Thoughts for a day on Tuesday 11 July

"Cluster munitions are the only viable, unfortunately —solution— to put end Ukraine's warfare… 

According to the International Red Cross, cluster munitions have been a significant issue for many years. These weapons have a broad range and often fail to detonate as intended, causing numerous civilian casualties. Even though only a few countries have used cluster munitions, many possess them in their stockpiles. The consequences could be worse if even a small amount of these stockpiled cluster munitions were used or transferred to other countries or non-State armed groups. Numerous countries are signing up for the Convention on Cluster Munitions to tackle the humanitarian problems linked to these weapons. 

There are approximately 90 countries that have stockpiles of cluster munitions, with around 30 of them producing these weapons. The use of cluster munitions has been documented in over 20 countries, causing harm to both military personnel and civilians. Most victims of cluster munitions are civilians, including children, who often mistake these submunitions for toys or other harmless objects. Using these weapons also has long-term effects on the environment, as unexploded submunitions can remain active for years after deployment, making areas unsafe for habitation or farming. 

Efforts to enhance the technology of cluster munitions, including the creation of self-destruct systems or submunitions with lower explosive force, have yet to prove to be entirely feasible or effective in solving the underlying issue. The Convention on Cluster Munitions, which prohibits these weapons' use, production, and stockpiling, has been signed by 119 countries, showing the international community's dedication to addressing the humanitarian concerns associated with cluster munitions.

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IEA says critical minerals supply could pull close to demand by 2030

While the supply picture in the energy sector is indeed improving, we must not overlook the warning from the Paris-based energy watchdog regarding the potential risks posed by delays and cost overruns for projects.

Reuters By Eric Onstad, July 11, 2023, editing by Germán & Co

In Ukraine I saw a brave but ravaged land in limbo. It needs a future – it needs Nato

Joe Biden must be bold at this week’s summit, and help to give Kyiv the security that would allow it to rebuild

The Guardian by Timothy Garton Ash, July 11, 2023

Biden’s hydrogen bombshell leaves Europe in the dust

The EU is investing billions into becoming a green energy superpower. But Washington’s Inflation Reduction Act means it’s the U.S. reaping the rewards.

POLITICO.COM By GABRIEL GAVIN and BEN LEFEBVRE, July 7, 2023 

New power lines take a decade to build because of red tape, complains National Grid

Energy company blasts Britain’s planning rules amid ongoing row over delays

The Telegraph By Gareth Corfield,  July 11, 2023 

The Flawed Moral Logic of Sending Cluster Munitions to Ukraine

The New York Times By *The Editorial Board, July 10, 2023

*The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

IEA says critical minerals supply could pull close to demand by 2030

While the supply picture in the energy sector is indeed improving, we must not overlook the warning from the Paris-based energy watchdog regarding the potential risks posed by delays and cost overruns for projects.

Reuters By Eric Onstad, July 11, 2023, editing by Germán & Co

LONDON, July 11 (Reuters) - Supply of minerals critical to the energy transition could move close to levels needed to support climate pledges by 2030 after a surge in investment, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday - provided all projects go as planned.

Consultants and analysts have warned of looming shortages due to surging demand for key minerals like lithium and cobalt used in electric vehicles, wind turbines and other clean energy technologies.

But after investment in critical minerals production jumped 30% last year to $41 billion, having gained 20% in 2021, that picture is looking brighter, the IEA said.

In key battery mineral lithium, the IEA forecasts supply by 2030 will reach 420,000 metric tons - only a touch short of demand estimated at 443,000 to meet government pledges, though well below the 702,000 required for net zero.

"We are happy that for a change we can give some good news," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told Reuters in an interview.

"This is testimony that the markets are buying in to the fact that the clean energy transition is moving very fast."

While the supply picture is improving, the Paris-based energy watchdog warned that delays and cost overruns for projects posed a risk to the upbeat scenario.

More work is also needed to diversify from key nations that have tight control on output of many minerals, such as China, Indonesia and Congo, the IEA added in a report.

