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Biden Casts Himself as the Trump Beater. Polls Suggest That’s No Sure Thing.

While the president argues that he is the one best positioned to stop his predecessor from returning to the White House, surveys indicate that he starts the 2024 race facing enormous challenges.

NYT By Peter Baker, May 8, 2023

Why Texas, a clean energy powerhouse, is about to hit the brakes

The state’s clean energy boom could be impeded by Texas leaders’ push for legislation that would boost natural gas and place new restrictions on wind and solar projects

WP By Anna Phillips, May 8, 2023

‘Over Our Dead Bodies’: Backlash Builds Against $3 Trillion Clean-Energy Push

Ballooning size of wind and solar projects draws local ire as they march closer to populated areas

WSJ TODAY

EU targets Central Asia in drive to stop sanctioned goods reaching Russia  

Several EU countries fear Brussels risk opening a Pandora’s box with a new measure that could eventually be used against China and Turkey.

POLITICO EU BY BARBARA MOENS, LEONIE KIJEWSKI AND SUZANNE LYNCH, MAY 8, 2023 

Analysis: Chile’s constitution will struggle to escape Pinochet’s shadow

This result has made it easier for far-right candidates like Kast to win elections: "Kast, a lawyer and supporter of the terrible Pinochet regime.

REUTERS By Alexander Villegas and Natalia A. Ramos Miranda

‘Mind-boggling’ methane emissions from Turkmenistan revealed

Leaks of potent greenhouse gas could be easily fixed, say experts, and would rapidly reduce global heating

The Guardian by Damian Carrington Environment editor, Tue 9 May 2023 

How can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…

The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Biden Casts Himself as the Trump Beater. Polls Suggest That’s No Sure Thing.

While the president argues that he is the one best positioned to stop his predecessor from returning to the White House, surveys indicate that he starts the 2024 race facing enormous challenges.

NYT By Peter Baker, May 8, 2023

WASHINGTON — Boiled down, President Biden’s argument for running for a second term rather than ceding the ground to the next generation is that he is the Democrat most assured of beating former President Donald J. Trump next year.

But a striking new poll challenged that case in a way that had much of the capital buzzing the last couple of days. Taken at face value, the poll showed Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by six percentage points in a theoretical rematch, raising the question of whether the president is as well positioned as he maintains.

No single poll means all that much, especially so early in an election cycle, and the president’s strategists as well as some independent analysts questioned its methodology. But even if it is an outlier, other recent surveys have indicated that the race is effectively tied, with either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump holding narrow leads within the margin of error. Taken together, they suggest that the president opens the 2024 campaign facing enormous challenges with no guarantee of victory over Mr. Trump.

The data has left many Democrats feeling anywhere from queasy to alarmed. Mr. Biden’s case for being the pair of safe hands at a volatile moment is undermined in their view if a president who passed major legislation and presides over the lowest unemployment in generations cannot outperform a twice-impeached challenger who instigated an insurrection, has been indicted on multiple felonies, is on civil trial accused of rape and faces more potential criminal charges in the months to come.

“The poll demonstrates that the president still has work to do, not only in convincing the American people that he’s up for the job that he wishes to complete,” said Donna Brazile, a former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee who said she lost sleep over the “ominous signs” in the latest survey results. “More importantly, it’s a good forecast of the challenges he will face in rebuilding the remarkable coalition that elected him in 2020.”

“I don’t think that they should panic because you can’t panic after one poll,” said Ms. Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s presidential campaign in 2000. A survey is “just one gauge” among many on the long road to the voting booth. “But it’s an important barometer of where the electorate is today, some 547 days away from the November 2024 election.”

The survey by The Washington Post and ABC News found that the president’s approval rating has slipped to 36 percent and that Mr. Trump would beat him by 44 percent to 38 percent if the election were held today. Just as worrisome for Democrats, respondents considered Mr. Trump, 76, more physically and mentally fit than Mr. Biden, 80, and concluded that the former president managed the economy better than the incumbent has.

“The poll really is trash, and I don’t say that lightly because I’ve had respect for their polling in the past,” said Cornell Belcher, who was President Barack Obama’s pollster. “However, their methodological decision here is problematic,” he added of the way the survey was constructed.

Others cautioned against overanalyzing data this early, noting that anything can happen in the next 18 months and recalling that projections based on polling — or misinterpretations of polling — proved to be poor predictors in recent cycles, including the 2022 midterm elections when a forecast “red wave” did not materialize.

“Polls in May 2024 will be of dubious value,” said David Plouffe, who was Mr. Obama’s campaign manager. “Polls in May 2023 are worth as much as Theranos stock.”

The White House expressed no concern over the latest surveys. “President Biden’s average job approval is higher now than in early November when poll-based reporting widely prophesied a supposedly inevitable red wave that never arrived,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.

Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for the fledgling Biden campaign, said the president would win on issues like lowering prescription drugs and protecting Social Security. “Americans voted for Joe Biden’s America in 2020 and 2022, and regardless of what today’s Beltway insider says, they will again in 2024,” he said.

