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World

Police move on coal mine protesters barricaded in abandoned German village

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LUETZERATH, Germany, Jan 11 (Reuters) – Hundreds of police began clearing climate protesters out of an abandoned village on Wednesday in a showdown over the expansion of an opencast lignite mine that has highlighted tensions around Germany’s climate policy during an energy crisis.

The protesters formed human chains, made a makeshift barricade out of old containers and chanted “we are here, we are loud, because you are stealing our future” as police in helmets moved in. Some threw rocks, bottles and pyrotechnics. Police also reported protesters were lobbing petrol bombs.

The demonstrators, wearing masks, balaclavas or biosuits, have been protesting against the Garzweiler mine, run by energy firm RWE (RWEG.DE) in the village of Luetzerath in the brown-coal district of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg plans to join the demonstration on Saturday, a spokesperson for Luetzerathlebt environmentalist group told Reuters.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck of the Greens called for no further violence after police and protesters scuffled.

“Leave it at that – from both sides,” he told reporters.

Police say the standoff could take weeks to resolve.

As the officers moved in, some activists perched on the roofs or the windows of the abandoned buildings, chanting and shouting slogans.

Others hung suspended from wires and wooden frames, or were holed up in treehouses to make it harder for police to dislodge them after a court ruling allowed for the demolition of the village now otherwise empty of residents and owned by RWE.

Julia Riedel, who said she has been camping in the village for two-and-a-half years, said the demonstrators had taken up their positions “because the issue here is whether the climate will cross the tipping point or not.”

Police, who had water cannon trucks on standby, led away and carried some protesters from the site.

The project has underscored Germany’s dilemma over climate policy, which environmentalists say has taken a back seat during the energy crisis that has hit Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, forcing a return to dirtier fuels.

It is particularly sensitive for the Greens party, now back in power as part of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government after 16 years in opposition. Many Greens oppose the mine’s expansion, but Habeck has been the face of the government’s decision.

[1/14] Police officers keep guard as activists stage a sit-in protest against the expansion of the Garzweiler open-cast lignite mine of Germany’s utility RWE, in Luetzerath, Germany, January 11, 2023 that has highlighted tensions over Germany’s climate policy during an energy crisis. REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen

“The empty settlement of Luetzerath, where no one lives any more, is the wrong symbol in my view,” Habeck said with reference to the demonstration.

HEAVY MACHINERY

Birte, a 51-year-old midwife who joined the protest on Sunday, was in tears as police led her away.

She said it was important for politically moderate citizens to attend the protest, to show “that these are not just young, crazy, violent people, but that there are people who care”.

Police have urged the protesters to leave the area and remain peaceful.

“It’s a big challenge for the police and we need a lot of special forces here to deal with the situation. We have aerial rescue specialists,” said police spokesperson Andreas Mueller.

“These are all factors that make it difficult to tell how long this will last. We expect it to continue for a least several weeks.”

A Reuters eyewitness saw police using heavy machinery to start dismantling high barricades.

RWE said earlier on Wednesday it would start to dismantle Luetzerath, and had begun building a fence around the area.

“RWE is appealing to the squatters to observe the rule of law and to end the illegal occupation of buildings, plants and sites belonging to RWE peacefully,” RWE said.

The fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted Scholz’s government to change course on previous policies.

Those include firing up mothballed coal power plants and extending the lifespan of nuclear power stations after Russia cut gas deliveries to Europe in an energy standoff that sent prices soaring.

The government has, however, brought forward the date when all brown coal power plants will be shut down in North Rhine-Westphalia, to 2030 from 2038, acceding to a campaign promise from the Greens.

Writing by Paul Carrel and Matthias Williams; Editing by Tom Hogue, Christopher Cushing, Conor Humphries and Alison Williams

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Biden’s climate agenda has a problem: Not enough workers

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Jan 11 (Reuters) – U.S. clean energy companies are offering better wages and benefits, flying in trainers from overseas, and contemplating ideas like buying roofing and electric repair shops just to hire their workers as firms try to overcome a labor shortage that threatens to derail President Joe Biden’s climate change agenda.

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law last year, provides for an estimated $370 billion in solar, wind and electric vehicle subsidies, according to the White House. Starting Jan. 1, American consumers can take advantage of those tax credits to upgrade home heating systems or put solar panels on their roofs. Those investments will create nearly 537,000 jobs a year for a decade, according to an analysis by BW Research commissioned by The Nature Conservancy.

