In this newsletter:
1) Joe Biden breaks climate pledge by approving colossal oil drilling scheme
The Daily Telegraph, 13 March 2023
2) Biden administration approves controversial Alaska oil drilling project
CNBC, 13 March 2023
3) Rick Newman: Biden finally glimpses the importance of oil
Yahoo Finance, 13 March 2023
4) Aramco ramps up fossil fuel spending as oil and gas firms ease off green agenda
City A.M., 14 March 2023
5) Reality check: There is no energy transition, just energy addition
Linkedin, February 2023
The Daily Telegraph, 13 March 2023
2) Biden administration approves controversial Alaska oil drilling project
CNBC, 13 March 2023
3) Rick Newman: Biden finally glimpses the importance of oil
Yahoo Finance, 13 March 2023
4) Aramco ramps up fossil fuel spending as oil and gas firms ease off green agenda
City A.M., 14 March 2023
5) Reality check: There is no energy transition, just energy addition
Linkedin, February 2023
6) China-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia marks a new Middle East
The Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2023
The Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2023
7) GOP lawmakers say allowing China’s Xi to extend Beijing’s global reach is a ‘strategic failure’ for Biden
New York Post, 13 March 2023
New York Post, 13 March 2023
8) Robert A Manning: Is the US having an ‘East of Suez’ moment?
The Hill, 13 March 2023
9) Germany forges alliance with seven Euro nations to oppose 2035 ICE ban
Motor.1, 13 March 2023
The Hill, 13 March 2023
9) Germany forges alliance with seven Euro nations to oppose 2035 ICE ban
Motor.1, 13 March 2023
10) Mini nuclear reactors as Rishi Sunak rewrites energy strategy
The Times, 14 March 2023
11) Oliver Shah: My prediction: UK government will slam the brakes on 2030 Net Zero targets
The Times, 14 March 2023
11) Oliver Shah: My prediction: UK government will slam the brakes on 2030 Net Zero targets
The Sunday Times, 12 March 2023
12) Francis Menton: Germany's coming green energy 'economic miracle'
Manhattan Contrarian, 12 March 2023
Manhattan Contrarian, 12 March 2023
Full details:
1) Joe Biden breaks climate pledge by approving colossal oil drilling scheme
The Daily Telegraph, 13 March 2023
President accused of ‘hypocrisy’ after sanctioning the Alaska Willow Project, reversing Net Zero promise he made during election
The Daily Telegraph, 13 March 2023
President accused of ‘hypocrisy’ after sanctioning the Alaska Willow Project, reversing Net Zero promise he made during election
Joe Biden is facing a showdown with environmentalists and leading Democrats after approving one of the largest ever drilling projects on US land.
His administration gave the green light to the Willow Project on Alaska’s North Slope, effectively reversing a policy pledge he made during the 2020 presidential election.
Having entered office vowing “no more drilling on federal lands, period”, Mr Biden’s hand has been forced by soaring energy prices, which have fuelled inflation.
The Willow Project, which has been led by oil behemoth ConocoPhillips, could produce more than 600 million barrels of crude oil over the next 30 years.
It is understood that the president will try to soften criticism by imposing strict restrictions on offshore drilling and strengthening protection on more than 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
This is unlikely to satisfy critics who are pressing the administration to honour its pledges at a raft of global climate summits.
Environmental groups estimate that the Willow Project will add more than 250 million metric tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere over the next 30 years, equivalent to the annual emissions of 66 coal plants.
Annually, it would equate to adding nearly two million cars onto US roads.
Only last week, nearly two dozen Democrat members of Congress – as well as independent Bernie Sanders – wrote to Mr Biden urging him to kill off what they described as an “ill-conceived and misguided” oil and gas drilling project.
They warned that would cause at least $19.8 billion (£16.3 billion) in climate-related damages.
“Climate damage is unlikely to stop with the first phase of the Willow Project; your administration needs to draw the line now,” they added.
“Approving a major new oil and gas development project would be inconsistent with your administration’s historic achievements on climate and environmental justice.”
Other opponents included Al Gore, a former vice president, who said: “The proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska is recklessly irresponsible.
“The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska native and other local communities at risk, [but] it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net zero future.”
Natalie Mebane, the climate director of Greenpeace USA, warned that the decision would lead to a “climate catastrophe”.
“Approving what would be the largest oil extraction project on federal lands is incredibly hypocritical from president Biden, who in his State of the Union called the climate crisis an existential threat,” she said.
While some Alaskan native groups have backed the move, others – notably the Nuiqsut – have warned of environmental devastation to waters and the caribou population.
However, Mr Biden’s predicament is that he is also facing political pressure from labour unions. The traditional bedrock of the Democratic party supports the scheme, which they believe will provide much-needed, well-paid jobs.
Full story
2) Biden administration approves controversial Alaska oil drilling project
CNBC, 13 March 2023
His administration gave the green light to the Willow Project on Alaska’s North Slope, effectively reversing a policy pledge he made during the 2020 presidential election.
Having entered office vowing “no more drilling on federal lands, period”, Mr Biden’s hand has been forced by soaring energy prices, which have fuelled inflation.
The Willow Project, which has been led by oil behemoth ConocoPhillips, could produce more than 600 million barrels of crude oil over the next 30 years.
It is understood that the president will try to soften criticism by imposing strict restrictions on offshore drilling and strengthening protection on more than 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
This is unlikely to satisfy critics who are pressing the administration to honour its pledges at a raft of global climate summits.
Environmental groups estimate that the Willow Project will add more than 250 million metric tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere over the next 30 years, equivalent to the annual emissions of 66 coal plants.
Annually, it would equate to adding nearly two million cars onto US roads.
Only last week, nearly two dozen Democrat members of Congress – as well as independent Bernie Sanders – wrote to Mr Biden urging him to kill off what they described as an “ill-conceived and misguided” oil and gas drilling project.
They warned that would cause at least $19.8 billion (£16.3 billion) in climate-related damages.
“Climate damage is unlikely to stop with the first phase of the Willow Project; your administration needs to draw the line now,” they added.
“Approving a major new oil and gas development project would be inconsistent with your administration’s historic achievements on climate and environmental justice.”
Other opponents included Al Gore, a former vice president, who said: “The proposed expansion of oil and gas drilling in Alaska is recklessly irresponsible.
“The pollution it would generate will not only put Alaska native and other local communities at risk, [but] it is incompatible with the ambition we need to achieve a net zero future.”
Natalie Mebane, the climate director of Greenpeace USA, warned that the decision would lead to a “climate catastrophe”.
“Approving what would be the largest oil extraction project on federal lands is incredibly hypocritical from president Biden, who in his State of the Union called the climate crisis an existential threat,” she said.
While some Alaskan native groups have backed the move, others – notably the Nuiqsut – have warned of environmental devastation to waters and the caribou population.
However, Mr Biden’s predicament is that he is also facing political pressure from labour unions. The traditional bedrock of the Democratic party supports the scheme, which they believe will provide much-needed, well-paid jobs.
Full story
2) Biden administration approves controversial Alaska oil drilling project
CNBC, 13 March 2023
The Biden administration approved a major and controversial oil drilling plan in Alaska, known as Willow, just one day after unveiling protections for more than 16 million acres of land and water in the region.
The $8 billion plan, led by Alaska’s largest crude oil producer, would produce about 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years and generate around 278 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Under the plan, ConocoPhillips will be allowed to develop three well pads within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre area that is the largest expanse of public land in the U.S.
The Biden administration approved a major and controversial oil drilling plan in Alaska, known as Willow, just one day after unveiling protections for more than 16 million acres of land and water in the region.
The $8 billion plan, led by Alaska’s largest crude oil producer, would produce about 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years and generate around 278 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Under the plan, ConocoPhillips will be allowed to develop three well pads within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre area that is the largest expanse of public land in the U.S.
The approval of Willow is one of the president’s most consequential climate decisions. Environmental groups have long condemned the plan, arguing it undermines the administration’s pledge to combat climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The project’s emissions would be about equivalent to what 66 new coal-fired power plants produce in a year.
Proponents of Willow, including the state’s congressional delegation and some Alaska Native tribal governments and residents of Alaska’s North Slope, have said the plan would create about 2,500 jobs, deliver up to $17 billion in revenue for the federal government and boost U.S. domestic energy security.
Prior to the president’s decision, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management released an environmental analysis last month that proposed lowering the number of drilling sites from five to three under the project. The Interior said it had “substantial concerns” about Willow, including its direct and indirect emissions and its impact on local wildlife.
In addition to lowering the number of drill sites, the Interior said Monday that ConocoPhillips would relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of existing leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to the government, a decision it said would create a buffer from exploration and development in the region outside the project.
Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement, said the approval “was the right decision for Alaska and our nation.”
“Willow fits within the Biden administration’s priorities on environmental and social justice, facilitating the energy transition and enhancing our energy security, all while creating good union jobs and providing benefits to Alaska Native communities,” Lance said.
In an apparent effort to offset criticism about the project’s climate impact, the administration on Sunday declared the Arctic Ocean off limits to oil and gas leasing and said it will also impose regulations to protect nearly 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
While climate groups praised the administration’s plans to protect the Arctic, they strongly condemned Willow and vowed to challenge the project in court.
“It’s insulting that Biden thinks this will change our minds about the Willow project,” said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “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.”
Christy Goldfuss, chief policy impact officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the decision to approve Willow a “grievous mistake” and said the group will continue its fight to stop the project.
