LyrArc Article Gist
Italy is converting most of its power plants from natrual gas to coal. Germany which also has banned nuclear power plants is also moving to coal plants. The will be clean coal plants except that when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions the technology still is not available for these plants. So experts say the global warming issues are going to get worse before they get better.

LyrArc Article Gist
Indonesia is a country with a long history of Hindu and Buddhist culture before conversion to Islam through traders from Malaysia and Sufi saints in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Hanuman and other deities from India are also part of the existing culture and traditions. Communist influence has been alien to this culture and tradition as in India. It was part of the Dutch empire in the east and a source of European trade in spices from the seventeenth century. It is also a extensive island chain of Java, Sumatra and other islands with a population of 280 million very closely linked to India culturally and with links to America since independence. Indonesia was given a great deal of importance during the Cold War with Robert Kennedy and other leaders visiting Indonesia during the period after Sukarno in the sixties. By 2000 the US engagement with China had evolved to the point that neglected India, Indonesia and the entire south east Asian region in a preference for links with China.  The British division of India led to the US links with India and Indonesia being shaped by that division and the Cold War with Russia. The confusion of the struggle against colonial rule of the British and Dutch led to leaders such as Nehru and Sukarno who compounded the difficulties of the Cold War and perpetuated with it the old British idea of a divided South Asia on a religious basis that had supported British rule and set the conditions that made it possible for a small group of English civil servants to run the country. This led to the Indian and Indonesian relationship with the US being stifled as the US struggled to rid itself of the British obsession with a divided India. Culturally India and Indonesia are part of an extended region in Asia with development aspirations and a youthful population that aspires to better infrastructure, better education, healthcare and ease of living, and the better opportunities in life. This is what migration did for Europeans who left for America for a new life on the east coast and on the prairies of America. It has little to do with the obsessions of the British and the Dutch that divided the region between the Indus and the Ganges and divided the Indonesian islands. That phase is now coming to an end as China reverts to its Communist period leadership under a new generation led by Mr. Jinping, a son of one of the veterans of the Communist Revolution of 1949. The US has to evolve its relations with India, Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries into new ties of trade, culture and technological exchange. This is needed as it winds down its close trade relations with China in its supply chain to rebuild a new supply chain after the trade wars and the pandemic revealed the deep flaws of that supply chain. What is needed is not the efforts of one changing adminstration after another, but an effort started by president Biden that will last through different administrations as the US engages with Asia in the way that it engaged with Europe after FDR and Truman for most of the twentieth century. And one that rids itself of the obsessions of divided regions from the colonial period of the Dutch and the British. The1.6 billion people in India and Indonesia share a  common aspiration of being a major part of the Free World with America. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Adani Group's public offering of $2.5 billion was slightly oversubscribed says the WSJ after a short seller in New York City Nathan Anderson issued a report critical of the company. Adani Group is a set of companies in India that have taken  up the ambitious goals of electrifying India with its population of 1.3 billion so that no home lacks an electric bulb light for children to read. It is under criticism because this means coal mines in Australia provide the coal that provides this electricity when coal is used in China and India to provide much needed electricity. Adani Group is unique in that it is making the rapid transition into renewable energy in line with PM Modi's goal of generating 50% of electricity from renewable energy by 2030.  Adani Total Gas Limited fell by 10%, Adani Green Energy and Adani Transmission made low percentage gains.   Thirty anchor investors provided $734 million including American banks.  This includes Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Life Insurance Corporation of India. Abu Dhabi based International Holding Company said it would buy $400 million in shares in a public show of support for the Adani Group. Adani Group will use the proceeds to fund capital expenditures on green energy projects, expressway construction and airport improvements and repay some debt. The building of India's Uttar Pradesh Expressway is being done by Adani Group which is similar to what happened under US president Eisenhower in the 1950's in building the first Interstate Highway system in the US. In 1953 after Dwight Eisenhower became president he developed the plan for a national Interstate Highway system that led to the passing of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. This is happening today in India. Airport and port improvements taken up by Adani Group help build India's woefully inadequate freight logistics to make it a part of the US new supply chain after the errors of overconcentration in one country China. Green energy projects help fight climate change where investments are badly needed and governments in the US and India are giving much needed direction and support. It is in this context that the huge growth of the Adani Group can be seen. It is not similar to the Tech company valuations simply because it is like China's effort under state owned companies to match the growing demand for electricity for industrialization. During the British Empire after 1800 capital from India financed the Napoleonic wars, industrialization of Britain, and indirectly industrialization of the United States through British capital invested in the US in the period before 1860. Capital that was diverted from India, and through British trade that impoverished China. As a result the growth in China after 1990, Korea after 1980 and India after 2014 comes in a catchup mode to meet the growing aspirations of hundreds of millions of young people with some companies state or private owned picking up the pace in an unprecedented way. This is the raison d'etre of the Adani Group. China's total installed capacity of electricity has increased from about 500 GW in 2005 to 2500 GW in 2021. This is the story repeating itself in India with Adani Group and other companies such as NTPC, State Grid and Tata Power setting over five fold increase. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This WSJ editorial looks beyond Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. It says for decades during which China modernized its economy with US investment and technology, Chinese policy remained peaceful reunification and no set date. The US under this agreement for peaceful reunification agreed that it would follow One China policy and not follow the earlier policy during the Cold War of close defense ties with Taiwan. Now it appears from Chinese policy under Xi Jinping that Chinese plans are for reunification of Taiwan by any means and with a date of the next decade or even in the next 18 months, says WSJ. This is a change of previous Chinese policy says WSJ and the US response should be to act with a change in its policy to provide Taiwan with the ability to defend itself during an invasion of the islands around Taiwan or other invasion.