The newly financed projects will help meet rising demand for critical minerals that the IEA has calculated will be needed to meet climate pledges made by governments, which would likely result in a global temperature rise of 1.7 C by 2100.

The agency made separate estimates of what would be necessary to meet a net zero-emission scenario by 2050.

Mining companies needed to make more progress in curbing greenhouse gas emissions and water use, the IEA said.

Twenty top miners emitted 0.18 kg of CO2 per kg of minerals in 2021, the same as in 2020, while water use climbed to 7.9 cubic metres per metric ton of mined output in 2021 from 5.4 cubic metres in 2019, the IEA said.

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In Ukraine I saw a brave but ravaged land in limbo. It needs a future – it needs Nato

Joe Biden must be bold at this week’s summit, and help to give Kyiv the security that would allow it to rebuild

The Guardian by Timothy Garton Ash, July 11, 2023

Unless the US gives bolder leadership on long-term security for Ukraine at Nato’s Vilnius summit this week, historians may one day ask, “Who lost Ukraine?” And their shocking answer might be: President Joe Biden.

I say this after talking to a wide range of people in Kyiv last week, before departing Ukraine on Saturday, the 500th day of the largest war in Europe since 1945. There’s still the extraordinary fighting spirit that I found on my last visit, in February. But in five months, some people seem to have aged five years. They are exhausted. The casualties, military and civilian, continue to mount.

With other members of our European Council on Foreign Relations fact-finding mission, I witnessed prayers being chanted in St Michael’s monastery over the coffin of the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina. As she was visiting Kramatorsk to document Russian war crimes, she herself became the victim of a Russian war crime. While the Biden administration worries at every single step about escalation, Vladimir Putin has continued to escalate – notably with the blowing-up of the Kakhovka dam, which has ruined vast tracts of Ukrainian land. Ecocide complements genocide.

In a recent poll, 78% of Ukrainians said close family members or friends had been wounded or killed since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year. The pain is partly masked by the adrenaline of resistance, but after the war, the country will face widespread trauma. A priest told us about a soldier who returned after some months at the front, but could not sleep. Back home, it was just too quiet.

Senior defence officials frankly acknowledged how slowly this summer’s counteroffensive was progressing, especially against Russia’s minefields and multiple lines of anti-tank defences in the south. The big combined arms push by western-trained and equipped brigades is yet to come, but in this kind of warfare the advantage lies with entrenched defence. Crucially, Russia is stronger in the skies. Hence the constant Ukrainian insistence on the need for more air defence systems – and F-16 fighter jets.

In a survey this May, 87% of Ukrainians said they were optimistic about their country’s future, but there’s an increasingly sober mood in private. We were told that as many as one in every five Ukrainian children is now outside the country. Tymofiy Mylovanov, the president of Kyiv School of Economics, shared with us its projection that on current trends the workforce would be reduced by as much as a third over the next few years. It’s a daunting challenge to produce the jobs, housing and schools without which millions of Ukrainians will not return from abroad.

So when I say, “Who lost Ukraine?”, I don’t mean losing the war. I mean losing the peace: a country exhausted, ravaged, traumatised, still robbed of some of its territory, a land in limbo. For this is now Putin’s brutal, vengeful objective: if he can’t force Ukraine back into the Russian empire, he will try to ruin it.

Here’s where the buck comes back to the US. Its military support is essential for Ukraine to win the war. Long-term security is essential for Ukraine to win the peace. Without security, there will be little investment, fewer returnees, no successful reconstruction. And that ultimately means Nato membership for Ukraine is critical.

While US military and economic assistance to Ukraine has been massive and indispensable, Europe is now ahead of the US in its strategic stance towards the embattled country. The EU has done what Nato has not: unambiguously committed to Ukrainian membership. As elsewhere in central and eastern Europe since 1989, this is already having a transformative impact on the country’s politics and policies. For everyone in Ukraine now has this big shared goal of “joining Europe”. Non-governmental experts and activists told us they actually wanted tougher EU conditionality, to fight corruption, strengthen the rule of law and improve governance. The EU’s four-year, €50bn support package is framing a domestic agenda of reconstruction and reform.

