Quote of the day…

“International Energy Agency warns of higher bills this winter

Fatih Birol says China’s economic recovery combined with harsh winter could pile pressure on gas supplies

The Guardian, Alex Lawson, Mon 3 Jul 2023 

Most read…

Joe Biden’s $400 Billion Man

Jigar Shah, who runs the Energy Department’s loan program, is trying to hand out a lot of money for green-technology projects, while navigating an unforgiving political environment

WSJ Scott Patterson, and Amrith Ramkumar, July 2, 2023 

Ukraine says: Putin is planning a nuclear disaster. These people live nearby…

“The current state of water availability required for cooling the reactors and spent fuel at the plant poses a significant risk. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam has significantly exacerbated the situation and has heightened the probability of a nuclear meltdown.

The Washington Post By Fredrick Kunkle and Kostiantyn Khudov, July 2, 2023 

Factbox: Japan aims to become major offshore wind energy producer

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) have made a firm commitment to generate 1.8 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy in four specified regions. They have substantially advanced in achieving this goal by successfully concluding the second phase of offshore wind tender processes. This statement highlights the Japanese government's dedication to achieving sustainable economic development and reducing emissions.

Reuters By Katya Golubkova and Yuka Obayashi / Editing by Germán & Co, June 30, 2023

International Energy Agency warns of higher bills this winter

Fatih Birol says China’s economic recovery combined with harsh winter could pile pressure on gas supplies

The Guardian, Alex Lawson, Mon 3 Jul 2023 

Joe Biden’s $400 Billion Man

Jigar Shah, who runs the Energy Department’s loan program, is trying to hand out a lot of money for green-technology projects, while navigating an unforgiving political environment

WSJ Scott Patterson, and Amrith Ramkumar, July 2, 2023 

Jigar Shah is living an investor’s dream, one with more strings attached than a symphony orchestra.

Shah has $400 billion of government funds to pour into businesses touting green-energy projects. But he has to do it under the eye of critical lawmakers, cautious bureaucrats and the White House, which has already clashed with him on the politics of his lending juggernaut. Losses are likely and will be frowned on by Congress.

The line for Shah’s cash stretches to 150 companies seeking $127.7 billion in loans, ranging from new companies with unproven products to giants such as General Motors and PG&E, the California utility blamed for deadly wildfires. Funneling that much money to climate startups in a short time would be near impossible. Shah has begun writing bigger checks, including a record $9.2 billion commitment to a Ford joint venture making batteries in Tennessee and Kentucky.

The source of Shah’s financial firepower is the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, an overlooked piece of the Biden administration’s strategy to address climate change. Largely quiescent for almost a decade, the office is designed to finance businesses that are important to the country’s energy transition but unable to borrow from traditional lenders, often because their technology is seen as too risky or because the terms are too onerous.

Resurrected

The Loan Programs Office has made several commitments recently after years of stagnation.

LPO project portfolio

Ford/SK, Battery JV, $9.2 billion, 2024; GM/LG, 2.5 billion, 2023; Li-Cycle, $375 million, 2022; Monolith, 1.04 billion, 2021; Sunnova, $3 billion, Commitments under Jigar Shah, 2020.

*Date of initial issuance shown.  The project has received several rounds of funding.
Note: Data through late June. Date of commitment or loan issuance shown. Excludes projects that closed loans but received no disbursement for various reasons.

Sources: Loan Programs Office; the companies

“We would absolutely look at investing alongside them,” said Jehangir Vevaina, a managing partner at Brookfield Asset Management who helps oversee the private firm’s $15 billion energy transition fund. That fund, one of the largest of its kind, typically invests in a company’s equity, which can become less risky when government loans give businesses a stamp of approval, as well as lower borrowing costs than commercial banks.

Climate-related provisions in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act gave Shah’s office a windfall, multiplying its lending capacity 10-fold. That pile of cash is at least 20 times as big as most private green-energy funds, giving Shah and the Loan Programs Office a major role in shaping the American energy landscape.

