Monday's thoughts

Waking up hopeless in a world where bad news rains down is a nightmare.

The article published by this blog in September 2022 named: “Beware of starving the enemy of oxygen …, was one of the first pieces of media to analyze China's potential role in the current war between Russia and Ukraine from a historical perspective.

…”  Following the conclusions of the bilateral meeting between the republics of China and Russia within the framework of the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in the city of Samarkand in the Republic of Uzbekistan on September 16 of this year, the dangers of the current Russian military invasion of Ukraine have deepened....  As a result of the cautious position of the forgotten ally of the West during the Second World War, China, after the conclusion of the meeting.  In a statement by President Vladimir Putin himself, he acknowledges and simultaneously understands China's concerns about the current conflict.  Obviously, for the president of the Russian federation, it must not have been easy to publicly acknowledge China's political stance concerning the present war labyrinth with threats of incalculable dangers in its escalation. (https://energycentral.com/c/og/beware-starving-enemy-oxygen)

Although it may be an illusion (and we hope not a dilution), news from today's issue of The Wall Street Journal, regarding the negotiations China is leading for a ceasefire between Russia and its allies against Ukraine and the rest of the world, gives a glimmer of hope.

It has been a slow, steady process in a world that has undermined the so-called normality stage brewing since the end of the Cold War.  It has also been a disruptive process, weakening the global political system and undermining its leaders' political management capacity to care for the most disadvantaged.  Adding to all this is the inflationary process of the 1970s that widened the inequality gap.  The 2008 recession and the volcanic social and economic upheaval (inflationary processes) in many regions of the world, first due to the pandemic and now to war, have contributed to disorientation and frustration, weakening the bonds of coexistence.  The world has changed so much, it is becoming increasingly difficult to envisage that we will ever be the same again.  How we live, work, and relate to each other has changed forever, and all we do is try desperately to adapt to the new reality.  It is difficult, but we can get through it together in a mean-spirited and polarised world.

Most read…

U.S. and Allies Look at Potential China Role in Ending Ukraine War

An expected offensive by Ukraine is seen as paving way for negotiations with Russia

WSJ By Bojan Pancevski and Laurence Norman, May 7, 2023

China's return to global stage checked by national security focus

Since abandoning pandemic controls that would effectively close its borders after 2020, Beijing has recently launched several diplomatic and commercial actions that appear to contradict each other.

REUTERS By Yew Lun Tian and James Pomfret, TODAY

The ‘Peace Dividend’ Is Over in Europe. Now Come the Hard Tradeoffs.

Defending against an unpredictable Russia in years to come will mean bumping up against a strained social safety net and ambitious climate transition plans.

NYT By Patricia Cohen and Liz Alderman, May 3, 2023

Israel to boost energy storage with eye on facilitating Sabbath supplies

Globally, there is a growing need for stored energy to utilize solar power at night and support the transition to electricity-powered transportation.

Reuters, NOW

In Germany, the construction of the Northvolt battery factory is under threat from US subsidies

The Swedish battery developer is considering abandoning their plans to build a factory in northern Germany to instead build it in the United States where subsidies for decarbonized industrial projects are more favorable.

Le Monde By Cécile Boutelet,  April 27, 2023. 

Climate Activists Have a New Target: Civilians…

On The Street Whit The Suv- Busting: Tire Extenguisher

POLITICO EU BY KARL MATHIESEN, MAY 2, 2023 

Chile: Far right ahead in key vote for new constitution

It was a major defeat for Chile's center-left president, Gabriel Boric, with the vote also widely viewed as a referendum on his government.

Le Monde with AP, TODAY

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.

U.S. and Allies Look at Potential China Role in Ending Ukraine War

An expected offensive by Ukraine is seen as paving way for negotiations with Russia

WSJ By Bojan Pancevski and Laurence Norman in Berlin and Vivian Salama in Washington, May 7, 2023

Some U.S. and European officials said they believe that Ukraine’s planned spring offensive could pave the way for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow by the end of the year, and that China could help bring Russia to the table.

The willingness to encourage negotiations and seek out a role for China in talks represents a shift in Western thinking, particularly in the U.S., which has been highly skeptical of any involvement for Beijing given China’s longstanding support for Moscow. Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly expressed cautious optimism recently that Beijing could help defuse the conflict. 

The approach is based on the belief that neither side has the ability to continue fighting indefinitely, and that Beijing’s willingness to play a role in international peace talks should be tested, the officials said. Still, they remain uncertain about Russia’s willingness to negotiate a cease-fire under Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The interest in negotiations brings Washington in closer alignment with some European countries, which are eager to see the conflict end, or at the very least moderate in intensity, and have been the most intent on discussing some resolution this year. The U.S., the U.K. and other countries have been publicly saying that Ukraine should be supported as long as it takes to defeat Russia. 

“We have been clear that we will continue to support Ukraine as they defend their country from Russia’s unprovoked invasion, and that support will continue,” said Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “Unfortunately, we see no signs that Russia is preparing to stop its attacks on the Ukrainian people. That’s why we are committed to continuing to help Ukraine protect its people against Russian aggression.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has been the most explicit in pushing Ukraine to seek negotiations with the Kremlin after the spring offensive. Officials at the White House and State Department have long maintained that all wars end at the negotiating table, but said that it will require a genuine interest on the part of Russia to approach any talks in good faith. The military aid dispatched to Ukraine is designed to put Kyiv in a stronger negotiating position.

Key U.S. officials on the National Security Council are in favor of negotiations, according to European officials, while the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have been more skeptical, eager to see how the offensive goes before pitching for a diplomatic off-ramp.