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But with the U.S. unemployment rate at an historic low of 3.5%, companies say they fear they will struggle to fill those jobs, and that plans to transition away from fossil fuels could stall out. Despite layoff announcements and signs of a slowdown elsewhere in the economy, the labor market for clean energy jobs remains tight.

“It feels like a big risk for this expansion. Where are we going to find all the people?” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group.

The shortage is anticipated to hit especially hard in electric vehicle and battery production and solar panel and home efficiency installations, forcing some of the companies into bold new approaches to find workers.

Korea’s SK Innovation Co Ltd, which makes batteries for Ford Motor Co’s (F.N) F-150 Lightning all-electric pickup truck in Commerce, Georgia, has pumped up pay and benefits as it ramps up its U.S. workforce to 20,000 people by 2025 from 4,000 today.

The battery maker is advertising pay between $20 and $34 an hour, above Georgia’s median hourly wage of $18.43, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is also covering 100% life insurance costs and matching retirement plan contributions up to 6.5%, above the national average of 5.6%, according to the Plan Sponsor Council of America. And the company is providing free food on the job.

“Georgia’s talent pool is not really massive. But we are trying to improve some of our policies to better source and retain workers,” said an SK official who declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the matter.

Georgia state officials said SK’s hiring has been a success considering how quickly production had to ramp up to meet the company’s obligations to automakers.

While national residential solar installer SunPower Corp (SPWR.O) is recruiting aggressively, Chief Executive Peter Faricy said the company is also looking at what he called “crazy ideas” to secure labor – including buying up companies just for their workers.

“I’m not suggesting we will do this, but I want to give you an order of magnitude of what we’re considering. Like, should we acquire a roofing company and make them all solar installers? Do we go buy an electrical company and acquire 100 electricians?” he said.

SunPower also held talks within the last year with panel manufacturer First Solar Inc (FSLR.O) about developing a solar panel that would be easier to install, enabling crews to outfit two homes a day instead of just one, Faricy said.

SunPower’s competitor, Sunrun Inc (RUN.O), is deploying drones to survey roofs ahead of installation, reducing the number of workers required to scale roofs. It is also rewarding top crews with office parties.

“As best you can game-ify the experience for the employee… it just makes the industry more fun, more attractive,” Chris McClellan, Sunrun’s senior vice president of operations, said in an interview.

Offshore wind developer Orsted (ORSTED.CO), a Danish company that is planning to build projects off the East Coast, hopes to fly in employees from projects in the United Kingdom and Asia to help train staff. State reports have indicated that New York and Massachusetts face large offshore wind workforce gaps.

“We’re creating sort of an ecosystem where we don’t just have an offshore wind academy, but really train the trainers of the future,” said Mads Nipper, Orsted’s CEO, told Reuters.

The Biden Administration has repeatedly promised that new green energy jobs would be well-paying union jobs.

But many of those jobs have lagged the fossil fuel industry in pay, according to a 2021 study by BW Research, as clean energy companies have sought to contain costs to compete with entrenched industries. The IRA seeks to address that by tying prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements to the subsidies.

Those provisions — and the hiring challenges — have put pressure on some employers to use unionized labor.

Learning from its earlier hiring challenges in Europe and Asia, Orsted signed an agreement with North America’s Building Trades Unions to secure workers.

Even Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), a company that has been embroiled in disputes with workers trying to organize, has used union labor to build the electric charging infrastructure for its fleet of electric delivery vehicles in Maspeth, Queens, NY.

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.

Corrine Case, an electrician represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said she was paid $43 an hour to install the charging system at Amazon.

A single mother, Case said she was excited about the job security offered by the rising demand for electricians to install charging stations.

“Our field is constantly changing because of new energy sources and to be a part of that is amazing,” she said.

FREE WORKER TRAINING

In their hunt for workers, solar, wind and electric vehicle companies have expanded programs offering free and subsidized training to military veterans, women and the formerly incarcerated.

SK told Reuters that it has been recruiting at military job fairs and American Legion chapters and collaborating with programs like the Georgia National Guard’s Work for Warriors and the Manufacturing Institute’s Heroes MAKE America.