That is how Shah found himself in early 2021 calling hundreds of clean-energy executives to pitch the loans his office could provide. Primary targets were clean-energy startups that had raised at least $100 million in equity financing. He also wooed big businesses with the resources to pay back large loans.

Some were reluctant to apply, worried about the complicated approval process and the risks of taking a government loan. Shah, eager to get funds out the door, can be impatient. In September, he pressed a startup company that has a plan for recycling batteries to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to construct a plant.

The company’s chief executive, Ajay Kochhar, was hesitant, unsure how quickly it could repay. “Get your ass to Pittsburgh,” where a clean-energy conference was about to start, Shah told the executive, according to people familiar with the conversation.

At a coffee shop soon after, Shah told Kochhar, of Li-Cycle Holdings, that its recycling plant could easily generate enough revenue for repayment. Five months later, the two announced a $375 million federal loan.

Shah’s office is “the clean-energy bank of the United States,” said Peter Davidson, who led it from 2013 to 2015. With its burst of funding, “the floodgates have really opened,” he said.

The loan program is part of the reason the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits and spending represent one of the largest outlays of taxpayer-financed industrial stimulus since the 1930s New Deal.

In early June, Shah’s office committed $850 million to startup battery maker Kore Power. The loan would fund what the company calls the KOREplex, a giant battery manufacturing facility in the desert about 35 miles west of Phoenix.

Shortly after, the Loan Programs Office announced the record commitment to the Ford battery venture. The $9.2 billion agreement is bigger than the $5.9 billion Ford borrowed from the office starting in 2009, when it was struggling through the financial crisis.

Solyndra PTSD

Hanging over the Loan Programs Office’s every move is what Shah called “Solyndra PTSD.” Despite the office’s successes, which include backing Tesla, it remains dogged by a busted loan to solar-panel startup Solyndra.

Solyndra failed in 2011 after China flooded the market with low-price panels. In addition, an investigation by the Energy Department’s inspector general found Solyndra had misrepresented facts and omitted key information in getting the loan. The $535 million loan that went sour made staffers cautious, borrowers nervous and critics of the program aggressive.

The Energy Department’s loan office has come under fire in the past, most notably for its botched funding to Solyndra, a solar-panel manufacturer that went bust in 2011. PHOTO: ALYSSA SCHUKAR FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has called the expanded funding “Solyndra on steroids” and said the Inflation Reduction Act’s new spending and lending “has heightened the risk for waste, fraud and abuse.” She said her committee is in regular contact with the loan office.

Shah’s first loan deal after taking over in 2021 was a $1 billion commitment to Monolith, a company that aims to produce hydrogen from natural gas. The company’s technology will capture the carbon that the process yields and turn it into a material for everyday products such as tires. Clean hydrogen is an alternative to oil and gas. 

Several members of Shah’s staff worried the deal was too risky, people familiar with the matter said. Shah argued it was safe because it required Monolith to set aside revenue and meet rigorous requirements before getting the money, such as showing its production process would work at scale. Monolith hasn’t yet met them.

Last summer, Monolith raised more than $300 million in equity from investors including BlackRock and NextEra Energy, the most valuable power company in the U.S.

Staff members raised concerns about a potential loan to a company called Syrah Resources, a producer of graphite, which is used in rechargeable batteries, people familiar with the matter said. Raw material for its Louisiana processing facility would come from a mine in Mozambique, the scene of terrorist attacks, raising concerns that disruptions would threaten Syrah’s project. Shah pushed ahead, on the grounds that the program was protected in the deal and the U.S. needed to lessen its dependence on China for graphite. The office issued a $102 million loan last summer.

When Shah supported granting a loan for an Occidental Petroleum project, White House officials told him it could backfire. The project involved removing carbon from the atmosphere via a new technology, then injecting it into the ground to extract more oil. Administration officials worried about a backlash from environmentalists, a person familiar with the discussion said.

Shah argued it was worth exploring as a way to develop carbon-removal technology. The loan application is still working its way through the office. Occidental’s first big carbon- removal plant is under construction. 

