 2021, according to the officials.

“The bottom line remains the same: Basically no one really knows,” one of the officials said.

Still, the news that Energy had shifted its view reignited what was already an intense debate on social media and in Washington, where members of Congress are preparing for hearings — some as early as Tuesday — exploring the circumstances behind the outbreak.

“To prevent the next pandemic, we need to know how this one began,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in response to news of the updated assessment, first reported Sunday by the Wall Street Journal. “The administration must move with a sense of urgency and use every tool at its disposal to ensure that we understand the origins of covid-19.”

U.S. officials confirmed that an updated assessment of covid-19’s origins was completed this year, and said the document was based on fresh data as well as new analysis by experts from eight intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council.

But the agencies are united, the official said, in the view that the virus was not man-made or developed as a bioweapon.

“‘Lab’ does not equal ‘man-made,’ the official said. “Even if it was a leak from a lab, they still think it would be a naturally occurring virus.”

Among the nine intelligence entities involved in the assessment, only the FBI had previously concluded, with “moderate” confidence, that covid-19 started with a lab accident. The Energy Department was the only agency that changed its view, while the CIA and one other agency remained undecided, lacking enough compelling evidence to support one conclusion over the other, officials said.

Even at low confidence, however, the Energy Department’s analysis carries weight. For its assessment, the department drew on the expertise of a team assembled from the U.S. national laboratory complex, which employs tens of thousands of scientists representing many technical specialties, from physics and data analysis to genomics and molecular biology.

The labs were established as part of the U.S. nuclear weapons program and operate largely in the classified realm. The department’s cadre of technical experts includes members of the Energy Department’s Z-Division, which since the 1960s has been involved in secretive investigations of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threats by U.S. adversaries, including China and Russia.

The Energy Department is “a technical organization with tens of thousands of scientists,” said a former energy official. “It’s more than just physics. It’s chemical and biological expertise. And they have a unique opportunity to look at intelligence from the technical aspect.”

Both the Energy Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the revised assessment. It was unclear what, precisely, prompted officials at Energy to see a lab leak as the more probable explanation for how covid-19 began.

Neither of the leading theories — a natural spillover or a lab leak — have been conclusively validated, in part because of China’s refusal to allow independent investigators access to environmental samples and other raw data from the earliest weeks of the outbreak.

Many scientists — and, at least for now, the majority of U.S. intelligence agencies — favor the spillover hypothesis, which holds that the virus jumped from bats to humans, perhaps at a Chinese market, and presumably after passing through a third species that had come to harbor what became known as the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Yet, three years after the outbreak began, the search for the elusive “carrier” species has produced no firm leads. The bats that naturally harbor viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 are native to Southeast Asia and southern China, about 1,000 miles from Wuhan, where the first cases of covid-19 were reported.

Likewise, no hard evidence of a lab leak has emerged. Supporters of the leak theory note that the outbreak began in a city that happens to be the world’s leading center for research on coronaviruses. China has had previous lab accidents, including an incident in 2004 in which lab workers were inadvertently exposed to the original SARS virus, and subsequently spread the pathogen outside the lab, resulting in multiple illnesses and at least one death, according to a World Health Organization probe.

China has repeatedly denied that an accident occurred. On Monday, Beijing denounced the new report linking Chinese labs to the pandemic, with Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning demanding that the United States “stop defaming China.”

“Covid tracing is a scientific issue that should not be politicized,” she said.

The Biden administration on Monday emphasized the inclusive nature of the evidence so far. National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby, speaking at a White House briefing, said the new intelligence assessment was part of an ongoing “whole of government” effort to investigate how covid-19 began, although he acknowledged that firm conclusions have remained elusive.

“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how covid started,” Kirby told reporters. “That work is still ongoing, but the president believes it’s really important that we continue that work and that we find out as best we can how it started so that we can better prevent a future pandemic.”

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines is scheduled to testify at a Senate worldwide threats hearing next week and probably will be asked to address the matter. The House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic was set to hold a roundtable exploring early covid-19 policy decisions on Tuesday.

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Image: Germán & Co

Bank finance for cleaner energy grows, but still lags fossil fuels - report

Reuters

LONDON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Banks gave 81 cents in financing support to low carbon energy supply for every dollar they provided to fossil fuels in 2021, a report showed on Tuesday, but they will need to ramp up their commitments much further for the world to hit its climate goals.

Several climate scenarios suggest that to limit global temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, the world needs to be investing $4 in renewable energy for every $1 invested in fossil fuels by 2030.

Energy analysts BloombergNEF compiled data from 1,142 banks for what it calls an "Energy Supply Banking Ratio" to assess whether banks are aligning their financing to the real economy and the 1.5 degrees target.

In 2021, bank financing for energy supply totalled $1.9 trillion, just over $1 trillion of which went to fossil fuels and $842 billion to low carbon energy projects and companies, according to the report.

The bank financing ratio, of 81 cents to $1, was below the global energy supply investment ratio of 90 cents to $1.

The latter ratio has been climbing in recent years from around 0.45:1 between 2011 and 2015.

"While a bounce in fossil-fuel investment is expected to counter the disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the underlying economics of low-carbon energy supply mean its growth will be sustained," said BloombergNEF CEO Jon Moore, noting 2022's 15% rise in low carbon energy supply investment.

Individual banks' financing ratios varied. The Royal Bank of Canada had a 0.4 ratio and JP Morgan 0.7, against BNP Paribas' 1.7 and Deutsche Bank's 2.2, according to BloombergNEF, which said differences reflect geographic focus, client bases and strategies.

JP Morgan and RBC did not respond to requests for comment.

The report's findings differ from another study published by environmental groups last month which said the share of bank financing going to renewables had stagnated.

BloombergNEF said its research covered financing from far more banks than other studies.

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Source: The New Yorker

The EU and UK have a Northern Ireland deal — so what’s in it?

The key concessions and single market safeguards in the newly-unveiled Windsor framework.

POLITICO EU BY CRISTINA GALLARDO, FEBRUARY 27, 2023

LONDON — After four months of intense talks (and plenty of squabbling before that), the EU and U.K. have a deal to resolve their long-running post-Brexit trade row over Northern Ireland.

But as U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak works to sell the so-called “Windsor framework” on the Northern Ireland protocol to Brexiteers and unionists, lawmakers on both sides of the English Channel and of the Irish Sea are getting to grips with the details.

From paperwork to plants, let POLITICO walk you through the new agreement, asking: Who has given ground, and how exactly will the deal thrashed out by EU and U.K. negotiators aim to keep the bloc’s prized single market secure?

Customs paperwork and checks

For businesses taking part in an expanded “trusted trader scheme,” the Windsor framework aims to considerably cut customs paperwork and checks on goods moving from Great Britain but destined to stay in Northern Ireland. 

These goods will pass through a “green lane” requiring minimal paperwork and be labeled “Not for EU,” while those heading for the EU single market in the Republic of Ireland will undergo full EU customs checks in Northern Ireland’s ports under a “red lane.”

Traders in the green lane will only need to complete a single, digitized certificate per truck movement, rather than multiple forms per load.

Sunak has already claimed that this means “any sense of a border in the Irish Sea” — deeply controversial among Northern Ireland’s unionist politicians — has now been “removed.”

However, it’s by no means a total end to Irish Sea red tape. An EU official said that although the deal delivers a “dramatic reduction” in the number of physical food safety checks, for example, there will still be some — those seen as “essential” to avoid the risk of goods entering the single market.

These checks will be based on risk assessments and intelligence, and aimed at preventing smuggling and criminality.

U.K. public health and safety standards will meanwhile apply to all retail food and drink within the U.K. internal market. British rules on public health, marketing, organics, labeling, genetic modification, and drinks such as wines, spirits and mineral waters will apply in Northern Ireland. This will remove more than 60 EU food and drink rules in the original protocol, which were detailed in more than 1,000 pages of legislation.

Supermarkets, wholesalers, hospitality and food producers are likely to welcome the new arrangements. Many had stopped supplying to Northern Ireland because the cost of filling out hundreds of certificates for each consignment was deemed too high for a market as small as Northern Ireland. 

Export declarations have been removed for the vast majority of goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.

The EU’s safeguards: While offering to drastically reduce the volume of checks carried out, the EU has toughened its criteria to become a trusted trader under the expanded scheme. The EU will now have access to databases tracking shipments of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland in real time. The system was tested through the winter, helping build trust in Brussels, and is being fed with data from traders and U.K. authorities. The European Commission will be able to suspend part or all of these trade easements if the U.K. fails to comply with the new rules.

The timeline: The U.K. government said it will consult with businesses in the “coming months” before implementing the new rules. The green lane will come into force this fall. Labels for meat, meat products and minimally-processed dairy products such as fresh milk will come into force from October 1, 2024. All relevant products will be marked by July 1, 2025. “Shelf-stable” products like bread and pasta will not be labeled.