Some solar companies have tried to recruit veterans, saying the skills learned in military life translate well to the industry.

Utility scale solar developer SOLV Energy, SunPower and Nextracker last year teamed up with nonprofit Solar Energy International to fund a women-only training program for solar installers. More than 30 women attended the week-long course in Colorado.

In October, the nonprofit Solar Hands-On Instructional Network of Excellence (SHINE) teamed up with the Virginia Department of Corrections on a pilot program to train 30 prison inmates and recently incarcerated people in solar panel installation. SHINE’s director David Peterson said the group is discussing expanding the program.

In California, the nonprofit Grid Alternatives has trained 150 inmates at the Madera County jail in solar installation since 2017 and is expanding its program this year to other facilities in the state. Potential employers are more open to hiring the formerly incarcerated once they see they have received some training, Tom Esqueda, the nonprofit’s outreach manager, said.

In Los Angeles, nonprofit Homeboy Industries, which works to rehabilitate former gang members, is using the potential job opportunities for solar panel installers to help recruits for its state-funded jobs program. Homeboy trains 50-60 people a year as solar panel installers.

More than 80% of the people who have gone through the training in the last year have found jobs in solar, according to Jackie Harper, who oversees the program.

“I’m going to be sticking with this,” said Marco Reyes, 28, who went through the program after his release from prison in February and earns $23 an hour as an installer in Valencia, California.

He now plans to train in the electrical end of solar installation, which would bump up his pay.

“Everyone has a chance to move up the ladder into a better position,” he said. “This job to me is a life changer.”

Read more:

Korea’s Hanwha Qcells to invest $2.5 bln in U.S. solar supply chain

U.S. solar installations to fall 23% this year due to China goods ban -report

Reporting by Nichola Groom and Valerie Volcovici; Edited by Richard Valdmanis and Suzanne Goldenberg

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World

‘Feels like summer’: Warm winter breaks temperature records in Europe

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  • Ski slopes deserted due to lack of snow
  • Activists call for faster action on climate change
  • Pollen warning issued as plants bloom early
  • Governments get short-term gas-price respite

LONDON/BRUSSELS, Jan 4 (Reuters) – Record-high winter temperatures swept across parts of Europe over the new year, bringing calls from activists for faster action against climate change while offering short-term respite to governments struggling with high gas prices.

Hundreds of sites have seen temperature records smashed in the past days, from Switzerland to Poland to Hungary, which registered its warmest Christmas Eve in Budapest and saw temperatures climb to 18.9 degrees Celsius (66.02°F) on Jan. 1.

In France, where the night of Dec. 30-31 was the warmest since records began, temperatures climbed to nearly 25C in the southwest on New Year’s Day while normally bustling European ski resorts were deserted due to a lack of snow.

The Weather Service in Germany, where temperatures of over 20C were recorded, said such a mild turn of the year had not been observed in the country since records began in 1881.

Czech Television reported some trees were starting to flower in private gardens while Switzerland’s office of Meteorology and Climatology issued a pollen warning to allergy sufferers from early blooming hazel plants.

The temperature hit 25.1C at Bilbao airport in Spain’s Basque country. People basked in the sun as they sat outside Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum or walked along the River Nervion.

“It always rains a lot here, it’s very cold, and it’s January, (but now) it feels like summer,” said Bilbao resident Eusebio Folgeira, 81.

French tourist Joana Host said: “It’s like nice weather for biking but we know it’s like the planet is burning. So we’re enjoying it but at the same time we’re scared.”

Scientists have not yet analysed the specific ways in which climate change affected the recent high temperatures, but January’s warm weather spell fits into the longer-term trend of rising temperatures due to human-caused climate change.

“Winters are becoming warmer in Europe as a result of global temperatures increasing,” said Freja Vamborg, climate scientist at the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

It follows another year of extreme weather events that scientists concluded were directly linked to global warming, including deadly heatwaves in Europe and India, and flooding in Pakistan.

“The record-breaking heat across Europe over the new year was made more likely to happen by human-caused climate change, just as climate change is now making every heatwave more likely and hotter,” said Dr Friederike Otto, climate scientist at Imperial College London.

Temperature spikes can also cause plants to start growing earlier in the year or coax animals out of hibernation early, making them vulnerable to being killed off by later cold snaps.