“It green-lights a carbon bomb, sets back the climate fight and emboldens an industry hell-bent on destroying the planet,” Goldfuss said. “It’s wrong on climate and wrong for the country.”
Full story
3) Rick Newman: Biden finally glimpses the importance of oil
Yahoo Finance, 13 March 2023
The $8 billion plan, led by Alaska’s largest crude oil producer, would produce about 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years and generate around 278 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Under the plan, ConocoPhillips will be allowed to develop three well pads within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre area that is the largest expanse of public land in the U.S.
The Biden administration approved a major and controversial oil drilling plan in Alaska, known as Willow, just one day after unveiling protections for more than 16 million acres of land and water in the region.
The $8 billion plan, led by Alaska’s largest crude oil producer, would produce about 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years and generate around 278 million metric tons of carbon emissions, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Under the plan, ConocoPhillips will be allowed to develop three well pads within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 23 million-acre area that is the largest expanse of public land in the U.S.
The approval of Willow is one of the president’s most consequential climate decisions. Environmental groups have long condemned the plan, arguing it undermines the administration’s pledge to combat climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The project’s emissions would be about equivalent to what 66 new coal-fired power plants produce in a year.
Proponents of Willow, including the state’s congressional delegation and some Alaska Native tribal governments and residents of Alaska’s North Slope, have said the plan would create about 2,500 jobs, deliver up to $17 billion in revenue for the federal government and boost U.S. domestic energy security.
Prior to the president’s decision, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management released an environmental analysis last month that proposed lowering the number of drilling sites from five to three under the project. The Interior said it had “substantial concerns” about Willow, including its direct and indirect emissions and its impact on local wildlife.
In addition to lowering the number of drill sites, the Interior said Monday that ConocoPhillips would relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of existing leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska to the government, a decision it said would create a buffer from exploration and development in the region outside the project.
Ryan Lance, ConocoPhillips chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement, said the approval “was the right decision for Alaska and our nation.”
“Willow fits within the Biden administration’s priorities on environmental and social justice, facilitating the energy transition and enhancing our energy security, all while creating good union jobs and providing benefits to Alaska Native communities,” Lance said.
In an apparent effort to offset criticism about the project’s climate impact, the administration on Sunday declared the Arctic Ocean off limits to oil and gas leasing and said it will also impose regulations to protect nearly 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
While climate groups praised the administration’s plans to protect the Arctic, they strongly condemned Willow and vowed to challenge the project in court.
“It’s insulting that Biden thinks this will change our minds about the Willow project,” said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “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.”
Christy Goldfuss, chief policy impact officer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the decision to approve Willow a “grievous mistake” and said the group will continue its fight to stop the project.
“It green-lights a carbon bomb, sets back the climate fight and emboldens an industry hell-bent on destroying the planet,” Goldfuss said. “It’s wrong on climate and wrong for the country.”
Full story
3) Rick Newman: Biden finally glimpses the importance of oil
Yahoo Finance, 13 March 2023
Biden is now learning the lessons of the 2022 energy crisis and acknowledging that the green energy transition is simply going to take a long time.
Environmentalists are aghast. They shouldn’t be.
President Biden’s decision to approve a big oil-drilling project in Alaska feels like betrayal to climate warriors, given Biden’s campaign promise to “end fossil fuel” and pivot to a green-energy economy. But that campaign promise was never realistic. Biden is now learning the lessons of the 2022 energy crisis and acknowledging that the green energy transition is simply going to take a long time.
The Biden administration on March 13 approved ConocoPhillips’s Willow drilling project, which could eventually produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day during 30 years of operation. To appease his climate critics, Biden is limiting the amount of drilling on the site to the minimum amount that is economically viable, while also imposing new limits on drilling in other areas of Alaska.
It doesn’t seem like a compromise to climate activists, who call the Willow project a “carbon bomb.” But Biden’s softening stance toward fossil-fuel production is pragmatic and necessary. The green-energy transition is not an either/or proposition, as some environmentalists insist. It’s a both/and situation in which the United States needs assured access to the hydrocarbons we rely on today while also aggressively developing renewable sources of energy that will gradually replace them.
Developments in 2022 made crystal clear the importance of oil and natural gas for the foreseeable future. Fossil-fuel supplies were tight before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with prices for gasoline and other types of fuel rising as a result. Russia’s invasion created a genuine energy crisis. Russia’s hydrocarbon supplies came into question as Ukraine’s allies imposed punishing sanctions on Russia, and that threatened economies everywhere, given that Russia was and still is a top exporter of oil and natural gas.
Those sanctions were supposed to avoid an energy war with Russia, but an energy war happened anyway, in part because Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted one. Putin shut off most natural gas supplies to Europe, which got 40% of its gas from Russia. Natural gas prices spiked worldwide as Europe scrambled to find other sources of heating fuel for the winter. As the war dragged on and Russia continued earning hard currency needed to finance the war through oil sales, advanced nations imposed a price cap on Russian oil, which risks further supply disruptions and rising prices. All of this is still going on and could once again cause energy shortages and spiking prices.
As energy prices soared in 2022, Biden found himself in the awkward position of beseeching American drillers, Saudi Arabia and other petro-states to drill more. Nobody ran to the rescue, with drillers and their investors indicating their preference for handsome profits over risky new investments that would boost supply. That must have been a sobering moment for Biden and his economic advisers, who up till then had blithely bashed oil and gas as a dinosaur industry we could easily do without.
What 2022 taught us is it will be decades before we can live without oil and gas. The possible consequences of misunderstanding that are shortages and painfully high prices—no matter how fast we adopt renewable forms of energy. S&P Global Commodity Insights expects worldwide oil demand to keep growing until 2031. Then it will flatline, staying roughly level for years. By 2050, S&P expects oil demand to be about where it is today. Demand for natural gas may remain strong even longer.
Disruptions to fossil fuel supplies do create an incentive for faster deployment of renewables, as environmentalists point out. And renewables are coming online quickly. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects the share of American electricity generated from renewables to rise from 22% now to 26% by 2024. The big green-energy bill Biden signed last year will pump unprecedented amounts of government funding into renewables and speed technology breakthroughs.
But abandoning fossil fuels too quickly can cause economic hardship and worse. The shortage of natural gas in Europe, and rising prices everywhere, led some utilities to switch back to burning coal, which is the dirtiest fossil fuel. If utilities could switch to sun or wind power they would, but it’s simply not available. Here in the United States, many homes in the northeast still rely on heating oil, because pipelines carrying cleaner natural gas to the region can’t get approved. Heating oil is similar to diesel fuel, which is scarce and expensive because of limited refining capacity and the loss of Russian supply. As a result, families in New England are bearing the highest winter heating costs in years.
It would be wondrous if some magic incantation switched America’s fossil-fuel infrastructure to renewables. But some clean-energy advocates vastly underestimate the complexity of the job. Building new infrastructure to get renewable energy where it’s needed is going to be just as fraught as getting new oil pipelines approved through residential communities. Everybody wants the infrastructure, as long as it’s somewhere else. Permitting battles and other approvals will add years to the construction of high-voltage transmission lines and other equipment needed to generate renewable energy and move it around. In the meanwhile, fossil fuels are already there.
Someday, renewable energy will displace the geopolitical power petro-states such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and other large oil producers wield today. Until renewables take over, however, petro-states could have more power, if fossil-fuel production drops off in the United States and other democracies. That’s because most petro-state governments control fossil-fuel production through nationalized energy companies that do what the government says. In the United States, energy companies are private-sector businesses driven by shareholder and investor interests, not by government diktat. If drilling isn’t profitable enough, they won’t do it. As long as the world economy needs oil, whoever has the oil will have the power.
Biden may now recognize this. He’s been tussling with oil and gas executives over these very issues for a year, begging for more production while getting an earful in return about hostile government policy. He’s now trying to make government policy toward oil and gas producers a little more friendly, even as it brings incoming fire from the left. But the left can’t lower anybody’s utility bill, while more energy can. That’s powerful, because navigating the present is just as important as planning for the future.
4) Aramco ramps up fossil fuel spending as oil and gas firms ease off green agenda
City A.M., 14 March 2023
Environmentalists are aghast. They shouldn’t be.
President Biden’s decision to approve a big oil-drilling project in Alaska feels like betrayal to climate warriors, given Biden’s campaign promise to “end fossil fuel” and pivot to a green-energy economy. But that campaign promise was never realistic. Biden is now learning the lessons of the 2022 energy crisis and acknowledging that the green energy transition is simply going to take a long time.
The Biden administration on March 13 approved ConocoPhillips’s Willow drilling project, which could eventually produce 180,000 barrels of oil per day during 30 years of operation. To appease his climate critics, Biden is limiting the amount of drilling on the site to the minimum amount that is economically viable, while also imposing new limits on drilling in other areas of Alaska.
It doesn’t seem like a compromise to climate activists, who call the Willow project a “carbon bomb.” But Biden’s softening stance toward fossil-fuel production is pragmatic and necessary. The green-energy transition is not an either/or proposition, as some environmentalists insist. It’s a both/and situation in which the United States needs assured access to the hydrocarbons we rely on today while also aggressively developing renewable sources of energy that will gradually replace them.
Developments in 2022 made crystal clear the importance of oil and natural gas for the foreseeable future. Fossil-fuel supplies were tight before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with prices for gasoline and other types of fuel rising as a result. Russia’s invasion created a genuine energy crisis. Russia’s hydrocarbon supplies came into question as Ukraine’s allies imposed punishing sanctions on Russia, and that threatened economies everywhere, given that Russia was and still is a top exporter of oil and natural gas.