Europeans are also ahead when it comes to calling for a strong statement from the Vilnius summit on Ukraine’s future Nato membership. And that’s not just the central and eastern Europeans. In what one Kyiv thinktanker called a “magic transformation” of the French position, President Emmanuel Macron has come out strongly in favour. Germany is more hesitant, but Kyiv’s biggest problem is now in Washington.

Ukrainians are realistic. They know they can’t join Nato while there’s a war on. They want what they call a “political invitation”, which would be implemented only when conditions are right. As a bridge to that moment, they seek security commitments from leading Nato powers such as the US, Britain, France and Germany. These are sometimes called “security guarantees”, but as one expert explained, a more accurate description would be “security assistance guarantees”. Those powers would undertake to go on supplying the military means necessary for Ukraine to fight off the aggressor. This would be something like what the US does for Israel, but from multiple partners and with a clear path to eventual Nato membership.

At the time of writing, Biden is still not there. On Sunday, he told the CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria that Ukraine was not ready for Nato membership and that Israel-style security arrangements should be available “if there is a ceasefire, if there is a peace agreement”. He emphasised the word “if”. Cross-checking this with public and private statements by senior US officials, one detects a rather hard-nosed stance. Nato membership is to be deployed as a future reward for Ukraine negotiating the best peace it can get, probably accepting some significant loss of territory.

If this were to be the outcome of the Vilnius summit, there would be massive disappointment in Ukraine. (The morally dubious gift of American cluster bombs is no substitute for long-term security commitments, and only confuses the debate.) We already heard indications in Kyiv of growing anger against the west. Left to fight on alone for another 500 days, without a firm promise of future security, even the bravest of the brave would find it difficult to rebuild their battered, exhausted, traumatised country.

But if the west gives Ukraine the military means to win this war, adding a firm promise of future Nato membership when it’s over, then the US will end up with a Europe much more capable of defending itself against a weakened Russia. The US will then be able to devote more of its own resources to the geostrategic threat from China.

The final decision will only be taken this week, over the leaders’ table in Vilnius. Come on, Mr President, do the right, the bold, the truly strategic thing. History is watching you.

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

Biden’s hydrogen bombshell leaves Europe in the dust

The EU is investing billions into becoming a green energy superpower. But Washington’s Inflation Reduction Act means it’s the U.S. reaping the rewards.

POLITICO.COM By GABRIEL GAVIN and BEN LEFEBVRE, July 7, 2023 

European leaders have devoted tens of billions of dollars toward encouraging production of hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel that advocates say will create jobs and help fight climate change.

But now, many of those jobs will be going to the United States instead.

The clean energy subsidies that undergird President Joe Biden’s climate agenda have just prompted one Norwegian manufacturer to choose Michigan, not Europe, as the site of a nearly $500 million factory that will produce the equipment needed to extract hydrogen from water. And other European-based companies are being tempted to follow suit, people involved in the continent’s hydrogen efforts say — making the universe’s most abundant substance the latest focus of the transatlantic trade battle on green energy.

The Norwegian firm, Nel, announced its decision in May, nine months after Congress approved Biden’s flagship climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The move takes 500 new jobs to the other side of the Atlantic, despite the European Union’s efforts to position itself as the obvious place for clean tech investment.

Gas grab riles Europeans

“There’s not one single driver behind the decision to put it in the U.S.,” Nel CEO Håkon Volldal told POLITICO, pointing to the benefit of being close to customers and partners like General Motors, as well as the financial benefits of the IRA, the Biden-era CHIPS and Science Act that provides funding for technology development, and Michigan’s own grants for green tech.

