Electric motorbike startups making inroads in Kenya
Say battery swapping saves drivers time, money
Planning to expand model to Tanzania, Uganda
NAIROBI, Dec 26 (Reuters) – Over recent months, sets of sturdy, brightly-branded battery swapping stations have cropped up around Kenya’s capital Nairobi, allowing electric motorcyclists to exchange their low battery for a fully-charged one.
It is a sign of an electric motorcyle revolution starting to unfold in Kenya where combustion-engine motorbikes are a cheaper and quicker way to get around than cars but environmental experts say are 10 times more polluting.
East Africa’s biggest economy is betting on electric-powered motorcycles, its renewables-heavy power supply and position as a technology and start-up hub to lead the region’s shift to zero-emission electric mobility.
The battery swapping system not only saves time – essential for Kenya’s more than one million motorcyclists, most of whom use the bikes commercially – but also saves buyers money as many sellers follow a model in which they retain ownership of the battery, the bike’s most expensive part.
“It doesn’t make a lot of economic and business sense for them to acquire a battery…which would almost double the cost of the bike,” said Steve Juma, the co-founder of electric bike company Ecobodaa.
Ecobodaa has 50 test electric motorcyles on the road now and plans to have 1,000 by the end of 2023 which it sells for about $1,500 each – roughly the same price as combustion-engine bikes thanks to the exclusion of the battery from the cost.
After the initial purchase, the electric motorcyle – designed to be sturdy enough to traverse rocky roads – is cheaper to run than petrol-guzzling ones.
[1/5] Workers at ARC Ride assemble an electric motorcycle at the company’s warehouse in Industrial Area, Nairobi, Kenya November 2, 2022. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi
“With the normal bike, I will use fuel worth approximately 700-800 Kenyan shillings ($5.70-$6.51) each day, but with this bike, when I swap a battery I get one battery at 300 shillings,” said Kevin Macharia, 28, who transports goods and passengers around Nairobi.
EXPANSION PLANS
Ecobodaa is just one of several Nairobi-based electric motorcycle startups working to prove themselves in Kenya before eventually expanding in East Africa.
Kenya’s consistent power supply which is about 95% renewable led by hydroelectricity and has a widespread network, was a major support for growth of the sector, said Jo Hurst-Croft, founder of ARC Ride, another Nairobi-based electric motorcycle startup.
The country’s power utility estimates it generates enough to charge two million electric motorcycles a day: electricity access in the country is over 75%, according to the World Bank, and even higher in Nairobi.
Uganda and Tanzania also have robust and renewables-heavy grids that could support electric mobility, said Hurst-Croft.
“We’re putting over 200 swapping stations in Nairobi and expanding to Dar es Salaam and Kampala,” said Hurst-Croft.
($1 = 122.9000 Kenyan shillings)
Reporting by Ayenat Mersie; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise
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WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday will announce that scientists at a national lab have made a breakthrough on fusion, the process that powers the sun and stars that one day could provide a cheap source of electricity, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have achieved a net energy gain for the first time, in a fusion experiment using lasers, one of the people said.
While the results are a milestone in a scientific quest that has been developing since at least the 1930s, the ratio of energy going into the reaction at Livermore to getting energy out of it needs to be about 100 times bigger to create a process producing commercial amounts of electricity, one of the sources said.
The FT first reported the experiment.
Fusion works when nuclei of two atoms are subjected to extreme heat of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit) or higher leading them to fuse into a new larger atom, giving off enormous amounts of energy.
But the process consumes vast amounts of energy and the trick has been to make the process self-sustaining and get more energy out than goes in and to do so continuously instead of for brief moments.
[1/2] Technicians use a service system lift to access the target chamber interior for inspection and maintenance at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a laser-based inertial confinement fusion research device, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States in 2008. Philip Saltonstall/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Handout via REUTERS
If fusion is commercialized, which backers say could happen in a decade or more, it would have additional benefits including the generation of virtually carbon-free electricity which could help in the fight against climate change without the amounts of radioactive nuclear waste produced by today’s fission reactors.
Running an electric power plant off fusion presents tough hurdles however, such as how to contain the heat economically and to keep lasers firing consistently. Other methods of fusion use magnets instead of lasers.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is slated to hold a media briefing on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) on a “major scientific breakthrough.”
The department has no information ahead of the briefing, a spokesperson said.