Robert Vautard, director of France’s Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, said that while temperatures peaked from Dec. 30 to Jan. 2, the mild spell has lasted for two weeks and is still not over. “This is actually a relatively long-lived event,” he said.

EMPTY SLOPES

French national weather agency Meteo France attributed the anomalous temperatures to a mass of warm air moving to Europe from subtropical zones.

It struck during the busy skiing season, leading to cancelled trips and empty slopes. Resorts in the northern Spanish regions of Asturias, Leon and Cantabria have been closed since the Christmas holidays for lack of snow.

On Jahorina mountain above the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, it should have been one of the busiest weeks of the season. Instead, the chair-lifts hung lifeless above the grassy slopes. In one guesthouse a couple ate dinner alone in the restaurant, the only guests.

A ski jumping event in Zakopane, southern Poland, planned for the weekend of Jan. 7-8 was cancelled.

Karsten Smid, a climate expert at Greenpeace Germany, said while some climate change impacts were already unavoidable, urgent action should be taken to prevent even more drastic global warming.

“What’s happening right now is exactly what climate scientists warned us about 10, 20 years ago, and that can no longer be prevented now,” Smid said.

WEATHER EASES GAS STRAIN

The unusually mild temperatures have offered some short-term relief to European governments who have struggled to secure scarce gas supplies and keep a lid on soaring prices after Russia slashed deliveries of the fuel to Europe.

European governments have said this energy crisis should hasten their shift from fossil fuels to clean energy – but in the short term, plummeting Russian fuel supplies have left them racing to secure extra gas from elsewhere.

Gas demand has fallen for heating in many countries due to the mild spell, helping to reduce prices.

The benchmark front-month gas price was trading at 70.25 euros per megawatt hour on Wednesday morning, its lowest level since February 2022 – just before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The head of Italy’s energy authority predicted that regulated energy bills in the country would fall this month, if the milder temperatures help keep gas prices lower.

However, a note by Eurointelligence cautioned that this should not lull governments into complacency about Europe’s energy crisis.

“While it will give governments more fiscal breathing room in the first part of this year, resolving Europe’s energy problems will taken concerted action over the course of several years,” it said. “Nobody should believe this is over yet.”

Reporting by Kate Abnett, Richard Lough, Alan Charlish, Krisztina Than, Luiza Ilie, Susanna Twidale, Riham Alkousaa, Jason Hovet, Emma Pinedo, Kirsten Donovan, Federico Maccioni; writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Mark Heinrich

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Business

South Korea fines Tesla $2.2 mln for exaggerating driving range of EVs

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SEOUL, Jan 3 (Reuters) – South Korea’s antitrust regulator said it would impose a 2.85 billion won ($2.2 million) fine on Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) for failing to tell its customers about the shorter driving range of its electric vehicles (EVs) in low temperatures.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said that Tesla had exaggerated the “driving ranges of its cars on a single charge, their fuel cost-effectiveness compared to gasoline vehicles as well as the performance of its Superchargers” on its official local website since August 2019 until recently.

The driving range of the U.S. EV manufacturer’s cars plunge in cold weather by up to 50.5% versus how they are advertised online, the KFTC said in a statement on Tuesday.

Tesla could not be immediately reached for comment.

On its website, Tesla provides winter driving tips, such as pre-conditioning vehicles with external power sources, and using its updated Energy app to monitor energy consumption, but does not mention the loss of driving range in sub-zero temperatures.

[1/2] A view shows the Tesla logo on the hood of a car in Oslo, Norway November 10, 2022. REUTERS/Victoria Klesty

In 2021, Citizens United for Consumer Sovereignty, a South Korean consumer group, said the driving range of most EVs drop by up to 40% in cold temperatures when batteries need to be heated, with Tesla suffering the most, citing data from the country’s environment ministry.

Last year, the KFTC fined German carmaker Mercedes-Benz and its Korean unit 20.2 billion won for false advertising tied to gas emissions of its diesel passenger vehicles.

The challenge for electric vehicle performance in extreme temperatures is widely known, though EVs are popular in markets like Norway, where four out of five vehicles sold last year were battery-powered, led by Tesla.