Despite having lived for decades around Washington, D.C., Shah seems more like a creature of Silicon Valley’s high-tech culture than a Beltway denizen. He co-founded a solar-energy company, SunEdison, in 2003 with a home-equity line of credit. It revolutionized the way businesses and homeowners paid for rooftop solar panels. Under its financing concept, which Shah drew up for a business-school class project at the University of Maryland, the panels are typically paid for over a 20-year stretch, in part with buyers’ savings from generating their own power, making the panels almost free in the long run.

Installations exploded, and SunEdison became North America’s largest rooftop-solar provider. Shah left in 2008, the company was sold in 2009. Years later it went bankrupt after an aggressive growth strategy backfired.

Shah co-founded clean-energy investment firm Generate Capital about nine years ago. His effusive personality and list of contacts helped build Generate into one of the largest clean-energy investment firms. At Generate’s San Francisco office he would hold court in a cavernous space known as the “Jigar-torium.”

When approached by the Biden transition team about leading the Loan Programs Office, Shah was reluctant. On a podcast he used to co-host called, “The Energy Gang,” he once called the office “irredeemable” because it was doing so little. 

Patti Poppe, now the CEO of PG&E, listened to the podcast in the mornings while exercising on her treadmill. “It would make me run faster because he’d make me mad,” she said. Shah often criticized utilities for moving too slowly. Poppe eventually invited Shah to talk to the management team at her previous job in Michigan and became convinced the industry needed to be more aggressive.

At PG&E, she is seeking a roughly $7 billion loan to upgrade and bury the utility’s outdated power lines, to reduce wildfire risk and keep up with rising electricity demand driven by electric vehicles.

‘Damn you!’

Before Shah took the job, his Generate colleagues told him accepting was a dumb idea unless he could make the office more efficient, he said in an interview at his Energy Department office, clad in his blue fleece vest and Stan Smith tennis shoes.

He outlined his demands, including provisions that would make it easier to lend to companies in the electric-vehicle supply chain. On a call with DOE officials, they agreed to all of his conditions, he said.

“I was like, ‘Damn you!’ ” he recalled.

He tripled the agency’s staff to roughly 250 and recruited debt experts from banks. He sought energy specialists such as Bill Magness, a former CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, that state’s power grid operator.

According to Magness, Shah invited him to meetings even before he agreed to join. “How could you not do it?” Shah told him, Magness said. Magness was a consultant for the office for a year before departing in 2022.

In April, Shah expanded on the rooftop-solar financing model he developed for his first company by improving access to loans for people with below-average credit scores. Through a $3 billion commitment to home-solar company Sunnova, the office would guarantee that even if some users default, many investors would be repaid. Shah is confident defaults will be low, and the backstop won’t be needed.

“If you have a normal government person coming into this spot, they’ll never think of something like that,” said Sunnova’s chief executive, John Berger.

The Loan Programs Office had largely been dormant since the second Obama term. The bulk of the office’s loans in the last decade went to utilities building the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, a nuclear power project in Georgia.

Shah’s tenure and the program’s aggressive lending could prove short-lived if Republicans win back the White House next year. In Congress, McMorris Rodgers has criticized the loan office’s high funding level and promised greater oversight. 

Shah says the government is more protected with today’s deals, through provisions that ensure the government will get some money back even if a borrower fails. The program has beefed up goals companies must meet before receiving funds.

The office’s default rate of 3% is comparable to the performance of loan portfolios of commercial banks, Shah has said. It has made money for the government over its lifetime.

All the loans need a series of approvals from a committee of senior Energy Department staff, as well as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Treasury Department.

“If anyone can crack through some of the red tape, it’s a force of nature like Jigar,” said Scott Jacobs, who co-founded Generate Capital with Shah and one other person. “Yet I’m not sure anyone can get through all of the bureaucracy.”

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Senior Vice President, Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer and President, New Energy Technologies SBU

Nadiya Hez, with her 1-year-old son, waits to fill her containers at a water truck last week in Tomakivka, Ukraine. Residents there have been without water since the Kakhovka dam breach earlier in June. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post) / Editing by germán & co

“The current state of water availability required for cooling the reactors and spent fuel at the plant poses a significant risk. The destruction of the Kakhovka dam has significantly exacerbated the situation and has heightened the probability of a nuclear meltdown.