Lawrence Livermore focuses mainly on national security issues related to nuclear weapons and the fusion experiment could lead to testing safer testing of the nation’s arsenal of such bombs.
But advances at the labs could also help efforts at companies that hope to develop power plants fired by fusion including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Focused Energy and General Fusion.
Investors including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and John Doerr have poured money into companies building fusion. Private industry secured more than $2.8 billion last year, according to the Fusion Industry Association for a total of about $5 billion in recent years.
Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Marguerita Choy and Richard Chang
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Average age of vessels up more than two years since 2017
New emissions rules may force older ships to go slower
One-fifth of ships fitted with energy saving devices
New vessels and alternative fuels the long-term solution
LONDON, July 11 (Reuters) – If shipping is the beating heart of global trade, its pulse is about to get slower.
Faced with uncertainty about which fuels to use in the long term to cut greenhouse gas emissions, many shipping firms are sticking with ageing fleets, but older vessels may soon have to start sailing slower to comply with new environmental rules.
From next year, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) requires all ships to calculate their annual carbon intensity based on a vessel’s emissions for the cargo it carries – and show that it is progressively coming down.
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While older ships can be retrofitted with devices to lower emissions, analysts say the quickest fix is just to go slower, with a 10% drop in cruising speeds slashing fuel usage by almost 30%, according to marine sector lender Danish Ship Finance.
“They’re basically being told to either improve the ship or slow down,” said Jan Dieleman, president of Cargill Ocean Transportation, the freight division of commodities trading house Cargill, which leases more than 600 vessels to ferry mainly food and energy products around the world.
Supply chains are already strained due to a surge in demand as economies rebound from lockdowns, pandemic disruptions at ports and a lack of new ships. If older vessels move into the slow lane as well, shipping capacity could take another hit at a time when record freight rates are driving up inflation. read more
At the moment, only about 5% of the world’s fleet can run on less-polluting alternatives to fuel oil, even though more than 40% of new ship orders will have that option, according to data from shipping analytics firm Clarksons Research.
But the new orders are not coming in fast enough to halt the trend of an ageing fleet across all three main types of cargo vessels: tankers, container ships and bulk carriers, the data provided to Reuters by Clarksons Research shows.
The average age of bulk carriers, which carry loose cargo such as grain and coal, had jumped to 11.4 years by June 2022 from 8.7 five years ago. Container ships now average 14.1 years, up from 11.6, while for tankers the average age was 12 years, up from 10.3 in 2017, according to the data.
“Some ship owners have preferred to buy second-hand vessels because of the uncertainties around future fuels,” said Stephen Gordon, managing director at Clarksons Research.
TALL ORDER
Orders for new container ships surged to a record high in 2021 and are still coming in at healthy clip this year, but as the appetite for new tankers and bulk carriers is much lower, the current order book across all three types of vessel only stands at about 10% of the fleet, down from over 50% in 2008.
Shipping companies are responsible for about 2.5% of the world’s carbon emissions and they are coming under increasing pressure to reduce both air and marine pollution.
The industry’s emissions rose last year, underlining the scale of the challenge in meeting the IMO’s target of halving emissions by 2050 from 2008 levels. The organization is now facing calls to go further and commit to net zero by 2050.
Some companies are testing and ordering vessels using alternative fuels such as methanol. Others are developing ships that can be retrofitted for fuels beyond oil, such as hydrogen or ammonia. There’s even a return to wind with vast, high-tech sails being tested by companies such as Cargill and Berge Bulk. read more
But many of the potential low-carbon technologies are in the early stages of development with limited commercial application, meaning the majority of new orders are still for vessels powered by fuel oil and other fossil fuels.
Of the vessels on order, more than a third, or 741, are set to use liquefied natural gas (LNG), 24 can be driven by methanol and six by hydrogen. Another 180 have some form of hybrid propulsion using batteries, Clarksons data shows.
Many shipping firms are hedging their bets mainly because prolonging the life span of vessels is cheaper and lower risk than new builds. They also gain breathing space while waiting for the winning new technologies to become mainstream.
“We have a clash between an industry that is very long-term investment oriented and a very fast pace of change,” said John Hatley, general manager of market innovation in North America at Finnish marine technology company Wartsila (WRT1V.HE).