A 2020 study of 4,200 connected EVs of all makes by Canada-based telematics provider Geotab found that most models had a similar drop in range in cold weather, primarily because the battery is also used to heat the car for the driver and passengers.

At just above 20 degrees Celsius, the average EV outperformed its stated range, but at minus 15 degrees the average EV had only 54% of its rated range, the study found.

Reporting by Ju-min Park and Hyunsu Yim; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Emelia Sithole-Matarise

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Business

Southwest flight upheaval a ‘system failure,’ U.S. says

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WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (Reuters) – U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Wednesday ratcheted up pressure on Southwest Airlines (LUV.N), saying thousands more canceled flights indicated a system failure at the low-cost carrier.

“We are past the point where they could say this is a weather-driven issue,” Buttigieg said in an interview posted by ABC News on its website. “Don’t get me wrong, all of this began with that severe storm. We saw winter weather affecting the country and severely disrupting all airlines.”

Nationwide, at least 60 people died in weather-related incidents in recent days, NBC News reported.

The rest of the aviation system and other airlines seemed to be back from the weather disruptions, Buttigieg said.

“So what this indicates is a system failure (at Southwest), and they need to make sure that these stranded passengers get to where they need to go and that they are provided adequate compensation, not just for the flights itself … but also things like hotels, like ground transportation, like meals because this is the airlines’ responsibility,” he said, adding he had spoken to the company’s leadership.

U.S. airlines had canceled thousands of flights as a massive winter storm swept over much of the country before and during the Christmas holiday weekend, but Southwest’s woes have deepened while other airlines have largely recovered.

Southwest has canceled a total of more than 14,500 flights since Friday. On Wednesday it canceled 2,500 flights, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.

[1/3] Travelers at Baltimore Washington International airport deal with the impact of Southwest Airlines canceling more than 12,000 flights around the Christmas holiday weekend across the country and in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. December 27, 2022.  REUTERS/Michael A. McCoy

Southwest told Reuters it would reimburse customers for travel-related costs and had already processed thousands of requests.

It also said employees across the airline were helping crews in many functions.

Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) said in an email it had capped fares in all domestic and international markets where Southwest operates. The program includes over 700 nonstop markets and are valid through Dec 31. United and American announced similar programs.

U.S. Representative Rick Larsen, top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in a tweet that the company was treating flight cancellations as “controllable” beginning Dec. 24, which triggers reimbursement for incidental expenses and refunds for full fares.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said the low-cost carrier needed to upgrade its legacy systems and apologized to customers and employees in a video message.

Shares of Southwest tumbled over 5% on Wednesday after diving 6% on Tuesday. Some analysts said the cancellations will pressure profits in the fourth quarter.

“The total impact to revenue could be in the 9% range of our expected Q4 revenue, which compares to our current estimate with revenues 15% ahead of 2019 levels in 2022” Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu said.

Kahyaoglu estimated total EBITDAR (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and restructuring or rent costs) impact from the cancellations could be in the range of $700 million.

Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Abhijith Ganapavaram in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Porter, Howard Goller, Alexandra Alper and David Gregorio

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Business

Tesla used car price bubble pops, weighs on new car demand

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SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 27 (Reuters) – Tesla buyers who waited months for their new car have had an unusual choice for much of the past two years: keep the new electric vehicle, or sell it at a profit to someone with less patience.

But the days of the Tesla flip are numbered – a potential threat to new car prices that are already getting cut.

Prices of used Teslas are falling faster than those of other carmakers and the clean-energy status symbols are languishing in dealer lots longer, industry data provided to Reuters showed.

The average price for a used Tesla in November was $55,754, down 17% from a July peak of $67,297. The overall used car market posted a 4% drop during that period, according to Edmunds data. The used Teslas were in dealer inventory for 50 days on average in November, compared with 38 days for all used cars.

Rising gasoline prices, an effect of the Ukraine war, boosted demand for Teslas, one of few long-range electric vehicles in the market. Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) itself raised prices faster than prices for other cars, building its profit margins. And buyers of some new Teslas took advantage of the booming market to sell their relatively new cars for a profit, then order new ones, driving demand for Tesla’s new cars.

Now fuel prices are easing, interest rates are rising, Tesla output is increasing, and EV competition is growing, leading used Tesla prices to fall faster than the market, and creating a cascading effect on prices of new Teslas.