Those sanctions were supposed to avoid an energy war with Russia, but an energy war happened anyway, in part because Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted one. Putin shut off most natural gas supplies to Europe, which got 40% of its gas from Russia. Natural gas prices spiked worldwide as Europe scrambled to find other sources of heating fuel for the winter. As the war dragged on and Russia continued earning hard currency needed to finance the war through oil sales, advanced nations imposed a price cap on Russian oil, which risks further supply disruptions and rising prices. All of this is still going on and could once again cause energy shortages and spiking prices.
As energy prices soared in 2022, Biden found himself in the awkward position of beseeching American drillers, Saudi Arabia and other petro-states to drill more. Nobody ran to the rescue, with drillers and their investors indicating their preference for handsome profits over risky new investments that would boost supply. That must have been a sobering moment for Biden and his economic advisers, who up till then had blithely bashed oil and gas as a dinosaur industry we could easily do without.
What 2022 taught us is it will be decades before we can live without oil and gas. The possible consequences of misunderstanding that are shortages and painfully high prices—no matter how fast we adopt renewable forms of energy. S&P Global Commodity Insights expects worldwide oil demand to keep growing until 2031. Then it will flatline, staying roughly level for years. By 2050, S&P expects oil demand to be about where it is today. Demand for natural gas may remain strong even longer.
Disruptions to fossil fuel supplies do create an incentive for faster deployment of renewables, as environmentalists point out. And renewables are coming online quickly. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects the share of American electricity generated from renewables to rise from 22% now to 26% by 2024. The big green-energy bill Biden signed last year will pump unprecedented amounts of government funding into renewables and speed technology breakthroughs.
But abandoning fossil fuels too quickly can cause economic hardship and worse. The shortage of natural gas in Europe, and rising prices everywhere, led some utilities to switch back to burning coal, which is the dirtiest fossil fuel. If utilities could switch to sun or wind power they would, but it’s simply not available. Here in the United States, many homes in the northeast still rely on heating oil, because pipelines carrying cleaner natural gas to the region can’t get approved. Heating oil is similar to diesel fuel, which is scarce and expensive because of limited refining capacity and the loss of Russian supply. As a result, families in New England are bearing the highest winter heating costs in years.
It would be wondrous if some magic incantation switched America’s fossil-fuel infrastructure to renewables. But some clean-energy advocates vastly underestimate the complexity of the job. Building new infrastructure to get renewable energy where it’s needed is going to be just as fraught as getting new oil pipelines approved through residential communities. Everybody wants the infrastructure, as long as it’s somewhere else. Permitting battles and other approvals will add years to the construction of high-voltage transmission lines and other equipment needed to generate renewable energy and move it around. In the meanwhile, fossil fuels are already there.
Someday, renewable energy will displace the geopolitical power petro-states such as Saudi Arabia, Russia and other large oil producers wield today. Until renewables take over, however, petro-states could have more power, if fossil-fuel production drops off in the United States and other democracies. That’s because most petro-state governments control fossil-fuel production through nationalized energy companies that do what the government says. In the United States, energy companies are private-sector businesses driven by shareholder and investor interests, not by government diktat. If drilling isn’t profitable enough, they won’t do it. As long as the world economy needs oil, whoever has the oil will have the power.
Biden may now recognize this. He’s been tussling with oil and gas executives over these very issues for a year, begging for more production while getting an earful in return about hostile government policy. He’s now trying to make government policy toward oil and gas producers a little more friendly, even as it brings incoming fire from the left. But the left can’t lower anybody’s utility bill, while more energy can. That’s powerful, because navigating the present is just as important as planning for the future.
4) Aramco ramps up fossil fuel spending as oil and gas firms ease off green agenda
City A.M., 14 March 2023
Saudi Aramco unveiled vast profits last week, the largest ever in the history of fossil fuel companies, dwarfing its rivals with a record £134bn full-year earnings.
Overall, its earnings were nearly treble the gains unveiled by Exxon Mobil, and four times more than Shell, Chevron, Total, BP and Equinor.
These companies had been posting their own record results, with Shell posting its biggest profits in its 115-year history, while Exxon announced the largest earnings ever posted by a Western fossil fuel major.
Such a hefty windfall from Aramco – a 46 per cent spike in profits since last year – from soaring oil and gas prices is not a surprise, and has been signposted every quarter by Aramco following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After all, the energy titan is nearly entirely owned by the Saudi Arabian government and is home to the country’s oil supplies, with more than 270bn barrels within its reserves.
What is remarkable is it shows no major signs of pivoting to a greener future, and is targeting a further ramp up in oil and gas prices.
Overall, its earnings were nearly treble the gains unveiled by Exxon Mobil, and four times more than Shell, Chevron, Total, BP and Equinor.
These companies had been posting their own record results, with Shell posting its biggest profits in its 115-year history, while Exxon announced the largest earnings ever posted by a Western fossil fuel major.
Such a hefty windfall from Aramco – a 46 per cent spike in profits since last year – from soaring oil and gas prices is not a surprise, and has been signposted every quarter by Aramco following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After all, the energy titan is nearly entirely owned by the Saudi Arabian government and is home to the country’s oil supplies, with more than 270bn barrels within its reserves.
What is remarkable is it shows no major signs of pivoting to a greener future, and is targeting a further ramp up in oil and gas prices.
Aramco’s monster profits dwarf even its energy rivals – despite their own record years
Aramco ramps up oil and gas spending
Aramco’s targets include a one million barrels per day boost in oil production from 12m to 13m over the next four years, and a 50 per cent hike in gas production by the end of the year.
This will be achieved through raising capital expenditure in fossil fuels from $37.6bn last year to $55bn this year.
The firm’s rivals are also boosting their own oil and gas spending plans and maintaining their role in the sector for multiple decades despite net zero pledges – while renewable spending lags far behind.
Looking at the UK players, BP chief executive Bernard Looney argued spending on both renewables and fossil fuels was an “and” not an “or” question, and has eased the company’s emissions targets.
Full story
5) Reality check: There is no energy transition, just energy addition
Linkedin, February 2023
By Leen Weijers
Aramco ramps up oil and gas spending
Aramco’s targets include a one million barrels per day boost in oil production from 12m to 13m over the next four years, and a 50 per cent hike in gas production by the end of the year.
This will be achieved through raising capital expenditure in fossil fuels from $37.6bn last year to $55bn this year.
The firm’s rivals are also boosting their own oil and gas spending plans and maintaining their role in the sector for multiple decades despite net zero pledges – while renewable spending lags far behind.
Looking at the UK players, BP chief executive Bernard Looney argued spending on both renewables and fossil fuels was an “and” not an “or” question, and has eased the company’s emissions targets.
Full story
5) Reality check: There is no energy transition, just energy addition
Linkedin, February 2023
By Leen Weijers
Energy forecasts for the next 30 years shows that ALL sources of energy are growing. While renewables are expected to comprise a larger fraction of a growing pie, fossil fuels are expected to grow more in absolute terms.
As Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright explained in his viral video a few weeks ago, dishonest terminology surrounds the climate debate. One of these terms is “Energy Transition”. The term’s use gives the impression that there exists a quick, easy and scalable alternative to eliminate fossil fuel use without serious impact on people.
Current primary energy distribution by source, and forecasts by organizations like the EIA in their International Energy Outlook 2021, show that this “energy transition” is non-existent. As you can see in the title graph above, and also in Liberty’s ESG report on Bettering Human Lives, on a net basis no present quantity of primary energy generated by fossil fuels is currently replaced by renewables. A couple of headlines from the report that you don’t hear a lot:
Global primary energy use is about to grow by almost 50% between 2020 – 2050 as impoverished people rise from poverty;
Oil consumption rises in all EIA scenarios. In their “Reference Scenario”, oil consumption rises at about 1 million bopd/year for the next 30 years, almost the same steady yearly increase of the last 5 decades;
Natural gas consumption will continue to growth through 2050.
The reason for this growth is simple: fossil fuels are abundant, cheap and efficient to provide reliable and dense energy at scale. They have helped to generate a quality-of-life revolution for a portion of humanity, and people in poverty who have missed out on this blessing rightfully want what you and I already have.
Sadly, few report on this blessing we take for granted. Good news about renewables breaking records, however, is widespread and often inflated. There are a few marketing strategies renewable advocates have used that make it appear as if renewables have a larger market share than they really do:
First, using the word “energy” or “power” when they mean “electricity”. Take this Reuters report as an example: “Renewable energy is expected to account for around 46% of German power consumption this year….” This sounds like Germans are running on renewables for almost half of their energy needs. But this is JUST for electricity. According to the BP Statistical Review and graphed below by OurWorldInData.org for world electricity vs primary power, worldwide electricity represents only 17% of all primary power. That’s also where is currently stands in Germany. In 2021, Germany’s top three primary energy sources were oil, natural gas and coal.
As Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright explained in his viral video a few weeks ago, dishonest terminology surrounds the climate debate. One of these terms is “Energy Transition”. The term’s use gives the impression that there exists a quick, easy and scalable alternative to eliminate fossil fuel use without serious impact on people.
Current primary energy distribution by source, and forecasts by organizations like the EIA in their International Energy Outlook 2021, show that this “energy transition” is non-existent. As you can see in the title graph above, and also in Liberty’s ESG report on Bettering Human Lives, on a net basis no present quantity of primary energy generated by fossil fuels is currently replaced by renewables. A couple of headlines from the report that you don’t hear a lot:
Global primary energy use is about to grow by almost 50% between 2020 – 2050 as impoverished people rise from poverty;
Oil consumption rises in all EIA scenarios. In their “Reference Scenario”, oil consumption rises at about 1 million bopd/year for the next 30 years, almost the same steady yearly increase of the last 5 decades;
Natural gas consumption will continue to growth through 2050.