While not predictive, recent surveys provide a foundational baseline at the start of a race potentially between two universally known figures, foreshadowing a campaign without a clear front-runner. Polls by Yahoo News, The Wall Street Journal and Morning Consult have found the president slightly ahead while surveys by The Economist and the Harvard University Center for American Political Studies found him tied or trailing by several points. Mr. Biden faces similarly mixed results against Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the strongest challenger to Mr. Trump for the Republican nomination.

The results point to a calcification in American politics where the leaders of both parties have a similarly sized core of support among voters not open to the other side regardless of developments in the news. The days when presidents could enjoy approval ratings above 50 percent or double-digit leads over challengers for any sustained period of time appear to be long over. And so if widespread support is no longer achievable, the challenge for Mr. Biden is to reassemble the coalition that provided him a 4.5-percentage-point victory nearly three years ago.

Mr. Biden has dismissed the importance of polls, saying that he is no different from other presidents at this point in their terms. “Every major one who won re-election, their polling numbers were where mine are now,” he told Stephanie Ruhle on “The 11th Hour” on MSNBC on Friday.

But in fact, only two of the past 13 presidents had approval ratings lower than Mr. Biden has at this point, according to an aggregate compilation by FiveThirtyEight.com — Mr. Trump and Jimmy Carter, both of whom lost re-election. More encouraging for Mr. Biden is the example of Ronald Reagan, who was just one-tenth of a point above where the current president is at this stage of his presidency, but came back to win a landslide re-election in 1984.

Whit Ayres, a Republican consultant, said it was telling that Mr. Biden was essentially tied or behind “a former president carrying more baggage than a loaded 747” and warned Democrats against complacency.

“Democrats are in denial if they think Biden cannot lose to Trump in 2024,” he said. “Trump can most certainly win. Joe Biden is asking the country to elect a candidate who will be 82 years old, who has clearly lost a step, running with a vice president whom almost no one in either party thinks is ready for prime time.”

The Post-ABC poll and other surveys contain grim news for Republicans as well. While Mr. Trump leads or keeps relatively even with the president, he may have a ceiling beyond which he cannot rise, while Mr. Biden can still win over ambivalent independents who dislike the former president, analysts said.

“While the poll is not great news for Biden, it’s not great news for the Republicans either,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster. “Only about a third say they are strong supporters for Biden, DeSantis and Trump. It feels more unsettled than anything else.”

She said that the real choice between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, should it come to that, would force ambivalent Democrats and independents to come off the fence. “I noticed more softness among Democrats, but I have no doubt that no matter what skepticism Democrats tell pollsters right now, they are going to vote for Joe Biden,” she said.

Stuart Stevens, who ran Mitt Romney’s campaign against Mr. Obama in 2012 and is a vocal critic of Mr. Trump, noted that the Republican establishment worries that the former president cannot win even though he leads in some polls. “We seem to be in this weird moment when Republican elite are panicked that Trump can’t beat Biden,” he said. “I think that’s because they know that Trump is deeply flawed.”

David Axelrod, the former Obama senior adviser who was on the other side of that race from Mr. Stevens, agreed with his assessment. “What Biden has that no one else does is a record of having beaten Trump, which weighs heavily in conversations among Democrats about the race,” Mr. Axelrod said. “He also has a record to run on and a party out of the mainstream on some important issues to run against, with a deeply flawed front-runner.”

“The worry for Democrats is that the re-elect is subject to a lot of variables Biden can’t entirely control — including his own health and aging process,” Mr. Axelrod added. “Any setback will exacerbate public concerns already apparent in the polls about his condition and ability to handle four more years.”

Why Texas, a clean energy powerhouse, is about to hit the brakes

The state’s clean energy boom could be impeded by Texas leaders’ push for legislation that would boost natural gas and place new restrictions on wind and solar projects

WP By Anna Phillips, May 8, 2023

Already No. 1 in wind power, and home to a fast-growing solar industry, Texas is poised to become a renewable energy powerhouse — timely because President Biden’s climate bill is about to deliver billions in subsidies.

But instead of embracing the green boom, Texas’ Republican-controlled legislature has introduced a spate of bills that could slow the growth of wind and solar industries, which has their leaders alarmed.

“Every state has legislation related to the placement of projects, but what we’re seeing in Texas is far beyond anything we’ve seen anywhere else,” said Jeff Clark, chief executive of the Advanced Power Alliance, an Austin-based trade group for renewable energy companies. “The aggressiveness of some of this legislation and the volume is unprecedented.”

Texas embraces a famously laissez-faire approach to energy development, but now some of its most anti-regulatory lawmakers are pushing new rules and permitting requirements for solar and wind, while backing measures that would bolster natural gas. Some Republicans have justified these moves by arguing that renewable energy is inherently unreliable and that more fossil fuels are needed to avoid another electricity blackout crisis — even though most of the loss of generating capacity during the 2021 outage came from gas power plants.

Other GOP officials say they are acting, in part, because the rapid expansion of solar and wind projects threatens the scenic character and way of the life of the state’s rural communities.