The Washington Post By Fredrick Kunkle and Kostiantyn Khudov, July 2, 2023 

TOMAKIVKA, Ukraine — The risk of a major disaster at the nearby Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant terrifies Nadiya Hez, who lives in an area that would probably take the brunt of any deadly radioactive fallout.

The nuclear plant has been in continual danger as Russian and Ukrainian troops trade fire in its vicinity, but the chance of a meltdown has increased sharply since the destruction of the Kakhovka dam just downstream. The June 6 breach unleashed a catastrophic flood and jeopardized the supply of water needed to cool the plant’s reactors and spent fuel.

But there have been so many horrors since Russia invaded last year that Hez and others in this Ukrainian town have responded to the threat of a nuclear disaster with a mix of dread and hardened fatalism.

Hez, who is a nurse, at least has iodine tablets on hand to mitigate the effects of radiation poisoning. After days of searching, she located a key to the root cellar outside their Soviet-era home that could serve as a crude fallout shelter for her, her husband and their 1-year-old son, Ihor, should radiation escape from the Russian-held nuclear power plant about 22 miles away. There has been little else to do except wait and focus on the daily hardships the war has already inflicted upon their lives.

“It’s horrible — I don’t even want to think about it,” Hez, 22, said while juggling her baby and several heavy water jugs from a charity’s roving tanker truck. The town’s municipal water system was knocked out when the dam went.

Warnings from Ukrainian officials and atomic energy experts about a potential disaster in southeastern Ukraine have gained urgency since the dam’s breach. Ukrainian officials accuse Russian forces of deliberately blowing up part of the dam, an allegation Moscow has denied.

What to know about Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

As far back as October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky predicted that Russia would destroy the dam. Now, Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian officials have upped the tempo of warnings that Russian forces plan to sabotage the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest such facility in Europe.

Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, who heads Ukraine’s military intelligence, said through a spokesman that Russians have planted explosives next to four of the six reactors and mined the cooling pond used to supply water to chill the reactors and spent fuel.

“There is an extremely high risk of human error or, given the amount of explosives, an accidental detonation,” spokesman Andriy Yusov said.

On Friday, the military intelligence agency issued an ominous update, saying that the three Russian supervisors had evacuated and Ukrainian employees signed to work for the Russian state nuclear power conglomerate should depart by July 5. The report also said that personnel remaining behind had been told to “blame Ukraine in case of any emergencies.”

Earlier this week, Ihor Klymenko, who heads the Ministry of Internal Affairs, announced training exercises at all levels of government to deal with a possible nuclear disaster. These have included planning for evacuations within a certain radius of the plant, road closures and the creation of checkpoints to screen people for radiation exposure.

For residents unable to evacuate in time, officials have urged sheltering in place, making sure to shut off ventilation and air conditioners and seal up windows with dampened cloth and tape. When outdoors, he said, people should wear masks that can filter out airborne radioactive dust and other particles.

IAEA chief pushes plan to secure nuclear plant ahead of Ukraine offensive

Klymenko and other officials have also urged the public to remain calm — advice that many Ukrainians seem to have taken to heart, despite their country’s history with Chernobyl, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster, and nine years of violent conflict with Russia.

“People are already hardened, resilient,” said Yuriy Malashko, the head of the Zaporizhzhia region’s military administration.

Water levels at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

Russian forces seized control of the nuclear power plant soon after President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion in February 2022. All six reactors have since been shut down.

The plant has had several close calls, including from repeated artillery strikes that cut the electric lines maintaining its cooling operations. It is now faced with a dwindling supply of water because of the dam breach.

After the construction of the plant in the 1980s, the reservoir of the Kakhovka dam was used to fill the holding pond cooling its reactors and spent fuel.

As of June 24, the pond’s water level stands at about 16 meters (52 feet) — only four meters above the minimum level necessary to cool the plant, said Olena Pareniuk, a senior researcher at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences who has studied nuclear power plant disasters.