The reason for this growth is simple: fossil fuels are abundant, cheap and efficient to provide reliable and dense energy at scale. They have helped to generate a quality-of-life revolution for a portion of humanity, and people in poverty who have missed out on this blessing rightfully want what you and I already have.
Sadly, few report on this blessing we take for granted. Good news about renewables breaking records, however, is widespread and often inflated. There are a few marketing strategies renewable advocates have used that make it appear as if renewables have a larger market share than they really do:
First, using the word “energy” or “power” when they mean “electricity”. Take this Reuters report as an example: “Renewable energy is expected to account for around 46% of German power consumption this year….” This sounds like Germans are running on renewables for almost half of their energy needs. But this is JUST for electricity. According to the BP Statistical Review and graphed below by OurWorldInData.org for world electricity vs primary power, worldwide electricity represents only 17% of all primary power. That’s also where is currently stands in Germany. In 2021, Germany’s top three primary energy sources were oil, natural gas and coal.
Second, reporting renewable records without mentioning they only last a short time. As an example, this article boasts renewables powering 85% of Germany’s electricity needs. But like electricity's primary power sources reported in the plot below by Timera Energy, records in wind and solar don’t last very long, and there are times when they don’t provide anything at all. Fossil fuels are there to back them up. Energy reliability is a marathon, not a sprint.
Third, reporting power capacity, not energy output. Renewables really shine using this metric because they don’t work most of the time. If you have ever spent time in western Europe, you will know that the sun there, like most Europeans, only has a 32-hour work week, while it gives little heads up when it will show up. What to do during the remaining 136 hours that week? You need to build a lot of power capacity to harvest a little energy. As per BP Statistical Review, the world capacity factor is only 14% for solar and 26% for wind. Therefore, if you see a historical power capacity growth curve, divide the solar curve’s slope by 7 and the wind curve’s slope by 4 to get energy output. Consumers pay for MWh, not MW.
Lastly, lumping in “traditional biofuels” to boost the share of renewables as part of total energy needs. These traditional biofuels kill millions of people yearly through PM2.5 particle release during indoor cooking. If there is an “energy transition” humanity needs ASAP, it is the transition from the traditional renewable cooking fuels to clean-burning fossil cooking fuels.
These unfair reporting methodologies have led to confusion and a belief that an “Energy Transition” is currently in the making. It is not.
The EIA primary energy forecast for the next 30 years shows that ALL sources of energy are growing. While renewables are expected to comprise a larger fraction of a growing pie, fossil fuels are expected to grow more in absolute terms.
Lastly, lumping in “traditional biofuels” to boost the share of renewables as part of total energy needs. These traditional biofuels kill millions of people yearly through PM2.5 particle release during indoor cooking. If there is an “energy transition” humanity needs ASAP, it is the transition from the traditional renewable cooking fuels to clean-burning fossil cooking fuels.
These unfair reporting methodologies have led to confusion and a belief that an “Energy Transition” is currently in the making. It is not.
The EIA primary energy forecast for the next 30 years shows that ALL sources of energy are growing. While renewables are expected to comprise a larger fraction of a growing pie, fossil fuels are expected to grow more in absolute terms.
Recently, a spark of sanity has returned to the debate about nuclear power. For a reliable, cost-effective, low-carbon and scalable energy transition, we need to take the path proposed by Robert Bryce in his book Power Hungry. In the near-term, we need more natural gas, which reduces our CO2 footprint and is cheap, reliable and abundant. For the long-term, we need to build nuclear energy, hopefully eventually nuclear fusion. Before that, let’s hope a spark of sanity returns to the discussion about the “Energy Transition”.
6) China-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia marks a new Middle East
The Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2023
The region is undergoing tectonic geopolitical shifts as Arab spring-fueled rivalries fade
China’s brokering of a detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia accelerates a geopolitical realignment in the Middle East, as rivalries that erupted during the Arab Spring fade and outside powers besides the U.S. vie for influence.
The restoration of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Riyadh, announced Friday in Beijing after years of enmity between the two capitals, reflects the new reality: With Washington increasingly preoccupied in Ukraine and Asia, the region is trying to move past its old divisions, resolving conflicts and easing tensions.
Along with the Saudi-Iran rapprochement, Turkey is normalizing relations with Riyadh after they were all but severed following the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. And Qatar has healed a five-year-old rupture with its Persian Gulf neighbors.
Israel is deepening its Arab ties, even as its conflict with the Palestinians heats up. And the region’s major Sunni governments are reaching out to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, long estranged from his neighbors over his brutal civil war.
Much of this reconciliation is happening without U.S. involvement, a sharp break with recent decades. Chastened by its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington is pulling back from its dominant role in the region, creating doubts among longtime allies about its security guarantees.
Needing weapons for its war in Ukraine, Russia has forged deeper military relations with Iran, and China has emerged as the world’s largest oil importer, which gives it a growing stake—and clout—in seeking stability in the conflict-ridden Middle East.
After years of acting as an oil consumer and otherwise mostly staying out of the region’s disputes, Beijing is intent on showing it offers something different than the U.S.—the ability to talk to all sides without lecturing them on human rights, an attractive prospect for the region’s many authoritarian regimes.
Unlike the U.S., which doesn’t have formal diplomatic relations with Iran, China has close diplomatic and economic ties with both Tehran and Riyadh. It is Iran’s biggest trade partner and a leading buyer of oil from Saudi Arabia, giving it leverage with both sides.
“China doesn’t have the capacity to play a bigger security role in the region,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London think tank. But the deal to restore diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia “foreshadows its potential to be an appealing alternative to Washington.”
China increasingly fears Washington’s goal is to isolate it, heightening Beijing’s longstanding concern about access to energy and driving it to take a more active role in the Middle East, analysts said.
In China, Iran has an outside power to help ease its economic woes and internal unrest, and the deal with Saudi Arabia adds another factor for its clerical rulers to consider as it weighs whether to build nuclear weapons.
Riyadh’s goal is to clear away as much as possible the threat from Iran, so its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, can focus on a plan to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil by attracting foreign investment and boosting domestic consumption.
“There is so much happening that they need a clear frontier, and they’ll go to whoever gives them that—the Americans, the Chinese, or a mix of both,” said Bader al-Saif, an expert on Persian Gulf and Arabian affairs at Kuwait University.
U.S. officials say the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a positive development, one that could advance its own goal of preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons, and they have voiced little concern about China’s growing diplomatic intervention in the region.
The U.S.’s pre-eminent position in the region was underscored Saturday with news that the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund plans to buy a large number of Boeing Co. jets for a new national airline, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Re-establishing diplomatic relations isn’t likely to immediately lessen the longstanding security and sectarian tensions that have divided Riyadh and Tehran for decades and fueled their competition for regional dominance, analysts said.
Nor is there much prospect that Beijing could displace the U.S. as the main outside power in the region, said Mr. Saif. The U.S. military presence in the region has shrunk in recent years, but even its smaller footprint gives it clout that China can’t begin to match, analysts say.
“Beijing recognizes it needs to move faster to counter what they see as containment,” said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore. “If it is indeed containment, the model that they’ve used, where they rely on the U.S. to maintain stability in the Middle East, they might not be able to trust that so much going forward.”
When Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited the Persian Gulf in December, he didn’t even stop in Tehran, which triggered a backlash in Iran. China and the Gulf Cooperation Council, a Saudi-led group of Arab monarchies, issued a joint statement that called on Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency over its nuclear program and negotiate over islands in the Persian Gulf that are also claimed by the United Arab Emirates.
The trip stirred fears in Iran that it was being isolated. He then hosted President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran in China last month in a visit that shored up ties, paving the way for the unannounced talks in Beijing this week.
Full story
The Wall Street Journal, 11 March 2023
The region is undergoing tectonic geopolitical shifts as Arab spring-fueled rivalries fade
China’s brokering of a detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia accelerates a geopolitical realignment in the Middle East, as rivalries that erupted during the Arab Spring fade and outside powers besides the U.S. vie for influence.
The restoration of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Riyadh, announced Friday in Beijing after years of enmity between the two capitals, reflects the new reality: With Washington increasingly preoccupied in Ukraine and Asia, the region is trying to move past its old divisions, resolving conflicts and easing tensions.
Along with the Saudi-Iran rapprochement, Turkey is normalizing relations with Riyadh after they were all but severed following the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. And Qatar has healed a five-year-old rupture with its Persian Gulf neighbors.
Israel is deepening its Arab ties, even as its conflict with the Palestinians heats up. And the region’s major Sunni governments are reaching out to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, long estranged from his neighbors over his brutal civil war.
Much of this reconciliation is happening without U.S. involvement, a sharp break with recent decades. Chastened by its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Washington is pulling back from its dominant role in the region, creating doubts among longtime allies about its security guarantees.
Needing weapons for its war in Ukraine, Russia has forged deeper military relations with Iran, and China has emerged as the world’s largest oil importer, which gives it a growing stake—and clout—in seeking stability in the conflict-ridden Middle East.
After years of acting as an oil consumer and otherwise mostly staying out of the region’s disputes, Beijing is intent on showing it offers something different than the U.S.—the ability to talk to all sides without lecturing them on human rights, an attractive prospect for the region’s many authoritarian regimes.