An NSC spokesperson disputed European accounts that there is division within the administration. The State Department and the CIA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Senior officials in Paris and Berlin who are familiar with their leaders’ discussions with President Biden say they expect the White House to attempt to facilitate talks following the Ukrainian offensive’s anticipated gains.

The aim is for Ukraine to regain important territory in the south, a development that could be interpreted as a success even if Russia retains chunks of territory its forces have occupied.  

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, will host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin this month on what is set to be his first trip to Germany since Russia invaded in February 2022. While Mr. Scholz won’t pressure Mr. Zelensky into talks, Mr. Biden is expected to signal to the Ukrainian leader that cease-fire talks might be opportune in the coming months, European officials said.

The push to negotiate comes in the midst of concern on both sides of the Atlantic that the scale of support provided by allies to Ukraine for the coming push will be hard to match in the future if the war grinds into a stalemate. The supply of ammunition is a key problem because Western industrial capacity has proven unable to meet its own demands while supporting Ukraine, several officials and industry leaders said.

A number of senior officials across European governments expressed concern about the high attrition rates of troops and materiel in Ukraine, whose population is less than one-third of Russia’s.

The European push for negotiations isn’t a consensus. Poland, the Baltic states, other smaller nations and some officials from the U.K. believe that Ukraine should be given the time it needs to make gains—even if the coming spring offensive doesn’t reshape the battlefield.

Russia faces challenges sustaining its war effort, which some believe could force it to the negotiating table. Testifying May 4 on Capitol Hill, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Mr. Putin has little interest in negotiating a definitive settlement of the conflict and is still assuming that the West’s will to support Ukraine will erode over time. 

“We continue to assess that Putin most likely calculates that time works in his favor,” said Ms. Haines. 

She added that the Russian leader has probably scaled back his near-term goals in Ukraine of consolidating control in the east and south of the country and ensuring that Kyiv never joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. If Mr. Putin accedes to a “negotiated pause” in the conflict, she said, his goal might be to use the time to rebuild Russia’s forces for future offensive operations.

It couldn’t be determined what any sort of negotiations would look like, but officials in Paris and Berlin said they are interested in a broadly framed cease-fire agreement that would potentially involve China among its guarantors.

In February, China called for peace talks to end the war in Ukraine, outlining its plan in a 12-point document, and casting itself as a neutral mediator. 

That same month, Mr. Macron offered in private to Mr. Zelensky to host a peace conference in Paris to negotiate a cease-fire when Kyiv decides the time is right. Mr. Zelensky said he would only participate if Mr. Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping attended. 

“China will continue to promote negotiations for peace and make its own efforts for an early cease-fire and restoration of peace,” the Chinese Embassy in Washington said in a statement.

Mr. Macron and his officials, as well as other Europeans officials, have since prodded Beijing to play a constructive role in diplomacy. Those efforts culminated in Mr. Xi calling Mr. Zelensky in April for the first time since the war began, although officials briefed on the conversation said the call deflated hopes that the Chinese leader would shift away from supporting Russia and contained no clear commitments to uphold Ukraine’s demands. 

Mr. Xi, who made a high-profile visit in March to the Kremlin, where he expressed support for Mr. Putin, will soon dispatch an envoy to Kyiv. 

“It is too early to be able to say anything, and we are now waiting for Xi’s representative to arrive in Kyiv,” said a senior member of the Ukrainian government.

Nonetheless, key European leaders are now confident that China is eager to remain involved in eventual cease-fire negotiations, several European officials said.

That sentiment was echoed by Mr. Blinken. “In principle, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said last week at a Washington Post forum. He added that if there are countries with significant influence “that are prepared to pursue a just and durable peace, we would welcome that. And it’s certainly possible that China would have a role to play in that effort.” Mr. Blinken also said he wasn’t sure that Beijing accepted the proposition that Moscow was the aggressor.

When would be the right time for Ukraine to hold peace talks with Russia? Join the conversation below.

Until recently, a number of U.S. and European officials were saying that China’s open support for Russia since the war began made Beijing unpalatable as a negotiating partner for ending the war.

Kyiv welcomes any country that can play a constructive role in their pursuit of peace, but didn’t believe Beijing was crucial, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Oksana Markarova, said recently.

Western leaders are now slowly moving toward a consensus that halting the conflict might be the best option, said Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council official responsible for Russian policy, now with the Brookings Institution.

“This seems to be where we are trending,” she said. “Freeze the conflict and stop the slaughter, because everybody would like this to stop.” 

Mr. Putin has shown no public sign of winding down the war or his objectives, despite mounting losses. Any durable arrangement will most likely involve Mr. Zelensky’s acceptance of occupation of Ukrainian territory by Russia, Ms. Hill said.

“Is it sufficient for Ukraine to have effectively given up territory and countless lives and to say, ‘OK, this is what we died for?’ ” Ms. Hill asked.

China's return to global stage checked by national security focus

Since abandoning pandemic controls that would effectively close its borders after 2020, Beijing has recently launched several diplomatic and commercial actions that appear to contradict each other.

REUTERS By Yew Lun Tian and James Pomfret, TODAY

BEIJING/HONG KONG, May 8 (Reuters) - China's increasing focus on its own security and intensifying rivalry with the United States threatens to turn its re-engagement with the world after years of COVID curbs into a new era of isolation from the West, analysts say.

Since casting off pandemic controls that effectively shut its borders since 2020, Beijing has in recent months embarked on a series of seemingly contradictory diplomatic and business steps that have left many observers questioning its motives.