LyrArc Article Gist
Russia is raising taxes on the rich, high earners and companies to keep military spending at levels not seen since the height of the Cold War of 6% of GDP. This is part of effort to keep the economy growing and standards of living stable as it pursues a long term policy of trying to push its borders further to the west in the Ukraine region and confront what it sees as unwarranted NATO expansion to its borders. Russia also with China's support is conducting its policy to show that it is undeterred by Sweden and Finland joining NATO or the early setbacks in its Ukraine war effort. This happens as China is moving to less strident positions in its relations with the EU and the US and working for some level of working relations on trade and economy with EU and the US as its economy slows down.

LyrArc Article Gist
Consumer spending boom is over and when you look at the detail in the government numbers on spending consumer spending is already declining. So the idea that consumer stocks like P&G, J&J and Coca Cola and Kimberly Clark will hold up better than other stocks is a mirage. Just this week the idea that stocks of companies doing a lot of business overseas and in infrastructure will hold up better turned out to be an illusion as GE fell by 12% in one day, April 11, 2008, because of earnings shortfalls in its finance units as a result of the new climate in the credit and financial markets. Consumers spent heavily. If consumer spending had continued the trends from the 1990's then it would have gone up $3 trillion less today. It would have been 70% ratio of household debt to GDP, right now its close to 97% of GDP. Some of this $3 trillion estimate of Business Week economist Mandel using Fed data will be what the American consumer will be dealing with as he reduces spending in the years ahead. According to OECD data the ratio of household liabilities to disposable income (charts P11 of BW, April 21, 2008) is close to 1.0 in France and Germany which is contrary to what one would expect considering the more conservative spending there especially Germany, exceeds 1.0 in Japan, and far exceeds 1.0 in the US, and in Canada aabout 1.3, with the highest ratio in Britain at a whopping 1.7, using a ballpark view of the charts. This suggests that Britain is way off the charts in spending, see the link to this so expect spending to be hit hardest in Britain and with financial services being a bigger part of the GDP and the economy in Britain expect higher unemployment in Britain than the rest of Europe....

