Tag: Power

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Business

5G rollout boosts demand for backup energy technology, Generac CEO says

5G rollout boosts demand for backup power generation, Generac CEO says

Aaron Jagdfeld, CEO of Generac, told CNBC on Monday that the emergency generator company expects to benefit from the adoption of 5G wireless technology.

“We believe this is an area that will grow tremendously over the next five years,” he said in an interview with Jim Cramer about Mad Money.

For Generac, the opportunity lies particularly in the telecommunications sector. The company is already a leading provider of backup generation for large wireless carriers, said Jagdfeld.

The introduction of 5G technology or the fifth generation cellular network promises faster network speeds and connecting more activities to the Internet of Things. The way people learn, drive and take care of their health is expected to be influenced by new technologies.

Because the networks are becoming even more critical for society, the demand for electricity security will only increase, according to Jagdfeld.

“None of this works without a continuous source of power, and telecommunications companies really need to improve their game on reliability, and that’s where we come in,” he said.

Generac’s shares fell more than 2% on Monday, trading at $ 293.95. The stock is up nearly 30% since the start of the year.

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World News

Renewables might oust fossil fuels to energy the world by 2050

Renewables could oust fossil fuels to power the world by 2050

Employees clean solar modules that will be exported to Sudan on October 16, 2020 at a factory in Ji an, Jiangxi Province, China.

Deng Heping | Visual China Group | Getty Images

LONDON – Solar and wind power could completely replace fossil fuels and become a global source of electricity by 2050, a new report says.

The Carbon Tracker think tank report released on Friday also predicted that if wind and solar power continued on their current growth trajectory, they would displace fossil fuels from the electricity sector by the mid-2030s.

Current technology gave the world the ability to generate 6,700 petawatt hours (PWh) of electricity from solar and wind energy, the researchers said – more than 100 times the global energy consumption in 2019.

Despite the potential to generate enormous amounts of energy, according to the report, only 0.7 PWh of solar energy and 1.4 PWh of wind energy were generated in 2019.

However, the authors were confident that the continuing decline in costs would lead to exponential growth in the generation of solar and wind power. With an annual growth rate of 15%, the sun and wind would generate all of the world’s electricity by the mid-2030s and supply all of the world’s energy by 2050.

The report found that the cost of solar energy had decreased by an average of 18% per year since 2010, while the price of wind power had decreased by an average of 9% per year over the same period.

According to the report, solar energy had grown an average of 39% per year over the past decade and had almost doubled every two years. Meanwhile, wind power capacity had increased 17% per year, with advances such as better panels and taller turbines helping to reduce costs.

Rise in steam and exhaust gas from the RWE Weisweiler coal-fired power plant on February 11, 2021 near Inden.

Lukas Schulze | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Nevertheless, there is still skepticism about the likelihood of an imminent so-called energy transition. Some climatologists believe that it is already “practically impossible” to limit the temperature rise of the planet to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels – a fundamental goal set in the Paris Agreement.

Carroll Muffett, executive director of the nonprofit center for international environmental law, told CNBC earlier this month that “embedded power structures and continued support for dying industries” would thwart progress in the transition to renewable energy sources.

And while many global companies are pledging to help in efforts to slow climate change, others are doubling their funding for fossil fuels.

Of the 60 largest banks in the world, 33 increased their funding for the fossil fuel sector between 2016 and 2020. This emerges from a CNBC analysis of the Banking on Climate Chaos 2021 report.

“Abundant” Africa

Carbon Tracker researchers identified four key groups of countries based on their potential to use wind and solar energy to meet domestic demand.

Low-income, low-energy countries in sub-Saharan Africa were labeled “overabundant,” meaning they had the potential to generate at least 1,000 times more energy than their domestic demand.

Africa in particular has great potential in implementing renewable energy infrastructure, the report said. Researchers said the region could become a “renewable energy superpower”.

Those with the potential to use at least 100 times more energy than demand were labeled “abundant” countries. Australia, Chile and Morocco, which had well-developed infrastructure and governance, were classified as “abundant”.