These have included: promoting peace in Ukraine while holding talks with the aggressor Russia, rolling out the red carpet to Western leaders while escalating tensions over democratic Taiwan, and wooing foreign CEOs while taking measures seen as stifling China's business environment.

Analysts say what may appear as mixed messaging is the result of President Xi Jinping's renewed focus on national security, steeled by rock-bottom relations with rival superpower, the United States.

"The stark reality in China...is that security now trumps everything, from economy to diplomacy," said Alfred Wu, associate dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Wu said the overwhelming focus on security is hurting some of China's diplomatic ties and its plans to rejuvenate the world's second largest economy, even as it seeks to stamp its authority on key geopolitical issues including the Ukraine crisis.

"For all that China says about wanting to be open to the outside world, it has progressively closed up."

Xi singled out national security, a broad concept incorporating issues ranging from politics and economics to technology and territorial disputes, in a speech after securing a precedent-breaking third leadership term in October.

A later speech in March at the National People's Congress was more pointed: China's security is being challenged by U.S. attempts to contain its rise, he said.

While national security has always been among Xi's top concerns since taking office in 2012, his first two terms focused more on domestic issues like dissidents, rights activists and Muslim ethnic groups in China's northwestern Xinjiang region.

In his October speech, he added "external security" and "international security", in what analysts say signals a new focus to counter foreign threats, namely Washington.

Asked for its response to a list of questions for this story, China's foreign ministry said it was "not aware of the situation".

Ministry officials have repeatedly asserted that China is a responsible power that supports multilateralism and globalisation and have accused other countries of hyping up the "China threat".

'DIVERGENCE UNDERNEATH'

But China's obsession with security has tainted several of its recent diplomatic initiatives, say analysts.

For example, China's attempts to promote a peace plan for Ukraine has been met with scepticism due to its refusal to condemn Moscow, a close ally and its biggest oil supplier.

When Xi last month held his first call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy since the war started more than a year ago - an effort to stress Beijing is not taking sides - several analysts cast it as "damage control" after China's ambassador to France questioned Ukraine's sovereignty.

Charles Parton, a fellow at British think tank Council of Geostrategy, said China's calls for peace in Ukraine are related to its own battle with the U.S.

"Beijing does not care if its peacemaking works...what matters is that this is an opportunity to portray the Americans in a bad light," he said, referring to China's assertions that the U.S. and its allies are fanning the flames of war by arming Kyiv.

Michael Butler, associate professor of political science at Clark University in Boston, said Ukraine was a litmus test for U.S. resolve with parallels for Taiwan, the democratically ruled island China claims as its own.

"Of particular concern to Xi is gauging the lengths to which the U.S. will – or won’t – go to defend Ukraine’s sovereignty from Russian aggression, while publicly positioning China as a sober voice of reason and the U.S. as a meddlesome aggressor," he said.

China's attempt to woo US allies in Europe is also part of its strategy to counter Washington's influence, but has had mixed success, say analysts.

They point to last month's meeting in China between Xi and French President Emmanuel Macron. What appeared to be a friendly, constructive encounter was marred by Beijing beginning war games around Taiwan hours after Macron left.

This, alongside comments by Macron perceived as weak on Taiwan, fuelled criticism of the trip in Europe as pandering to China. EU officials subsequently took a tougher line on China.

BUSINESS JITTERS

China's security focus also risks isolating the country economically.

At a pair of high-profile business summits in China in March, officials were at pains to stress the country was open for business after COVID.

But in recent weeks, China has also passed a wide-ranging update of its anti-espionage law and taken what the U.S. said was "punitive" action toward some overseas firms in China.

"The security forces in China seem to have been emboldened, at the same time that China seeks to attract more foreign investment," Lester Ross, the head of the American Chamber of Commerce’s China policy committee, told Reuters.

Chinese foreign ministry officials have previously said Beijing welcomes foreign firms as long as they abide by its laws.

Instead of optimism about China's reopening, decades-long foreign bullishness on its capital markets is breaking down, with China's rivalry with the U.S. topping investor concerns.

Ray Dalio, the founder of one of the world's biggest hedge funds Bridgewater and a high profile Sinophile, is among those concerned.

"(China and the U.S.) are very close to crossing red lines that, if crossed, will irrevocably push them over the brink into some type of war that damages these two countries and causes damage to the world order in severe and irrevocable ways," Dalio, who retired earlier this year, recently wrote on his personal LinkedIn account.

The ‘Peace Dividend’ Is Over in Europe. Now Come the Hard Tradeoffs.

Defending against an unpredictable Russia in years to come will mean bumping up against a strained social safety net and ambitious climate transition plans.

NYT By Patricia Cohen and Liz Alderman, May 3, 2023

*Patricia Cohen covers the global economy from London, and Liz Alderman the European economy from Paris.

In the 30 years since the Iron Curtain came crashing down, trillions of dollars that had been dedicated to Cold War armies and weapons systems were gradually diverted to health care, housing and schools.

That era — when security took a back seat to trade and economic growth — abruptly ended with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

“The peace dividend is gone,” Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, recently declared, referring to the mountains of cash that were freed up when military budgets shrank. “Defense expenditures have to go up.”

The urgent need to combat a brutal and unpredictable Russia has forced European leaders to make excruciating budgetary decisions that will enormously affect peoples’ everyday lives. Do they spend more on howitzers or hospitals, tanks or teachers, rockets or roadways? And how to pay for it: raise taxes or borrow more? Or both?