Solar and wind developers and environmental groups say these arguments are a cover for a politically driven effort to penalize renewables. After years of enjoying a hands-off environment, they say renewable energy has gotten caught up in a polarized culture war that has conservative state lawmakers attacking the industry to establish their national bona fides.

One of the bills in question would require large-scale wind and solar farms to win the approval of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, whose members are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott (R), a staunch supporter of fossil fuels. New projects would be subject to a state environmental impact review, developers would have to pay a yearly fee, and they would need a new permit anytime they made significant changes to existing projects. Senate Bill 624 would also require wind turbines to be built at least 3,000 feet from any property lines — a little more than half a mile — a distance Clark called “absurd.”

The bill’s supporters include Houston billionaire Dan Friedkin, chairman and chief executive of the Friedkin Group, a collection of automotive and travel companies. Friedkin — who also co-owns film production and marketing companies — has not said why he is backing the measure. A lobbyist for the company who registered its support did not respond to messages seeking comment.

But some rural landowners in Texas have banded together to torpedo solar and wind projects, and Friedkin is the owner of the sprawling Comanche Maverick Ranch near Carrizo Springs. State records show he has previously intervened to prevent an electric transmission line from being built on the property, saying it would harm the ranch’s aesthetics, fragment wildlife habitat and lead to increased illegal drug trafficking.

Friedkin is not alone — standing behind the bill is a group of landowners, called the Texas Real Estate Advocacy and Defense Coalition, whose members say they are alarmed by the size and number of solar farms popping up across the state, particularly near pristine landscapes and in areas where developers have cut down trees to clear land. While some landowners have cited environmental concerns, others have claimed that nearby renewable projects are lowering their property values.

Jessica Karlsruher, the coalition’s executive director, cited the case of a landowner near the town of Waco whose property will eventually be surrounded by a solar farm. “That is not a NIMBY issue. That [solar project] has changed the way she wanted to steward her land,” Karlsruher said. “We wanted to see if we could do something about putting up guardrails.”

Yet major environmental groups in Texas have opposed the bill, saying it unfairly targets renewable energy in a state where oversight of the oil, gas and petrochemical industries is lax. A state government review last year found the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s leaders have become “reluctant regulators,” and, rather than emphasizing enforcement, its policies encourage “industry members to self-govern and self-police.”

“This feels like weaponizing regulations,” said Adrian Shelley, director of the advocacy group Public Citizen’s Texas office. “If the bill’s author were serious about this, she’d be applying it to all sources of energy.”

The renewable energy industry’s lagging political support might seem surprising in a state where wind and solar projects have proliferated. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that Texas will get almost 40 percent of its power this year from carbon-free sources.

But Nathan Jensen, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said the industry, as a whole, has not excelled at coalition-building either within the business community or among environmental groups. He also noted that some wind and solar developers have been bad neighbors, barely communicating with nearby property owners and aggressively pursuing tax breaks.

“A lot of people thought that as you build out wind and solar and it becomes mainstream, their political power is going to increase dramatically,” Jensen said. “And this is a point in contrast.”

Other bills that have made it through the Texas Senate and are pending in the House would increase Texas’s use of natural gas. One measure calls for spending taxpayer dollars to build a fleet of new gas-fired power plants — it has the backing of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

Another would replace the state’s multibillion-dollar corporate tax break program with a new version that excludes wind and solar energy projects, preventing them from taking advantage of the incentives. Lawmakers in the House approved the measure last week. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) had championed the change, claiming that most of the benefits were going to the wind industry.

Renewable energy advocates said this package of bills could bring the industry’s growth to a sudden halt.

In 2023, for the second year in a row, the EIA expects Texas to lead the nation in solar power growth by installing roughly 7.7 gigawatts of new capacity — beating California’s expected 4.2 gigawatts. Its wind industry, which has been steadily expanding for more than a decade, is expected to lead the United States as well in new development.

While this rapid expansion has angered some rural landowners, it has benefited others eager to lease their property. It has also boosted local governments’ tax revenue.

For years before the wind industry came to town, the Robert Lee Independent School District in West Texas was operating out of a 1954 building with asbestos tiles and no air conditioning, said Aaron Hood, the district’s superintendent. But as wind turbines began to dot the landscape, and the local tax base increased, the district of about 280 students was able to issue a bond to pay for a new school building.

“Wind and solar have been really the only economic development that exists in our area. Samsung and Tesla are not going to come to West Texas,” said Hood. As president of the Texas Association of Rural Schools, he worries that other small school districts poised to benefit from the state’s solar boom may not be able to cash in if lawmakers pass the slate of bills.

“Without these projects coming to Texas, they would have no hope of any true increase in revenue,” he said.

‘Over Our Dead Bodies’: Backlash Builds Against $3 Trillion Clean-Energy Push

Ballooning size of wind and solar projects draws local ire as they march closer to populated areas

WSJ TODAY

LAWRENCE, Kan.—The federal government has ignited a green-energy investment spree that’s expected to reach as high as $3 trillion over the next decade. The road to spending that money, though, is increasingly hitting speed bumps from the likes of Gerry Coffman.