China, India and the US, which had the potential to produce enough to meet their domestic demand, were “full” while Japan, South Korea and much of Europe were “stretched” when it came to using their renewable resources effectively use.

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World News

How Mario Draghi Is Making Italy a Energy Participant in Europe

How Mario Draghi Is Making Italy a Power Player in Europe

ROME – The European Union stumbled upon a Covid-19 vaccine rollout in late March that was fraught with bottlenecks and logistical issues when Mario Draghi took matters into his own hands. The new Italian Prime Minister confiscated a shipment of vaccines for Australia – an opportunity to show that a new, aggressive and powerful force had arrived in the European bloc.

The move rocked a Brussels tour that seemed to be sleeping at the counter. Within a few weeks, partly due to its urgent and technical efforts behind the scenes, the European Union had approved even more comprehensive and stringent measures to curb the export of Covid-19 vaccines much-needed in Europe. The Australia Experiment, as officials in Brussels and Italy call it, marked a turning point for both Europe and Italy.

It also showed that Mr Draghi, known as the former President of the European Central Bank who helped save the euro, was ready to lead Europe from behind, where Italy has been for years and lags behind its European partners in terms of economic dynamism and Reforms are urgently needed.

In his brief tenure – he took power in February after a political crisis – Mr Draghi has quickly used his European relations, his ability to navigate EU institutions and his almost messianic reputation to turn Italy into something of an actor Making the continent hasn’t been around for decades.

After his girlfriend, Chancellor Angela Merkel, resigned from office in September, President Emmanuel Macron of France faces tough elections next year and the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to demonstrate competence, Draghi is ready to create a leadership vacuum to fill Europe.

Increasingly, he seems to speak for the whole of Europe.

“The difference is that when Mario Draghi speaks, everyone knows that he is not only pushing, he is increasing Italian interest,” said Vincenzo Amendola, the Italian minister for European affairs of the European Union, in an interview.

Knowing that Mr. Draghi has derived his influence from his international reputation, Mr. Amendola said that given the potential leadership gap in Europe, “you need stable leaders who bring trust”.

At home, Mr Draghi’s vaccination game in March provided political red meat to an Italian population hungry for vaccines and a sense of freedom of choice, but it was supposed to improve the leverage of Europe as a whole.

Abroad, his first stop in Libya sought to restore dwindling Italian influence in the troubled former Italian colony, which is vital to Italy’s energy needs and efforts to curb illegal migration from Africa. He also did not shy away from fighting with Turkey’s autocratic leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “With these dictators – let’s call them what they are – you have to be open about expressing your different views and visions of society,” Draghi said.

But within the European Union, Mr Draghi has shown that Italy is now above its weight.

Last week, Mr Draghi, who is alternately funny and shaky but always direct, kept the pressure on Brussels when it came to vaccine exports. In the original contract negotiations with the pharmaceutical companies, he referred to “light” efforts and stated that the European Union had not yet acted despite its new, strict rules on export bans.

But he has also skillfully offset his criticism of Mrs von der Leyen’s commission by defending it after Mr Erdogan denied her a chair instead of a sofa during a visit to Turkey last week, saying he regretted the humiliation very much.

Making his debut at a European meeting as Italian Prime Minister in February, 73-year-old Draghi made it clear he wasn’t there to cheer. He said of an economic summit that was attended by batsmen like his successor to the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, to “curb your enthusiasm” when it came to a closer fiscal union.

Updated

April 15, 2021, 6:18 p.m. ET

This type of association is Mr. Draghi’s long-term ambition. But before he can tackle the near or deeper economic problems at home, those around him realize that his priority must be to resolve Europe’s response to the pandemic.

Italian officials said his distance from the contract negotiations, which were concluded before he took office, gave him freedom of action. He suggested that AstraZeneca misled the bloc about supplying vaccines and sold Europe the same doses two or three times, and he immediately launched an export ban.

“He understood immediately that it was about vaccinations and supplies,” said Lia Quartapelle, a foreign affairs representative for the Italian Democratic Party.