Cargill says that as of now it doesn’t expect to have many new-build ships in its fleet, instead fitting energy saving devices to older vessels and prolonging their use, while there’s still uncertainty about future technology.
They’re not alone, with more than a fifth of global shipping capacity fitted with such devices, according to Clarksons.
Devices include Flettner rotors, tail spinning cylinders that act like a sail and let ships throttle back when it’s windy, or air lubrication systems that save fuel by covering the hull with small bubbles to reduce friction with seawater.
While energy saving devices go a long way to tackling emissions, ultimately, newer vessels are a better bet, said Peter Sand, analyst at shipping and air cargo data firm Xeneta.
“The next generation of fuel oil ships will be much more carbon efficient, they will be able to transport the same amount of cargo emitting only half of the emissions that they did over a decade ago,” he said.
THE POSEIDON PRINCIPLES
Shipping firms are set to come under growing pressure to comply with targets set by the IMO, which will rate the energy efficiency of ships on a scale of A to E, as the ratings will have a knock-on effect when it comes to finance and insurance.
In 2019, a group of banks agreed to consider efforts to cut carbon emissions when lending to shipping companies and established a global framework known as the Poseidon Principles.
The Poseidon Principles website shows that 28 banks, which include BNP Paribas (BNPP.PA), Citi , Danske Bank (DANSKE.CO), Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) and Standard Chartered (STAN.L), have committed to being consistent with IMO policies when assessing shipping portfolios on environmental grounds.
“Lending decisions on second-hand ships are going to become an issue on older tonnage,” said Michael Parker, chairman of Citigroup’s global shipping, logistics and offshore business, adding that environmental factors would be taken into account when lenders decided whether to refinance vessels.
“Second-hand ships will continue to get financing, provided that the owner is doing the right things about keeping that vessel as environmentally efficient as possible,” he said.
One early adopter of new technology is shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk . It has ordered 12 vessels which can run on green methanol produced from sources such as biomass, as well as fuel oil as there is not yet enough low carbon fuel available.
The Danish company doesn’t intend to use LNG because it is still a fossil fuel and it would prefer to shift directly to a lower carbon alternative.
Wartsila, meanwhile, is launching an ammonia-fueled engine next year, which it says is generating a lot of interest from customers, as well as a hydrogen engine in 2025.
Ship owners are facing a lot of uncertainty over how to “future proof” their fleets and avoid regretting investment decisions now within a couple of years, said Wartsila’s Hatley.
“They would rather wait for maybe the whole life of the ship of 20 years, but that’s even more uncertain now because of the pace of change.”
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Reporting by Sarah McFarlane; Editing by Veronica Brown and David Clarke
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ROME, July 4 (Reuters) – Italy on Monday declared a state of emergency for areas surrounding the river Po, which accounts for roughly a third of the country’s agricultural production and is suffering its worst drought for 70 years.
The government decree will allow authorities to cut through red tape and take action immediately if they think it necessary, such as to impose water rationing for homes and businesses.
The Po is Italy’s longest river which runs for more than 650 km (400 miles) through the wealthy north of Italy. However, many stretches of the waterway have run dry and farmers say the flow is so weak that sea water is seeping inland, destroying crops. read more
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The government said in a statement that the emergency measures would cover lands that bordered the Po and the water basins of the eastern Alps.
More broadly, it also introduced a state of emergency in five northern regions – Emilia-Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto – earmarking an initial 36.5 million euros ($38 million) of funds to help them tackle the water shortage.
“The state of emergency is aimed at managing the current situation with extraordinary means and powers, with relief and assistance to the affected population,” the government said.
It added that further measures could be taken in future to deal with the drought which water authorities say is increasingly impacting central Italy after an extremely dry winter and spring followed by an exceptionally hot early summer.
Italian media have reported that Prime Minister Mario Draghi was also considering appointing a commissioner to coordinate the drought response, in a similar way to which the government created a commissioner to oversee the coronavirus crisis.
($1 = 0.9596 euros)
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Reporting by Angelo Amante, editing by Giulia Segreti and Alex Richardson
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WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) – The U.S. securities regulator on Monday proposed requiring U.S.-listed companies to disclose a range of climate-related risks and greenhouse gas emissions, part of President Joe Biden’s push to join global efforts to avert climate-related catastrophes.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) unveiled its long-anticipated draft rule under which companies would disclose their own direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions, known as Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. It would also require companies to disclose emissions generated by their suppliers and partners, known as Scope 3 emissions, if they are material.