LyrArc Article Gist
A large number of utility companies ( most of the big companies like Duke, AEP, Consolidated Edison, DTE, Edison, PG&E and so on) in the USA are working with General Motors to come up with the whole system for putting electric cars on the road and to work out all the issues relating to electricity recharging of the batteries in the cars. Even though coal is used to generate this electricity it reduces overall emissions as the electric plants burn coal with lower emisssions than the internal combustion engine burns gasoline. Charging the cars at night might be attractive as the utilities might find that this is more efficient for them as they may be able to increase production at power plants with extra capacity.

LyrArc Article Gist
Tom Albanese of Australia's Rio Tinto resigns, ending a six year period at the company, after taking a $14 billion loss in Jan 2013. Of this $10-11 billion is for the failed Alcan Aluminium acquisition, and $3 billion for the acquisition of Riversdale Mining with coking coal assets in Mozambique. The Alcan Aluminium acquisition has resulted in $30 billion in wirtedowns for Rio Tinto including the latest writedown. Aluminium prices have declined 22% since 2007. The coking coal prices have declined 43% since 2011. Shipping coking coal down the Zambezi would require dredging the river and approvals, the coal is also of poor quality requiring additional processing. Sam Walsh who headed the iron operations since 2004 takes over as new CEO. Walsh has managed the large Pilbara iron ore projects on time and on budget. Earnings on the large iron ore projects have increased 15 times since 2004, with near doubling of production. Rio Tinto is the world's second largest iron ore producer. The focus of operations will now be on developing iron ore deposits to meet demand from China, India, Russia and the Middle East. A string of CEO's of commodity producers have resigned. Anglo American's CEO Cynthia Carroll resigned after investing in an iron ore project in Brazil in 2007 which cost $5.6 billion more than expected to develop. Going to remote regions of the world has increased risks for mining companies and overoptimistic projections have hurt the companies badly....

LyrArc Article Gist
The U-2 plane of the US Air Force flies at 70,000 feet. It is in service for 70 years and was last made in 1989. The U-2 Dragon Lady was used to track the Chinese spy balloon at altitudes not reached by conventional airplanes. The USAF has a fleet of 31 U-2 planes. The U-2 made by Lockheed first flew in 1955 with flights over the Soviet Union. 2 U-2 planes flew around the Chinese spy balloon with sensors that enable it to examine the balloon and jam its electronic signals.

LyrArc Article Gist
FR24 talks to student voters at Paris-8- St Denis University, north of Paris. Students say they are considering voting for Marie Le Pen because they see her as better than Macron on social issues. Many of these students voted for Melenchon in the first round.  Melenchon has won the largest share of the 18-25 vote in the first round. None were keen to re-elect Macron even against a candidate from the far right, says this report in FR24.

LyrArc Article Gist
From 2027 to 2030 Drax will get 500 million pounds for using 700 million tons of biomass pellets to make 4% of UK's electricity. This was at one time the largest coal burning power plant in the UK. It still is a large carbon emitter. What are the choices? 

LyrArc Article Gist
Test drive of a Nissan Leaf in a Michigan winter. The cold weather significantly cuts into the car battery's capacity. The heater alone can take up 25% of the energy. This Leaf had 91 miles of driving range on its readout. Nissan says the car has a 100 mile range. The EPA required Nissan to state the range as 73 miles. In wintry weather in cold weather states the range can be much less. For this reason Nissan is first introducing the Leaf in warm weather states such as California and states in the southern US.

LyrArc Article Gist
Stranded assets is likely to become a major issue for automobile companies switching to electric vehicles, power companies switching away from coal, and oil and gas companies that are moving to renewables. Close to $20 trillion such assets now face writedowns, as shown in this report in the WSJ. These are assets that are retired early or assets that can no longer be used because of high carbon emissions and the switch to new technologies. A recent US Congressional session with oil company executives showed the heads of BP, Shell, Exxon, and Chevron, answering questions on how quickly they were preparing for the switch to renewable energy. The COP26 Glasgow conference has created new urgency at companies such as BP and Shell in Europe.