On February 25th, he participated in a video conference of the European Council with Ms. von der Leyen and other leaders of the European Union. The heads of state greeted him warmly. “We owe you so much,” the Bulgarian Prime Minister told him.

Ms. von der Leyen then gave an optimistic presentation about the introduction of vaccines in Europe. But the new member of the club told Ms. von der Leyen bluntly that he found her vaccination prognosis “hardly reassuring” and did not know whether the numbers promised by AstraZeneca could be trusted, an official gift at the meeting.

He begged Brussels to get harder and drive faster.

Ms. Merkel checked together with him Ms. von der Leyen’s numbers, which pushed the Commission President, a former German defense minister, into the background. Mr Macron, who had campaigned for Mrs von der Leyen to be nominated but had quickly entered into a strategic alliance with Mr Draghi, continued to pile up. He called on Brussels, which negotiated vaccination contracts on behalf of its members, to “put pressure on companies that do not comply”.

At the time, Frau von der Leyen was being criticized less and less in Germany for her perceived weakness on the vaccine issue, although her own commissioners argued that an overly aggressive reaction with a vaccine export ban could harm the bloc in the future.

Mr Draghi, speaking face to face during the February meeting, tightened the screws. Mr Macron, for example, who emerged as his partner – the two are referred to as “Dracon” by the Germans – pushed for a more muscular Europe.

Behind the scenes, Mr Draghi complemented his more public hard line with an advertising campaign. The Italian, known to call European executives and pharmaceutical directors privately on their cell phones, turned to Ms. von der Leyen.

Of all the players in Europe, he knew her the least well, according to the European Commission and Italian officials, and he wanted to remedy the situation and make sure she didn’t feel isolated.

At the beginning of March, Mr Draghi found the perfect present for Mrs von der Leyen: 250,000 doses of confiscated AstraZeneca vaccine for Australia.

“He told me that he had called von der Leyen a lot in the previous days,” said Ms. Quartapelle, who spoke to Mr. Draghi the day after the program was frozen. “He worked a lot with von der Leyen to convince them.”

The move was recognized in Brussels, according to representatives of the Commission, as it exonerated Ms. von der Leyen and gave her political cover, while at the same time giving the impression that it was difficult to sign.

The episode has become a clear example of how Mr Draghi is building relationships that have the potential to generate great profits not just for himself and Italy, but for the whole of Europe.

On March 25, when the Commission suspected 29 million AstraZeneca cans in a warehouse outside Rome, Ms. von der Leyen called Mr. Draghi for help, officials said with knowledge of the calls. He was obliged and the police were dispatched quickly.

In the meantime, Mr Draghi and Mr Macron, along with Spain and others, continued to support a tougher line by the Commission on vaccine exports. The Netherlands were against it, and Germany, with a vibrant pharmaceutical market, was queasy.

When the European heads of state and government met again on March 25 at a video conference, Ms. von der Leyen was more confident about the political and pragmatic benefits of stopping exports of Covid vaccines made in the European Union. She re-presented slides, this time approving a broader six-week restriction on exports from the bloc, and Mr Draghi stepped down into a support role.

“Let me thank you for a job,” he said.

After the meeting, Mr Draghi gave, albeit modestly, Italy – and in a broader sense itself – appreciation for the moves that made export bans possible. “This is more or less the discussion that has been going on,” he told reporters, “because that was the topic that we were initially bringing up.”

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Politics

After Backing Army Pressure in Previous, U.S.A.I.D. Nominee Focuses on Deploying Gentle Energy

After Backing Military Force in Past, U.S.A.I.D. Nominee Focuses on Deploying Soft Power

WASHINGTON – Samantha Power becomes more emotional towards the end of the 2014 documentary, Watchers of the Sky, which traces the origins of the legal definition of genocide. At the time, Ms. Power was President Barack Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations and, she said, had “great insight into much of the pains” in the world.

To prevent mass atrocities abroad, one had to “consider what we can do about it in order to exhaust the tools at your disposal,” Ms. Power said in the film. “And I always think of the privilege of being able to try – just to try.”

Little doubt about Ms. Power’s zeal – given her career as a war correspondent, human rights activist, academic expert, and foreign affairs advisor – even if it meant advocating military violence to stop widespread murders.