The sudden security demands, which will last well beyond an end to the war in Ukraine, come at a moment when colossal outlays are also needed to care for rapidly aging populations, as well as to avoid potentially disastrous climate change. The European Union’s ambitious goal to be carbon neutral by 2050 alone is estimated to cost between $175 billion and $250 billion each year for the next 27 years.

“The spending pressures on Europe will be huge, and that’s not even taking into account the green transition,” said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard. “The whole European social safety net is very vulnerable to these big needs.”

After the Berlin Wall fell, social spending shot up. Denmark doubled the money it funneled to health care between 1994 and 2022, according to the latest figures compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while Britain increased its spending by more than 90 percent.

Over the same period, Poland more than doubled funding for culture and recreation programs. Germany ramped up investments in the economy. The Czech Republic increased its education budget.

Military spending by European members of North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Canada reached a low point in 2014 as the demand for battle tanks, fighter jets and submarines plummeted. After Russia annexed Crimea that year, budgets started to rise again, but most countries still fell well below NATO’s target of 2 percent of national output.

“The end of the peace dividend is a big rupture,” said Daniel Daianu, chairman of the Fiscal Council in Romania and a former finance minister.

Before war broke out in Ukraine, military spending by the European members of NATO was expected to reach nearly $1.8 trillion by 2026, a 14 percent increase over five years, according to research by McKinsey & Company. Now, spending is estimated to rise between 53 and 65 percent.

That means hundreds of billions of dollars that otherwise could have been used to, say, invest in bridge and highway repairs, child care, cancer research, refugee resettlement or public orchestras is expected to be redirected to the military.

Last week, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported that military spending in Europe last year had its biggest annual rise in three decades. And the spendathon is just beginning.

The demand for military spending will be on display Wednesday when the European Union’s trade commissioner, Thierry Breton, is expected to discuss his fact-finding tour to determine whether European nations and weapons manufacturers can produce one million rounds of 155-millimeter shells for Ukraine this year, and how production can be increased.

Poland has pledged to spend 4 percent of its national output on defense. The German defense minister has asked for an additional $11 billion next year, a 20 percent increase in military spending. President Emmanuel Macron of France has promised to lift military spending by more than a third through 2030 and to “transform” France’s nuclear-armed military.

Some analysts argue that at times cuts in military budgets were so deep that they compromised basic readiness. And surveys have shown that there is public support for increased military spending, pointedly illustrated by Finland and Sweden’s about-face in wanting to join NATO.

But in most of Europe, the painful budgetary trade-offs or tax increases that will be required have not yet trickled down to daily life. Much of the belt-tightening last year that squeezed households was the result of skyrocketing energy prices and stinging inflation.

Going forward, the game board has changed. “France has entered into a war economy that I believe we will be in for a long time,” Mr. Macron said in a speech shortly after announcing his spending blueprint.

But the crucial question of how to pay for the momentous shift in national priorities remains. In France, for instance, government spending as a percentage of the economy, at 1.4 trillion euros ($1.54 trillion), is the highest in Europe. Of that, nearly half was spent on the nation’s generous social safety net, which includes unemployment benefits and pensions. Debt has also spiraled in the wake of the pandemic. Yet Mr. Macron has vowed not to increase what is already one of the highest tax levels in Europe for fear of scaring off investors.

Debates over competing priorities are playing out in other capitals across the region — even if the trade-offs are not explicitly mentioned.

In Britain, on the same day in March that the government unveiled a budget that included a $6.25 billion bump in military spending, teachers, doctors and transport workers joined strikes over pay and working conditions. It was just one in a series of walkouts by public workers who complained that underfunding, double-digit inflation and the pandemic’s aftermath have crippled essential services like health care, transportation and education. The budget included a $4.1 billion increase for the National Health Service over the same two-year period.

Romania, which has been running up its public debt over the years, has pledged to lift military spending this year by 0.5 percent of national output. And this month it agreed to buy an undisclosed number of F-35 fighter jets, which have a list price of $80 million a piece. While the increase will enable the country to hit NATO’s budget target, it will undercut efforts to meet the debt limits set by the European Union.

The shift in government spending is perhaps most striking in Germany, where defense outlays plunged after the reunification of the former East and West German nations in 1990.

“Defense was always the place to save, because it was not very popular,” said Hubertus Bardt, the managing director of the Institute of the German Economy.

Germany, the largest and most powerful economy in Europe, has consistently devoted less money to the military as a percentage of gross domestic output than either France or Britain.

It’s a “historic turning point,” the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said when he announced a special $112 billion defense fund last year. Yet that pot of money did not include any spending for ammunition. And when the fund is depleted, Germany will need to find an additional $38 billion to level up with its NATO partners.

Mr. Rogoff, the Harvard economist, said that most Europeans have not yet absorbed how big the long-term effects of a fading peace dividend will be. This is a new reality, he said, “and governments are going to have to figure out how to rebalance things.”

Israel to boost energy storage with eye on facilitating Sabbath supplies

Globally, there is a growing need for stored energy to utilize solar power at night and support the transition to electricity-powered transportation.

Reuters, NOW

JERUSALEM, May 7 (Reuters) - Israel approved on Sunday a plan to create an energy storage network in cities to produce off-peak electricity, which will also supply "kosher" electricity for ultra-Orthodox Jews observing the Sabbath.

Demand for stored energy is on the rise worldwide as a way to use solar power at night and to help shift to electricity-based transport.

In Israel, with a new government that has strong religious representation, there is an added interest for ultra-Orthodox communities that strictly observe Jewish law, including restrictions on electricity use on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath.

Observant Jews do not turn on electric appliances on Saturdays, though systems like air conditioners or water heaters can be turned on beforehand and run throughout the day.