SEC chair Gary Gensler said the agency was responding to investor demand for consistent information on how climate change will affect financial performance of companies they invest in. But prominent Republicans accused the regulator of overstepping its legal authority, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vowed to fight parts of the rule.
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The draft proposal, subject to public feedback and likely to be finalized later this year, should help investors get the information they are seeking while also increasing the reporting burden for Corporate America.
It would also require companiesto disclose the “actual or likely material impacts” that climate-related risks will have on their business, strategy and outlook, including physical risks as well as possible new regulations such as a carbon tax.
Companies that have set emissions goals or announced other plans to transition away from fossil fuels would have to provide details on how and when they expect to do so. read more
“Companies and investors alike would benefit from the clear rules of the road,” Gensler said.
Senator Patrick Toomey, the Senate Banking Committee’s top Republican, blasted the rule, saying it “extends far beyond the SEC’s mission and expertise.”
Progressives and activist investors have pushed for the SEC to require Scope 3 emissions disclosure to hold companies accountable for all the carbon dioxide and methane they help generate. Corporations have been pushing for a narrower rule that will not boost compliance costs too sharply.
“This proposal will be the light in a pathway toward addressing President Biden’s priority of disclosing climate risk to investors and all areas of our society,” said Tracey Lewis, a policy counsel at Washington-based advocacy group Public Citizen. “There will be a lot of critics,” she added.
The SEC said the Scope 3 requirement would include carve-outs based on a company’s size, and that all the emissions disclosures would be phased in between 2023 and 2026.
It was not immediately clear how many companies would have to make Scope 3 disclosures, given they would have largely have the discretion to decide what counts as ‘material.’
The Chamber of Commerce, the country’s biggest business lobby, called the proposal too prescriptive and complained it would force companies to disclose information that was largely immaterial at the expense of more meaningful data.
“The Supreme Court has been clear that any required disclosures under securities laws must meet the test of materiality, and we will advocate against provisions of this proposal that deviate from that standard,” Tom Quaadman, an executive vice president with the group, said in a statement.
The Investment Company Institute, which represents global investors, broadly welcomed the rule.
“The enhanced disclosure that the proposal calls for will provide investors with comparable, consistent, qualitative, and quantitative information.”
LEGAL CHALLENGES
The SEC spent the past week shoring up the draft against potential legal challenges, six sources told Reuters.
Corporate groups have argued there is no agreed methodology for calculating Scope 3 emissions, saying it can lead to double-counting, and that providing so much detail would be burdensome and would expose companies to litigation if third-party data ends up being wrong.
The SEC tried to address that concern by proposing Scope 3 disclosures would be protected by a legal safe harbor that already exists for companies’ forward-looking statements.
Any legal challenges to the rule will likely argue that the SEC lacks the authority to require Scope 3 emissions data, something the agency’s lone Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce said on Monday in voting against the proposal.
Some experts said the SEC’s authority in this area was clear, noting investors poured more than $649 billion into environmental, social and governance-focused funds worldwide last year and were calling for better data.
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Reporting by Katanga Johnson in Washington
Editing by Michelle Price, David Gregorio and Matthew Lewis
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Katanga Johnson
Washington-based reporter covering U.S. regulation at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, previously e3xperience in Ecuador, alumnus of Morehouse College and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, March 5 (Reuters) – Forty-nine mushers and their teams of huskies trotted through Alaska’s largest city on Saturday to start the 50th annual running of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, an event transformed by climate change and commercialism since its humble beginnings.
The starting gate has been returned to downtown Anchorage, a year after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted organizers to launch the 2021 race from a secluded riverside spot north of the city and off limits to the usual crowds of spectators.
Contestants forged through unusually warm and sloppy
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conditions on the first day of the run, with temperatures hovering between freeze and thaw. Wet snow soaked teams and spectators lining the city trail.
Fortunately for the mushers and dog teams more accustomed to crisp, cold weather, the 11-mile (17.7-km) Anchorage portion of
the race is merely ceremonial, with timed competition starting
on Sunday at Willow, about a 75-mile drive north.
The overall trail has been restored to its traditional 1,000-mile (1,600-km) distance from Anchorage to the Bering Sea gold-rush town of Nome after a COVID-forced shortening of the course last year. Still, several pandemic restrictions remain in effect.