Governance

A key plank of the deal is the bid to address complaints by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — currently boycotting the power-sharing assembly in the region in opposition to the protocol — that lawmakers there did not have a say in the imposition of new EU rules in the region.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the Commission will have to give the U.K. government notice of future EU regulations intended to apply in Northern Ireland. According to Sunak, Stormont will be given a new power to “pull an emergency brake on changes to EU goods rules” based on “cross-community consent.”

Under this mechanism, the U.K. government will be able to suspend the application in Northern Ireland of an incoming piece of EU law at the request of at least 30 members of the assembly — a third of them. But if unionist parties in Northern Ireland want to trigger the new “Stormont brake,” they must first return to the power-sharing institutions which they abandoned last May. The EU and the U.K. could subsequently agree to apply such a rule in a meeting of the Joint Committee, which oversees the protocol.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this new tool remains an emergency mechanism that hopefully will not need to be used. A second EU official said it would be triggered “under the most exceptional circumstances and as a matter of last resort in a well-defined process” set out in a unilateral declaration by the U.K. These include that the rules have a “significant and lasting impact on the everyday lives” of people in the region.

If the EU disagrees with the U.K.’s trigger of the Stormont brake, the two would resolve the issue through independent arbitration, instead of involving the Court of Justice of the EU.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland’s courts will consider disputes over the application of EU rules in the region, and judges could decide whether to consult the CJEU on how to interpret them. In a key concession, the Commission has agreed not to unilaterally refer a case to the CJEU, although it retains the power to do so.

The EU’s safeguards: The CJEU will remain the “sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law” and will have the “final say” on EU single market disputes, von der Leyen stressed. Whether Brexiteers and the DUP are willing to accept that remains the million-dollar question.

Tax, state aid and EU rules

The U.K. government will now be able to set rules in areas such as VAT and state aid that will also apply in Northern Ireland — two major wins for Sunak that were rejected by the Commission in previous rounds of negotiations with other U.K. prime ministers.

It will, Sunak was at pains to point out Monday, allow Westminster to pass on a cut in alcohol duty that previously passed Northern Ireland by.

But London has had to give up on its idea of establishing a dual-regulatory mechanism that would have allowed Northern Ireland businesses to choose whether they would follow EU or British rules when manufacturing goods, depending on whether they intended to sell them in the EU single market or in the U.K. The whole idea was deemed by Brussels as impossible to police.

The EU’s safeguards: Northern Irish businesses producing goods for the U.K. internal market will only have to follow “less than 3 percent” of EU single market rules, a U.K. official said. But the nature of these regulations remains unclear, and there will be increased market surveillance and enforcement by U.K. authorities to try and reassure the EU.

The timeline: The U.K. government will be able to exercise these powers as soon as the Windsor framework comes into force.

Parcels

The EU and the U.K. have agreed to scrap customs processes for parcels being sent between consumers in Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

The EU’s safeguards: Parcels sent between businesses will now move through the new green lane, as is the case for other goods destined to stay in Northern Ireland. That should allow them to be monitored, but remove the need to undergo international customs procedures. Parcel operators will share commercial data with the U.K.’s tax authority, HMRC, in a bid to reduce risks to the EU single market.

Timeline: These new arrangements will take effect September 2024.

Pets

Residents in Great Britain will be able to take their dogs, cats and ferrets to Northern Ireland without having to fulfill a requirement for a rabies vaccine, tapeworm treatment and other checks.

Pets traveling from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and back will not be required to have any documentation, declarations, checks or health treatments.

The EU’s safeguards: Microchipped pets will be able to travel with a life-long pet travel document issued for free by the U.K.’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Pet owners will tick a box in their travel booking acknowledging they accept the scheme rules and will not move their pet into the EU.

The timeline: The new rules will take effect fall 2023.

Medicines

Drugs approved for use by the U.K.’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, will be automatically available in every pharmacy and hospital in Northern Ireland, “at the same time and under the same conditions” as in the U.K., von der Leyen said. 

Businesses will need to secure approval for a U.K.-wide license from the MHRA to supply medicines to Northern Ireland, rather than having to go through the European Medicines Agency. The agreement removes any EU Falsified Medicines Directive packaging, labeling and barcode requirements for medicines. This means manufacturers will be able to produce a single medicines pack design for the whole of the U.K., including Northern Ireland.

Drugs being shipped into Northern Ireland from Great Britain will be freed of customs paperwork, checks and duties, with traders only being required to provide ordinary commercial information.

The EU’s safeguards: Medicines traveling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will do so via the new green lane, which will have monitoring to protect the single market built in.

The timeline: The U.K. government said it will engage with the medicines industry soon on these changes.

Plants

The deal lifts the protocol’s ban on seed potatoes entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, and its prohibition on trees and shrubs deemed of “high risk” for the EU single market. This will enable garden centers and other businesses in Northern Ireland to sell 11 native species to Great Britain and some from other regions.

The Windsor framework also removes sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks on all these plants, and ditches red tape on their shipment into Northern Ireland.

The EU’s safeguards: Supplying businesses will have to obtain a Northern Ireland plant health label, which will be the same as the plant passport already required within Great Britain, but with the addition of the words “for use in the U.K. only” and a QR code linking to the rules.

Russia’s strategy of plunging the country into darkness and cold has, if not outright failed, certainly not succeeded, either. Public opinion has not shifted as a result of the blackouts—polls in recent months have shown that more than eighty per cent of respondents in Ukraine want to continue the fight, the same number as before the attacks on the energy grid began. Over time, Ukraine’s air defenses have improved, and its technicians have got faster at repairing the electrical grid. Russia’s stock of long-range missiles, meanwhile, has dwindled, leading to less frequent attacks.

The onset of spring will bring lower electricity consumption, and Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, expects that the Ukrainian grid will soon stabilize. “Russia did not achieve its ultimate goal,” he said. “Yes, they managed to create problems for nearly every Ukrainian family.” But that is only half the story: “Instead of making us scared and unhappy, it made us angry, more resolved to win. They did not lower the morale of the nation; they mobilized the nation.”

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Who is China's new foreign minister in charge of finding —a glimmer of hope— for Russia-Ukraine peace talks?

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"You can't hide an elephant," Martin said, referring to a refrain he heard several times in Beijing. In other words, China's international standing has now reached a point where a low-key approach to diplomacy is inappropriate, if not impossible."

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday acknowledged for the first time China's "concerns" about the war in Ukraine.

"We understand your questions and concerns," he told his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, during their first face-to-face meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, since Moscow decided to invade Ukraine in late February, turning the global geopolitical scene upside down.

El País by Guillermo Abril, Beijing, 15 September 2022

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What is worse, negotiation or war?

Significant dispute causes opposing interests (or what we think are opposing interests) to be at the core of the most conflict. Three visions on the War:

Sun Tzu (China 544 BC) the premise of The Art of War is that diplomacy should be used to avoid war. If it cannot be avoided, it should be fought strategically and psychologically in order to minimise damage and resource waste.

Hugo Grotius (10 April 1583, Delft, Holland - 28 August 1645,  Rostock, Swedish Pomerania) published his seminal work De Jure Belli ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace) in 1629 during the Thirty Years' War, which described the political order as a loose international society and explored the idea of self-defence. His recommendations showed tolerance and changed the nature of wars in Europe, leading to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

As the United States Ambassador to Germany during the rise of Hitler's dominance in 1933, history professor William E. Dodd (Clayton, North Carolina, 28 February of 1869, Virginia, USA, 9 February 1940) would step outside his comfort zone, with sometimes complicated thoughts for a diplomat in times of crisis... One of the most well-known is: Why is it so difficult for world leaders to learn, adjust policies, and avoid the disasters that have occurred so frequently in the past?

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The images are self-explanatory

The Kremlin, Moscow, February 22, 2023

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Illustration by Eleanor Shakespeare

The proposal from China…

China calls for a cease-fire in Ukraine while warning Moscow against using nuclear weapons, and insists that "dialogue and negotiations are the only viable way out in Ukraine," according to the Asian superpower's government.

The Chinese bid on Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sparked much debate and suspicion... However, China, the East's forgotten ally during WWII, has taken a cautious stance toward the Kremlin... Mr. Quin Gang, the newly appointed Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China, has been tasked with driving the challenger..

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China’s new foreign minister and the taming of “wolf warrior” diplomacy

newstatesman By Katie Stallard

Qin Gang's rise from trusted aide to China's leader to ambassador to the US and then foreign minister reflects the country's increasingly assertive foreign policy, known as "wolf warrior" diplomacy.

“For a long time among the Chinese public, there was a perception that Chinese diplomats were too passive, that they didn’t defend China rigorously enough,” said Peter Martin, author of China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy. Some citizens sent calcium tablets to the foreign ministry, urging diplomats to strengthen their spines. “That started to shift under Hu Jintao [general secretary from 2002 to 2012],” Martin explained. After Xi came to power in 2012, he demanded that China be treated with respect as the world’s second-largest economy and told his diplomats to show “fighting spirit”.