Unlike the U.S., which doesn’t have formal diplomatic relations with Iran, China has close diplomatic and economic ties with both Tehran and Riyadh. It is Iran’s biggest trade partner and a leading buyer of oil from Saudi Arabia, giving it leverage with both sides.
“China doesn’t have the capacity to play a bigger security role in the region,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London think tank. But the deal to restore diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia “foreshadows its potential to be an appealing alternative to Washington.”
China increasingly fears Washington’s goal is to isolate it, heightening Beijing’s longstanding concern about access to energy and driving it to take a more active role in the Middle East, analysts said.
In China, Iran has an outside power to help ease its economic woes and internal unrest, and the deal with Saudi Arabia adds another factor for its clerical rulers to consider as it weighs whether to build nuclear weapons.
Riyadh’s goal is to clear away as much as possible the threat from Iran, so its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, can focus on a plan to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil by attracting foreign investment and boosting domestic consumption.
“There is so much happening that they need a clear frontier, and they’ll go to whoever gives them that—the Americans, the Chinese, or a mix of both,” said Bader al-Saif, an expert on Persian Gulf and Arabian affairs at Kuwait University.
U.S. officials say the rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a positive development, one that could advance its own goal of preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons, and they have voiced little concern about China’s growing diplomatic intervention in the region.
The U.S.’s pre-eminent position in the region was underscored Saturday with news that the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund plans to buy a large number of Boeing Co. jets for a new national airline, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Re-establishing diplomatic relations isn’t likely to immediately lessen the longstanding security and sectarian tensions that have divided Riyadh and Tehran for decades and fueled their competition for regional dominance, analysts said.
Nor is there much prospect that Beijing could displace the U.S. as the main outside power in the region, said Mr. Saif. The U.S. military presence in the region has shrunk in recent years, but even its smaller footprint gives it clout that China can’t begin to match, analysts say.
“Beijing recognizes it needs to move faster to counter what they see as containment,” said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore. “If it is indeed containment, the model that they’ve used, where they rely on the U.S. to maintain stability in the Middle East, they might not be able to trust that so much going forward.”
When Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited the Persian Gulf in December, he didn’t even stop in Tehran, which triggered a backlash in Iran. China and the Gulf Cooperation Council, a Saudi-led group of Arab monarchies, issued a joint statement that called on Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency over its nuclear program and negotiate over islands in the Persian Gulf that are also claimed by the United Arab Emirates.
The trip stirred fears in Iran that it was being isolated. He then hosted President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran in China last month in a visit that shored up ties, paving the way for the unannounced talks in Beijing this week.
Full story
7) GOP lawmakers say allowing China’s Xi to extend Beijing’s global reach is a ‘strategic failure’ for Biden
New York Post, 13 March 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to be positioning himself to replace President Biden as the world’s power broker — setting up meetings with both Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodomyr Zelesnky on the heels of China’s success in brokering a diplomatic deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
And some Republicans believe the Xi power-play points to “America’s decline” under Biden.
“The US was once the indispensable nation but [Biden’s] often incompetent management of [international] affairs is undoing that,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) wrote in a recent tweet, lamenting the outsized role in global affairs the communist power has been taking on since Biden took office.
“Biden let Communist China become the Middle East’s new power broker. This is what American decline under Biden looks like,” Hagerty added.
Fresh off its wheeling and dealing in the Middle East, Xi told Chinese lawmakers Monday that the Asian nation should “actively participate in the reform and construction of the global governance system” and promote “global security initiatives.”
That will add “positive energy to world peace and development,” he claimed.
And in a blend of statecraft and blunt force, Xi spoke of turning the People’s Liberation Army into a “great wall of steel.”
“We should comprehensively promote the modernization of national defense and military construction, and build the People’s Army into a great wall of steel that effectively safeguards national sovereignty, security and development interests,” the Chinese leader said.
Xi’s emphasis on expansion comes as the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that he plans to visit Russia as soon as next week to meet with his counterpart Putin as Russia continues its more than yearlong invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
His trip to Moscow follows US intelligence concerns that Beijing is considering providing lethal arms to Russia.
The report said Xi also intends to meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky, possibly after his visit to Moscow, and reflects China’s objective to play a peacemaking role between the two countries.
Iran and Saudi Arabia announced last Friday that they had reached an agreement, negotiated during four days of secret talks in Beijing, to re-establish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies.
Xi, 69, who has sidelined potential rivals to cement his dominance in the Communist Party, was named to a third five-year term as China’s president last week, which puts him on track to remain in power for the rest of his life.
In the US, there’s growing anxiety over China’s global ambition — and criticism of the Biden administration that it’s taking a too lenient position with Beijing.
“The Obama admin let Russia back into the Middle East after a 40-year absence,” Hagerty said. “Now the Biden admin has let Communist China into the Gulf. This is strategic failure.”
Hagerty also doubted how effective the “Xi Jinping accords” will be at actually cooling hostilities between Tehran and Riyadh, and argued that the deal won’t be as significant as former President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords.
“Whereas Trump’s historic Abraham Accords transformed relations among Israel & 4 Arab nations, this China-brokered deal likely won’t end Iran-Saudi hostility,” Hagerty argued.
“But if Obama claimed to lead from behind, the ‘Xi Jinping accords’ show Biden isn’t even leading,” he said.
Hagerty told The Post on Monday that Biden “squandered the opportunity that he inherited” to strengthen the US’s position in the Middle East, leaving a “power vacuum” that Xi was all too willing to step in and fill.
“He relaxed pressure on Iran’s terrorist regime in the hopes of reviving a fatally flawed nuclear deal. He dithered on embracing and expanding the Abraham Accords to include new Arab nations like the Saudi kingdom. He created a power vacuum in the Middle East that China happily filled. The recent China-brokered agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a regrettable yet unsurprising consequence of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy malpractice in the Middle East,” Hagerty told The Post.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday accused Biden of being afraid to “provoke” Beijing.
“I think what we heard clearly from the intelligence community is the emergence of China as a threat, both militarily and through espionage, and as the senator was just saying, through technology, quantum technology computing, also certainly the ability for them to insert themselves through TikTok into our data systems,” Turner told ABC’s “This Week.”
Turner was referring to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who appeared earlier on the news show and agreed that China poses a threat to the US because of its aim to extend influence globally.
John Bolton, the former national security adviser in the Trump administration, warned that the US is “sitting still” while China makes gains, referring to the diplomatic breakthrough Beijing negotiated between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
“It’s an indication that the Saudis and others are trying to hedge their bets with China and Russia, because they don’t think the United States has the resolve and the fortitude necessary to do what they need to do to protect the world against Iran and its intentions,” Bolton told John Catsimatidis on his WABC 770 AM radio show on Sunday.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he was “very concerned” with the alliances China seems to be building under Biden’s weak leadership.
Full post
New York Post, 13 March 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to be positioning himself to replace President Biden as the world’s power broker — setting up meetings with both Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodomyr Zelesnky on the heels of China’s success in brokering a diplomatic deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
And some Republicans believe the Xi power-play points to “America’s decline” under Biden.
“The US was once the indispensable nation but [Biden’s] often incompetent management of [international] affairs is undoing that,” Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) wrote in a recent tweet, lamenting the outsized role in global affairs the communist power has been taking on since Biden took office.
“Biden let Communist China become the Middle East’s new power broker. This is what American decline under Biden looks like,” Hagerty added.
Fresh off its wheeling and dealing in the Middle East, Xi told Chinese lawmakers Monday that the Asian nation should “actively participate in the reform and construction of the global governance system” and promote “global security initiatives.”
That will add “positive energy to world peace and development,” he claimed.
And in a blend of statecraft and blunt force, Xi spoke of turning the People’s Liberation Army into a “great wall of steel.”
“We should comprehensively promote the modernization of national defense and military construction, and build the People’s Army into a great wall of steel that effectively safeguards national sovereignty, security and development interests,” the Chinese leader said.
Xi’s emphasis on expansion comes as the Wall Street Journal reported Monday that he plans to visit Russia as soon as next week to meet with his counterpart Putin as Russia continues its more than yearlong invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
His trip to Moscow follows US intelligence concerns that Beijing is considering providing lethal arms to Russia.
The report said Xi also intends to meet with Ukrainian President Zelensky, possibly after his visit to Moscow, and reflects China’s objective to play a peacemaking role between the two countries.
Iran and Saudi Arabia announced last Friday that they had reached an agreement, negotiated during four days of secret talks in Beijing, to re-establish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies.
Xi, 69, who has sidelined potential rivals to cement his dominance in the Communist Party, was named to a third five-year term as China’s president last week, which puts him on track to remain in power for the rest of his life.
In the US, there’s growing anxiety over China’s global ambition — and criticism of the Biden administration that it’s taking a too lenient position with Beijing.
“The Obama admin let Russia back into the Middle East after a 40-year absence,” Hagerty said. “Now the Biden admin has let Communist China into the Gulf. This is strategic failure.”
Hagerty also doubted how effective the “Xi Jinping accords” will be at actually cooling hostilities between Tehran and Riyadh, and argued that the deal won’t be as significant as former President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords.
“Whereas Trump’s historic Abraham Accords transformed relations among Israel & 4 Arab nations, this China-brokered deal likely won’t end Iran-Saudi hostility,” Hagerty argued.
“But if Obama claimed to lead from behind, the ‘Xi Jinping accords’ show Biden isn’t even leading,” he said.
Hagerty told The Post on Monday that Biden “squandered the opportunity that he inherited” to strengthen the US’s position in the Middle East, leaving a “power vacuum” that Xi was all too willing to step in and fill.