The situation led the International Atomic Energy Agency’s general director to conduct an emergency inspection of the nuclear plant days after the dam breach.

In a statement posted on the IAEA’s website, Rafael Mariano Grossi said the cooling pond is being replenished with water from a discharge channel at a nearby coal-fired power plant and from a drainage system fed by underground water. At the current rate of evaporation — about four inches a day, Grossi estimated that the plant has enough water for “many weeks.” He also said he saw no evidence it had been mined.

Just as concerning, however, is the added pressure on remaining Ukrainian staff, Pareniuk said. Perhaps only 3,000 of its 11,000 employees are left to oversee its operations — “barely enough” to keep the plant safe in a shutdown state and far too few for an emergency.

“The threat of a terrorist attack is high,” said a Ukrainian employee still working at the plant, whom The Washington Post is not naming to protect his safety. He said the plant has already reduced the amount of water used to cool the reactors — the hottest of which, according to Pareniuk, is still at about 536 degrees Fahrenheit even after being shut down.

Ukrainian officials and atomic energy experts warn that without sufficient cooling, a reactor’s core could overheat, allowing the buildup of an explosive mixture of hydrogen gas and steam that could rupture the containment structure and blow dangerous amounts of radiation into the air. The reactors could melt down within 10 hours or two weeks without water, Budanov said.

What could happen then? Pareniuk and other experts said it is unlikely to be anything like Chernobyl, which blew when the reactor was in active operation. She said the most likely worst-case scenario could be something on scale with the Fukushima disaster in 2011, when fuel in three of the Japanese nuclear plant’s four reactors melted down following a massive earthquake and tsunami.

If so, a poisonous cloud could spread across Ukraine, contaminating its agricultural heartland and probably drifting over European neighbors with radioactive particles that increase the risk of certain cancers. Radioactive contamination is likely to reach the Dnieper River, too, flowing into the Black Sea. Depending on water currents, the contamination could touch every country along the Black Sea’s shores, Pareniuk said. As a bio-radiologist, she understands in detail what that could mean for her and her 4-year-old child, though they live far away, west of the capital, Kyiv.

“I’m terrified,” she said.

So are many people in this small town, located at the edge of the potential 20-mile exclusion zone around the plant. That’s the radius of the no man’s land that still exists around the Chernobyl plant.

Even before the dam break, Hez had already been through a lot. She gave birth in a hospital bunker in Nikopol as Russian artillery pounded the city. Constant shelling there forced her and her husband, Oleksiy, 23, to relocate here with their baby, where they subsist on state assistance as displaced people and the parents of a child — about $135 a month.

Both have been contacted by the military’s draft officials, one of whom told her she would have to put her baby in the care of his grandmother or someone else because her services are needed.

“It’s like a horror movie,” said Vita Lyashenko, 47, a nurse waiting in line with about 50 other people to collect drinking water in the center of town. Like others, she has been gathering rainwater, recycling water for household chores and going longer without showers since the municipal water system went down after the dam breach. She has also set aside iodine tablets, extra water and tape to seal her windows against radioactive fallout.

Olena Mykytiuk, 59, who lives on disability while caring for her ailing husband, said she, too, has iodine pills but isn’t sure whether she wants to take them. She also worries about what might happen to her chickens.

“We don’t know how to prepare ourselves for radiation,” Mykytiuk said. “We are watching the news, and we know all they need to do is to press a button.”

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…

Factbox: Japan aims to become major offshore wind energy producer

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) have made a firm commitment to generate 1.8 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy in four specified regions. They have substantially advanced in achieving this goal by successfully concluding the second phase of offshore wind tender processes. This statement highlights the Japanese government's dedication to achieving sustainable economic development and reducing emissions.

Reuters By Katya Golubkova and Yuka Obayashi / Editing by Germán & Co, June 30, 2023

TOKYO, June 30 (Reuters) - Japan plans to become one of the world's top offshore wind energy producers, joining the likes of China and the United Kingdom, as it makes the transition to a zero-emission economy while also seeking greater energy security.

Japanese companies have offshore wind assets from Taiwan to Belgium and UK but are yet to build large-scale farms at home.