About an hour southwest of Kansas City, she turned down a wind lease last year on a farm that has been in her family since 1866. Someone knocked on her door a few months later, paperwork in hand, and offered $6,000 to hang a wind-power transmission line across her land. If she agreed to store construction equipment, she stood to make an additional $4,000. Ms. Coffman said no.

Ms. Coffman rotates corn and soybeans and has cattle pasture on her part of the family farm, which includes a wooded ribbon of water called Eight Mile Creek. Ms. Coffman doesn’t want to see native forest or prairie disturbed and thinks the industrial nature of towering wind turbines would change the community for the worse if a proposed project were built. 

“A year ago we were a nice, quiet neighborhood,” said Ms. Coffman, who has attended a series of contentious public meetings over several months as the county considers revising regulations for wind-energy development.

County-by-county battles are raging as wind and solar projects balloon in size, edge closer to cities and encounter mounting pushback in communities from Niagara Falls to the Great Plains and beyond. Projects have slowed. Even in states with a long history of building renewables, developers don’t know if they can get local permits or how long it might take. 

In Kansas, wind power grew rapidly for two decades and supplies around 45% of the electricity generated in-state, ranking it third in the nation. But at least five counties in more-populous eastern Kansas have recently placed moratoriums or bans on new wind or solar projects, joining 18 others that already restricted wind development to preserve the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. Kansas lagged behind nearly every state in large project construction and new clean power capacity last year, according to the American Clean Power Association, an industry group for wind, solar and battery storage.

President Biden’s signature legislative accomplishment, the Inflation Reduction Act, aims to make the nation’s electric grid and fuel industries cleaner. Companies have already announced plans for $150 billion in investment in renewables and battery storage in the eight months following the law’s passage, according to the American Clean Power Association. 

Potential private investment over the next decade spurred by federal tax incentives and loans could include $900 billion in renewable-energy projects and $100 billion in battery storage, according to Goldman Sachs. Adding investments in such areas as carbon capture and electric vehicles, total spending could reach $3 trillion, the firm estimates. 

Eight Mile Creek runs through Gerry Coffman’s farm in rural Douglas County, Kansas, where opponents are rallying against wind power.

Ms. Coffman, whose farm has been in the family for 150 years, worries that towering wind turbines would change the community for the worse.

The U.S., though, is a patchwork of state and local governments with different rules on development, and opposition to projects has mounted for myriad reasons. Increasingly, many communities are concerned that the rapidly expanding size of wind and solar farms will irreparably alter the complexion of where they live.

In a pattern familiar across the U.S., Kansas wind developers years ago snapped up the rights to tracts of rural land in the less-populous western part of the state. That filled capacity on large transmission lines that deliver electricity over long distances, pushing newer projects east into more-populous areas such as Douglas County, a place where many people commute to jobs in Kansas City and Topeka and large farms are interspersed with smaller plots.

Market demand and economies of scale have pushed solar and wind farm size to hundreds or thousands of acres. They may not sit on contiguous parcels, but instead spread throughout a community, increasing the odds of friction. 

In Michigan, a typical solar project once covered 60 acres but now would take up 1,200, said Sarah Mills, a senior project manager at the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute. Ms. Mills said they may need to get smaller—and more expensive—to be more socially acceptable. A refrain emerging at community meetings she attends is, “What you’re asking our rural community to host is way more than our fair share.”

Projects aren’t evenly distributed throughout the U.S. They are placed where the wind or sunshine is plentiful, or where state policies have required the addition of renewables. Wind farms are concentrated in the Great Plains, Midwest and Texas, while solar is clustering in the West, Southeast and Northeast.

The National Renewable Energy Lab has tracked more than 2,000 local wind ordinances and 1,000 solar ordinances that outline rules for development such as project size. Figuring out whether regulations bar or allow development can be tricky, as bans aren’t always explicit—communities can create rules that amount to de facto denials—but the landscape changes each time developers cross a county line.

“It can be very localized,” said Rebecca Kujawa, president and CEO of NextEra Energy Resources. “It can be one county where a couple of stakeholders are very vocal and literally right over the border they’re very receptive.”

In Iowa, which has the second-highest installed wind power capacity in the country after Texas, a 2022 study of wind ordinances found that 16 of 99 counties had prohibitive rules or a ban against new projects, most of them approved in the previous four years. Between moratoriums and requirements for setbacks between turbines and things such as neighboring property lines, roads or buildings, developers won’t even consider projects on around half to three quarters of land with good wind resources, according to a study by the nonprofit research firm ClearPath and consulting group LucidCatalyst. 

Despite soaring demand and available capital even before the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, U.S. clean power installations dipped 16% last year and 12% over 2020, according to the American Clean Power Association. It was the worst year for land-based wind installations since 2018.