In some neighbourhoods generators are activated ahead of time and provide electricity for the day, which is expensive, polluting and can be dangerous, Israel's energy ministry says.

"Storing electrical energy will be one way to allow the expansion of electricity production from renewable energies," said the ministry. "At the same time, in Israel there are populations interested in consuming 'kosher electricity' that was not generated on Sabbath."

The government approved a pilot - a 24-megawatt battery facility - to store excess power from peak production times that will be drawn on by some 3,000 households in the city of Bnei Barak, an ultra-Orthodox enclave in central Israel.

It will be built by state-owned Israel Electric Corp for up to 120 million shekels ($33 million) and privatised after three years. If successful, hundreds of megawatts in storage facilities will be built nationwide, the ministry said, without giving a timeframe.

In Germany, the construction of the Northvolt battery factory is under threat from US subsidies

The Swedish battery developer is considering abandoning their plans to build a factory in northern Germany to instead build it in the United States where subsidies for decarbonized industrial projects are more favorable.

Le Monde By Cécile Boutelet(Berlin (Germany) correspondent),  April 27, 2023. 

A few kilometers from the North Sea coast, standing on the moors of Schleswig-Holstein, Heide is one of those typical villages of Germany's northernmost state: a rural community, swept by the sea winds, where manufacturing has become rare.

For several months now, though, Heide has been at the heart of a battle that has become almost existential for "made in Germany:" The Swedish group Northvolt, which was planning to set up a huge car battery factory in Heide, is threatening to build it in the United States instead, mainly because the cost of electricity in Germany is too high.

If Heide were to be abandoned, it would be catastrophic for the German industrial site. A year ago, in March 2022, Berlin and the Schleswig-Holstein region celebrated the announcement of Northvolt's move to the region, which promised an investment of €4.5 billion and the creation of 3,000 jobs.

The Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Change Robert Habeck was particularly pleased. A native of Schleswig-Holstein, where he was a regional minister, he has played a major role in making the region self-sufficient in green energy by developing an ambitious wind power program. It was the local abundance of renewable electricity that convinced Northvolt to locate in Heide. The vision of environmentalist Habeck was realized: It is possible to combine industry with carbon neutrality.

Intense negotiations

A few months later, Northvolt's boss, the Swede Peter Carlsson, dashed hopes of a rapid opening of the Heide plant. In the columns of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in October, the 52-year-old founder and former Tesla executive explained that the highly anticipated factory project was now facing headwinds. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which massively subsidizes projects for low-carbon technologies produced in the United States, has reshuffled the deck, as has the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.

"With current electricity prices, we consider the profitability of energy-intensive projects in Germany to be at risk," said Carlsson. "We want to continue to be a European champion and market leader. But we are now at a point where it is possible that we will prioritize expansion in the US over Europe."

These statements chilled Berlin and triggered a phase of intense negotiations between the Swedish group and the German and European authorities, which is not yet over. But no decision has been taken, the Northvolt group confirmed to Le Monde. It hopes that the matter will be decided "in the course of the year." In practical terms, it is a question of knowing to what extent the Swedish group can benefit from the European response to the very attractive American subsidies, and above all, within what timeframe. Habeck continues to throw all his weight behind Heide's investment: He personally visited Northvolt's research center in Västeras, Sweden, in February 2023. "We continue to work on the Heide project," Carlsson said after the visit.

But the most sensitive matter remains the cost of electricity. Compared to the north of Sweden, the gap is huge. In Skelleftea, where Northvolt has been operating its first gigafactory since the end of 2021, "electricity from renewable sources is 3 cents per kilowatt hour," said Martin Höfelmann, spokesman for Northvolt in Germany. "In Germany, the price of electricity for industry is currently around 15 cents. About 5 cents would be required to make the plant profitable. There would also be the possibility of directly using locally produced surplus wind power, which the grid cannot absorb. But there are major administrative barriers to this solution," Höfelmann said.

Unattainable ambition

Heide is emblematic of the current dilemma of the European automotive industry. All carmakers are pushing their electric programs and urgently need batteries – ideally made in Europe – to reduce dependence on external suppliers. But this ambition seems increasingly unattainable. Volkswagen, the largest shareholder in Northvolt with a 20% stake, and which itself plans to build six battery factories, is not indifferent to the sirens of the IRA: in March, the group announced its intention to build its third gigafactory in Canada (which benefits from American subsidies) rather than in Slovakia as originally planned.

The debate reinforces concerns currently expressed by German imanufacturing, which gathered at the Hannover Fair this week, the world's largest industrial trade fair. "German competitiveness is eroding," said Siegfried Russwurm, president of the industry federation, at the opening of the meeting on Monday, April 17, in front of Chancellor Scholz. "We have reached a point where German companies are thinking twice before investing," he continued, pointing to high electricity prices as one of the main reasons for the current loss of market share for "made in Germany."

The trade unions deplore the already perceptible consequences of this development on industrial employment. According to a recent survey by IG Metall in Baden-Württemberg, almost every second automotive supplier is currently relocating jobs abroad, either to cut costs or to produce closer to the end customer, following the global trend away from free trade to relocating production.

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.

Climate Activists Have a New Target: Civilians…

On The Street Whit The Suv- Busting: Tire Extenguisher

POLITICO EU BY KARL MATHIESEN, MAY 2, 2023 

BRUSSELS — Claude stood watch on the dark, glistening street as Samuel crouched down to jam a lentil into the tire valve of an SUV. “Of course, it will piss them off,” Claude said. An hour later, the vehicle would be slumped against the curb on a flat tire. By the end of the night, the Belgian cell of the Tyre Extinguishers — a loose collective of anarchic climate activists — would claim they had “disarmed” 194 SUVs across Brussels and nearby Ghent.