“If you take the IRA and the CHIPS Act together, we’re talking about more than $400 billion,” Volldal said. “On top of that, you have subsidies for renewable power and so on. Europe is dwarfed by the numbers we see in the U.S.”

The global hydrogen industry was valued at more than $155 billion last year, and the EU plans to produce and import a total of 20 million tons of renewable hydrogen a year by 2030. Supporters say this will help replace natural gas, powering vehicles and generating electricity.

Now, though, the U.S. has its sights set on overtaking Europe when it comes to both hydrogen and the electrolyzers that extract it. The IRA introduced a $3-per-kilogram subsidy for green hydrogen and tens of billions of dollars in loans and other incentives for international investors to put money into the industry.

“A year ago, the EU clearly had the yellow jersey,” Volldal said, referring to the garment that the fastest cyclist wears in the Tour de France. “Now the U.S. has it.”

Jorgo Chatzimarkakis agrees. As the CEO of Hydrogen Europe, he’s one of the continent’s most influential lobbyists, having helped secure industry handouts worth billions of dollars. “We have a very robust framework in the EU, but we fail to attract our own companies because it’s all too complex,” he said. “We have ambitious targets, but we don’t have simple and efficient instruments to incentivize businesses.

“In their typical bureaucratic way, the Europeans will kill this business,” Chatzimarkakis said.

That leaves those who’ve helped launch the industry at risk of losing out, Chatzimarkakis added.

“Dung beetles spend hours rolling up balls of dung to attract females,” he said. “But there are some very smart dung beetles that just sit by the side and watch while others do hard work. Then they shoot in, take the dung ball, take the girl and run away with everything. That’s Joe Biden.”

Revving up subsidies in Michigan

Michigan wants to cement its growing reputation as a home for the hydrogen industry, hoping that the U.S. Department of Energy will designate it as one of four hydrogen development hubs in the country. That would make it eligible for even more money in the form of federal grants.

Luring Nel is a major early coup. The company is one of Europe’s largest manufacturers of electrolyzers for hydrogen production, and its Michigan gigafactory will be one of the largest in the world.

“Hydrogen is one of the fuels for the future,” Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who has worked with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to bring in green investment, said in an interview. “We want to locate all kinds of different alternative technologies here.”

The White House has spent months responding to European criticism that its landmark energy policy is unfairly stealing business from U.S. allies on the continent. The administration counters that flooding the market with U.S. government funding is increasing the odds of success for companies on both sides of the Atlantic.

The IRA “benefits both the United States and our partners and allies, contributing to the advancement of the clean energy sector globally and presenting significant opportunities for our partners,” a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said in a statement. “We continue to listen to our partners’ perspectives ... and are turning the IRA into a source of economic growth and partnership.”

The spokesperson was granted anonymity to comment candidly on diplomatic relations.

The scale of the competition is now becoming clear. A senior European Commission official who has worked closely on the bloc’s hydrogen industry incentives policy, granted anonymity to speak openly, acknowledged that Michigan and other U.S. states are becoming an attractive prospect for firms. “The IRA has a tool we don’t have — tax credits.”

In Europe, the official added, businesses have to go through a “tendering process” in which government agencies assess companies’ proposals on their merits, with separate pots of money available for national and EU-level funds. But to get U.S. subsidies, “they just have to meet certain requirements. That’s attractive for industry.”

However, the official insisted Brussels isn’t worried about losing jobs to the U.S. just yet. The EU is making €800 million in funding available for a pilot auction under its Hydrogen Bank scheme to help subsidize the cost of producing the gas, while a range of other incentives exists to kickstart the industry and more are still being planned, the official said. “If the market is here, people will be here.”

America first

Mona Dajani, global head of the renewable energy deals at the law firm Shearman and Sterling, said that after the passage of the IRA, countries from Europe, Asia and the Middle East are investing in clean energy projects in the U.S. at a rate she’s not seen in her 25 years in the practice.

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.