Born in Tianjin, near Beijing, in 1966 – the same year Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution began – Qin seems to have aspired to a career in diplomacy at an early stage. He studied international politics at the foreign ministry’s Institute of International Relations, and got his first job, at 22, in the bureau for diplomatic missions in Beijing, clipping news articles. He joined the foreign ministry in 1992, in the department of west European affairs, and completed three postings to the UK embassy, an experience he likened to winning the lottery.

While little is known about his personal life beyond that he is married with a son (such a dearth of facts is not unusual in China’s opaque political system), Qin’s professional career tracks the country’s re-emergence as a major power. Aged ten when Chairman Mao died in 1976, he joined the foreign ministry as the height of China’s “reform and opening up” period, as the country was pursuing closer relations with the West and membership of the World Trade Organisation (granted in 2001). He was a spokesman in Beijing during the global financial crisis in 2008, which saw China recover faster than the US and question the future of the Western-dominated financial system.

But it was under Xi that Qin rose to higher office. He became head of Xi’s protocol department in 2014, where he accompanied the leader on trips overseas and is said to have paid great attention to ensuring Xi was afforded sufficient respect. As relations with the US deteriorated in subsequent years, Qin’s rise continued. He became vice-minister of foreign affairs in 2018 and ambassador to Washington in 2021, where he served for 17 months before being named foreign minister on 30 December 2022. At 56, he is one of the youngest people ever to hold the post.

While Qin’s reputation as a wolf warrior preceded his arrival in Washington, his approach as ambassador was more restrained. With Joe Biden in the White House, both countries hoped to stabilise relations and slow an apparent spiral towards open confrontation. “He was here to make nice and mend ties, not to do more damage,” said Yun Sun.

Yet there was a limit to how much of a difference he could make, given the parlous state of relations. Qin’s access to senior US officials was reportedly limited, with few authorised to meet him (the White House has denied this). So Qin focused on public diplomacy instead, posting photos on Twitter of meetings with Elon Musk, driving a tractor on a visit to farms in Iowa, and throwing the first pitch at a St Louis Cardinals baseball game. Still, American views of China darkened during his posting. According to the Pew Research Center, 82 per cent of Americans surveyed said they had an unfavourable opinion of China in 2022. This trend was repeated across the democratic world, fuelled by China’s heavy-handed approach to territorial and trade disputes. The demand that diplomats show “fighting spirit” has done little to win China friends abroad.

There are signs that the worst excesses of wolf warrior diplomacy are being tamed. During a politburo study session in May 2021, Xi called for efforts to promote a “trustworthy, lovable and respectable” image of China. In early January, Zhao Lijian, a foreign ministry spokesman and another notorious wolf warrior, was sidelined – transferred to a department that handles land and maritime borders.

“I think there is a recognition, from the top leadership down, that some of the more extreme examples of wolf warrior diplomacy were damaging China’s international reputation and there was a need for some kind of tactical recalibration,” Martin said. We should not expect its diplomats to adopt a conciliatory tone, but China seems to be trying to balance a robust defence of national interests with outreach to trading partners, as it seeks to rebuild economic growth after the self-imposed isolation of its “zero Covid” policy.

Despite his “Warrior Gang” notoriety, Qin’s appointment fits this new approach. In previous roles, he had “a reputation among European diplomats as someone who was very capable of acting like a wolf warrior in private, dressing down officials and using very assertive language about China’s place in the world,” Martin said. But “he is capable of doing the charm-offensive thing too – addressing think tank audiences, working diplomatic receptions… Xi needs someone like that in charge of China’s diplomatic apparatus”.

Yun Sun said that Qin’s recent experience in the US could also help to steady relations between the two powers. “Qin’s tenure as the ambassador in Washington was clearly aimed at familiarising him with the key issues and personnel in the bilateral relationship,” Sun said. “It also shows Xi wants someone he knows and trusts to handle foreign relations.”

This won’t mean the end of Chinese diplomats berating their foreign counterparts in public, however. As China’s economic prospects look less assured, Xi won’t hesitate to stoke nationalism to redirect domestic discontent towards external enemies. He will not waver in his conviction that the days of hiding and biding are over; that China is a great power once again and must be treated as such.

“There is a refrain that I heard several times in Beijing,” Martin said: “You can’t hide an elephant. In other words, China’s international status has now reached a point where it’s inappropriate, and maybe impossible, for it to have a low-key approach to diplomacy.”

Qin has put this more colourfully, answering a question about increasing defence budgets in 2014 by scoffing that China was “not just a boy scout with a red-tasselled gun”. Besides, he continued, “even a boy scout grows bigger and bigger every year”. Both Beijing’s sense of its status in the world and Qin’s seniority have only increased since. If there is any change to China’s foreign policy in the months ahead, it will be more in style than in substance. An early test will come when the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, meets Qin in Beijing in early February. China’s diplomats may try to avoid picking fights, but that doesn’t mean they have any intention of backing down.

Russian nuclear fuel: The habit Europe just can’t break

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Quote of the day…

Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to turn off the gas taps while the EU turned increasingly to liquefied natural gas deliveries from elsewhere caused the reliance on Moscow to tumble from 40 percent of the bloc's gas supply before the war to less than 10 percent now.

POLITICO EU

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Image: Russias Novovoronezh plant in central Russia which is a sister project to Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant.

The EU managed to quickly cut down on Russian coal, gas and oil supplies, but can’t seem to do the same for nuclear.

POLITICO EU BY VICTOR JACK AND CHARLIE COOPER, FEBRUARY 23

Europe is on track to kick its addiction to Russian fossil fuels, but can't seem to replicate that success with nuclear energy a year into the Ukraine war.

The EU's economic sanctions on Russian coal and oil permanently reshaped trade and left Moscow in a “much diminished position,” according to the International Energy Agency. Coal imports have dropped to zero, and it is illegal for Russian crude to be imported by ship; only four countries still receive it by pipeline.

That's compared to the bloc getting 54 percent of its hard coal imports and one-quarter of its oil from Russia in 2020.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to turn off the gas taps while the EU turned increasingly to liquefied natural gas deliveries from elsewhere caused the reliance on Moscow to tumble from 40 percent of the bloc's gas supply before the war to less than 10 percent now.

Source: IEAE

But nuclear energy has proved a trickier knot for EU countries to untie — for both historical and practical reasons.

As competition in the global nuclear sector atrophied following the Cold War, Soviet-built reactors in the EU remained locked into tailor-made fuel from Russia, leaving Moscow to play an outsized role.

In 2021, Russia's state-owned atomic giant Rosatom supplied the bloc’s reactors with 20 percent of their natural uranium, handled a quarter of their conversion services and provided a third of their enrichment services, according to the EU’s Euratom Supply Agency (ESA).

That same year, EU countries paid Russia €210 million for raw uranium exports, compared to the €88 billion the bloc paid Moscow for oil.

The value of imports of Russia-related nuclear technology and fuel worldwide rose to more than $1 billion (€940 billion) last year, according to research from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). In the EU, the value of Russia's nuclear exports fell in some countries like Bulgaria and the Czech Republic but rose in others, including Slovakia, Hungary and Finland, RUSI data shared with POLITICO showed.

“While it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions from what is ultimately a time-limited and incomplete dataset, it does clearly show that there are still dependencies on, and a market for, Russian nuclear fuel,” said Darya Dolzikova, a research fellow at RUSI.

Although uranium from Russia could be replaced by imports from elsewhere within a year — and most nuclear plants have at least one-year extra reserves, according to ESA head Agnieszka Kaźmierczak — countries with Russian-built VVER reactors rely on fuel made by Moscow.

“There are 18 Russian-designed nuclear power plants in [the EU] and all of them would be affected by sanctions,” said Mark Hibbs, a senior fellow at Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program. “This remains a deeply divided issue in the European Union.”

That's why the bloc has struggled over the past year to target Russia's nuclear industry — despite repeated calls from Ukraine and some EU countries to hit Rosatom for its role in overseeing the occupied Ukrainian Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, and possibly supplying equipment to the Russian arms industry.

“The whole question of sanctioning the nuclear sector … was basically killed before there was ever a meaningful discussion,” said a diplomat from one EU country who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The most vocal opponent has been Hungary, one of five countries — along with Slovakia, Bulgaria, Finland and the Czech Republic — to have Russian-built reactors for which there is no alternative fuel so far.

Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have signed contracts with U.S. firm Westinghouse to replace the Russian fuel, according to ESA chief Kaźmierczak, but the process could take “three years” as national regulators also need to analyze and license the new fuel.

The “bigger problem” across the board is enrichment and conversion, she added, due to chronic under-capacity worldwide. It could take “seven to 10 years” to replace Rosatom — and that timeline is conditional on significant investments in the sector.

While Finland last year scrapped a deal to build a Russian-made nuclear plant on the country’s west coast — prompting a lawsuit from Rosatom — others aren't changing tack.