Mushers, volunteers and fans gathered for this year’s renewal of Iditarod festivities in Anchorage were instructed to mask up and take other precautions to prevent the spread of the lingering virus.
The pandemic also forced one last-minute switch. Nic Petit, a top musher, had to pull out of the race after testing positive for COVID-19. Four-time champion Jeff King, who had planned to sit out this year’s contest, then stepped in to drive Petit’s dog team to Nome.
King got the call from Petit on Tuesday afternoon. He said Petit is trusting him to manage “a really nice dog team.”
“I think he knows I know what I’m doing,” King said at the downtown Anchorage start area.
Other returning winners are Dallas Seavey, who claimed a record-tying fifth victory last year, and his father, Mitch Seavey, a three-time champion who holds the Iditarod speed record of eight days, 3 hours and 40:13 minutes.
Riley Dyche?s dog team during the ceremonial start of the 50th Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S. March 5, 2022. REUTERS/Kerry Tasker
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The field also includes Pete Kaiser, who in 2019 became the first Native Yup’ik musher to win the race, 2018 champion Joar Leifseth Ulsom of Norway, and four-time winner Martin Buser.
Those and others should be contenders for this year’s title, said Leifseth Ulsom. “A whole bunch of them are really good teams,” the Norwegian said in the Anchorage starting area.
Seventeen of this year’s mushers are women. The Iditarod is one of the few high-profile sports evens where women and men compete on equal footing.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
The Iditarod has come a long way in the half century since it began in 1973 as a low-budget, novelty event that drew a field of all-amateur mushers and took the winner 20 days to complete.
Now, top Iditarod contestants are professionals with high-tech gear bearing sponsors’ logos. Teams are tracked by global positioning satellite, and live coverage is beamed worldwide to audiences through internet streaming services. Winners typically reach the finish line in just nine days.
The modern race attracts major corporate backing, though in recent years,animal rights activists who condemn the race as cruel to the dogshave pressured some companies to drop support.
Climate change has wrought some of the greatest changes in the world’s most famous sled-dog race, as it has for much of life in the far north.
Three times, most recently in 2017, unseasonably warm conditions forced the Iditarod to move its day-two restart – following the ceremonial Anchorage launch – much farther north, to Fairbanks.
In 2020, flooding swamped the ultra-thin Bering Sea ice that teams had to skirt near the end of the race. Three racers and their dogs had to be rescued from the coastal site only 25 miles (40 km) from the Nome finish line. Contestants who followed had to be rerouted farther inland to avoid standing water.
The course, though running at full length again this year, has still been altered somewhat, with checkpoints relocated to minimize contact with Native Alaska villages that remain vigilant against renewed coronavirus outbreaks because of scarce healthcare resources.
Organizers say such precautions are fitting for an annual race that honors a famed dog-sled relay run nearly a century ago to deliver diphtheria serum to Nome in 1925.
“Vaccinations and dogs and Iditarod go way back, to the beginning of the race,” said Paige Drobny, a musher from Cantwell, Alaska, who is promoting vaccination on behalf of her sponsor, a Fairbanks healthcare consortium.
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Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage; Writing by Steve Gorman; editing by Richard Pullin and David Gregorio
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Feb 23 (Reuters) – The largest ever U.S. sale of offshore wind development rights – for areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey – attracted record-setting bids on Wednesday from companies seeking to be a part of President Joe Biden’s plan to create a booming new domestic industry.
It is the first offshore wind lease sale under Biden, who has made expansion of offshore wind a cornerstone of his strategy to address global warming and decarbonize the U.S. electricity grid by 2035, all while creating thousands of jobs.
With bidding still underway, the auction was on track to easily top the $405 million U.S. offshore wind auction record set in 2018, according to updates posted on the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) web site.
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After 11 rounds, bidding stood at a record-setting $250 million for a single lease 32 miles (51.5 km) off the coast of New Jersey. The government had identified that 114-acre area – the largest offered in the sale – as being capable of producing power for more than 485,000 homes.
The previous record amount paid for a U.S. offshore wind lease was $135.1 million in 2018 for a lease off the coast of Massachusetts.
High bids on each of the other five areas in the auction ranged between $12.6 million and $134.3 million as of Wednesday afternoon.