Many projects will eventually get built, say developers and analysts, but they could take longer and cost more than expected. At the federal level, there is some bipartisan support for speeding up permitting for transmission or pipeline projects, and Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has relaunched a legislative effort that stalled last year. Some states are pushing back on their own against local roadblocks.

New regulations in New York give the state project-siting authority when conflicts arise over what it considers unreasonably burdensome local rules, part of an effort to add more renewable energy to the grid. Illinois has a similar effort: A new law says local rules can’t be more stringent than those the state sets.

In Cambria, N.Y., near Niagara Falls, a proposed 900-acre solar project across several parcels of land would neighbor around 350 residents, said town supervisor Wright Ellis. The town opposes the project, but likely cannot halt it. 

“We are not against solar,” Mr. Ellis said. “It’s the industrial size.”

That doesn’t mean the process is swift, though. The Cambria solar project was first proposed in 2017.

Landowner John Ohol, 44, wants to lease his property for the solar farm but fears further delays as the developer and township wrangle in court over the state’s draft permit. His family had a dairy farm in Cambria for 90 years, but he believes solar would be a more secure income stream. It is unrealistic for the community to expect that nothing would ever be developed on the property, Mr. Ohol said.

The developer says the site is ideal for solar. “Running right through our project site are two to three very large transmission lines,” said Keith Silliman of Cypress Creek Renewables. “That’s the A-number one reason that we’re there.”

New York has ambitious plans to have 70% of its electricity produced by renewables by 2030. Around 32% of New York’s electricity in 2021 came from renewables, most of it from longtime hydropower plants that would be difficult to impossible to build today. 

Adding more renewables has been slow so far. New York added just 262 megawatts of large wind and solar projects in 2022, less than Montana and South Dakota, according to the American Clean Power Association.

The Douglas County Board of Commissioners held a hearing in February on a request by NextEra Energy to put up a meteorological tower and other equipment.

Many Douglas County landowners object to renewable energy projects, which they say will harm local businesses, wildlife and property values.

On a cold February night in Kansas, Douglas County residents filed into dark wooden pews in the county courthouse and waited turns at the microphone. The meeting was focused on permits for a meteorological tower and other weather measurement equipment that is needed for  wind projects. The applications from power company NextEra Energy drew so much opposition that the meeting stretched four hours.

“Do you see the wounds that are being caused?” asked Debbie Yarnell, who owns a cow and sheep farm.

NextEra declined to comment on the meeting or its plans in Douglas County, but Chief Executive John Ketchum said in an interview in March that the company tries to do community outreach on the benefits of renewable energy and has an early-state development team that identifies places that would both welcome projects and have a good solar or wind resource. 

“The one thing we do that is really, really hard to do in this country is create economic development opportunities for rural communities,” Mr. Ketchum said. 

Alan Anderson, vice chair of the Polsinelli law firm’s national energy practice, represented the company at the Kansas meeting. He has traversed the state for such meetings for the last 15 years. The mood changed around 2015 when one of Mr. Anderson’s clients called and said they had been turned down for a meteorological tower, which until then had received routine approvals.

“It was the first of what became a pretty constant onslaught of challenges to projects,” said Mr. Anderson, who attributes the change to the conversation shifting from renewables as an economic boost to political debates and misinformation.

Some opponents don’t like the idea of locally produced energy getting exported out of the state, or that the government is singling out particular technologies for special tax treatment. Other objections are more tangible. Communities often complain about the rhythmic blinking red lights that flash atop turbines at night or the whooshing noise of blades. They also raise concerns about taking farmland out of production or the impact on wildlife.

Plenty of Kansans do want to host projects—wind is already the biggest source of electricity in the state, followed by coal at 35%, according to government data. Supporters view energy exports as akin to shipments of products like wheat or beef, and point to the amount of the corn crop that is grown for ethanol. 

The state’s residential electricity prices have generally been at or below the national average, while low-cost wind production drives down wholesale power prices, according to government and grid operator reports.

Many Kansans are girding for a long fight over this and future projects. Michael Forth helped start an opposition group which gained 1,200 petition signatures from residents who own a collective 40,000 acres. He traces his Douglas County family farm back to 1904 and moved back seven years ago from Colorado and built a house. “I’m wondering if I didn’t make the biggest mistake of my life,” he said.

Mr. Forth’s sister, Laurie Shuck, recently purchased a stack of “no trespassing” signs to post around her fences to try to keep out NextEra representatives offering wind leases or transmission easements. One late afternoon as light faded at her farm, the moon rose in the east and a flock of geese honked overhead. She paused to watch. Mrs. Shuck said she and her brother would lease land for wind projects, “over our dead bodies.” 

 “I was here first,” she said, and walked to feed her horses.

Michael Forth and his family have owned land in Douglas County since 1904. He moved back seven years ago, but with the influx of renewable-energy projects, said, ‘I’m wondering if I didn’t make the biggest mistake of my life.’

EU targets Central Asia in drive to stop sanctioned goods reaching Russia  

Several EU countries fear Brussels risk opening a Pandora’s box with a new measure that could eventually be used against China and Turkey.