New power lines take a decade to build because of red tape, complains National Grid

Energy company blasts Britain’s planning rules amid ongoing row over delays

The Telegraph By Gareth Corfield,  July 11, 2023 

The boss of National Grid has complained that it takes a decade to build a new power line in an attack on planning red tape.

John Pettigrew, the company’s chief executive, said that Britain’s planning rules add seven years of delays to the construction time for cables.

His warning comes amid ongoing rows over delays in connecting new wind and solar farms to the UK’s electricity grid, which are threatening the Government’s target of making the network carbon neutral by 2035.

Speaking to shareholders at National Grid’s annual meeting, Mr Pettigrew said: “Typically, to build a transmission line in the UK it takes about 10 years.

“Seven of it is in the planning process and three in construction.”

Fierce rows have raged over delays to grid connections, with some renewable energy developers complaining that they have been pushed to the back of the queue until the 2030s.

National Grid itself is responsible for managing the waiting list of projects, but says it is forced to deliver them on a first come, first served basis that leaves legitimate schemes stuck in limbo behind others that are highly speculative and unlikely to ever be built.

Energy watchdog Ofgem’s chief executive has accused National Grid of presiding over “unacceptable” delays and threatened to strip the company of its role in the planning process.

The company, meanwhile, argues that the first come, first served rules are the problem and has called for reform. In February, National Grid told The Telegraph that it had a backlog of 600 requests to connect, even though around 70pc of such applications ultimately come to nothing.

Mr Pettigrew said on Monday: “The reason there’s a delay is those at the front of the queue, even if they have no intention of developing, actually hold up those people who are behind.

“We need a new regulatory framework to accelerate the ability for people who have genuinely got projects they want to get onto the system to the front of the queue.”

The one-time state monopoly’s boss added that there are “about three times more generation [companies] wanting to connect to the system than is actually needed to meet any of the net zero targets that have been set”.

Current plans require Britain to have up to 248 gigawatts (GW) of electricity generation capacity by 2035, more than double today’s 104GW, as heating and cars go electric.

The Flawed Moral Logic of Sending Cluster Munitions to Ukraine

The New York Times By *The Editorial Board, July 10, 2023

*The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

In the brutal logic of warfare, cluster munitions may appear to make solid sense for Ukraine’s slow-moving counteroffensive against well-dug-in Russian troops. Delivered by artillery, a 155-millimeter shell packed with 72 armor-piercing, soldier-killing bomblets can strike from 20 miles away and scatter them over a vast area.

On Friday, the Biden administration announced it would start delivering these weapons to Ukraine, over objections from, among others, human rights organizations and key allies. President Biden said the United States would supply cluster munitions from its large stockpile until suppliers could catch up with Ukraine’s shortage of conventional artillery shells, a key weapon in the static warfare in eastern and southern Ukraine.

With Ukraine using up ordinary artillery shells at a huge rate (the United States alone has sent more than two million rounds to Ukraine), the cluster munitions, of which the United States has a bountiful supply, could give Ukrainian forces an advantage in prying the Russians from their trenches and fortifications along the 620-mile-long front. Besides, Russia has been using its own cluster munitions, as has Ukraine, from the outset of the war, and Ukraine’s leaders have been urgently asking for more.

This is a flawed and troubling logic. In the face of the widespread global condemnation of cluster munitions and the danger they pose to civilians long after the fighting is over, this is not a weapon that a nation with the power and influence of the United States should be spreading.

However compelling it may be to use any available weapon to protect one’s homeland, nations in the rules-based international order have increasingly sought to draw a red line against use of weapons of mass destruction or weapons that pose a severe and lingering risk to noncombatants. Cluster munitions clearly fall into the second category.

The reason is that not all bomblets explode as they’re meant to, and thousands of small, unexploded grenades can lie around for years, even decades, before somebody — often, a child spotting a brightly colored, battery-size doodad on the ground — accidentally sets it off. The weapons used today by Russia and Ukraine are said to leave as many as 40 percent duds lying around, and they will remain a threat to the people of Ukraine, no matter the outcome of this conflict.