The auction’s scale marks a major step forward for offshore wind power in the United States, which has lagged European nations in developing the technology. Currently, the United States has just two small offshore wind facilities, off the coasts of Rhode Island and Virginia, along with two additional commercial-scale projects recently approved for development.
BOEM, which has not held an auction for wind leases since 2018, is offering 488,201 acres (197,568 hectares) in shallow waters between New York’s Long Island and New Jersey, an area known as the New York Bight.
The area is 22% smaller than what was initially proposed last summer due to concerns about the developments’ impact to commercial fishing and military interests.
‘ENOUGH WIND TO POWER MILLIONS OF HOMES’
The sale’s 25 approved bidders include entities controlled by Equinor ASA (EQNR.OL), Avangrid Inc (AGR.N), BP Plc and Eletricite de France SA (EDF.PA), according to government documents. Each bidder may only win one lease.
The energy generated from the newly offered areas could one day power nearly 2 million homes, the administration has said.
Last year, the Biden administration set a goal of installing 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030 along the nation’s coastlines. Much of the current development is happening in waters off of Northeastern states.
New York and New Jersey have set targets of building more than 16 GW of offshore wind by 2035, and Wednesday’s lease areas – which lie between 20 and 69 nautical miles off the coast, according to BOEM – could deliver more than a third of that capacity.
“That’s enough wind to power millions of homes,” Ed Potosnak, executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, said in an interview. “That’s a big deal in a state with about nine million people.”
Not everyone supports offshore wind development. The Biden administration’s ambitions have stoked concerns among commercial fishermen and coastal communities about harm to their livelihoods and property values.
In January, a group of New Jersey residents sued BOEM over its leasing plans for the New York Bight. The group, from the summer colony of Long Beach Island, is concerned about the aesthetic impacts of the turbines and potential lost tourism.
Greg Cudnik, owner of a fishing charter boat business on Long Beach Island, worries about what thousands of wind turbines will do to the ocean habitat.
“For all this that’s taking place and all this that is put in jeopardy, to me, I don’t see the net benefit,” Cudnik said.
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Reporting by Nichola Groom in Los Angeles and Christine Kiernan in Ship Bottom, New Jersey; Editing by Bill Berkrot
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Canadian minister warns Russia not to invade Ukraine-sources China resists haircuts on poor country debt sources say
G20 finance chiefs pledge global tax deal to take effect in 2023
JAKARTA/WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Russia and China watered down a G20 finance leaders’ statementon geopolitical risks to the global economy as a contentious meeting endedon Friday, deleting a reference to “current” tensions as financial markets fretted over the prospect of war in Ukraine.
The gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 major economies was one of the most fractious since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland strayed from the G20 economic script to issue an impassioned plea to her Russian counterparts to not invade Ukraine, warning that such action would hurt the global economy and bring “crushing” sanctions against Russia, according to two sources familiar with her remarks. read more
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Other sources familiar with the meeting said China and Russia had objected to the reference to “current tensions” in an earlier draft communique, as well as disagreements on debt restructuring for poor countries and carbon pricing.
The group’s final communique simply said: “We will also continue to monitor major global risks, including from geopolitical tensions that are arising, and macroeconomic and financial vulnerabilities.”
As the meeting concluded, U.S. and European stocks fell on worries that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent after Russian-backed separatists announced a surprise evacuation of their breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine. read more
DEBT RELIEF STANDSTILL
The G20 talks, held virtually and in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, were also marked by disagreements over the group’s stalled debt restructuring framework.
The final communique failed to endorse International Monetary Fund and World Bank proposals for an immediate debt service suspension for poor countries that seek restructurings and an expansion to include some middle-income countries.
Instead, finance officials reiterated their “commitment to step up our efforts” to implement the framework in a “timely, orderly and coordinated manner” without any specifics.
Earlier, a source at the talks said China, by far the world’s largest bilateral creditor, had baulked at the idea of accepting outright haircuts on debt.
World Bank President David Malpass said at the Munich Security Conference after the finance meeting that he was concerned the G20 “is not identifying the steps forward” to deal with a massive and growing debt overhang in developing countries.
“The G20 discussions on debt were really disappointing,” said Eric LeCompte, executive director of the Jubilee USA Network, a faith-based organization campaigning for debt relief for poor countries. He said China was resisting steps to strengthen the bankruptcy-like G20 debt framework “so that they can cut deals on the side” with debtor countries.