POLITICO EU BY BARBARA MOENS, LEONIE KIJEWSKI AND SUZANNE LYNCH, MAY 8, 2023 

Central Asian countries such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are the most likely first targets of a radical new EU proposal to stop Russia busting sanctions by importing the high-tech components required to wage war through its neighbors.

The EU is moving toward its 11th package of sanctions against Russia to try to sap President Vladimir Putin's military machine and, for the first time, its proposal will include counter-measures against countries helping Moscow dodge Brussels' trade embargo. China and Turkey are the nations most often credited with throwing Russia an economic lifeline — but EU diplomats cautioned that Ankara and Beijing were not their immediate targets, and that measures against such significant geostrategic trade partners risked backfiring.

Instead, three EU diplomats said the hope was that the EU's impending proposals on sanctions circumvention would encourage Central Asian states to fall into line. The full 11th sanctions package could be unveiled as early as Tuesday, when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visits Kyiv to mark Europe Day.

EU sanctions envoy David O’Sullivan has traveled to Turkey, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in recent weeks in a bid to gauge the scale of sanctions circumvention.

Under the proposal for the 11th package, seen by POLITICO, the Commission wants to target “persons and entities circumventing the Union’s restrictive measures by activities which have the aim or result of frustrating the prohibitions in those measures. This concerns, for example, companies established in third countries, which obtain goods subject to restrictions from companies established in the Union and which are then supplied to Russia, directly or through intermediaries.”

Significantly, no specific countries or products are named in the two annexes to the proposal — instead it will be up to EU countries to make that decision. In addition to the new proposal, the 11th sanctions package also currently includes listings of 72 individuals and 31 entities.

The central plank of this new EU measure would be to restrict European companies from selling sensitive goods to one of Russia's neighbors if there were circumvention. The sanctions would first list sensitive products in terms of circumvention, then the countries where they are being shipped.

EU ambassadors will offer their first impressions on the proposal on Wednesday. EU diplomats don’t expect a deal on the new package until next week, or even the week after. The Kazakh and Uzbek embassies to the EU did not have an immediate response.

Not so fast

But that doesn’t mean the anti-circumvention measures will win a quick sign-off.

Several EU countries fear Brussels risks opening a Pandora’s box with the proposal. By establishing the principle that countries who breach EU sanctions, deliberately or not, could be targeted, the move opens up the possibility that other countries such as Turkey or China could be next in the firing line.

One EU diplomat seeking a tougher line on the bigger targets said he was "hoping for a loaded gun on the table, but right now the gun isn't even loaded."  

The U.S. has been pushing Brussels to take a more hawkish line on China but the EU is reluctant to further alienate Beijing. 

Similarly, confronting Turkey is also seen as a major political risk, given the volatility of Turkish politics as it approaches this weekend’s election, and Ankara’s leverage when it comes to issues like migration, given that Turkey has long acted as a buffer between the EU and the Middle East. 

While the Commission believes the threat of punishing Central Asian countries will be enough of an economic stick to change their behavior, one diplomat said Europe “should be sure we are ready to follow through” with a threat before making it. Another diplomat said Brussels needs to find a balance between cracking down on sanction circumvention and maintaining economic ties with key trading partners such as Turkey or China.  

Beijing on Monday was already adamantly opposed to a separate EU measure in the 11th sanctions package, which targets seven Chinese companies suspected of sending prohibited goods to Russia either directly or through intermediaries. This direct targeting of the seven companies is distinct from the proposed broader circumvention measure to draw up specific lists of products that should not be sold from Europe to companies in countries neighboring Russia, which has not yet been approved.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin warned the EU not to go ahead. “We urge the EU not to go on this wrong path, otherwise China will take firm actions to safeguard our legitimate and lawful interests,” he said. 

But the Commission is confident that the circumvention package gives EU countries enough wiggle-room to apply the brakes if a proposed measure is seen as too politically sensitive. 

Under the proposal, every decision to add a product or country needs to be approved by all 27 EU capitals. 

This may help to get EU countries on board with the politically sensitive new idea; at the same time, it makes the procedure very burdensome, giving every capital a potential veto power.

Focusing minds has been the looming G7 summit in Japan later this month, where the group of the world’s strongest economies are expected to focus on strengthening sanctions on Russia and combatting circumvention. 

For Ukraine’s supporters, the new package to be considered by member states Wednesday is good news. “I'm satisfied with that [package] as long as the final decision has been made … All the sanctions which are harming the Russian war machine, we are supporting them,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told POLITICO.

Jakob Hanke Vela and Stuart Lau contributed reporting.

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

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

Analysis: Chile’s constitution will struggle to escape Pinochet’s shadow

This result has made it easier for far-right candidates like Kast to win elections: "Kast, a lawyer and supporter of the terrible Pinochet regime.

REUTERS By Alexander Villegas and Natalia A. Ramos Miranda

SANTIAGO, May 8 (Reuters) - Chile's new constitution may end up looking a lot like the current text, which dates back to the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship - but without his name on it - after the political right took charge of the redraft process in a harsh nationwide electoral defeat for leftist President Gabriel Boric.