This danger prompted the adoption of a Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008. The United Nations secretary general at the time, Ban Ki-moon, spoke of “not only the world’s collective revulsion at these abhorrent weapons but also the power of collaboration among governments, civil society and the United Nations to change attitudes and policies on a threat faced by all humankind.” As of today, 123 nations — including many of America’s allies — have agreed never to use, transfer, produce or stockpile cluster munitions.

But not Russia or Ukraine or the United States, which used cluster munitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the United States actively opposed the treaty. This editorial board argued at the time: “As the main holdout, the United States gives cover to countries like Russia and China, which also rejected the ban. The treaty is weaker for it: Together, these three nations have more than a billion cluster munitions stockpiled, far more than the number of weapons expected to be destroyed.”

Defending the decision to supply the weapons to Ukraine, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, argued that Ukraine would not be using the munitions in a foreign land but on its own territory. “These are their citizens they’re protecting, and they are motivated to use any weapon system they have in a way that minimizes the risk to these citizens,” he said.

In fact, there is considerable risk. Cluster munitions used by both Ukrainian and Russian forces have led to, reportedly, at least dozens of civilian deaths and serious injuries, according to a Human Rights Watch report published Thursday. Specifically, the report said Ukrainian cluster-munition rocket attacks on Russian-controlled areas around the city of Izium in 2022 “caused many casualties among Ukrainian civilians.” (Ukraine denied that cluster munitions were used there.)

While it is Ukraine’s decision to choose what weapons it uses in its defense, it is for America to decide which weapons to supply. At the outset of the conflict, the United States resisted sending advanced weapons for fear of encouraging a wider war and Russian retaliation. But as the fighting dragged on and Ukraine proved increasingly capable of standing up to Russia, line after line has been crossed, with Washington and its allies agreeing to provide sophisticated weapons like the Patriot air-defense system, the HIMARS long-range rocket launcher, the Abrams tank and soon the F-16 jet fighter.

There is a legitimate debate about whether this amounts to the sort of mission creep that marked conflicts in Vietnam or Afghanistan. Sending cluster munitions to Ukraine amounts to a clear escalation of a conflict that has already become far too brutal and destructive. But the greater issue here is sharing a weapon that has been condemned by a majority of the world’s nations, including most of America’s close allies, as morally repugnant for the indiscriminate carnage it can cause long after the combatants have gone.

The Pentagon’s central defense against such proscriptions is that the dud rate of the American weapons — the number of bomblets that do not explode and are left on the battlefield — is down to 2.35 percent, compared with an estimated 40 percent for Russia’s. In 2008 the Pentagon set a limit of 1 percent on cluster munitions, and Congress has since banned the use, production or transfer of weapons over that rate. Even the 2.35 percent rate, an average, may be misleading. As John Ismay reported in The Times on Saturday, the cluster munitions in question may include an older type known to have a failure rate of 14 percent or more. That could leave the land littered with unexploded bombs.

The White House bypassed Congress by invoking a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act that allows the president to disregard arms export restrictions if he deems the aid to be a vital national security interest. Several members of Congress have denounced the export of these weapons and will add an amendment to the annual defense bill that would prohibit export of almost all cluster munitions.

This board has consistently supported the supply of arms to Ukraine by the United States and its allies. Ukraine is battling an invader prepared to use all sorts of weapons, including indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets. It needs and deserves help.

But providing weapons that much of the world justifiably condemns is wrong. The United States had wisely started to move away from the use of cluster munitions. To now disregard the long-term consequences of these weapons would undermine one of the fundamental reasons to support Ukraine: to defend the norms that secure peace and stability in Europe, norms that Russia violated so blatantly. Encouraging the use and proliferation of these weapons could weaken the support of allies who until this point have rallied behind American leadership.

The rain of bomblets may give Ukraine a military advantage in the short term, but it would not be decisive, and it would not outweigh the damage in suffering to civilians in Ukraine, now and likely for generations to come.