Slovakia’s new Mochovce-3 Soviet VVER-design reactor came online earlier this month, which Russia will supply with fuel until at least 2026. 

Russia's nuclear energy was not initially included in EU sanctions over Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine | Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images

Hungary, meanwhile, deepened ties with Moscow by giving the go-ahead to the construction of two more reactors at its Paks plant last summer, underwritten by a €10 billion Russian loan.

“Even if [they] were to come into existence, nuclear sanctions would be filled with exemptions because we are dependent on Russian nuclear fuel,” said a diplomat from a second EU country.

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A third nuclear age may be dawning in Ukraine

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Quote of the day…

Despite scattered calls in the US for the creation of a ‘no-fly zone' over some or all of Ukraine, the Biden administration has widely resisted. In practice, this could mean shooting down Russian planes. It could lead to World War III

NINA TANNENWALD

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Image: Germán & Co

‘If we refuse to use them, why do we have them?’

A third nuclear age may be dawning in Ukraine

The first nuclear age was marked by deterrence, the second by hopes that nuclear weapons might be eliminated. The war in Ukraine may herald a third nuclear age, much more dangerous and uncertain than what came before.

LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE BY OLIVIER ZAJEC

…A third nuclear age may be dawning in Ukraine?

On 11 March, President Joe Biden sharply rejected politicians’ and experts’ calls for the United States to get more directly involved in the Ukraine war, ruling out direct conflict with Russia: ‘The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand ... that’s called World War III’ (1). He nonetheless accepted war was possible if the Russian offensive spread to the territory of a NATO member state.

Thus a distinction was established between NATO’s territory (inviolable) and the territory of Ukraine, which falls into a unique geostrategic category: according to the US, maintaining this distinction will require an accurate understanding of the balance of power between the belligerents on the ground, strict control of the degree of operational involvement of Ukraine’s declared supporters (especially concerning the nature of arms transfers to Ukraine) and, above all, continual reassessment of the limits of Russia’s determination — all with a view to leaving room for a negotiated way out acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine. Some trace the US’s caution back to a statement by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on 24 February: ‘No matter who tries to stand in our way or ... create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.’ These words, and his order that Russia’s nuclear forces be placed on high alert (‘a special regime of combat duty’), amounted to attempted coercion, and could suggest that Biden’s reaction constituted backing down. In January, neoconservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens had called for the revival of the concept of the ‘free world’, and warned, ‘The bully’s success ultimately depends on his victim’s psychological surrender’ (2).

One might argue that it is not for the bully to say how much aggression is ‘acceptable’ from countries that, with help from allies, seek to defend their own borders and their right to exist. Stephens’s warning could equally apply to past international crises, such as Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But the territory being invaded today is Ukraine, which is far bigger. And the aggressor — Russia — has strategic arguments entirely different from those of Saddam Hussein.

‘Scenarios for use of nuclear arms’

To help understand the issues at stake in US-Russian relations today, and Joe Biden’s irritation with the extreme positions of some of his fellow Americans and some allies, it’s worth recalling Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s 2018 statement that Russia’s nuclear doctrine ‘has unambiguously limited the threshold of use of nuclear weapons to two ... hypothetical, entirely defensive scenarios. They are as follows: [first,] in response to an act of aggression against Russia and/or against our allies if nuclear or other types of mass destruction weapons are used and [second,] with use of conventional arms but only in case our state’s very existence would be in danger’ (3).

Nuclear doctrines are made to be interpreted, and Russia experts have long debated exactly how (4). In Foreign Affairs, Olga Oliker, director of International Crisis Group’s Europe and Central Asia programme, writes that ‘although it has not been used before, Putin’s phrase “a special regime of combat duty” does not appear to signal a serious change in Russia’s nuclear posture’ (5).

But, at least in terms of how the present crisis is perceived, we cannot ignore the implications of the second scenario in Lavrov’s 2018 statement — an existential threat to Russia. Do Russia’s leaders really see Ukraine’s strategic status, and therefore its potential NATO accession, as critical? If they do, that would explain why, contrary to all normal logic and political good sense, they have given NATO a reason to make a stand and irretrievably damaged Russia’s international standing by deciding it is rational to attack Ukraine unilaterally — and then opting for a blunt ‘nuclearisation’ of their crisis diplomacy, so as to keep other potential belligerents out of the conflict.

Is this just a cynical manoeuvre, banking on Western weakness and hesitation, to give Russia the greatest possible freedom to act? Former British prime minister Tony Blair asks on his thinktank’s website: ‘Is it sensible to tell [Putin] in advance that whatever he does militarily, we will rule out any form of military response? Maybe that is our position and maybe that is the right position, but continually signalling it, and removing doubt in his mind, is a strange tactic’ (6).

Who would take responsibility?

Yet although diplomatic manoeuvring is clearly going on, who — with responsibility for what comes next — would be able to say today precisely to what extent this Russian cynicism, which seeks to achieve its objectives through aggressive drawing of red lines, also stems from strategic conviction fuelled by frustrations that have come to a head? We should not underestimate the dangers of this mixture if the West were to test Russia’s siege mentality head on in Ukraine.

Others asked these questions, well before Biden. In the first days of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the US joint chiefs of staff were taking a hard line, President John F Kennedy expressed the key issues not in military terms, but in terms of perception. He told a meeting of ExComm (the Executive Committee of the National Security Council), ‘Let me just say a little, first, about what the problem is, from my point of view ... we ought to think of why the Russians did this.’

The declassified archives on this key moment in history reveal that Kennedy talked of a blockade, of the importance of giving Khrushchev a way out, and of avoiding escalation to nuclear weapons, all while preserving the US’s international credibility. General Curtis E LeMay, US Air Force chief of staff, replied, ‘This blockade and political action, I see leading into war ... This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.’ The joint chiefs were unanimous in recommending immediate military action. Kennedy thanked them, dryly, and, in the days that followed, did the exact opposite.

‘And [the joint chiefs] were wrong,’ historian Martin J Sherwin concludes in a recent book on decision-making processes in nuclear crises. ‘Had the president not insisted on a blockade, had he accepted the chiefs’ recommendations (also favoured by the majority of his ExComm advisers), he unwittingly would have precipitated a nuclear war’ (7).

The central issue is indeed the significance of the nuclear signalling in which Russia has wrapped its premeditated conventional attack. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky doubts Putin will really use nuclear weapons: ‘I think that the threat of nuclear war is a bluff. It’s one thing to be a murderer. It’s another to commit suicide. Every use of nuclear weapons means the end for all sides, not just for the person using them’ (8).

At the risk of appearing spineless, Biden seems to have reserved judgment. For the moment he is restraining his most aggressive allies, such as Poland, and focusing on the coercive force of the economic sanctions, rather than any initiative that might give Putin an excuse for escalation — starting with the use of tactical nuclear weapons, of which Russia is thought to have around 2,000.

‘Putin is bluffing on nuclear’

Is Biden wrong? On 14 March General Rick J Hillier, former chief of Canada’s defence staff, told CBS that NATO should impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine because Putin was bluffing. John Feehery, former communications director to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, thought so too: ‘Biden’s weakness on Ukraine invited [the] Russian invasion ... When Putin hinted that he was willing to use nuclear weapons to achieve his goals, Biden said that we weren’t going to use ours, which seems to me to defeat the purpose of having those weapons in the first place. If we refuse to use them, why do we have them?’ (9). Stanford historian Niall Ferguson agrees: ‘Putin is bluffing on nuclear, we shouldn’t have backed down.’ And is dismayed that ‘media coverage has become so sentimental and ignorant of military realities’ (10).

But what are these military ‘realities’? What is the nature of the problem? It’s the possibility that Russia will resort to first use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict that is already under way. Nina Tannenwald, whose book The Nuclear Taboo (Cambridge, 2007) has become a key text in international relations, believes the risk is too great, and supports the US’s wait-and-see strategy: ‘Despite scattered calls in the US for the creation of a “no-fly zone” over some or all of Ukraine, the Biden administration has widely resisted. In practice, this could mean shooting down Russian planes. It could lead to World War III’ (11).

The most striking characteristic of the war in Ukraine is its nuclear backdrop. Events are unfolding as if the world was hurriedly relearning the vocabulary and fundamentals of nuclear strategy, forgotten since the cold war. This is certainly true of Western media and governments, as they become conscious of the potentially destructive sequences of events that link the operational-tactical and politico-strategic dimensions of the present tragedy. The bellicose declarations of some experts in the early days of the war have given way to calmer analysis. In many ways, it’s high time; Kharkiv is not Kabul. Especially given the recent worrying developments in the nuclear debate.