“He relaxed pressure on Iran’s terrorist regime in the hopes of reviving a fatally flawed nuclear deal. He dithered on embracing and expanding the Abraham Accords to include new Arab nations like the Saudi kingdom. He created a power vacuum in the Middle East that China happily filled. The recent China-brokered agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a regrettable yet unsurprising consequence of the Biden Administration’s foreign policy malpractice in the Middle East,” Hagerty told The Post.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday accused Biden of being afraid to “provoke” Beijing.
“I think what we heard clearly from the intelligence community is the emergence of China as a threat, both militarily and through espionage, and as the senator was just saying, through technology, quantum technology computing, also certainly the ability for them to insert themselves through TikTok into our data systems,” Turner told ABC’s “This Week.”
Turner was referring to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who appeared earlier on the news show and agreed that China poses a threat to the US because of its aim to extend influence globally.
John Bolton, the former national security adviser in the Trump administration, warned that the US is “sitting still” while China makes gains, referring to the diplomatic breakthrough Beijing negotiated between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
“It’s an indication that the Saudis and others are trying to hedge their bets with China and Russia, because they don’t think the United States has the resolve and the fortitude necessary to do what they need to do to protect the world against Iran and its intentions,” Bolton told John Catsimatidis on his WABC 770 AM radio show on Sunday.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he was “very concerned” with the alliances China seems to be building under Biden’s weak leadership.
Full post
8) Robert A Manning: Is the US having an ‘East of Suez’ moment?
The Hill, 13 March 2023
Many in the West were stunned at the spectacle last week in Beijing as Saudi Arabia and Iran announced they had agreed to reestablish relations and exchange ambassadors — and that the détente had been brokered by China. Beijing showcasing its ambitions and growing influence in the region may be a harbinger of a U.S. version of the British withdrawal “East of Suez” in 1971.
The deal is a signpost of a changing regional order. Riyadh and Tehran are the chief drivers of the Sunni-Shia Islam conflicts in the Middle East. The rivalry has featured proxy wars in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon in a broader contest for regional pre-eminence. It has also featured Iranian drones and missiles attacking Saudi oil facilities.
Perhaps they tired of slugging it out since they severed ties six years ago. If implemented (both sides’ foreign ministers will hash out details over the next two months), it sets the stage for ending a proxy war in Yemen, a costly humanitarian tragedy that has left some 377,000 people dead, according to United Nations estimates. Tehran reportedly pledged to stop arming Houthi rebels there who have been fighting Saudi-backed forces and lobbing missiles into Saudi Arabia.
Taken together with the Abraham Accords, a U.S.-brokered rapprochement between Sunni Arab states and Israel, it reflects an exhaustion in the region and a quest for stability. It also reflects a perception across the region that the U.S., steeped in a war in Ukraine and countering China in the Asia-Pacific, is retrenching and is less of a reliable security guarantor than it used to be.
For the Saudis, the deal had multiple motivations. It reflected a view that the future world (and the direction of 75 percent of their oil exports) will be more Asian and more multipolar. It was a slap at President Biden and U.S. human rights groups. It also reflected doubts about U.S. reliability and a desire for more diverse partners and a hope that the region can solve its own problems.
It was probably no coincidence that at about the same time as the Saudi-Iran deal, Riyadh issued outsized demands to the U.S. as a condition for their normalizing ties to Israel. The Saudis asked for stronger U.S. security guarantees, support for a civil nuclear program and more robust arms sales, all of which are problematic. By dangling such a foreign policy coup for Biden, the Saudis appeared to show off their perceived leverage — and build pressure on Biden from Israel and its U.S. supporters.
For China, the Riyadh-Tehran deal was an opportunity to flaunt its growing prominence in the Middle East, and its role as a peace broker in line with President Xi Jinping’s still vague 2022 Global Security Initiative, Beijing’s response to the U.S. alliance network.
The U.S. remains the predominant military power in the region, with a ring of bases in the Gulf, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar. But China is fast becoming the region’s major economic player. It was no accident that Riyadh was one of Xi’s first destinations after the post-COVID-19 opening last December, nor that it was followed by hosting Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in Beijing, setting the stage for China’s diplomatic coup.
For Iran, facing U.S. and UN sanctions, a failing economy and waves of massive popular protests, normalizing relations (restoring trade, investment and security accords with Riyadh) offers a path toward integration in the region and Chinese economic help. That the Saudis went forward despite Iran’s continued uranium enrichment activities moving it closer to a nuclear bomb and confrontation with Israel and the West poses new challenges for the U.S.
For Washington, the Riyadh-Tehran deal cuts in different directions. Officially, the Biden administration welcomed the deal as reducing tensions. White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters: “If this deal can be sustained – regardless of what the interest was or who sat down at the table – if it can be sustained, and the war in Yemen can end, and Saudi Arabia doesn’t have to continually try to defend itself against attacks from the Houthis who are funded and supported by Iran, in the end we welcome that.”
While the prospect of stability is in U.S. interests, the deal diminishes U.S. leverage with Iran, though China’s constructive diplomacy can be seen as a plus. Yet the episode fuels the perception in the Middle East of a diminishing U.S. role and a buoyant Chinese one. The deal projects a deft Beijing using its economic leverage while avoiding getting sucked into the region’s geopolitical morass, and managing good relations with all sides.
The reality is that the U.S. remains a major actor in the region, but one among other contenders seeking influence, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and Egypt. That bodes well for avoiding a new hegemon, but not for U.S. primacy in a multipolar world.
It may be premature to compare the U.S. predicament in the region to the United Kingdom’s “East of Suez” exit from its south and east Asian empire. But this development should serve to spark a rethink of where the region fits in U.S. strategy.
9) Germany forges alliance with seven Euro nations to oppose 2035 ICE ban
Motor.1, 13 March 2023
The Hill, 13 March 2023
Many in the West were stunned at the spectacle last week in Beijing as Saudi Arabia and Iran announced they had agreed to reestablish relations and exchange ambassadors — and that the détente had been brokered by China. Beijing showcasing its ambitions and growing influence in the region may be a harbinger of a U.S. version of the British withdrawal “East of Suez” in 1971.
The deal is a signpost of a changing regional order. Riyadh and Tehran are the chief drivers of the Sunni-Shia Islam conflicts in the Middle East. The rivalry has featured proxy wars in Yemen, Syria and Lebanon in a broader contest for regional pre-eminence. It has also featured Iranian drones and missiles attacking Saudi oil facilities.
Perhaps they tired of slugging it out since they severed ties six years ago. If implemented (both sides’ foreign ministers will hash out details over the next two months), it sets the stage for ending a proxy war in Yemen, a costly humanitarian tragedy that has left some 377,000 people dead, according to United Nations estimates. Tehran reportedly pledged to stop arming Houthi rebels there who have been fighting Saudi-backed forces and lobbing missiles into Saudi Arabia.
Taken together with the Abraham Accords, a U.S.-brokered rapprochement between Sunni Arab states and Israel, it reflects an exhaustion in the region and a quest for stability. It also reflects a perception across the region that the U.S., steeped in a war in Ukraine and countering China in the Asia-Pacific, is retrenching and is less of a reliable security guarantor than it used to be.
For the Saudis, the deal had multiple motivations. It reflected a view that the future world (and the direction of 75 percent of their oil exports) will be more Asian and more multipolar. It was a slap at President Biden and U.S. human rights groups. It also reflected doubts about U.S. reliability and a desire for more diverse partners and a hope that the region can solve its own problems.
It was probably no coincidence that at about the same time as the Saudi-Iran deal, Riyadh issued outsized demands to the U.S. as a condition for their normalizing ties to Israel. The Saudis asked for stronger U.S. security guarantees, support for a civil nuclear program and more robust arms sales, all of which are problematic. By dangling such a foreign policy coup for Biden, the Saudis appeared to show off their perceived leverage — and build pressure on Biden from Israel and its U.S. supporters.
For China, the Riyadh-Tehran deal was an opportunity to flaunt its growing prominence in the Middle East, and its role as a peace broker in line with President Xi Jinping’s still vague 2022 Global Security Initiative, Beijing’s response to the U.S. alliance network.
The U.S. remains the predominant military power in the region, with a ring of bases in the Gulf, from Saudi Arabia to Qatar. But China is fast becoming the region’s major economic player. It was no accident that Riyadh was one of Xi’s first destinations after the post-COVID-19 opening last December, nor that it was followed by hosting Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in Beijing, setting the stage for China’s diplomatic coup.
For Iran, facing U.S. and UN sanctions, a failing economy and waves of massive popular protests, normalizing relations (restoring trade, investment and security accords with Riyadh) offers a path toward integration in the region and Chinese economic help. That the Saudis went forward despite Iran’s continued uranium enrichment activities moving it closer to a nuclear bomb and confrontation with Israel and the West poses new challenges for the U.S.
For Washington, the Riyadh-Tehran deal cuts in different directions. Officially, the Biden administration welcomed the deal as reducing tensions. White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters: “If this deal can be sustained – regardless of what the interest was or who sat down at the table – if it can be sustained, and the war in Yemen can end, and Saudi Arabia doesn’t have to continually try to defend itself against attacks from the Houthis who are funded and supported by Iran, in the end we welcome that.”
While the prospect of stability is in U.S. interests, the deal diminishes U.S. leverage with Iran, though China’s constructive diplomacy can be seen as a plus. Yet the episode fuels the perception in the Middle East of a diminishing U.S. role and a buoyant Chinese one. The deal projects a deft Beijing using its economic leverage while avoiding getting sucked into the region’s geopolitical morass, and managing good relations with all sides.