CREDIBILITY QUESTIONS
Indonesia’s finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, said other sticking points involved the reticence of some countries to endorse carbon-pricing as a tool to tackle climate change and how to help low-income countries such as Chad, Zambia and Ethiopia struggling with debt burdens made yet more unsustainable during the coronavirus pandemic.
“This also concerns the reputation and credibility of the G20 as a group of countries with the biggest economies to help countries that are in an uneasy situation,” she said.
On other subjects, the final draft of the G20 text pledged to use “all available policy tools to address the impacts of the pandemic,” while warning that future policy space was likely to be “narrower and uneven.” read more
“Central banks will act where necessary to ensure price stability in line with their respective mandates, while remaining committed to clear communication of their policy stances.”
The diverging pace of recovery from the pandemic is complicating the policy path for central banks. Expected steady interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve have drawn attention to the potential fallout for emerging markets.
While cases of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 are receding in many wealthy countries, they are still rising in many developing nations including host country Indonesia.
The G20 text also pledged to ensure that a landmark deal last year setting a global minimum level of corporate tax could be put into force in 2023. [nL1N2UT0JV]
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Additional reporting by Fransiska Nangoy and Stefanno Sulaiman in Jakarta, Leika Kihara in Tokyo, Christian Kraemer in Berlin, Jan Strupczewski in Brussels, Leigh Thomas in Paris, David Lawder and Andrea Shalal in Washington; writing by David Lawder and Mark John; Editing by John Stonestreet, Toby Chopra and Leslie Adler
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Steam rises from cooling towers of the Electricite de France (EDF) nuclear power plant in Belleville-sur-Loire, France October 12, 2021. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
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European Commission drawing up green investment rules
Draft proposal labels nuclear, some gas plants as green
Countries disagree on the fuels’ green credentials
EU advisors said gas not compatible with climate goals
Jan 1 (Reuters) – The European Union has drawn up plans to label some natural gas and nuclear energy projects as “green” investments after a year-long battle between governments over which investments are truly climate-friendly.
The European Commission is expected to propose rules in January deciding whether gas and nuclear projects will be included in the EU “sustainable finance taxonomy”.
This is a list of economic activities and the environmental criteria they must meet to be labelled as green investments.
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By restricting the “green” label to truly climate-friendly projects, the system aims to make those investments more attractive to private capital, and stop “greenwashing”, where companies or investors overstate their eco-friendly credentials.
Brussels has also made moves to apply the system to some EU funding, meaning the rules could decide which projects are eligible for certain public finance.
A draft of the Commission’s proposal, seen by Reuters, would label nuclear power plant investments as green if the project has a plan, funds and a site to safely dispose of radioactive waste. To be deemed green, new nuclear plants must receive construction permits before 2045.
Investments in natural gas power plants would also be deemed green if they produce emissions below 270g of CO2 equivalent per kilowatt hour (kWh), replace a more polluting fossil fuel plant, and receive a construction permit by Dec. 31 2030.
Gas and nuclear power generation would be labelled green on the grounds that they are “transitional” activities – defined as those that are not fully sustainable, but which have emissions below industry average and do not lock in polluting assets.
“Taking account of scientific advice and current technological progress as well as varying transition challenges across member states, the Commission considers there is a role for natural gas and nuclear as a means to facilitate the transition towards a predominantly renewable-based future,” the European Commission said in a statement, adding that consultations on a draft began on Friday.
To help states with varying energy backgrounds to transition, “under certain conditions, solutions can make sense that do not look exactly ‘green’ at first glance,” a Commission source told Reuters.
However, natural gas and nuclear will be subject to strict conditions, the official added.
EU countries and a panel of experts will scrutinise the draft proposal, which could change before it is due to be published later in January. Once published, it could be vetoed by a majority of EU countries or the European Parliament.
The policy has been mired in lobbying from governments for more than a year and EU countries disagree on which fuels are truly sustainable.
Natural gas emits roughly half the CO2 emissions of coal when burned in power plants, but gas infrastructure is also associated with leaks of methane, a potent planet-warming gas.
The EU’s advisers had recommended that gas plants not be labelled as green investments unless they met a lower 100g CO2e/kWh emissions limit, based on the deep emissions cuts scientists say are needed to avoid disastrous climate change.