Until relatively recently, the nuclear orthodoxy established after the cold war, as the two superpowers reduced their strategic arsenals, had placed some nuclear weapons in a kind of peripheral area of the doctrine: those known as ‘tactical’ because of their lesser power and range. From 1945 to the 1960s, they had been a key part of US war plans, especially for the European theatre. At the time, the aim was to counter the Soviet Union’s conventional superiority with overwhelming nuclear superiority, to deny the battlefield to the enemy. US secretary of state John Foster Dulles, author of the ‘massive retaliation’ doctrine, stated in 1955, ‘The United States in particular has sea and air forces now equipped with new and powerful weapons of precision which can utterly destroy military targets without endangering unrelated civilian centers’ (12). President Dwight D Eisenhower declared, ‘I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.’

However, from the 1960s, the prospect of ‘mutual assured destruction’ reduced the likelihood that tactical nuclear weapons would be used, because of the risk of escalation. The concept of a ‘limited nuclear strike’ gradually came to be seen as dangerous sophistry. Regardless of experts who were certain that a nuclear war could be ‘won’ by ‘graduating’ one’s nuclear response, and controlling the ‘ladders of escalation’ (the best known being Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute), even a nuclear weapon (arbitrarily) labelled as ‘tactical’ still had the potential to lead to total destruction. The works of Thomas Schelling, especially The Strategy of Conflict (1960) and Strategy and Arms Control (1961) contributed to this new awareness.

Options for US decision makers

The rejection of graduation became a distinguishing characteristic of France’s nuclear doctrine. While reserving the option of a ‘unique and non-renewable’ warning shot, President Emmanuel Macron said in February 2020 that France had always ‘refused to consider nuclear weapons as a weapon of battle.’ He also insisted that France would ‘never engage in a nuclear battle or any form of graduated response’ (13).

Prior to the 2010s, it seemed possible that other nuclear-weapon states could adopt such a doctrinal stance, coupled with the ‘minimum necessary’ nuclear arsenal (France had fewer than 300 warheads). And it was possible to believe that, with a few exceptions (such as Pakistan), tactical nuclear weapons had ‘faded into the background of military and political planning and rhetoric’ (14).

Despite scattered calls in the US for the creation of a ‘no-fly zone' over some or all of Ukraine, the Biden administration has widely resisted. In practice, this could mean shooting down Russian planes. It could lead to World War III

NINA TANNENWALD

But over the last decade, the trend has reversed. In the world of strategic studies, there has been a return to ‘theories of [nuclear] victory’. Their proponents draw on the work of past scholars such as Henry Kissinger, who wondered in his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy if extending the American deterrent to all of Europe at a time when the threat of total destruction hung over the US itself would actually work: ‘A reliance on all-out war as the chief deterrent saps our system of alliances in two ways: either our allies feel that any military effort on their part is unnecessary or they may be led to the conviction that peace is preferable to war even on terms almost akin to surrender ... As the implication of all-out war with modern weapons become better understood ... it is not reasonable to assume that the United Kingdom, and even more the United States, would be prepared to commit suicide in order to defend a particular area ... whatever its importance, to an enemy’ (15).

One of the recommended solutions was to bring tactical nuclear weapons back into the dialectic of deterrence extended to allied territories, so as to give US decision makers a range of options between Armageddon and defeat without a war. Global deterrence was ‘restored’ by creating additional rungs on the ladder of escalation, which were supposed to enable a sub-apocalyptic deterrence dialogue — before one major adversary or the other felt its key interests were threatened and resorted to extreme measures. Many theorists in the 1970s took this logic further, in particular Colin Gray in a 1979 article, now back in fashion, titled ‘Nuclear Strategy: the case for a theory of victory’ (16).

Theoreticians of nuclear victory today reject the ‘paralysis’ that comes with an excessively rigid vision of deterrence. Their strategic beliefs were semi-officialised in the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (17). What influence have these theories had on Russia? Has the Kremlin chosen to combine nuclear and conventional deterrents in an operational continuum? Whatever the case, authors who defend the idea of using tactical (‘low-yield’ or ‘ultra-low yield’) nuclear weapons emphasise the importance of countering adversaries who adopt hybrid strategies. Rogue states without a nuclear deterrent will increasingly be tempted to present a fait accompli, banking on nuclear-weapon states’ risk aversion, at least when the latter face a crisis that does not affect their own national territory.

Uncertainties of deterrence dialogue

This shows how Kissinger’s 1957 discussion of the intrinsic weaknesses of wider nuclear deterrence remains pertinent today. The benefits would be even greater for a state with a nuclear deterrent — a nuclear-weapon state behaving like a rogue state. This is exactly what Russia is doing in Ukraine. The West’s hesitation to adopt an over-vigorous response that could lead to nuclear escalation is amplified by its realisation of how history would view whichever party — aggressor or victim — became the first to break the nuclear taboo since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. International Crisis Group’s Olga Oliker admits that ‘such caution and concessions may not bring emotional satisfaction; there is certainly a visceral appeal to proposals that would have NATO forces directly help Ukraine. But these would dramatically heighten the risk that the war becomes a wider, potentially nuclear conflict. Western leaders should therefore reject them out of hand. Literally nothing else could be more dangerous.’

The ‘Third Nuclear Age’, heralded by various crises over the last decade, has dawned in Ukraine. In 2018 Admiral Pierre Vandier, now chief of staff of the French navy, offered a precise definition of this shift to the new strategic era, which has begun with Russia’s invasion: ‘A number of indicators suggest that we are entering a new era, a Third Nuclear Age, following the first, defined by mutual deterrence between the two superpowers, and the second, which raised hopes of a total and definitive elimination of nuclear weapons after the cold war’ (18).

This third age will bring new questions on the reliability — and relevance — of ‘logical rules ... painfully learned, as during the Cuban [missile] crisis’ (19). There will be questions about the rationality of new actors using their nuclear deterrents. The worth of the nuclear taboo, which some today treat as absolute, will be reappraised.

‘Unleashed power of the atom’

Questions like ‘If we refuse to use them, why do we have them?’ suggest Albert Einstein’s warning from 1946 may still be pertinent: ‘The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking.’ Yet Einstein was already wrong. Huge numbers of papers were hurriedly written to explain the balances and imbalances of the deterrence dialogue. The current usefulness of these historical, theoretical documents is highly variable, as their logic often reaches absurd conclusions. Yet they include some intelligent analyses that shed light on the Ukrainian nuclear crisis.

Columbia professor Robert Jervis (20), a pioneer of political psychology in international relations, sought to demonstrate that it was possible to overcome the security anxieties that cause each actor to see his own actions as defensive, and those of his competitor as ‘naturally’ offensive. Jervis maintained that breaking the insecurity cycle caused by this distortion meant developing exchanges of signals that would make it possible to differentiate between offensive and defensive weapons in the arsenals of one’s adversaries. And his adaptation of prospect theory to nuclear crises opens up possibilities of interpreting Russia’s behaviour differently, suggesting for example that the adoption of aggressive tactics is more often motivated by aversion to loss than by hopes of gain.

In a nuclear crisis, all strategies are sub-optimal. One, however, is worse than all the rest: claiming that the adversary’s leader is insane, while simultaneously treating the standoff as a game of chicken. This will lead either to mutual destruction or to defeat without a war. Over the past few weeks, some seem to have accepted that this worst of all possible choices is worthy of being called a strategy.

*OLIVIER ZAJEC IS A LECTURER IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AT JEAN MOULIN LYON III UNIVERSITY’S LAW FACULTY.

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News round-up, Friday, February 24, 2023.

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Quote of the day…

…Undoubtedly, to China, the forgotten ally of the West during World War II, also, this undesirable situation is squeezing his shoes leaving them serious wounds in their public treasury, hopefully, and so, by necessity or common sense, the economic giant of the East will awaken to the damage that this context is causing in its own economy and will use the magic key.

NATURAL GAS IS THE NEW “RUSSIAN WINTER” AS A WAR ELEMENT…

GERMAN & CO, SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

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Most read…

China calls for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine

China made the comments in a 12-point paper on the 'political settlement' of the crisis, timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

LE MONDE WITH AP AND AFP

‘If we refuse to use them, why do we have them?’

A third nuclear age may be dawning in Ukraine

The first nuclear age was marked by deterrence, the second by hopes that nuclear weapons might be eliminated. The war in Ukraine may herald a third nuclear age, much more dangerous and uncertain than what came before.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Olivier Zajec

The U.S. Has Billions for Wind and Solar Projects. Good Luck Plugging Them In

An explosion in proposed clean energy ventures has overwhelmed the system for connecting new power sources to homes and businesses.

NYT BY BRAD PLUMER

New French fund with 87.5 mln euros targets African solar development

The AFRIGREEEN Debt Impact Fund's first closing will finance on- and off-grid solar power plants for small- and medium-sized commercial and industrial consumers across the continent, the statement said.

REUTERS

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…”We’ll need natural gas for years…

— but can start blending it with green hydrogen today, AES CEO, Andrés Gluski says

cnbc.com, Anmar Frangoul

PUBLISHED MON, JAN 23 

AES chief says we’ll need natural gas for next 20 years

From the United States to the European Union, major economies around the world are laying out plans to move away from fossil fuels in favor of low and zero-carbon technologies.