The reality is that the U.S. remains a major actor in the region, but one among other contenders seeking influence, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and Egypt. That bodes well for avoiding a new hegemon, but not for U.S. primacy in a multipolar world.
It may be premature to compare the U.S. predicament in the region to the United Kingdom’s “East of Suez” exit from its south and east Asian empire. But this development should serve to spark a rethink of where the region fits in U.S. strategy.
9) Germany forges alliance with seven Euro nations to oppose 2035 ICE ban
Motor.1, 13 March 2023
German transport minister said in a statement that the EU's proposal needs to change at once. He added that the approach seems wrong, pointing out that there's a "climate-neutral way" to run ICE.
In the foray into preserving the environment, automakers within the European Union (EU) now have a deadline to meet. By 2035, all new cars should have zero CO2 emissions.
However, not every member of the EU agrees with the decision. In a report by Reuters, Germany has formed an alliance with several European nations to oppose the said ban on internal combustion engines (ICE).
The seven countries involved are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Germany – all of their transport ministers recently held a meeting to discuss what must change in the EU decision.
German transport minister Volker Wissing said in a statement that the EU's proposal needs to change at once. He added that the approach seems wrong, pointing out that there's a "climate-neutral way" to run ICE.
That said, it's reported that the newly forged alliance is heeding for a separate category for ICE vehicles that can run on carbon-neutral fuels after 2035.
Full story
In the foray into preserving the environment, automakers within the European Union (EU) now have a deadline to meet. By 2035, all new cars should have zero CO2 emissions.
However, not every member of the EU agrees with the decision. In a report by Reuters, Germany has formed an alliance with several European nations to oppose the said ban on internal combustion engines (ICE).
The seven countries involved are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Germany – all of their transport ministers recently held a meeting to discuss what must change in the EU decision.
German transport minister Volker Wissing said in a statement that the EU's proposal needs to change at once. He added that the approach seems wrong, pointing out that there's a "climate-neutral way" to run ICE.
That said, it's reported that the newly forged alliance is heeding for a separate category for ICE vehicles that can run on carbon-neutral fuels after 2035.
Full story
10) Mini nuclear reactors as Rishi Sunak rewrites energy strategy
The Times, 14 March 2023
The Times, 14 March 2023
Rishi Sunak is preparing to rewrite Boris Johnson’s energy security strategy in an attempt to make Britain a world leader in mini nuclear reactors and carbon capture technology.
Announcing plans for a revamped strategy, the prime minister insisted Britain had a “track record of getting this right” despite the scramble to boost domestic supplies in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has set out plans to use this week’s budget for a “clean energy reset”, with taxpayers and energy bill payers spending £20 billion on carbon capture and storage technology in the next two decades. Now Sunak has suggested that he is preparing to update the energy security strategy set out only last spring, which aimed to speed up the building of offshore wind farms and solar panels as well as big nuclear plants.
Speaking on a visit to the US, Sunak said: “Shortly we will be outlining in the energy security strategy an approach forward in some of the other areas we have been talking about, whether that is carbon capture and storage, small modular reactors and the like.”
He said that Britain already had “vibrant industries” such as offshore wind and added: “I am very confident that we will continue to have a very vibrant set of companies and jobs created in the UK as we transition to net zero, and our track record should give everyone confidence we know how to do this and get it right.”
Proponents of small modular nuclear reactors — dubbed “mini-nukes” — say they should be cheaper and quicker to build than conventional nuclear plants, which have been plagued by delays and cost over-runs. Developers of small modular reactors hope to mass-produce components in factories.
The nascent technology has yet to be built anywhere in the world but the Treasury said last week that it would begin a competition to select designs to be built here. “Small modular reactors [SMRs] are emerging technology, and no country has yet deployed one. To ensure the UK steals the march, the small nuclear reactors competition is expected to attract the best designs from both domestic and international manufacturers,” it said.
However, the launch of a competition to choose between manufacturers has raised eyebrows in the industry, because a British consortium led by Rolls-Royce had already secured £210 million of taxpayer backing and hoped its design would be fast-tracked. Rolls-Royce has been lobbying the government to place an order for its plants, even though they are yet to get safety approval, so it can start building the factories that will make its components.
Full story
Announcing plans for a revamped strategy, the prime minister insisted Britain had a “track record of getting this right” despite the scramble to boost domestic supplies in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine.
Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has set out plans to use this week’s budget for a “clean energy reset”, with taxpayers and energy bill payers spending £20 billion on carbon capture and storage technology in the next two decades. Now Sunak has suggested that he is preparing to update the energy security strategy set out only last spring, which aimed to speed up the building of offshore wind farms and solar panels as well as big nuclear plants.
Speaking on a visit to the US, Sunak said: “Shortly we will be outlining in the energy security strategy an approach forward in some of the other areas we have been talking about, whether that is carbon capture and storage, small modular reactors and the like.”
He said that Britain already had “vibrant industries” such as offshore wind and added: “I am very confident that we will continue to have a very vibrant set of companies and jobs created in the UK as we transition to net zero, and our track record should give everyone confidence we know how to do this and get it right.”
Proponents of small modular nuclear reactors — dubbed “mini-nukes” — say they should be cheaper and quicker to build than conventional nuclear plants, which have been plagued by delays and cost over-runs. Developers of small modular reactors hope to mass-produce components in factories.
The nascent technology has yet to be built anywhere in the world but the Treasury said last week that it would begin a competition to select designs to be built here. “Small modular reactors [SMRs] are emerging technology, and no country has yet deployed one. To ensure the UK steals the march, the small nuclear reactors competition is expected to attract the best designs from both domestic and international manufacturers,” it said.
However, the launch of a competition to choose between manufacturers has raised eyebrows in the industry, because a British consortium led by Rolls-Royce had already secured £210 million of taxpayer backing and hoped its design would be fast-tracked. Rolls-Royce has been lobbying the government to place an order for its plants, even though they are yet to get safety approval, so it can start building the factories that will make its components.
Full story
11) Oliver Shah: My prediction: UK government will slam the brakes on 2030 Net Zero targets
The Sunday Times, 12 March 2023
Industry and consumers aren’t going to be able to cope with the deadlines.
Across the Channel, the green automotive dream has collided with realpolitik. Germany and Italy have decided to oppose an EU scheme to ban the internal combustion engine by 2035, seeking an exemption for cars that run on synthetic fuels. Porsche, owned by Volkswagen, wants to keep using engines in its 911 models. Ferrari, owned by the Agnelli family, has refused to say when it might stop using them in its supercars. A vote due to take place in Brussels last week has been delayed indefinitely.
Almost everywhere you look, green policies are being reviewed as cheques written in the boom years become more expensive to cash amid war in Ukraine and an economic downturn. Climate campaigners scowled last month when BP diluted plans for a 40 per cent cut in oil and gas production by 2030. But its shares bounced and have stayed high.
Almost everywhere, that is, except in Westminster. Ministers are still wedded to ambitious net-zero targets set in the bombastic first-album phase of Boris Johnson’s premiership, when Britain was about to host Cop26. They commit us to banning the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, outlawing the renting of buildings below a certain energy performance threshold, ending the installation of new gas boilers by 2035, and decarbonising all electricity.
At least, they do for now. Because I predict that most of these cliff-edges will be pushed back or fudged to within an inch of losing their meaning.
In a curious mix of statism and libertarianism, ministers issued stark cut-off dates, then largely left it to the market to meet them. It isn’t working: the car industry is drifting offshore; swathes of property will become obsolete; new heating devices probably won’t be ready to replace gas ones; and an absence of baseload generation means renewables won’t completely edge out gas in the electricity system.
Industry and consumers aren’t going to be able to cope with the deadlines. Jaguar Land Rover, the UK car industry’s biggest employer, has warned that even a proposed interim 2024 step requiring manufacturers’ sales to be 22 per cent electric might be too much. JLR has only one all-electric model, the Jaguar I-Pace, and faces having to buy carbon credits from the likes of Tesla or pay fines if it can’t hit the target. It has said it might scale back its UK presence as a result.
As we’re on JLR, let’s start with cars. Electrification needs huge investment, the retooling of factories and the building of battery facilities. The Automotive Transformation Fund, at £850 million, is a fraction of what other governments have thrown at the issue. It awarded funds to Britishvolt in the northeast (the money never changed hands). Having gone bust, Britishvolt is being revived by an Australian buyer, which has indicated interest in making batteries for storage and defence. JLR’s owner, Tata, is predictably now seeking £500 million to base the gigafactory it needs in Somerset, not Spain. Nissan, the UK’s other car giant, uses one built by China’s Envision.
“Rules of origin”, under the 2020 Brexit deal, stating that most of a car’s battery pack will have to be made in the UK or EU by 2027 for tariff-free sales, may now be postponed.
Ford has cut its R&D team in Essex, and the electric van start-up Arrival has left for subsidies in the US. Drivers, put off perhaps by patchy charging facilities and teething problems with the cars, have cooled their love affair with EVs. Sales of pure battery-powered models fell by 1.2 percentage points to 13.5 per cent of the market year-on-year last month. Sales of petrol models rose by 2.8 percentage points to 43.4 per cent.
On real estate, from next month it will be illegal to let buildings with an energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of less than E. Under yet-to-be-confirmed plans, that will tighten to C by 2027 and B by 2030. EPC ratings are flawed tools that don’t properly capture a building’s energy usage, and smarter tenants and landlords are already insisting on the highest environmental standards.