Nuclear power produces very low CO2 emissions but the Commission sought expert advice this year on whether the fuel should be deemed green given the potential environmental impact of radioactive waste disposal.
Some environmental campaigners criticised the leaked proposal on Saturday. WWF Austria said in a tweet that labelling gas and nuclear as green would lead to “investments of billions in climate-damaging industries”.
Austria opposes nuclear power, alongside countries including Germany and Luxembourg. EU states including the Czech Republic, Finland and France, which gets around 70% of its power from the fuel, see nuclear as crucial to phasing out CO2-emitting coal fuel power.
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Reporting by Kate Abnett; additional reporting by Sabine Siebold
Editing by Frances Kerry and Louise Heavens
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
GLASGOW, Nov 6 (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of protesters marched on Saturday through rainy downtown Glasgow, and in many other cities around the world, to demand bolder action at the U.N. climate conference.
Students, activists and climate-concerned citizens linked arms as they moved slowly through the streets of the Scottish city, host of the COP26 meeting that began on Monday.
Some pushed children in strollers, some danced to stay warm. Police watched the procession from the flanks.
“It’s good to have your voice heard,” said Kim Travers of Edinburgh. “Even with the rain, I think it makes it a bit more dramatic.”
Just a few blocks from the procession, back-room negotiations continued at the COP26 meeting. On stage, speakers sounded the alarm over the threat of global warming to food security.
Since the climate talks began, national delegations have been working to agree on technical details for the final pact, to be announced at the end of the conference after more negotiations this week.
The first week also saw countries make a slew of promises to phase out coal, slash emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane and reduce deforestation. Business leaders and financiers, meanwhile, pledged to invest more in climate solutions.
But activists have demanded that the meeting make more progress. read more
Ros Cadoux, a grandmother from Edinburgh, said she came to march for future generations. “If you’ve got kids and grandkids – my God, What else could you do?”
Colorful banners bore slogans ranging from earnest calls for “Climate Justice Now,” to the more comical: “No planet = no beer”.
One group bounced along to the sound of a drum and chanted “Get Up, Get Down, Keep that Carbon in the Ground.”
“The climate crisis is about the survival of humanity as we know it,” said Philipp Chmel, who traveled from Germany for the march. “It’s up to the youth and the workers, the working class, to bring about the change that is necessary.”
One group of youths – some with bullhorns – blamed companies for the climate crisis and chanted calls in favour of socialism while punching their fists in the air.
Police officers keep guard as demonstrators attend a protest amid the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 6, 2021. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
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Around midday, the rain cleared for a few hours, and an enormous rainbow streaked across the sky.
“If ever there was a time for activism, and if ever there was a time for the people to come out onto the streets, then it is today,” said University of Glasgow student Theo Lockett, 20.
Climate activists held rallies in many other cities, including Seoul, Melbourne, Copenhagen and London.
CONFERENCE HALLS
During a panel of speeches on Saturday, Democratic U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse urged companies to rein in groups lobbying politicians to block climate action.
“Corporate members who made big promises here at this COP have got to get their trade associations under control so they’re not undercutting our work in Congress,” said Whitehouse, who was at COP26 with a bipartisan group of Congress members.
He also told journalists that it was crucial to resolve a carbon price for carbon markets — one of the key sticking points in the negotiations.
Earlier at the conference, actor Idris Elba acknowledged that he had few credentials to speak on climate change, but said he was at COP26 to amplify the climate threat to global food security.
Sitting on the same panel, climate justice campaigner Vanessa Nakate of Uganda implored the world to stop burning fossil fuels, the main cause of rising global temperatures.
“We are watching farms collapse and livelihoods lost due to floods, droughts and swarms of locusts,” she said – all of which scientists say are being exacerbated by climate change.
“The climate crisis means hunger and death for many people in my country and across Africa.”
Civil society leaders and representatives from companies like Unilever (ULVR.L) and PepsiCo (PEP.O) spoke about corporate responsibility in making trade and commerce less of a burden on nature.
Speaking about using satellite technology to monitor global landscapes, the director and founder of Google Earth Outreach (GOOGL.O) urged better stewardship of the world’s forests.
“We don’t want to be writing the obituary of our planet in high resolution,” Rebecca Moore said.
Reporting by William James, Lucy Marks and Simon Jessop in Glasgow
Additional reporting by Natalie Thomas and Katy Daigle
Editing by Frances Kerry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.