On Friday, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) finished accepting proposals for the second major round of offshore wind tenders to build 1.8 gigawatt (GW) capacity in four areas. Below are main facts about Japan's offshore wind sector.

CAPACITY

Japan had 136 megawatt (MW) of offshore wind capacity installed as of 2022, a fraction compared to nearly 14 GW in UK and 31 GW in China, according to Global Wind Energy Council.

It aims to have 10 GW by 2030 and up to 45 GW operational by 2040 as it wants renewables to provide 36% to 38% of its electricity mix by the end of this decade from around 20% now and has targeted becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

A Marubeni-led consortium (8002.T) launched Japan's first large-scale commercial offshore wind operations at Noshiro Port (84 MW) and Akita Port (55 MW) in late 2022 and early 2023.

SECOND ROUND

The government's auction for another 1.8 GW of capacity, conducted over six months, concluded on June 30. The winners will be announced by the end of March 2024, though they could be named as early as December.

It was auctioning four areas, all with bottom-fixed structures, in total:

- Happo Town and Noshiro City in Akita Prefecture (356 MW)

- Oga City, Katagami City and Akita City in Akita Prefecture (336 MW)

- Murakami City and Tainai City in Niigata Prefecture (700 MW)

- Enoshima, Saikai City in Nagasaki Prefecture (424 MW)

Under the revised rules, companies are not allowed to disclose whether they intend to bid.

JERA, Japan's top power generator, has said it was conducting environmental assessment procedures for Oga-Katagami-Akita project and Happo-Noshiro project.

Itochu Corp 8001.T, Tokyo Gas Co Ltd 9531.T and other companies are considering bidding for some of the projects, according to the Nikkei business daily.

FLOATING OFFSHORE

In 2021, the government selected a consortium of six companies led by Toda Corporation to build the 16.8 MW Goto floating offshore wind farm in Nagasaki prefecture. It was the only bidder in a public auction for the small project.

Japan is working to create a new roadmap for floating offshore wind power by the end of March 2024.

EXPERIENCE

Foreign companies are likely to need Japanese partners in order to participate in auctions as they would need to discuss plans with local authorities, fishermen and residents, whose opposition led to some wind power projects being scrapped in the past.

The UK wants to take part in developing Japan's offshore wind power via options ranging from the participation of its energy companies to providing financing and insurance, Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps told Reuters in April.

At the time of the first round, a number of foreign companies, including Denmark's Orsted (ORSTED.CO), Germany's RWE (RWEG.DE) and Norway's Equinor (EQNR.OL), showed interest in entering the Japanese market.

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.

International Energy Agency warns of higher bills this winter

Fatih Birol says China’s economic recovery combined with harsh winter could pile pressure on gas supplies

The Guardian, Alex Lawson, Mon 3 Jul 2023 

The head of the International Energy Agency has warned that energy prices may spike again this winter, forcing government to subsidise bills – just days after state support for UK households fell away.

Fatih Birol said a rapid improvement in the Chinese economy, coupled with a harsh winter, could put pressure on gas supplies and push up bills for consumers.

He said the agency “cannot rule out” another spike in gas prices this winter, which would mirror last year when a surge in wholesale costs as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fed through to huge consumer bills.

“In a scenario where the Chinese economy is very strong, buys a lot of energy from the markets, and we have a harsh winter, we may see strong upward pressure under natural gas prices, which in turn will put an extra burden on consumers,” Birol told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

China’s economy had been bouncing back from Covid restrictions – pushing up demand for gas supplies – however, recent indicators suggest a slowdown. “We do not know yet how strongly the Chinese economy will rebound,” Birol said.

Last autumn the then prime minister, Liz Truss, was forced to step in to subsidise bills for households and consumers, and that support was extended in March to cap average bills at £2,500 from April to the end of June after demands from campaigners.

On Saturday, the Ofgem price cap fell to £2,074, in effect replacing the government energy price guarantee, although bills remain almost £1,000 more than two years ago.