Tesla last week doubled a U.S. new-car price cut to $7,500 for Model Ys and Model 3s delivered this year, adding to investor jitters about softening demand.

Nearly a third of used Teslas for sale in August were 2022 models up for resale, a sign that original buyers were aiming to flip, analysts said. That compares with about 5% of other brands on the used market, research firm Edmunds said.

Reuters Graphics
Reuters Graphics
Reuters Graphics

“You can’t sell your current Tesla for more money than you paid for it, which was true for a lot of the past two years,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at car sales website iSeeCars.com. “That would reduce demand for new Teslas.”

On Thursday Musk said that the “radical interest rate changes” have increased the prices of all cars, new and used, and that Tesla potentially could lower pricing to sustain volume growth, which would result in lower profit.

Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department, did not respond to Reuters’ emailed questions.

Indeed, Tesla is hardly alone: the U.S. used car market thrived as global vehicle manufacturing hit snags, but it now is facing a “used vehicle recession,” one analyst said, after used car seller CarMax last week reported an 86% drop in third-quarter profit.

But Tesla is leading the retreat: the factors that pushed up prices of its vehicles were exaggerated compared with other brands because Teslas were “basically for a long time really the only viable product when it came to used EVs,” said Ivan Drury, director of Insights at Edmunds.com.

EVs such as the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 are coming to market with a lot of buzz, said Liz Najman, content marketing manager at EV researcher Recurrent.

Software engineer Greg Profitt bought a new Model Y last year for $49,000 and sold it three months later for $12,000 more. He ordered a new one – but has just bought a used Tesla at a discount.

“The economy kind of scares me to buy new ” he said, adding that the new $7,500 discount would be too little to sustain demand.

Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco and Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru
Editing by Peter Henderson, Anna Driver and Matthew Lewis

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Business

Battery swapping spurs Kenya’s electric motorbike drive

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  • 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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US

Blizzard kills 13 in Buffalo, N.Y., area

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Dec 25 (Reuters) – A lethal blizzard paralyzed Buffalo, New York, on Christmas Day, trapping motorists and rescue workers in their vehicles, leaving thousands of homes without power and raising the death toll from storms that have chilled much of the United States for days.

At least 30 people have died in U.S. weather-related incidents, according to an NBC News tally, since a deep freeze gripped most of the nation, coupled with snow, ice and howling winds from a sprawling storm that roared out of the Great Lakes region on Friday.

CNN has reported a total of 26 weather fatalities.

Much of the loss of life has centered in and around Buffalo at the edge of Lake Erie in western New York, as numbing cold and heavy “lake-effect” snow – the result of frigid air moving over warmer lake waters – persisted through the holiday weekend.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the storm’s confirmed death toll climbed to 13 on Sunday, up from three reported overnight in the Buffalo region. The latest victims included some found in cars and some in snow banks, Poloncarz said, adding that the death tally would likely rise further.

“This is not the Christmas any of us hoped for nor expected,” Poloncarz said on Twitter on Sunday. “My deepest condolences to the families who have lost loved ones.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it an “epic, once-in-a-lifetime” weather disaster that ranked as the fiercest winter storm to hit the greater Buffalo area since a crippling 1977 blizzard that killed nearly 30 people.

“We have now surpassed the scale of that storm, in its intensity, the longevity, the ferocity of its winds,” Hochul told an evening news conference, adding that the current storm would likely to go down in history as “the blizzard of ’22.”

RESCUING THE RESCUERS

The latest blizzard came nearly six weeks after a record-setting but shorter-lived lake-effect storm struck western New York.

Despite a ban on road travel imposed since Friday, hundreds of Erie County motorists were stranded in their vehicles over the weekend, with National Guard troops called in to help with rescues hindered by white-out conditions and drifting snow, Poloncarz said.

Many snow plows and other equipment sent on Saturday and Sunday became stuck in the snow, “and we had to send rescue missions to rescue the rescuers,” he told reporters.

The Buffalo police department posted an online plea to the public for assistance in search-and-recovery efforts, asking those who “have a snow mobile and are willing to help” to call a hotline for instructions.

The severity of the storm was notable even for a region accustomed to harsh winter weather.

Christina Klaffka, 39, a North Buffalo resident, watched the shingles blow off her neighbor’s home and listened to her windows rattle from “hurricane-like winds.” She lost power along with her whole neighborhood on Saturday evening, and was still without electricity on Sunday morning.