But agents estimate that, as things stand, by 2030 about 80 per cent of all commercial real estate — offices, retail centres etc— will be unlettable. That will have huge implications for owners in capital value destruction and refurbishment costs.
Full post
The Sunday Times, 12 March 2023
Industry and consumers aren’t going to be able to cope with the deadlines.
Across the Channel, the green automotive dream has collided with realpolitik. Germany and Italy have decided to oppose an EU scheme to ban the internal combustion engine by 2035, seeking an exemption for cars that run on synthetic fuels. Porsche, owned by Volkswagen, wants to keep using engines in its 911 models. Ferrari, owned by the Agnelli family, has refused to say when it might stop using them in its supercars. A vote due to take place in Brussels last week has been delayed indefinitely.
Almost everywhere you look, green policies are being reviewed as cheques written in the boom years become more expensive to cash amid war in Ukraine and an economic downturn. Climate campaigners scowled last month when BP diluted plans for a 40 per cent cut in oil and gas production by 2030. But its shares bounced and have stayed high.
Almost everywhere, that is, except in Westminster. Ministers are still wedded to ambitious net-zero targets set in the bombastic first-album phase of Boris Johnson’s premiership, when Britain was about to host Cop26. They commit us to banning the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, outlawing the renting of buildings below a certain energy performance threshold, ending the installation of new gas boilers by 2035, and decarbonising all electricity.
At least, they do for now. Because I predict that most of these cliff-edges will be pushed back or fudged to within an inch of losing their meaning.
In a curious mix of statism and libertarianism, ministers issued stark cut-off dates, then largely left it to the market to meet them. It isn’t working: the car industry is drifting offshore; swathes of property will become obsolete; new heating devices probably won’t be ready to replace gas ones; and an absence of baseload generation means renewables won’t completely edge out gas in the electricity system.
Industry and consumers aren’t going to be able to cope with the deadlines. Jaguar Land Rover, the UK car industry’s biggest employer, has warned that even a proposed interim 2024 step requiring manufacturers’ sales to be 22 per cent electric might be too much. JLR has only one all-electric model, the Jaguar I-Pace, and faces having to buy carbon credits from the likes of Tesla or pay fines if it can’t hit the target. It has said it might scale back its UK presence as a result.
As we’re on JLR, let’s start with cars. Electrification needs huge investment, the retooling of factories and the building of battery facilities. The Automotive Transformation Fund, at £850 million, is a fraction of what other governments have thrown at the issue. It awarded funds to Britishvolt in the northeast (the money never changed hands). Having gone bust, Britishvolt is being revived by an Australian buyer, which has indicated interest in making batteries for storage and defence. JLR’s owner, Tata, is predictably now seeking £500 million to base the gigafactory it needs in Somerset, not Spain. Nissan, the UK’s other car giant, uses one built by China’s Envision.
“Rules of origin”, under the 2020 Brexit deal, stating that most of a car’s battery pack will have to be made in the UK or EU by 2027 for tariff-free sales, may now be postponed.
Ford has cut its R&D team in Essex, and the electric van start-up Arrival has left for subsidies in the US. Drivers, put off perhaps by patchy charging facilities and teething problems with the cars, have cooled their love affair with EVs. Sales of pure battery-powered models fell by 1.2 percentage points to 13.5 per cent of the market year-on-year last month. Sales of petrol models rose by 2.8 percentage points to 43.4 per cent.
On real estate, from next month it will be illegal to let buildings with an energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of less than E. Under yet-to-be-confirmed plans, that will tighten to C by 2027 and B by 2030. EPC ratings are flawed tools that don’t properly capture a building’s energy usage, and smarter tenants and landlords are already insisting on the highest environmental standards.
But agents estimate that, as things stand, by 2030 about 80 per cent of all commercial real estate — offices, retail centres etc— will be unlettable. That will have huge implications for owners in capital value destruction and refurbishment costs.
Full post
12) Francis Menton: Germany's coming green energy 'economic miracle'
Manhattan Contrarian, 12 March 2023
I’m old enough to remember the German post-World War II “economic miracle.” (Their term was “Wirtschaftswunder.”). After more than ten years of government direction of the economy under the Nazis, followed by the devastation of the war, Germany after 1945, under economics minister Ludwig Erhard, adopted the model of low taxes and light regulation. The economy boomed for decades on end.
But Germany then gradually turned away from Erhard’s prescriptions. Today Germany is twenty or so years into the most aggressive green energy “transition” of any country with a large economy, with the government firmly in charge of picking the winners and losers in the energy sector. At this writing, Germany’s consumer electricity rates are in the range of triple the U.S. average. My January 3, 2023 post quoted a German energy market guru named Mirko Scholssarczyk forecasting yet further big increases:
“40 cents per kilowatt-hour [is] likely to be the new normal in 2023 and 2024, and . . . prices could even rise to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour after that.”
That would put German consumer electricity rates at about 4 to 5 times the U.S. average — assuming that the U.S. does not go down the same path and drive rates up the way Germany has.
Is anybody over there in Germany learning anything? Don’t count on it. A March 10 post at the site No Tricks Zone has the title “As German Economy Reels, Chancellor Promises Going Green Will Lead To ‘Economic Miracle.’” Yes, it will be a new “economic miracle” — but this time not led by free market entrepreneurialism, but rather by a government-directed and taxpayer-subsidized energy transition. Or at least that’s what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz claims to believe. NTZ links to a German-language site called Pleiteticker.de, and provides translations of the key passages:
“Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now promising a new economic miracle through investment in climate protection, regardless of the miserable economic situation in which the Federal Republic finds itself,” reports Germany’s new, critical online news site, Pleiteticker.de. . . . “Because of the high investments in climate protection, Germany will be able to achieve growth rates for some time, as last seen in the 1950s and 1960s,” said the Chancellor.
In Scholz’s vision, economic growth results from “investments,” so if the government just provides enough billions in compelled “investments” the economy is sure to boom — even if the “investments” are in things that would immediately go bust in an uncompelled and unsubsidized environment, such as wind and solar electricity generation or electric heat pumps for home heating. Basically, Scholz has the same economic vision as our President Biden.
NTZ quotes Pleiteticker’s reaction:
“Real wages most recently fell by 3.7 percent in 2022 compared with the same quarter of the previous year. At the same time, consumer prices rose by 8.6 percent, while food and energy prices increased by around 20 percent. Economists expect German GDP to fall in the first quarter of 2023, which would be the second time in a row – a recession. Major German companies, most recently BASF, are leaving the country.”
Next up in Germany’s energy transition is the full electrification of home heating, to be brought about by compelling everybody to replace gas furnaces with electric heat pumps.
Full post
Manhattan Contrarian, 12 March 2023
I’m old enough to remember the German post-World War II “economic miracle.” (Their term was “Wirtschaftswunder.”). After more than ten years of government direction of the economy under the Nazis, followed by the devastation of the war, Germany after 1945, under economics minister Ludwig Erhard, adopted the model of low taxes and light regulation. The economy boomed for decades on end.
But Germany then gradually turned away from Erhard’s prescriptions. Today Germany is twenty or so years into the most aggressive green energy “transition” of any country with a large economy, with the government firmly in charge of picking the winners and losers in the energy sector. At this writing, Germany’s consumer electricity rates are in the range of triple the U.S. average. My January 3, 2023 post quoted a German energy market guru named Mirko Scholssarczyk forecasting yet further big increases:
“40 cents per kilowatt-hour [is] likely to be the new normal in 2023 and 2024, and . . . prices could even rise to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour after that.”
That would put German consumer electricity rates at about 4 to 5 times the U.S. average — assuming that the U.S. does not go down the same path and drive rates up the way Germany has.
Is anybody over there in Germany learning anything? Don’t count on it. A March 10 post at the site No Tricks Zone has the title “As German Economy Reels, Chancellor Promises Going Green Will Lead To ‘Economic Miracle.’” Yes, it will be a new “economic miracle” — but this time not led by free market entrepreneurialism, but rather by a government-directed and taxpayer-subsidized energy transition. Or at least that’s what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz claims to believe. NTZ links to a German-language site called Pleiteticker.de, and provides translations of the key passages:
“Chancellor Olaf Scholz is now promising a new economic miracle through investment in climate protection, regardless of the miserable economic situation in which the Federal Republic finds itself,” reports Germany’s new, critical online news site, Pleiteticker.de. . . . “Because of the high investments in climate protection, Germany will be able to achieve growth rates for some time, as last seen in the 1950s and 1960s,” said the Chancellor.
In Scholz’s vision, economic growth results from “investments,” so if the government just provides enough billions in compelled “investments” the economy is sure to boom — even if the “investments” are in things that would immediately go bust in an uncompelled and unsubsidized environment, such as wind and solar electricity generation or electric heat pumps for home heating. Basically, Scholz has the same economic vision as our President Biden.
NTZ quotes Pleiteticker’s reaction:
“Real wages most recently fell by 3.7 percent in 2022 compared with the same quarter of the previous year. At the same time, consumer prices rose by 8.6 percent, while food and energy prices increased by around 20 percent. Economists expect German GDP to fall in the first quarter of 2023, which would be the second time in a row – a recession. Major German companies, most recently BASF, are leaving the country.”
Next up in Germany’s energy transition is the full electrification of home heating, to be brought about by compelling everybody to replace gas furnaces with electric heat pumps.
Full post
The London-based Net Zero Watch is a campaign group set up to highlight and discuss the serious implications of expensive and poorly considered climate change policies. The Net Zero Watch newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.netzerowatch.com.
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