Chile's Republican Party, led by far-right firebrand Jose Antonio Kast, secured over a third of the national vote on Sunday to elect advisers to draw up the new constitution, a sharp shift from a progressive majority that led the failed first attempt.

The win for the right will likely set the foundations for a far more conservative rewrite of the neoliberal original text, which was credited for propelling decades of strong growth in the copper mining nation, but criticized for causing wide economic inequalities that sparked months of social justice protests in 2019.

"This is the right's best chance for people to pick a Pinochet constitution without Pinochet's signature," said Patricio Navia a political scientist at New York University.

"If it includes some upgrades and demands from the left, we're going to have a constitution very similar to Pinochet's, but signed by Gabriel Boric and ministers of the Communist Party (part of the governing coalition)."

Boric, a former student protest leader, rose to power representing the Social Convergence Party on a hopeful mandate of reform, pledging to support a major progressive overhaul of the constitution. That process ended in failure last year when voters rejected the proposed new text.

Boric and progressives had called for a new democratic drafting process led by citizens with a focus on Indigenous and minority rights, powers of collective bargaining, water and land rights, as well as healthcare, education and pension reforms.

This time around, Boric's approval rating has fallen amid concerns about inflation and insecurity.

"The political climate in Chile isn't the same as in 2019 or 2020," said political analyst Cristobal Bellolio. "After a pandemic, and amid an economic and security crisis, people are favoring options that reduce uncertainty."

That's opened the door to far-right politicians like Kast, a lawyer who lost to Boric in the 2021 presidential elections and has defended the legacy of the brutal Pinochet dictatorship. An estimated 3,200 Chileans were murdered and another 28,000 tortured by the state during Pinochet's rule. Many of the victims were affiliated with the socialist government of Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a 1973 coup.

Kast's party won 23 of 50 seats on the new constitutional council, while a separate coalition of conservative parties won 11 seats. With a three-fifths majority needed to pass new articles, the right could push things through on its own.

Analysts said, however, that the right would likely agree to some changes to appease voters, including on areas like expanded social rights, consumer protections and Indigenous recognitions.

"The issue is that if it's more right then Pinochet's constitution, people are going to reject it," Navia added, who added the loss for Boric left the leader who once promised to bury Chile's market-led model sorely wounded.

"Boric said that if Chile was the cradle of neo-liberalism, it would also be its grave. But neo-liberalism is still healthy and now Boric is in the ICU," he said.

The loss comes weeks after Boric presented his most-recent ambitious proposal to take control of the country's lithium industry and create a new national lithium company. The plan already faces technical and political challenges as a key part must pass through Congress.

Rossana Castiglioni, a political science professor at Diego Portales University in Chile, said she was surprised by the low support for centrist parties and high number of null and blank votes, saying it was a message for progressives in the region.

"It's not enough to win an election, what happens in between is very important," Castiglioni said, adding that the economic landscape was very different than a previous leftist tide in Latin America during the economic boom of the early 2000s.

"The lesson is that there has to be a strategic adaption on the left if it wants to win elections in contexts were the economy is more adverse."

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‘Mind-boggling’ methane emissions from Turkmenistan revealed

Leaks of potent greenhouse gas could be easily fixed, say experts, and would rapidly reduce global heating

The Guardian by Damian Carrington Environment editor, Tue 9 May 2023 

Methane leaks alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK, satellite data has revealed.

Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil- and gas-rich country are “mind-boggling”, and an “infuriating” problem that should be easy to fix, experts have told the Guardian.

The data produced by Kayrros for the Guardian found that the western fossil fuel field in Turkmenistan, on the Caspian coast, leaked 2.6m tonnes of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted 1.8m tonnes. Together, the two fields released emissions equivalent to 366m tonnes of CO2, more than the UK’s annual emissions, which are the 17th-biggest in the world.

Methane emissions have surged alarmingly since 2007 and this acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating, according to scientists. It also seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.

The Guardian recently revealed that Turkmenistan was the worst in the world for methane “super emitting” leaks. Separate research suggests a switch from the flaring of methane to venting may be behind some of these vast outpourings.

Flaring is used to burn unwanted gas, putting CO2 into the atmosphere, but is easy to detect and has been increasingly frowned upon in recent years. Venting simply releases the invisible methane into the air unburned, which, until recent developments in satellite technology, had been hard to detect. Methane traps 80 times more heat than CO2 over 20 years, making venting far worse for the climate.

Experts told the Guardian that the Cop28 UN climate summit being hosted in the United Arab Emirates in December was an opportunity to drive methane-cutting action in Turkmenistan. The two petrostates have close ties and there is pressure on the UAE to dispel doubts that a big oil and gas producer can deliver strong outcomes from the summit.

Tackling leaks from fossil fuel sites is the fastest and cheapest way to slash methane emissions, and therefore global heating. Action to stem leaks often pays for itself, as the gas captured can be sold. But the maintenance of infrastructure in Turkmenistan is very poor, according to experts.