[1/9] A snow plow is left stranded on the road following a winter storm that hit the Buffalo region on Main St. in Amherst, New York, U.S., December 25, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

“My TV kept flickering while I was trying to watch the Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears game. I lost power shortly after the 3rd quarter,” she said.

John Burns, 58, a retiree in North Buffalo, said he and his family were trapped in their house for 36 hours by the storm and extreme cold that he called “mean and nasty.”

“Nobody was out. Nobody was even walking their dogs,” he said. “Nothing was going on for two days.”

Snowfall totals were hard to gauge, he added, because of fierce winds that reduced accumulation between houses, but piled up a 5-foot (1.5-meter) drift “in front of my garage.”

Hochul told reporters on Sunday that the Biden administration had agreed to support her request for a federal disaster declaration.

About 200 National Guard troops were mobilized in western New York to help police and fire crews, conduct wellness checks and bring supplies to shelters, Hochul said.

ELECTRICITY HIT HARD

The larger storm system was moving east on Sunday, after knocking out power to as many as 1.5 million customers at the height of outages late last week and forcing thousands of commercial flight cancellations during the busy holiday travel period.

More than 150,000 U.S. homes and businesses were without power on Sunday, down sharply from the 1.8 million without power as of early Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. In Buffalo, 15,000 residents were still without electricity on Sunday evening, Poloncarz said.

He said one electrical substation knocked offline was sealed off by an 18-foot-tall mound of snow, and utility crews found the entire facility frozen inside.

Christmas Day temperatures, while beginning to rebound from near-zero readings that were widespread on Saturday, remained well below average across the central and eastern United States, and below freezing even as far south as the Gulf Coast, National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist Rich Otto said.

Nearly 4 feet of snow was measured at Buffalo airport by Sunday, according to the latest NWS tally, with white-out conditions lingering south of Buffalo into the afternoon as continuing squalls dumped 2-3 inches of snow an hour.

In Kentucky, officials confirmed three storm-related deaths since Friday, while at least four people were dead and several injured in auto-related accidents in Ohio, where a 50-vehicle pileup shut down the Ohio Turnpike during a blizzard on Friday.

Other deaths related to extreme cold or weather-induced vehicle accidents were reported in Missouri, Tennessee, Kansas and Colorado, according to news reports.

(The story has been refiled to remove extraneous word in headline)

Reporting by Gabriella Borter and Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington; Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani, Idrees Ali, Ismail Shakil, Rick Cowan and ; Writing by Steve Gorman; editing by Ross Colvin, Diane Craft, Nick Zieminski, Leslie Adler, Gerry Doyle and Bradley Perrett

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Ahmed Aboulenein

Thomson Reuters

Washington-based correspondent covering U.S. healthcare and pharmaceutical policy with a focus on the Department of Health and Human Services and the agencies it oversees such as the Food and Drug Administration, previously based in Iraq and Egypt.

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U.S. deep freeze forecast to break Christmas Eve records

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Dec 24 (Reuters) – An arctic blast gripped much of the United States on Saturday driving power outages, flight cancellations and car wrecks, as plummeting temperatures were predicted to bring the coldest Christmas Eve on record to several cities from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

Temperatures are forecast to top out on Saturday at just 7 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 13 Celsius) in Pittsburgh, surpassing its previous all-time coldest Christmas Eve high of 13 F, set in 1983, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

Cities in Georgia and South Carolina – Athens and Charleston – were likewise expected to record their coldest daytime Christmas Eve high temperatures, while Washington, D.C., was forecast to experience its chilliest Dec. 24 since 1989.

The flurry of yuletide temperature records were predicted as a U.S. deep freeze sharpened by perilous wind chills continued to envelope much of the eastern two-thirds of the nation into the holiday weekend.

The freeze already produced fatal car collisions around the country with CNN reporting at least 14 dead from weather-related accidents.

The arctic cold combined with a “cyclone bomb” of heavy snow and howling winds roaring out of the Great Lakes region on Friday and into the Upper Mississippi and Ohio valleys wreaked havoc on power systems, roadways and commercial air traffic.

Extreme winter weather was blamed for at least five deaths on Friday.