Now, as President Biden’s candidate to lead the US Agency for International Development, she is preparing to re-enter government as administrator of soft power and oppose the use of weapons as a deterrent and punishment against the urged her in the past.

A Senate committee is expected to vote on her nomination as head of one of the world’s largest distributors of humanitarian aid on Thursday.

If confirmed, Mr Biden will also put her on the National Security Council, where during the Obama administration she pushed for military inventions to protect civilians from government-sponsored attacks in Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2013 which declined 2003 invasion of Iraq.)

The fact that she will sit at the table again on the council – and will almost certainly again debate whether American forces should be drawn into ongoing conflict – has worried some officials, analysts and think-tank experts, the military reluctance of the Biden administration demand. Mr Biden seems to be leaning like this: He has embraced economic sanctions as an instrument of hard power and is expected to announce a full withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by September 11 to end the longest war in the United States.

“When you are talking about humanity, famine and war, natural causes aside, war is the leading cause of famine around the world,” Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul told Ms. Power last month at her Senate confirmation hearing. “Are you ready to admit that the Libyan and Syrian interventions you advocated were a mistake?”

Mrs. Power didn’t. “When these situations arise, it’s almost about less evils – that the decisions are very challenging,” she said.

The US aid agency naturally has a long-term view of the world compared to the immediacy of military action. In addition to the humanitarian aid amounting to around 6 billion US dollars, which it is making available this year for disaster-stricken countries, the agency is trying to prevent conflict at its roots, largely strengthen the economy, counteract state corruption and democracy and promote human rights.

This mission is central to Mr Biden’s foreign policy and may nowhere prove more important than in his global competition with China.

Last month, Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken reassured allies that they would not return to a “us-or-you” decision with China as the two superpowers vie for economic, diplomatic and military advantage.

Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey and former Deputy Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights of Obama, described in his loan and development projects the “perception that China exports corruption”.

For example, a February study by the International Republican Institute, a private not-for-profit group that receives government funding and promotes democracy, concluded that Panama’s decision in 2017 to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan “appeared to be due to disbursements” from China was driven. It was also noted that Nepal regularly revoked the legal status of Tibetan refugees after becoming economically dependent on Beijing.

The American aid organization alone cannot keep up with the resources that China has deployed in developing countries. But Mr. Malinowski said his support for journalists, legal advisors and legitimate opposition groups could “expose and combat” caustic foreign leaders who had benefited from Beijing’s financial aid and playbook to stay in power.

“There is a problem that has come to the fore in this government and that it is very focused on, which is fighting corruption,” Malinowski said of Ms. Power. “And USAID may play a very important role there.”

At her confirmation hearing in March, Ms. Power told the senators that she had been moved to pursue a career in foreign affairs following the 1989 massacre of Tiananmen protesters in Beijing. She described China’s “coercive and predatory approach that is so transactional” in dealing with developing countries that ultimately become dependent on Beijing through what she called “debt-trap diplomacy”.

“I think it’s not going so well, and that opens up the United States,” Ms. Power told Indiana Republican Senator Todd Young.

The mostly harmless nudge of Democrats and Republicans during the hearing showed how fighting China has become a rare, if reliable, non-partisan issue in Congress. “I think it is absolutely essential that our development funds are used to advance our geostrategic priorities,” said Young.

The aid agency and the State Department have budgeted around $ 2 billion for programs to promote democracy, human rights and open governance abroad in fiscal 2021 – a third as much as funding humanitarian aid.

It’s an area that Ms. Power is expected to expand into. The Biden government’s first budget released on Friday alleged it was committing an unspecified but “substantial increase in resources” to advance human rights and democracy while thwarting corruption and authoritarianism.

The spending plan will also support another of Ms. Power’s priorities: fighting corruption, violence and poverty in Central America to curb the influx of thousands of migrants who travel to the southwestern border each year. The Biden government is betting on a $ 4 billion strategy through 2025 – including an initial tranche of $ 861 million proposed this year – to help stabilize the region.