“We don’t want them to think that they can buy a big car and just enjoy their life and ignore what’s going on in the world,” Claude explained to me. He and his two accomplices gave false names as a condition of allowing me to observe their nighttime expedition. The vehicles weren’t damaged, but they’d need a refill or a tire change. Before he left, Claude stuck a leaflet to the windscreen saying, in French: “Don’t take it personally. You are not our target, it’s your car.”

If you live on planet Earth, you might have noticed that climate change activists have become increasingly annoying in recent years, splattering masterpieces with soup, halting football and tennis matches, shutting down highways and petrol stations and — in the case of the Tyre Extinguishers, who take their instructions from an anonymized website — claiming to have disabled more than 11,000 SUVs in 17 countries around the world.

I met up with Claude and his friends to witness a new development in climate activism. A small but significant wing of the green movement has crossed the Rubicon: It’s not just fossil fuel executives and politicians being targeted; for activists like Claude and those who support them, civilians are now fair game.

Claude and his fellow travelers see their actions as annoying, yes, but also part of an existential struggle — the next necessary step after exhausting normal democratic acts like voting, peaceful protests, lobbying and disinvestment. Western government officials may tout a recent surge in climate spending and legislation, but activists point to investments in coal plants or the expansion of oil and gas production as evidence that humanity is continuing to nurture its own apocalypse. “I don’t know how you can’t see it,” Claude told me. What are a few flat tires in the face of a potentially civilization-ending climate crisis?

“We need to wake up,” said Margaret Klein Salamon, executive director of the U.S.-based Climate Emergency Fund (CEF), which has channeled millions of dollars to 95 “disruptive activism” groups since it was set up in 2019. “I think of the activists as shaking us, trying anything that they can think of and putting themselves at very significant risk … but they’re doing it because they’re terrified.”

Attitudes like Claude’s are reinforcing a long-held view among some law enforcement officials, academics and parts of the green movement that this escalation was inevitable. If activists who view the world in increasingly millenarian terms really are done trying to win the public’s approval, what’s to stop these slightly goofy stunts from turning into something more serious? Cases of arson and sabotage are breaking into the news more often. Could more extreme forms of violence be next?

“The movement is getting more confrontational,” said Jamie Henn, a U.S.-based activist and organizer who co-founded the 350.org climate group in 2007. “Marching around with clever signs isn’t going to get Exxon to keep fossil fuels in the ground, so folks are finding other ways to apply pressure.”

“And then, you’ll always just have some young folks who want to fuck shit up,” he added.

‘How to blow up a pipeline’

There is a bit of cloak and dagger in arranging my meeting with the Tyre Extinguishers: hidden phone numbers, encrypted emails and code names. But Claude and his little gang aren’t hardcore militants — at least, not yet.

On the street, they take amateurish precautions, such as face coverings (which often slip down) or sharing a series of signals in case they spot cops or angry car owners. Claude also acknowledged that what they do could be “dangerous for people, because they could get in an accident.” The flyers he sticks to the windscreens serve not only as an explanation for the group’s actions but as a warning for people who might otherwise drive off on a flat tire. Cars with kids’ seats, disability stickers and medic tags get a pass.

The Tyre Extinguishers’ goal is to make SUV ownership socially toxic — to shatter it as a symbol of wealth, comfort and power. The massive vehicles are, after all, one of the largest drivers of carbon dioxide emissions growth. In 2022, they accounted for a record 46 percent of new car sales globally, according to the International Energy Agency. Their bulk makes them 20 percent less energy efficient than a regular car, and considerably more dangerous to pedestrians. The Tyre Extinguishers want to make them impossible to own, if only because you might wake up one morning and find your ride is neither pimped nor pumped.

The group’s website appears to be run by a British group that started taking credit for SUV hits up and down the U.K in 2021. It encourages anyone to steal its campaign: “We have no leader,” the site says. The idea itself is stolen — a reboot of the activities of a Swedish group, called the Indians of the Concrete Jungle, which claimed it had temporarily depressed SUV sales across the country in 2007.

One of the members of that group was Andreas Malm, an academic whose 2021 book “How to Blow up a Pipeline” galvanized a new wave of activists who want to go beyond protests and sit-ins and start attacking the machines that cause climate change. (A feature film based on the book debuted in the United States on April 7). In his book, which is more a manifesto than an instruction manual, Malm goads the mostly peaceful green movement for valuing nonviolence more than the urgent cause they’re fighting for.

Malm’s message has resonated with activists who have fallen out of love with marching. Greta Thunberg inspired school strikes that brought millions of young people into the streets between 2018 and 2020, but that is over. “Battling with that sense of defeat is part of where we’re at now,” said Dominika Lasota, a Polish activist and a leader of the Fridays For Future climate protest movement.

“COVID really knocked the wind out of the sails,” said Klein Salamon. “Earth Day 2020 was supposed to be the largest environmental demonstration in history. And instead, it was a live stream.”

Groups like the Tyre Extinguishers offer a relatively low risk on-ramp for involvement in what activists call “direct action.” There’s a solemn purpose, sure. But it’s also a night out — and a gleeful element to the lawless hijinks.

Roaming the streets of Uccle, an affluent southern Brussels suburb, Claude and his friends let out yelps of joy when they spotted a Tesla. No! Two Teslas! It wasn’t long before the battery-fueled cars were sinking hissing to their haunches.

