First, I would like to level you in direction of Amanda Chu’s glorious investigation into the delays confronted by a few of the greatest US manufacturing investments introduced within the first 12 months of Joe Biden’s flagship industrial and local weather insurance policies.
Among the most important initiatives on maintain are Enel’s $1bn photo voltaic panel manufacturing unit in Oklahoma, LG Energy Solution’s $2.3bn battery storage facility in Arizona and Albemarle’s $1.3bn lithium refinery in South Carolina.
Amanda and others performed greater than 100 interviews with corporations and state and native authorities to decide the standing of initiatives. If you missed the story yesterday, it’s nicely price your time.
Thanks for studying — Tom
Chinese biofuel imports trigger concern in Europe
European energy corporations being undercut by low-cost Chinese imports, inflicting main misery within the trade and leading to vegetation being closed.
Sound just like the photo voltaic trade? It’s not: this time it’s Europe’s biofuels sector that has sounded the alarm.
Biofuels are liquid fuels which might be created from simply replenishable sources resembling used cooking oil, waste and even algae. In basic, they burn extra cleanly than fossil fuels. But as a substitute, they’re nonetheless briefly provide.
Despite the potential demand, prior to now two months energy corporations have been mothballing vegetation and furloughing staff. Chevron, which put staff at a German biofuels plant on depart in July, said the issue: allegedly fraudulent biofuel imports, made with uncertified supplies, and dumped Chinese biodiesel was “flooding the market”.
Around the identical time, Shell put the development of a serious biofuels plant in Rotterdam on maintain. And Argent Energy in March mentioned it plans to finish manufacturing at its biodiesel plant in Scotland.
In Germany, one in all Europe’s largest biofuel markets, costs have halved prior to now 12 months, in accordance to the European Biodiesel Board.
“The Chinese biodiesel industry has developed over the past years to almost exclusively target the EU market,” the EBB wrote in a letter to the European Commission calling urgently for anti-dumping measures.
“The EU receives more than 90 per cent of total Chinese biodiesel exports,” the commerce physique added, saying “the EU must act, before it is too late”.
The fee lastly acted final month, saying a set of tariffs on Chinese biofuel imports starting from 12 per cent to 36 per cent. The levies provisionally come into drive on Friday. Member states should approve them to make them everlasting.
However, Brussels has exempted sustainable aviation fuels from the measures, partly as SAFs are seen as a vital approach to decarbonise jets but in addition as a result of at current they make up a small fraction of Chinese imports.
The UK introduced its personal anti-dumping probe in June and is contemplating whether or not to embody SAFs.
Cian Delaney, a biofuels campaigner at Transport & Environment, warned omitting SAFs may open the door to circumvention of the levies: “[The EU] excluded SAF so that means there will be redirection and probably more SAF [coming from China] than there was.”
The EBB echoed this, saying it was “gravely concerned at the EU’s unexpected exclusion of dumped Chinese Sustainable Aviation Fuel”. Chinese SAF producers are planning to improve manufacturing in response to the exemption, Argus Media has reported.
Delaney added one other main subject was fraudulent biofuel imports, which had been possible to improve as airways and different energy intensive industries rushed to meet targets for extra sustainable fuels.
“With the current usage of used cooking oil imports and growing demand of SAF mandates, there will be a massive crunch for purchasing this stuff and limited availability,” he mentioned.
T&E has warned a major proportion of imported biofuels may very well be falsely labelled to conceal palm oil-based fuels — a feedstock that the EU is eager to keep away from as it’s a main contributor to deforestation.
Germany, the Netherlands and France known as on the fee to impose more durable checks on biofuels importers in June to forestall circumvention of the bloc’s larger requirements. But no motion has been taken but.
And for some excellent news in Europe . . .
Temperatures have hit sweltering highs in Brussels however there’s some excellent news on the inexperienced energy entrance.
Wind and solar energy has overtaken fossil gas technology within the EU for the primary time within the first six months of 2024 regardless of a rise in electrical energy demand.
The document noticed the 2 sources account for 30 per cent of the EU’s electrical energy combine, in accordance to the energy think-tank Ember, demonstrating a measure of success within the bloc’s efforts to overhaul its energy system away from fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels made up 27 per cent of energy technology within the first half of the 12 months, a drop of 17 per cent year-on-year pushed by a dramatic fall in coal use, which fell by nearly 1 / 4. Greenhouse gas emissions had been 31 per cent decrease than within the first half of 2022, which Ember described as an “unprecedented” decline.
Analysts have beforehand attributed decreases in fossil gas use to total demand destruction within the EU as industries shut down vegetation or manufacturing strains within the wake of document excessive energy costs prompted by Russia chopping off gas provides to the bloc in 2022.
But Ember has mentioned for the primary time development in wind and solar energy was the “single largest driver of the fossil fuel fall”.
“It’s not just down to a lucky turn of events with a milder winter and good conditions,” mentioned Sarah Brown, Europe programme director at Ember. “We’ve shown that the main factor is due to structural change and added [renewable] capacity.” (Alice Hancock)