Two motorists were killed, and numerous others injured, in a 50-vehicle pileup that shut down the Ohio Turnpike in both directions during a blizzard near Toledo, forcing an evacuation of stranded motorists by bus to keep them from freezing in their cars, officials said.

Three more weather-related fatalities were confirmed in neighboring Kentucky – two from car accidents and one a homeless person who died of exposure.

Freezing rain and ice from a separate storm in the Pacific Northwest made travel treacherous there as well on Friday.

[1/7] A view of an area after heavy snowfall in Regent, North Dakota, U.S. December 23, 2022, in this picture obtained from social media. Blake Rafferty/Twitter@BlakeRafferty1/via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES

BORDER TO BORDER

From the Canadian to the Mexican border and coast to coast, some 240 million people in all were under winter weather warnings and advisories of some sort on Friday, according to the weather service.

The NWS said its map of existing or impending meteorological hazards “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever.”

With energy systems across the country strained by rising demand for heat and storm-related damage to transmission lines, as many as 1.8 million U.S. homes and businesses were left without power as of early Saturday morning, according to tracking site Poweroutage.us.

The disruptions upended daily routines and holiday plans for millions of Americans during one of the busiest travel periods of the year.

The American Automobile Association had estimated that 112.7 million people planned to venture 50 miles (80 km) or more from home between Friday and Jan. 2. But stormy weather heading into the weekend likely ended up keeping many of them at home.

At least 3,741 U.S. flights were canceled on Saturday, with total delays tallying 10,297, according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. More than 5,000 flights were cancelled on Friday, the flight tracking said.

The city of Buffalo and its surrounding county on the edge of Lake Erie in western New York imposed a driving ban, and all three Buffalo-area border crossing bridges were closed to inbound traffic from Canada due to the weather.

The severe weather prompted authorities across the country to open warming centers in libraries and police stations while scrambling to expand temporary shelter for the homeless. The challenge was compounded by the influx of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border by the thousands in recent weeks.

Bitter cold intensified by high winds extended through the Deep South to the U.S.-Mexico border, plunging wind chill factors to single digits Fahrenheit (minus 18 to minus 13 Celsius) in El Paso, Texas. Exposure to such conditions can cause frostbite within minutes.

Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Joel Schectman, Gabriella Borter, Tim Reid, Lisa Baertlein, Erwin Seba, Susan Heavey, Laila Kearney, Alyson McClaren, Aleksandra Michalska, and Scott DiSavino; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Aurora Ellis, William Mallard and Diane Craft

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Airlines cancel 5,700 U.S. flights amid fierce winter storms

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WASHINGTON, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Airline cancellations topped 5,700 U.S. flights on Friday as massive winter storms snarled airport operations around the United States and frustrated tens of thousands of holiday travelers.

That followed nearly 2,700 canceled flights on Thursday, while just over 1,000 flights have already been canceled for Saturday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.

Passenger railroad Amtrak has canceled dozens of trains through Christmas, disrupting holiday travel for thousands.

Highways in the Midwest faced lengthy delays because of snowy weather or crashes and authorities in parts of Indiana, Michigan, New York and Ohio urged motorists to avoid nonessential travel.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed ground stops or delays for de-icing at a number of U.S. airports because of winter weather.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN the U.S. aviation system “is operating under enormous strain” with two different storms and high winds affecting airports around the country. About 10% of U.S. flights were canceled on Thursday, Buttigieg said.

Another 10,400 U.S. flights were delayed on Friday – including more than 40% of those operated by American Airlines (AAL.O), United Airlines (UAL.O), Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) and Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) – after 11,300 flights were delayed Thursday.

Southwest canceled 1,238 flights on Friday, 29% of all its scheduled flights, while Alaska Airlines (ALK.N) canceled 507, or 64%, of its flights.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had 357 flights, or 63% of departures, canceled Friday. The FAA lifted a ground stop there due to snow and ice but late Friday delays were still averaging nearly three hours.

Nearly half of departing flights at Detroit Metro were canceled, along with 70% at Portland, 38% at New York’s LaGuardia, 29% at Chicago O’Hare and 27% at Boston.

Chicago was facing dangerously cold temperatures with wind chills hitting minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 Celsius).

Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Josie Kao, Jonathan Oatis, Sandra Maler and Edmund Klamann

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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