The Tyre Extinguishers have rules on their website, outlining what should or shouldn’t be targeted. Hitting high-end electric vehicles is considered kosher, because of the harm caused by mining precious minerals for their batteries. Claude explained that big cars of all sorts were unacceptable. “It’s just rich people who pretend to believe in ecology,” he said of the Tesla owners. A few minutes later, just as he was labeling a windscreen, a man in a nearby house lurched to his palatial front window. The group fast-walked away, looking suspicious as hell.

A few streets over, it happened again. This time, with the likely owner of the targeted SUV glaring through his window just a few feet from my head, there was no time to stick the leaflet on the windshield. It was a breach of the safety procedure. But the group cut its losses and melted away to other parts of the city.

Any means necessary

The tension between nonviolence and militancy is as old as protest itself. Yet, amid the escalating climate crisis, the debate over how to confront the forces driving environmental destruction has taken on an existential urgency.

The big question hanging over groups like the Tyre Extinguishers is: If this ratcheting up of public irritation fails, will they, or others like them, take things further?

The iconic moment in this new spate of protest-by-annoyance took place last October, when two British activists from the Just Stop Oil group made international news by splattering cans of Heinz tomato soup across Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery in London.

The resulting public fury wasn’t unexpected, said James Skeet, a spokesperson for the group. It was the point. “If you’re not getting millions of eyeballs, you’re not in the ballpark of achieving significant societal change,” he said. He noted that when the group attacked a series of oil terminals, the public paid almost no heed. A video of the act taken by Guardian journalist Damian Gayle has been viewed more than 50 million times on Twitter.

Orange is the chosen color of many of these groups: garish and impossible to ignore. On Monday, a Just Stop Oil protester launched himself onto the table at the World Snooker Championships in Sheffield showering himself in colored dust, like a worshiper at the Hindu Holi festival. The orange powder stained the green felt as the commentator intoned: “Terrible, terrible scenes here.”

By contrast, when the famously disruptive protest group Extinction Rebellion held a peaceful march in London last weekend, the media coverage was … crickets. “Disruption or Nonexistence,” mused Roger Hallam, one of the group’s founders, on Twitter. “Sometimes Life only gives you two options.”

Elsewhere, environmental demonstrations have already escalated. Recent protests in France against the construction of agricultural water reservoirs that critics say will unfairly favor corporate farms have included arson, sabotage and clashes between protesters and police. Claude, the Tyre Extinguisher, was present at a recent clash with the cops that left one activist in a coma.

In northwestern Germany, a long-running battle over the expansion of a network of coal mines has been the site of acts of sabotage and attacks on vehicles and police. In 2020, an excavator at a construction site owned by the energy company RWE was torched. In January, an anonymous poster on the left-wing blog indymedia.org declared that “two strategically placed incendiary devices” had disabled a coal train in Cologne. “Our action is part of a militant campaign … against global climate destruction,” the poster said. “RWE deserves nothing but our deepest hatred!”

RWE declined to comment on the post nor confirm that the attack had taken place, referring questions to the police.

A connection to climate activism is “likely,” said Andreas Müller, a spokesperson for the Aachen police. He confirmed incendiary devices were placed on RWE rail infrastructure but would provide no further details other than adding that no arrests had been made. “Some of the groups are under surveillance by the government,” he added.

A spokesman for the interior ministry of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia described Ende Gelände as a “hinge” connecting far-left “extremist violent criminals” to a democratic protest movement. The government said it recorded 43 fire crimes, 25 dangerous interventions in rail traffic and 216 incidents of property damage around the coal mines between 2019 and 2022.

Ende Gelände has rejected the extremist label. But last week, in a tweet that was subsequently deleted, the group said it would be necessary to “abolish democracy” to tackle the climate crisis. In recent months, another group, Letzte Generation, has eclipsed both Fridays For Future and Ende Gelände as the noisiest, most disruptive force in German climate activism.

Many mainstream activists view groups like these as a force that can help the rest of the movement achieve its goals. Malm likes to point to how the U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized the threat posed by black militants like Malcolm X to push forward his cause. Suffragettes pushing for the right of women to vote not only marched; they smashed windows, attacked ballot boxes with acid and carried out a campaign of bombing and arson; one suffragette even attacked a young Winston Churchill, cutting his face with a dog whip.

“We should not forget that in the past, it is always through these movements of civil disobedience that the law and practice have been changed,” said Michel Forst, the U.N. special rapporteur for environmental defenders. “I met many young people who told me how they had decided to break the law because the emergency commanded it … I think it’s something that’s not illegitimate.”

Government response in the form of harsh anti-protest laws proposed in Italy and Britain has rallied support for activists from the wider left. In Germany, dozens of left-wing and green groups, including mainstream NGOs like BUND and Oxfam, signed a letter condemning the government for targeting Ende Gelände as extremist.

Crucially, more militant actions have not alienated the American philanthropic community that funds much of the global climate movement. Arguably, the tactics of groups like Ende Gelände, Letzte Generation and Just Stop Oil have made them even more attractive to a certain type of funder. The three organizations and eight others have banded together to form the A22 network, which has pledged constant “mass civil disobedience.” They are financed by the Climate Emergency Fund, which says it distributed $5.3 million to “organizations who tell the truth, disrupt normalcy, and demand transformation at emergency speed” last year.

Founded by the Getty oil heiress Aileen Getty, the CEF’s two other big donors are Rory Kennedy — the youngest child of Robert Kennedy, the former U.S. attorney general and senator who was assassinated in 1968 — and the film director Adam McKay. Together they represent a trinity of liberal American guilt: Big Oil, Big Politics and Hollywood.