LyrArc Article Gist
Australian PM Anthony Albanese sets May 3, 2025 for Australian elections. Labor party is in a tight race with Sutton's Liberal party coalition. Sutton proposes cuts in bureaucracy, and efforts to reduce cost of living pressures in the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, cut immigration and replace coal powered plants with small nuclear reactors.

LyrArc Article Gist
Coca Cola has a mix of brands from orange juice to soda drinks. Sugary drinks increase obesity which leads to other diseases. The pandemic has shown the increased risks of obesity with studies showing obesity doubles the risk of being hospitalized for coronavirus 200% and increases risk of ending up in intensive care unit by 74%. UK prime minister Boris Johnson learned this the hard way and has changed all his eating and exercizing habits, and urges others to do the same. 

China, India, Mexico, Vietnam have much more to do to increase awareness of the risks of obesity from sugary drinks. The influence of Yoga, Ayurveda and traditional herbal foods and drinks is increasing awareness in India. This is not the same in China, Vietnam and other Communist countries where the dangers of smoking and sugary drinks are not part of the education put forward by the government.

LyrArc Article Gist
The action taken by local and government officials to address the high PM 2.5 pollutant levels and smog in Harbin, China, in October 2013. For the first time the Ministry of Environmental Protection has powers to take serious action. It is sending out inspection teams to cities across China for the winter to make sure environmental regulations are enforced. One big change is that cities now report in real time the change in pollutant levels for PM 2.5, the worst pollutant. By Oct. 2013 113 cities in China carried the live reports on websites. The Ministry has published a list of the 4189 factories in China that create 65% of total industrial air pollutants in China. The Jinping-Li Keqiang administration supports the stronger enforcement and has set a goal of reducing PM 2.5 levels by 15- 25% each year for Tianjin, Beijin and Hebi province in northern China, compared to 2012 levels. These three regions have been given the target of reducing coal use by 80 million tons a year.

LyrArc Article Gist
Plans of the incoming administration of president Lopez Obrador to increase renewable energy from wind, solar and other sources, in Mexico. Mexico's potential is for 8 times the current levels for wind energy and 75 times current levels for solar. Solar energy has not received much attention as Mexico increased reliance on coal and oil for energy. Mexico's supply of renewable energy is only 25% of total installed power capacity compared to 50% for other countries in Latin America.

The Obrador administration plans to cut Mexico's emissions by 6.8% a year. Solar energy in particular has high potential in Mexico.

LyrArc Article Gist
Patti Pope, CEO of Consumers Energy, a Michigan power company serving 7 million consumers, is moving to greener sources for energy. Consumers Energy retired 7 coal fired power plants and is shifting to solar farms, wind farms for energy, smart thermostats and meters, new infrastructure, taking advantage of the lower costs of renewable energy.

It plans to invest $25 billion over the next 10 years, including to add 6 gigawatts of solar power requiring 59 square miles of solar panels in its service area. Included are plans to help customers to produce and manage their own power as more users install solar panels in homes.