It’s a colossal task that will require massive sums of money, huge political will and technological innovation. As the planned transition takes shape, there’s been a lot of talk about the relationship between hydrogen and natural gas.

During a panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Joumanna Bercetche at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of energy firm AES offered up his take on how the two could potentially dovetail with one another going forward.   

“I feel very confident in saying that, for the next 20 years, we need natural gas,” Andrés Gluski, who was speaking Wednesday, said. “Now, what we can start to do today is … start to blend it with green hydrogen,” he added.

“So we’re running tests that you can blend it up to, say 20%, in existing turbines, and new turbines are coming out that can burn … much higher percentages,” Gluski said.

“But it’s just difficult to see that you’re going to have enough green hydrogen to substitute it like, in the next 10 years.”

Change on the way, but scale is key

The planet’s green hydrogen sector may still be in a relatively early stage of development, but a number of major deals related to the technology have been struck in recent years.

In December 2022, for example, AES and Air Products said they planned to invest roughly $4 billion to develop a “mega-scale green hydrogen production facility” located in Texas.

According to the announcement, the project will incorporate around 1.4 gigawatts of wind and solar and be able to produce more than 200 metric tons of hydrogen every day.

Despite the significant amount of money and renewables involved in the project, AES chief Gluski was at pains to highlight how much work lay ahead when it came to scaling up the sector as a whole.

The facility being planned with Air Products, he explained, could only “supply point one percent of the U.S. long haul trucking fleet.” Work to be done, then.

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Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

Sourrce by MERCADO Dominican Republic

28 JUNE 2022

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

Armando Rodríguez, vice president and executive director of Seaboard, joins us for this Mercado Interview to talk about the company's contributions to the Dominican Republic's electricity sector. "Our plants have been strategically located by the authorities of the electricity sector to make it possible to reduce blackouts in Santo Domingo and save foreign currency for all Dominicans," he explains.

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Image: Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang speaks during the Lanting Forum on the Global Security Initiative Tuesday. The foreign ministry issued a 12-point plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war Friday. (Andy Wong/The Associated Press )

China calls for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine

China made the comments in a 12-point paper on the 'political settlement' of the crisis, timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Le Monde with AP and AFP, Published on February 24, 2023 at 04h06

China, a firm Russian ally, has called for a cease-fire between Ukraine and Moscow and the opening of peace talks as part of a 12-point proposal to end the conflict.

The plan issued on Friday, February 24, by the Foreign Ministry also urges the end of Western sanctions imposed on Russia, measures to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities, the establishment of humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, and steps to ensure the export of grain after disruptions caused global food prices to spike.

China has claimed to be neutral in the conflict, but it has a "no limits" relationship with Russia and has refused to criticize its invasion of Ukraine over even refer to it as such, while accusing the West of provoking the conflict and "fanning the flames" by providing Ukraine with defensive arms.

China and Russia have increasingly aligned their foreign policies to oppose the US-led liberal international order. Foreign Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed the strength of those ties when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Moscow this week.

China has also been accused by the US of possibly preparing to provide Russia with military aid, something Beijing says lacks evidence. Given China's positions, that throws doubt on whether its 12-point proposal has any hope of going ahead – or whether China is seen as an honest broker.

US reserving judgment

Before the proposal was released, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it an important first step. "I think that, in general, the fact that China started talking about peace in Ukraine, I think that it is not bad. It is important for us that all states are on our side, on the side of justice," he said at a news conference Friday with Spain's prime minister.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said earlier Thursday that the US would reserve judgment but that China’s allegiance with Russia meant it was not a neutral mediator. "We would like to see nothing more than a just and durable peace ... but we are skeptical that reports of a proposal like this will be a constructive path forward," he said.

Price added that the US hopes "all countries that have a relationship with Russia unlike the one that we have will use that leverage, will use that influence to push Russia meaningfully and usefully to end this brutal war of aggression. (China) is in a position to do that in ways that we just aren’t."

The peace proposal mainly elaborated on long-held Chinese positions, including referring to the need that all countries' "sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity be effectively guaranteed." It also called an end to the "Cold War mentality" – it's a standard term for what it regards as US hegemony and interference in other countries.

"A country’s security cannot be at the expense of other countries’ security, and regional security cannot be guaranteed by strengthening or even expanding military blocs," the proposal said. "The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries should be taken seriously and properly addressed."

'Resume direct dialogue asap'

China abstained Thursday when the UN General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution that calls for Russia to end hostilities in Ukraine and withdraw its forces. It is one of 16 countries that either voted against or abstained on almost all of five previous resolutions on Ukraine.

The resolution, drafted by Ukraine in consultation with its allies, passed 141-7 with 32 abstentions, sending a strong message on the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion that appears to leave Russia more isolated than ever.

While China has not been openly critical of Moscow, it has said that the present conflict is "not something it wishes to see," and has repeatedly said any use of nuclear weapons would be completely unacceptable, in an implied repudiation of Putin’s statement that Russia would use "all available means" to protect its territory.

"There are no winners in conflict wars," the proposal said. "All parties should maintain rationality and restraint ... support Russia and Ukraine to meet each other, resume direct dialogue as soon as possible, gradually promote the de-escalation and relaxation of the situation, and finally reach a comprehensive ceasefire," it said.

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Image: Germán & Co

‘If we refuse to use them, why do we have them?’

A third nuclear age may be dawning in Ukraine

The first nuclear age was marked by deterrence, the second by hopes that nuclear weapons might be eliminated. The war in Ukraine may herald a third nuclear age, much more dangerous and uncertain than what came before.

Le Monde Diplomatique by Olivier Zajec

…A third nuclear age may be dawning in Ukraine?

On 11 March, President Joe Biden sharply rejected politicians’ and experts’ calls for the United States to get more directly involved in the Ukraine war, ruling out direct conflict with Russia: ‘The idea that we’re going to send in offensive equipment and have planes and tanks and trains going in with American pilots and American crews — just understand ... that’s called World War III’ (1). He nonetheless accepted war was possible if the Russian offensive spread to the territory of a NATO member state.

Thus a distinction was established between NATO’s territory (inviolable) and the territory of Ukraine, which falls into a unique geostrategic category: according to the US, maintaining this distinction will require an accurate understanding of the balance of power between the belligerents on the ground, strict control of the degree of operational involvement of Ukraine’s declared supporters (especially concerning the nature of arms transfers to Ukraine) and, above all, continual reassessment of the limits of Russia’s determination — all with a view to leaving room for a negotiated way out acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine. Some trace the US’s caution back to a statement by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on 24 February: ‘No matter who tries to stand in our way or ... create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.’ These words, and his order that Russia’s nuclear forces be placed on high alert (‘a special regime of combat duty’), amounted to attempted coercion, and could suggest that Biden’s reaction constituted backing down. In January, neoconservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens had called for the revival of the concept of the ‘free world’, and warned, ‘The bully’s success ultimately depends on his victim’s psychological surrender’ (2).

One might argue that it is not for the bully to say how much aggression is ‘acceptable’ from countries that, with help from allies, seek to defend their own borders and their right to exist. Stephens’s warning could equally apply to past international crises, such as Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. But the territory being invaded today is Ukraine, which is far bigger. And the aggressor — Russia — has strategic arguments entirely different from those of Saddam Hussein.

‘Scenarios for use of nuclear arms’

To help understand the issues at stake in US-Russian relations today, and Joe Biden’s irritation with the extreme positions of some of his fellow Americans and some allies, it’s worth recalling Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s 2018 statement that Russia’s nuclear doctrine ‘has unambiguously limited the threshold of use of nuclear weapons to two ... hypothetical, entirely defensive scenarios. They are as follows: [first,] in response to an act of aggression against Russia and/or against our allies if nuclear or other types of mass destruction weapons are used and [second,] with use of conventional arms but only in case our state’s very existence would be in danger’ (3).

Nuclear doctrines are made to be interpreted, and Russia experts have long debated exactly how (4). In Foreign Affairs, Olga Oliker, director of International Crisis Group’s Europe and Central Asia programme, writes that ‘although it has not been used before, Putin’s phrase “a special regime of combat duty” does not appear to signal a serious change in Russia’s nuclear posture’ (5).

But, at least in terms of how the present crisis is perceived, we cannot ignore the implications of the second scenario in Lavrov’s 2018 statement — an existential threat to Russia. Do Russia’s leaders really see Ukraine’s strategic status, and therefore its potential NATO accession, as critical? If they do, that would explain why, contrary to all normal logic and political good sense, they have given NATO a reason to make a stand and irretrievably damaged Russia’s international standing by deciding it is rational to attack Ukraine unilaterally — and then opting for a blunt ‘nuclearisation’ of their crisis diplomacy, so as to keep other potential belligerents out of the conflict.