The CEF is a regulated charity in the U.S., meaning it can’t fund lawbreaking directly. “Climate Emergency Fund does not support sabotage,” said Klein Salamon. “We only fund legal activities.” She emphasized their requirement for activists to undergo nonviolent training. However, groups that receive its money have openly broken the law. Just Stop Oil hosts a “Court and Prison” section on its website, which doubles as a hall of fame, with dozens of activists proudly going down for their mischief.

“We have, basically, engaged in sabotage,” said Skeet.

‘How everything can collapse’

Some members of the Tyre Extinguishers are already taking things beyond flat tires.

In the U.K. city of Bristol, Chris Bailey, the owner of a Range Rover found his car spray-painted in early April with the words: “THIS MACHINE KILLS KIDS” after his tires had been let down just three weeks earlier. Although he agreed that global warming was a serious issue, Bailey told local media the perpetrators were “causing a negative connotation with climate change” and making people “very resentful towards the movement.”

Meanwhile, in Brussels, Claude, thinks the climate movement needs to become more radical. The day after I ran with the Tyre Extinguishers through the city’s darkened streets, Claude and I met in a pub in a hipstery square where Brussels students party each weekend.

A newcomer to the cause, Claude gave his age as between 25 and 35. Three years ago, he was launching a corporate career. “I was promised a big job in a big company.” Then he read the book “How Everything Can Collapse,” by the theorists Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens, which makes the case that environmental pressures could soon nudge our civilization into oblivion. Ten days later, he quit his job.

“I don’t want to have regrets,” he told me, opting for a soda while I took a beer. “If it goes wrong, OK, I would have done everything I could. That’s my way of thinking.”

“I’m part of this generation which is willing to go deeper,” he said.

But what does that mean, specifically? Would he harm a person?

“I would never kill someone … I don’t think I did any violent action yet. And I’m not planning to do one.”

What about blowing something up or other forms of sabotage?

“For me sabotage is not violence because I am not targeting people … So yeah, sabotage, I could do it without problem.”

He added: “I think it’s important to show the government and the firms that if what we did was not enough to make them move, then we are willing to move even more deeper, faster and stronger.”

It might be bluster. It’s certainly easy to say such threatening and scary things to a reporter who doesn’t know your real name. But here’s a thought: Five years after Thunberg turned millions of young people on to climate activism, a significant number of them are disillusioned with protest-as-normal — but just as angry and scared as they ever were. How many of them are out there, sitting in bars near you, contemplating how far they are willing to go?

Coal mines, highways, SUVs, snooker matches, metro stations, museum masterpieces — the list is already extensive. How long will it be before anyone, anything, anywhere becomes a potential target for disruption, or even violence? Those are questions that struck me as even more ominous when, an hour after my drink with Claude, I bumped into him again: The would-be eco-militant staring at me awkwardly in the beer aisle of a Carrefour supermarket.

Chile: Far right ahead in key vote for new constitution

It was a major defeat for Chile's center-left president, Gabriel Boric, with the vote also widely viewed as a referendum on his government.

Le Monde with AP, TODAY

A far-right party led in the vote count on Sunday, May 7, after Chileans cast ballots for a 50-member commission that is to draft a new constitution after voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed charter last year that was considered one of the world’s most progressive.

It was a major defeat for Chile's center-left president, Gabriel Boric, with the vote also widely viewed as a referendum on his government, which currently has an approval rating of around 30%. With 91% of polling stations reporting, the Republican Party, led by far-right José Antonio Kast, who lost the presidential runoff to Boric in 2021, led with 35% of the vote. The Republican Party has long opposed changing the constitution that was imposed by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

A coalition of left-leaning parties allied with Boric, Unity for Chile, was in second place with 28% of the vote. A center-right alliance, Safe Chile, was in third with 21%. Null or blank votes made up 21% of the total. Preliminary calculations pointed to the Republican Party ending up with about 22 representatives on the constitutional council, compared to 17 for Unity for Chile and 11 for Safe Chile.

Boric's allies will have little room to influence final text

If the two right-of-center groups, the Republicans and Safe Chile, unite it could leave Boric's allies with very little room to influence the final text. The preliminary count suggested left-leaning coalitions would not reach the 21 seats necessary to veto proposals or force consensus on certain issues.

Sunday's vote marked a key step in the effort to come up with a new proposal for a constitution after 62% of voters rejected the previously proposed charter in September. It had been the first in the world to be written by a convention split equally between male and female delegates.

Critics said the document was too long, lacked clarity and went too far in some of its measures, which included characterizing Chile as a plurinational state, establishing autonomous Indigenous territories, and prioritizing the environment and gender parity.

Once installed, the commission's 50 members will not start from scratch but rather work from a preliminary document drafted by 24 experts who were approved by Congress. The body's proposal is to be put before the plebiscite in December.

The path to rewriting Chile’s constitution began after violent student-led protests in 2019 that were sparked by a hike in public transportation prices but quickly expanded into broader demands for greater equality and more social protections. Congress managed to get the protests under control by calling for a referendum on whether to draw up a new constitution, which almost 80% of voters agreed was needed.

Much of that enthusiasm appears to have vanished, though. Before Sunday's vote, polls said there was broad disinterest in the constitutional process. Luis Rodríguez, a 70-year-old retiree who cast a ballot, said: "I decided to vote because it's mandatory... I don't care about the result." Another retiree, David Pino, 65, said he also voted out of obligation. Fines for those who do not vote can be as high as $230.

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