LyrArc Article Gist
This WSJ story shows how China started its steel industry from small beginnings when Chinese leader Deng visited a Nippon Steel plant in 1978. He made the decision to go big with Baosteel, with an investment of $6 billion, with the words- "if we do it lets do it big." This was 36 times the Chinese foreign exchange reserves at the time. From 4% of steel production, this went up and up, passing the U.S. in 1993, past Japan in 1996, and in 2018 producing three times the steel of U.S., Russia and China combined, producing 923 million metric tons of steel in 2018, or more than half of world production of steel. With steel China was able to build its automobile industry, shipbuilding, bridges, infrastructure, high speed rail network. This was done using global demand, subsidies from the government, cheap loans and tax breaks. Markets worldwide were affected by substantial excess production in China. From Baosteel the spread of the steel industry to all 23 Chinese provinces led to China accounting for 25% of world exports. By 2016 5 million workers mostly from the agrarian countryside were employed in the steel industry, helping China transform itself into an rapidly urbanizing and modern economy. It was a period when the rail network was tripled between 1975-2017, with shipping companies that ensured access to Australian coal and Brazilian iron ore. From 2011 to 2017 Chinese steel dropped global prices by 57% triggering closure of steel mills in EUrope and the U.S. About a third of trade complaints since 2001 by G20 countries against China are about steel. After entry into the WOrld Trade Organization Chinese steel exports rose to 8% of GDP from 2%. Subsidies, cheap energy, and shift of agrarian workers to cities. U.S. investigations around 2006 showed Chinese steelmakers subsidies covered 30% to 45% of the subsidized value of steel pipes exported overseas. China's steel prices were set 20-40% lower than the U.S. China responded to complaints saying it was trade protectionism. The WTO rules call for full disclosing of all subsidies. This was disclosed 5 years after joining WTO in 2001, and only for central subsidies. Local government subsidies were not disclosed till 2016- the U.S. says 15 years late. Still the Bush and Obama administrations failed to take action. In 2018 Mr. Trump seized on this as a campaign issue that resonated with American workers in manufacturing communities across the U.S. In 2018 November president Trump announced a 25% tariff on imports of Chinese steel. A six month probe by U.S. officials had already shown 40% of sales value came from subsidies for corrosion resistant steel from China. The U.S. Trade Commission imposed tariffs of its own from 39% to 241%, with the Trump tariffs of 25% coming as an additional tariff to tackle the trade surplus with China. Meanwhile in China the government is closing uncompetitive smaller steel mills and in 2016 it combined baosteel with Wuhan Steel to create a larger company, and consolidate remaining companies. Baosteel now provides the steel for CIMC to dominate the steel container business, and to make ship to shore cranes, and make the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  It also goes to show what can be accomplished from small beginnings for countries in the developing world from Asia to Africa and Latin America, with government and industry focussed on development and growth.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The $369 billion climate and tax package that is coming out of a deal arranged by Schumer in the US Senate could be a path breaking action. It would enable president Biden to get close to the climate goals he promised last year of cutting US carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 over 2005 levels to combat effects of climate change. The $369 billion package would get the US to reduce carbon emissions by 40% in 2030 over 2005 levels.  Severe effects of climate change with fires and floods in the US, Europe, and Asia have brought a new spotlight to the issues facing the world and the fact that something needs to be done quickly with the US leading the way. Senator Manchin a holdout because he comes from a coal mining state was a holdout. He was persuaded to join as the new legislation provides for support for transmission lines and other investment during a transition period so that it does not affect the economy in his state. The transition period is now accepted as Europe now looks at gas and coal as a temporary resource following the cutoff of Russian supplies and the US will be shipping more LNG to Europe during this period. The vote for this legislation is planned under reconciliation so that the vice president MS. Harris can cast the deciding vote for Democrats in a 50-50 split Senate. Republicans oppose the legislation. Manchin now says it will reduce inflation. Briefly it will give $7500 to every buyer of an electric vehicle EV, and $4000 for a used EV. It would give rebates for heat pumps that increase home energy efficiency. Billions of dollars would be spent for clean energy industries, and for solar, wind, geothermal, other renewable energy projects. Democrats want to get the legislation through the Senate quickly by next week, and so secret were Schumer's negotiations that most Democrats did not know about it. Coming on the heels of the $280 billion CHIPS and Science bill for $280 billion investment in US semiconductor industry, this will be a big win for president Biden and shows the persistence and patience of Mr. Biden is paying off.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
More than 6.7 million persons are displaced inside Ukraine most of them from the war torn eastern part of Ukraine, and most of them women and children. In addition over 3 million are refugees in neighboring countries such as Slovakia and Poland. 

The war is now extending to the Donetsk region with about half of the population of the population in eastern Ukraine having left that region for safety in central and western Ukraine. The rolling farmland and old coal mines of the region, the destroyed infrastructure and industrial facilities, make the area of no use to Russian forces. A fraction of the Russian population in the area has also left says this report in the NYT. 

The scale of the damage and the refugee situation is hard to imagine and can be seen in the pictures in this NYT report. Boarding trains and buses civilians have poured out of cities in eastern Ukraine where the war has intensified.