Is this just a cynical manoeuvre, banking on Western weakness and hesitation, to give Russia the greatest possible freedom to act? Former British prime minister Tony Blair asks on his thinktank’s website: ‘Is it sensible to tell [Putin] in advance that whatever he does militarily, we will rule out any form of military response? Maybe that is our position and maybe that is the right position, but continually signalling it, and removing doubt in his mind, is a strange tactic’ (6).

Who would take responsibility?

Yet although diplomatic manoeuvring is clearly going on, who — with responsibility for what comes next — would be able to say today precisely to what extent this Russian cynicism, which seeks to achieve its objectives through aggressive drawing of red lines, also stems from strategic conviction fuelled by frustrations that have come to a head? We should not underestimate the dangers of this mixture if the West were to test Russia’s siege mentality head on in Ukraine.

Others asked these questions, well before Biden. In the first days of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the US joint chiefs of staff were taking a hard line, President John F Kennedy expressed the key issues not in military terms, but in terms of perception. He told a meeting of ExComm (the Executive Committee of the National Security Council), ‘Let me just say a little, first, about what the problem is, from my point of view ... we ought to think of why the Russians did this.’

The declassified archives on this key moment in history reveal that Kennedy talked of a blockade, of the importance of giving Khrushchev a way out, and of avoiding escalation to nuclear weapons, all while preserving the US’s international credibility. General Curtis E LeMay, US Air Force chief of staff, replied, ‘This blockade and political action, I see leading into war ... This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.’ The joint chiefs were unanimous in recommending immediate military action. Kennedy thanked them, dryly, and, in the days that followed, did the exact opposite.

‘And [the joint chiefs] were wrong,’ historian Martin J Sherwin concludes in a recent book on decision-making processes in nuclear crises. ‘Had the president not insisted on a blockade, had he accepted the chiefs’ recommendations (also favoured by the majority of his ExComm advisers), he unwittingly would have precipitated a nuclear war’ (7).

The central issue is indeed the significance of the nuclear signalling in which Russia has wrapped its premeditated conventional attack. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky doubts Putin will really use nuclear weapons: ‘I think that the threat of nuclear war is a bluff. It’s one thing to be a murderer. It’s another to commit suicide. Every use of nuclear weapons means the end for all sides, not just for the person using them’ (8).

At the risk of appearing spineless, Biden seems to have reserved judgment. For the moment he is restraining his most aggressive allies, such as Poland, and focusing on the coercive force of the economic sanctions, rather than any initiative that might give Putin an excuse for escalation — starting with the use of tactical nuclear weapons, of which Russia is thought to have around 2,000.

‘Putin is bluffing on nuclear’

Is Biden wrong? On 14 March General Rick J Hillier, former chief of Canada’s defence staff, told CBS that NATO should impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine because Putin was bluffing. John Feehery, former communications director to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, thought so too: ‘Biden’s weakness on Ukraine invited [the] Russian invasion ... When Putin hinted that he was willing to use nuclear weapons to achieve his goals, Biden said that we weren’t going to use ours, which seems to me to defeat the purpose of having those weapons in the first place. If we refuse to use them, why do we have them?’ (9). Stanford historian Niall Ferguson agrees: ‘Putin is bluffing on nuclear, we shouldn’t have backed down.’ And is dismayed that ‘media coverage has become so sentimental and ignorant of military realities’ (10).

But what are these military ‘realities’? What is the nature of the problem? It’s the possibility that Russia will resort to first use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict that is already under way. Nina Tannenwald, whose book The Nuclear Taboo (Cambridge, 2007) has become a key text in international relations, believes the risk is too great, and supports the US’s wait-and-see strategy: ‘Despite scattered calls in the US for the creation of a “no-fly zone” over some or all of Ukraine, the Biden administration has widely resisted. In practice, this could mean shooting down Russian planes. It could lead to World War III’ (11).

The most striking characteristic of the war in Ukraine is its nuclear backdrop. Events are unfolding as if the world was hurriedly relearning the vocabulary and fundamentals of nuclear strategy, forgotten since the cold war. This is certainly true of Western media and governments, as they become conscious of the potentially destructive sequences of events that link the operational-tactical and politico-strategic dimensions of the present tragedy. The bellicose declarations of some experts in the early days of the war have given way to calmer analysis. In many ways, it’s high time; Kharkiv is not Kabul. Especially given the recent worrying developments in the nuclear debate.

Until relatively recently, the nuclear orthodoxy established after the cold war, as the two superpowers reduced their strategic arsenals, had placed some nuclear weapons in a kind of peripheral area of the doctrine: those known as ‘tactical’ because of their lesser power and range. From 1945 to the 1960s, they had been a key part of US war plans, especially for the European theatre. At the time, the aim was to counter the Soviet Union’s conventional superiority with overwhelming nuclear superiority, to deny the battlefield to the enemy. US secretary of state John Foster Dulles, author of the ‘massive retaliation’ doctrine, stated in 1955, ‘The United States in particular has sea and air forces now equipped with new and powerful weapons of precision which can utterly destroy military targets without endangering unrelated civilian centers’ (12). President Dwight D Eisenhower declared, ‘I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.’

However, from the 1960s, the prospect of ‘mutual assured destruction’ reduced the likelihood that tactical nuclear weapons would be used, because of the risk of escalation. The concept of a ‘limited nuclear strike’ gradually came to be seen as dangerous sophistry. Regardless of experts who were certain that a nuclear war could be ‘won’ by ‘graduating’ one’s nuclear response, and controlling the ‘ladders of escalation’ (the best known being Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute), even a nuclear weapon (arbitrarily) labelled as ‘tactical’ still had the potential to lead to total destruction. The works of Thomas Schelling, especially The Strategy of Conflict (1960) and Strategy and Arms Control (1961) contributed to this new awareness.

Options for US decision makers

The rejection of graduation became a distinguishing characteristic of France’s nuclear doctrine. While reserving the option of a ‘unique and non-renewable’ warning shot, President Emmanuel Macron said in February 2020 that France had always ‘refused to consider nuclear weapons as a weapon of battle.’ He also insisted that France would ‘never engage in a nuclear battle or any form of graduated response’ (13).

Prior to the 2010s, it seemed possible that other nuclear-weapon states could adopt such a doctrinal stance, coupled with the ‘minimum necessary’ nuclear arsenal (France had fewer than 300 warheads). And it was possible to believe that, with a few exceptions (such as Pakistan), tactical nuclear weapons had ‘faded into the background of military and political planning and rhetoric’ (14).

Despite scattered calls in the US for the creation of a ‘no-fly zone' over some or all of Ukraine, the Biden administration has widely resisted. In practice, this could mean shooting down Russian planes. It could lead to World War III

Nina Tannenwald

But over the last decade, the trend has reversed. In the world of strategic studies, there has been a return to ‘theories of [nuclear] victory’. Their proponents draw on the work of past scholars such as Henry Kissinger, who wondered in his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy if extending the American deterrent to all of Europe at a time when the threat of total destruction hung over the US itself would actually work: ‘A reliance on all-out war as the chief deterrent saps our system of alliances in two ways: either our allies feel that any military effort on their part is unnecessary or they may be led to the conviction that peace is preferable to war even on terms almost akin to surrender ... As the implication of all-out war with modern weapons become better understood ... it is not reasonable to assume that the United Kingdom, and even more the United States, would be prepared to commit suicide in order to defend a particular area ... whatever its importance, to an enemy’ (15).

One of the recommended solutions was to bring tactical nuclear weapons back into the dialectic of deterrence extended to allied territories, so as to give US decision makers a range of options between Armageddon and defeat without a war. Global deterrence was ‘restored’ by creating additional rungs on the ladder of escalation, which were supposed to enable a sub-apocalyptic deterrence dialogue — before one major adversary or the other felt its key interests were threatened and resorted to extreme measures. Many theorists in the 1970s took this logic further, in particular Colin Gray in a 1979 article, now back in fashion, titled ‘Nuclear Strategy: the case for a theory of victory’ (16).

Theoreticians of nuclear victory today reject the ‘paralysis’ that comes with an excessively rigid vision of deterrence. Their strategic beliefs were semi-officialised in the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (17). What influence have these theories had on Russia? Has the Kremlin chosen to combine nuclear and conventional deterrents in an operational continuum? Whatever the case, authors who defend the idea of using tactical (‘low-yield’ or ‘ultra-low yield’) nuclear weapons emphasise the importance of countering adversaries who adopt hybrid strategies. Rogue states without a nuclear deterrent will increasingly be tempted to present a fait accompli, banking on nuclear-weapon states’ risk aversion, at least when the latter face a crisis that does not affect their own national territory.