‘Out of control’

“Methane is responsible for almost half of short-term [climate] warming and has absolutely not been managed up to now – it was completely out of control,” said Antoine Rostand, the president of Kayrros.

“We know where the super emitters are and who is doing it,” he said. “We just need the policymakers and investors to do their job, which is to crack down on methane emissions. There is no comparable action in terms of [reducing] short-term climate impacts.”

Super-emissions from oil and gas installations were readily ended, Rostand said, by fixing valves or pipes or, at the very least, relighting flares: “It’s very simple to do, it has no cost for the citizen, and for the producers, the cost is completely marginal.”

The satellite data used by Kayrros to detect methane has been collected since the start of 2019 and Turkmenistan’s overall emissions show a level trend since then. Satellites have also detected 840 super-emitting events, ie leaks from single wells, tanks or pipes at a rate of a few tonnes an hour or more, the most from any nation.

Most of the facilities leaking the methane were owned by Turkmenoil, the national oil company, Kayrros said. Further undetected methane emissions will be coming from Turkmenistan’s offshore oil and gas installations in the Caspian Sea, but the ability of satellites to measure methane leaks over water is still being developed.

Kayrros also did some high-resolution monitoring of the North Bugdayly field in western Turkmenistan. The number of super-emitter events there doubled to almost 60 between 2021 and 2022, with one recent super-emitter pouring out methane for almost six weeks.

Turkmenistan is China’s biggest supplier of gas and is planning to double its exports to the country. Until 2018, Turkmen citizens had received free gas and electricity. However, the country is also very vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, with the likelihood of severe drought projected to increase “very significantly” over the 21st century and yields of major crops expected to fall.

‘Huge opportunity’

Speaking freely about the repressive and authoritarian state is difficult but sources told the Guardian it was a “very depressing” situation, with Turkmenistan probably the worst country in the world in dealing with methane leaks.

They said preventing or fixing the leaks represented a “huge opportunity” but that the lack of action was “infuriating”. Turkmenistan could stop the leaks from ageing Soviet-era equipment and practices, they said, and the country could be the “world’s biggest methane reducer”. But the huge gas resources on tap meant “they never cared if it leaked”.

It was also not a priority for the president, Serdar Berdimuhamedov, they said, without whose approval little happens. This is despite Berdimuhamedov, then deputy chair of the cabinet of ministers, telling the UN climate summit Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 that Turkmenistan was reducing greenhouse gas emissions “by introducing modern technologies in all spheres of the state’s economy”, with “special attention” to the reduction of methane emissions.

Turkmenistan’s president, Serdar Berdimuhamedov, at his inauguration ceremony in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, in March 2022. Photograph: AP

Berdimuhamedov also welcomed the Global Methane Pledge (GMP) to cut emissions, but Turkmenistan has failed to join the 150 nations now signed. Neither are Turkmenoil and Turkengas, the state companies, members of a voluntary UN initiative to cut leaks, the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP2), which covers about 40% of global oil and gas production. “The president hasn’t followed up,” said a source.

Largest hotspot

Recent scientific research, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that the west coast of Turkmenistan was “one of the largest methane hotspots in the world”.

Detailed analysis of satellite data revealed 29 different super-emitter events between 2017 and 2020, although older satellite data showed that “this type of emission has been occurring for decades”.

The researchers said 24 of the 29 super-emitter events came from flare stacks that had been extinguished and were then venting methane directly into the air, and that all were managed by state companies. The other five were linked to pipeline leaks. The scientists said that “the more frequent emitters would conflict with Turkmen law, which bans continuous gas flaring and venting”.

“Flaring is very easy to identify from the flame itself,” said Itziar Irakulis-Loitxate, of the Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain, who led the study. “But venting was something that you could not identify easily until two years ago.” The switch to venting, a far worse environmental practice, was “mind-boggling”, according to another expert.

The scientists said the prevalence of venting “points to the risks of penalising flaring without effective measures to control venting”. The World Bank founded a global initiative to end flaring in 2015.

‘Forcing mechanism’

The UN climate summit in December represented an opportunity for change, sources said, as it is being hosted by the UAE, which has strong links with Turkmenistan and expertise in oil and gas production. The most recent visit by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, the UAE’s deputy prime minister, to Turkmenistan was in February. He met Berdimuhamedov and discussed with him bilateral cooperation “in vital sectors such as oil and gas”.

The UAE is a member of the Global Methane Pledge and the state oil company, Adnoc, is a member of the OGMP2. Adnoc recently announced a partnership to develop a “supergiant gas field” called Galkynysh and other energy projects in Turkmenistan. However, Adnoc did not respond to a request for information on how the company would help limit methane emissions in the country.

The Guardian understands diplomatic efforts are being made to urge Turkmenistan to cut its methane emissions. “We are really hoping Cop28 is a forcing mechanism,” a source said.

The Guardian contacted Turkmenoil, Turkmengaz, the Turkmenistan ministry of foreign affairs and the Turkmen embassy in the UK for comment, but none responded.