Russia reduced supplies of gas into Europe last year, causing fears that power cuts may occur over the winter and sparking a huge effort to reduce consumption on the continent. The UK government belatedly introduced a campaign to encourage energy saving in December.

Birol said European governments had made “strategic mistakes”, including an overreliance on Russia for energy, and that foreign policy had been “blindfolded” by short-term commercial decisions.

Countries have made attempts to improve their ability to import gas from other countries and ramp up their renewable energy generation, but there are simmering fears that Vladimir Putin’s regime may decide to cut supplies of Russian gas into Europe this winter.

Birol said he “wouldn’t rule out blackouts” this winter as “part of the game”.

Last week, the chief executive of Centrica, the British Gas owner, said household energy bills were likely to remain high for the foreseeable future as wholesale market prices remain inflated.

Gas prices eased earlier this year as a relatively mild European winter reduced demand. However, prices have rallied in recent weeks, up 40% in June, amid fears over supplies this winter.

Month-ahead UK gas prices rose by almost 6% on Monday to 96.5p a therm.

Exclusive: Trump says aborted mutiny 'somewhat weakened' Putin

“According to someone I heard, Putin is still in power and considered a strong leader by many, but some believe his influence has waned. The unknown alternative could either be an improvement or a step backwards if he were to step down. I can't say for sure. The president said…

Reuters By Steve Holland and Nathan Layne / Editing by Germán & Co, June 30, 2023

WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump, a longtime admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on Thursday Putin has been "somewhat weakened" by an aborted mutiny and that now is the time for the United States to try to broker a negotiated peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine.

"I want people to stop dying over this ridiculous war," Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Speaking expansively about foreign policy, the front-runner in opinion polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination also said China should be given a 48-hour deadline to get out of what sources familiar with the matter say is a Chinese spy capability on the island of Cuba 90 miles (145 km) off the U.S. coast.

On Ukraine, Trump did not rule out that the Kyiv government might have to concede some territory to Russia in order to stop the war, which began with Russian forces invading Ukraine 16 months ago. He said everything would be "subject to negotiation", if he were president, but that Ukrainians who have waged a vigorous fight to defend their land have "earned a lot of credit."

"I think they would be entitled to keep much of what they've earned and I think that Russia likewise would agree to that. You need the right mediator, or negotiator, and we don't have that right now," he said.

U.S. President Joe Biden and NATO allies want Russia out of territory it has seized in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine has launched a counteroffensive that has made small gains in driving out Russian forces.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last year proposed a 10-point peace plan, which calls on Russia to withdraw all of its troops.

"I think the biggest thing that the U.S. should be doing right now is making peace - getting Russia and Ukraine together and making peace. You can do it," Trump said. "This is the time to do it, to get the two parties together to force peace."

As president, Trump developed friendly relations with Putin, who Biden said on Wednesday has "become a bit of pariah around the world" for invading Ukraine.

Trump said Putin had been damaged by an uprising by the Russian mercenary force, the Wagner Group, and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, last weekend.

"You could say that he's (Putin) still there, he's still strong, but he certainly has been I would say somewhat weakened at least in the minds of a lot of people," he said.

If Putin were no longer in power, however, "you don't know what the alternative is. It could be better, but it could be far worse," Trump said.

As for war crime charges levied against Putin by the International Criminal Court last March, Trump said Putin's fate should be discussed when the war is over "because right now if you bring that topic up you'll never make peace, you'll never make a settlement."

Trump was adamantly opposed to China's spy base on Cuba and said if Beijing refused to accept his 48-hour demand for shutting it down, a Trump administration would impose new tariffs on Chinese goods.

As president, Trump adopted a tougher stance on China while claiming a good relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping that soured over the coronavirus pandemic.

"I'd give them 48 hours to get out. And if they didn't get out, I'd charge them a 100% tariff on everything they sell to the United States, and they'd be gone within two days. They'd be gone within one hour," Trump said.

Trump was mum on whether the United States would support Taiwan militarily if China invaded the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

"I don't talk about that. And the reason I don't is because it would hurt my negotiating position," he said. "All I can tell you is for four years, there was no threat. And it wouldn't happen if I were president."