Uncertainties of deterrence dialogue

This shows how Kissinger’s 1957 discussion of the intrinsic weaknesses of wider nuclear deterrence remains pertinent today. The benefits would be even greater for a state with a nuclear deterrent — a nuclear-weapon state behaving like a rogue state. This is exactly what Russia is doing in Ukraine. The West’s hesitation to adopt an over-vigorous response that could lead to nuclear escalation is amplified by its realisation of how history would view whichever party — aggressor or victim — became the first to break the nuclear taboo since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. International Crisis Group’s Olga Oliker admits that ‘such caution and concessions may not bring emotional satisfaction; there is certainly a visceral appeal to proposals that would have NATO forces directly help Ukraine. But these would dramatically heighten the risk that the war becomes a wider, potentially nuclear conflict. Western leaders should therefore reject them out of hand. Literally nothing else could be more dangerous.’

The ‘Third Nuclear Age’, heralded by various crises over the last decade, has dawned in Ukraine. In 2018 Admiral Pierre Vandier, now chief of staff of the French navy, offered a precise definition of this shift to the new strategic era, which has begun with Russia’s invasion: ‘A number of indicators suggest that we are entering a new era, a Third Nuclear Age, following the first, defined by mutual deterrence between the two superpowers, and the second, which raised hopes of a total and definitive elimination of nuclear weapons after the cold war’ (18).

This third age will bring new questions on the reliability — and relevance — of ‘logical rules ... painfully learned, as during the Cuban [missile] crisis’ (19). There will be questions about the rationality of new actors using their nuclear deterrents. The worth of the nuclear taboo, which some today treat as absolute, will be reappraised.

‘Unleashed power of the atom’

Questions like ‘If we refuse to use them, why do we have them?’ suggest Albert Einstein’s warning from 1946 may still be pertinent: ‘The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking.’ Yet Einstein was already wrong. Huge numbers of papers were hurriedly written to explain the balances and imbalances of the deterrence dialogue. The current usefulness of these historical, theoretical documents is highly variable, as their logic often reaches absurd conclusions. Yet they include some intelligent analyses that shed light on the Ukrainian nuclear crisis.

Columbia professor Robert Jervis (20), a pioneer of political psychology in international relations, sought to demonstrate that it was possible to overcome the security anxieties that cause each actor to see his own actions as defensive, and those of his competitor as ‘naturally’ offensive. Jervis maintained that breaking the insecurity cycle caused by this distortion meant developing exchanges of signals that would make it possible to differentiate between offensive and defensive weapons in the arsenals of one’s adversaries. And his adaptation of prospect theory to nuclear crises opens up possibilities of interpreting Russia’s behaviour differently, suggesting for example that the adoption of aggressive tactics is more often motivated by aversion to loss than by hopes of gain.

In a nuclear crisis, all strategies are sub-optimal. One, however, is worse than all the rest: claiming that the adversary’s leader is insane, while simultaneously treating the standoff as a game of chicken. This will lead either to mutual destruction or to defeat without a war. Over the past few weeks, some seem to have accepted that this worst of all possible choices is worthy of being called a strategy.

*Olivier Zajec is a lecturer in political science at Jean Moulin Lyon III University’s law faculty.

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Image: The climate bill President Biden signed last year provides $370 billion in subsidies for low-carbon technologies like wind, solar, nuclear and batteries. Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

The U.S. Has Billions for Wind and Solar Projects. Good Luck Plugging Them In

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New French fund with 87.5 mln euros targets African solar development

Reuters

Dr Stanford Chidziva, acting director of Green Hydrogen, looks at the solar panels at the site where Keren Energy constructed the first proof of concept of green hydrogen production facility in Africa at Namaqua Engineering in Vredendal, in collaboration with The Green Hydrogen Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry (SAIAMC) at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, November 15, 2022. REUTERS/Esa Alexande

PARIS, Feb 24 (Reuters) - A new investment fund with 87.5 million euros ($92.63 million) will finance solar power production across Africa, with a focus on West and Central Africa, French fund manager RGREEN INVEST and investment adviser ECHOSYS INVEST said on Friday.

The AFRIGREEEN Debt Impact Fund's first closing will finance on- and off-grid solar power plants for small- and medium-sized commercial and industrial consumers across the continent, the statement said.

The project aims to provide direct lending and asset-based debt facilities for regional and international developers and African commercial and industrial companies to develop solar infrastructure.

The groups are looking to have a portfolio of twenty to thirty investments, with aim of meeting long-term debt financing needs of between 10 and 15 million euros, with an average of around 5 million euros over eight to ten years, the statement said.

The fund also includes and offer of long-term local currency financing in Ghana and Nigeria with support from the International Development Association's Private Sector Window Local Currency Facility.

The Fund's will measure impact targets in terms of megawatts (MW) installed, megawtt-hours (MWh) produced, tonnes of CO2 emissions and litres of fuel avoided, and number of companies directly or indirectly accessing new financing channel, it said.

The impact will also be measured by the number of commercial and industrial companies able to upgrade their power generation facilities and enhance their efficiency.

RGREEN INVEST and ECHOSYS INVEST said that the first closing included commitments from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

French banks Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) and BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA) completed the first round of funding, the statement said.

The group is aiming to raise a total of 100 million euros from development finance institutions and private investors.

($1 = 0.9446 euros)

Reporting by Forrest Crellin and Sudip Kar-Gupta. Editing by Jane Merriman

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China calls for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine (Le Monde)

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Quote of the day…

Undoubtedly, to China, the forgotten ally of the West during World War II, also, this undesirable situation is squeezing his shoes leaving them serious wounds in their public treasury, hopefully, and so, by necessity or common sense, the economic giant of the East will awaken to the damage that this context is causing in its own economy and will use the magic key.

Natural gas is the new “Russian winter” as a war element…

German & Co, september 9, 2022

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Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

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Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang speaks during the Lanting Forum on the Global Security Initiative Tuesday. The foreign ministry issued a 12-point plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war Friday. (Andy Wong/The Associated Press )

China made the comments in a 12-point paper on the 'political settlement' of the crisis, timed to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Le Monde with AP and AFP

Published on February 24, 2023 at 04h06, updated at 07h14 on February 24, 2023

China, a firm Russian ally, has called for a cease-fire between Ukraine and Moscow and the opening of peace talks as part of a 12-point proposal to end the conflict.

The plan issued on Friday, February 24, by the Foreign Ministry also urges the end of Western sanctions imposed on Russia, measures to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities, the establishment of humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, and steps to ensure the export of grain after disruptions caused global food prices to spike.

China has claimed to be neutral in the conflict, but it has a "no limits" relationship with Russia and has refused to criticize its invasion of Ukraine over even refer to it as such, while accusing the West of provoking the conflict and "fanning the flames" by providing Ukraine with defensive arms.

China and Russia have increasingly aligned their foreign policies to oppose the US-led liberal international order. Foreign Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed the strength of those ties when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Moscow this week.

China has also been accused by the US of possibly preparing to provide Russia with military aid, something Beijing says lacks evidence. Given China's positions, that throws doubt on whether its 12-point proposal has any hope of going ahead – or whether China is seen as an honest broker.

US reserving judgment

Before the proposal was released, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called it an important first step. "I think that, in general, the fact that China started talking about peace in Ukraine, I think that it is not bad. It is important for us that all states are on our side, on the side of justice," he said at a news conference Friday with Spain's prime minister.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said earlier Thursday that the US would reserve judgment but that China’s allegiance with Russia meant it was not a neutral mediator. "We would like to see nothing more than a just and durable peace ... but we are skeptical that reports of a proposal like this will be a constructive path forward," he said.

Price added that the US hopes "all countries that have a relationship with Russia unlike the one that we have will use that leverage, will use that influence to push Russia meaningfully and usefully to end this brutal war of aggression. (China) is in a position to do that in ways that we just aren’t."

The peace proposal mainly elaborated on long-held Chinese positions, including referring to the need that all countries' "sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity be effectively guaranteed." It also called an end to the "Cold War mentality" – it's a standard term for what it regards as US hegemony and interference in other countries.

"A country’s security cannot be at the expense of other countries’ security, and regional security cannot be guaranteed by strengthening or even expanding military blocs," the proposal said. "The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries should be taken seriously and properly addressed."

'Resume direct dialogue asap'

China abstained Thursday when the UN General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution that calls for Russia to end hostilities in Ukraine and withdraw its forces. It is one of 16 countries that either voted against or abstained on almost all of five previous resolutions on Ukraine.

The resolution, drafted by Ukraine in consultation with its allies, passed 141-7 with 32 abstentions, sending a strong message on the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion that appears to leave Russia more isolated than ever.

While China has not been openly critical of Moscow, it has said that the present conflict is "not something it wishes to see," and has repeatedly said any use of nuclear weapons would be completely unacceptable, in an implied repudiation of Putin’s statement that Russia would use "all available means" to protect its territory.

"There are no winners in conflict wars," the proposal said. "All parties should maintain rationality and restraint ... support Russia and Ukraine to meet each other, resume direct dialogue as soon as possible, gradually promote the de-escalation and relaxation of the situation, and finally reach a comprehensive ceasefire," it said.

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