In El Salvador, for example, killings fell 61 percent after a USAID attempt to reduce violence from 2015 to 2017, Ms. Power told senators, and the agency’s programs in Honduras have produced similar results. In addition to assisting local prosecutors, the programs brought together government officials, businesses, and church and community leaders to distract young people from gangs through professional training, tutoring, and artistic activities.

She met with some skepticism.

Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman noted that the number of Central American children on the border has increased steadily since January, despite the fact that the United States has spent $ 3.6 billion on similar efforts over the past five years.

“The results are not impressive,” said Portman. “It’s primarily an economic problem” and “people will still try to get to the US.”

Explaining foreign policy decisions to the American people and making them relevant to their lives is a driving theme for the State Department under Mr. Biden. Ms. Power can draw on her own experience as an immigrant from Ireland and as a storyteller to help alleviate the border crisis by attacking its root causes.

“That’s part of the job – you have to be a salesperson, you have to go out and tell people, ‘So we need more resources to do this job, and this is where USAID can be an incredibly important partner,” said John Prendergast, a longtime veteran Human rights and anti-corruption activist and close friend of Ms. Power.

“There is so much that can be done between bombing and nothing,” said Prendergast, paraphrasing Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court featured in the same genocide documentary as Ms. Power. “And all of Samantha’s work and life was between those two extremes.”

Gayle Smith, who ran the aid agency for Mr Obama and is now the State Department’s coronavirus vaccine envoy, put it more clearly.

“It’s not that USAID is going to break into anyone,” she said.

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Business

How Texas’ robust winter uncovered U.S. energy grid issues

How Texas' tough winter exposed U.S. power grid problems

Texas had a rough winter in 2021.

In mid-February, when temperatures dropped in the single digits, demand for electricity hit a record high across Texas. The supply was running low, causing the state’s utility operator to introduce rolling blackouts. At the height of the crisis, more than 4.5 million customers lost electricity. The unusual winter storm caused neighboring states like Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas to also impose rolling power outages.

Texas residents shivered from the cold as the outages lasted for days. You have lost access to water. Some turned their cars on in their garages to keep warm and then died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The historic collapse was a wake-up call – if the Texas power grid was so fragile, what about the rest of the United States? According to Climate Central, the US has seen weather-related blackouts have increased by 67% since 2000. Part of the problem is aging infrastructure. Most of today’s power grid was built in the 1950s and 1960s with the hope that it would take 50 years.

Check out the video above to find out what happened in the Texas power outage and how it’s a warning sign on the US power grid.

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Politics

Trump, Hungry for Energy, Tries to Wrestle Away G.O.P. Fund-Elevating

Trump, Hungry for Power, Tries to Wrestle Away G.O.P. Fund-Raising

“I fully support the Republican Party and key GOP committees, but I do not support RINOs and fools, and it is not their right to use my likeness or image to raise funds,” he said. But even when he tried to clarify that he supported his party, he put another plug on his own group. “When you donate to our Save America PAC at DonaldJTrump.com, you are helping the America First movement and doing it right,” he said.

Right now, the advisors say, Trump’s plan is to save money so he can remain a force in politics and help candidates challenge Republican dissidents like Representative Liz Cheney from Wyoming, who indicted him earlier this year.

Mr Trump, along with the national party, raised around $ 250 million between election day and President Biden’s inauguration. More than $ 60 million of that went to a new political action committee. This committee and the former president’s campaign committee were both transformed into affiliated political action committees. Mr Trump’s staff said this week that they have not started sending calls for funds since he left office but had planned to do so in the coming days.

The Republican clash could resonate particularly in the House.

If Mr Trump manages to convince donors to give him money instead of directly supporting Republican House candidates, he could cause problems for minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who is trying to retake the house in two years. He has to flip five seats to do this.

“If you control the money, you control the party,” said Dan Eberhart, a Republican donor.

Some Republican strategists noted that Utah Senator Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 presidential candidate, was the biggest fundraiser name in GOP politics less than a decade ago. Now he hardly recognizes his party.

The strategists have downplayed the threat Mr. Trump poses to Republican fundraising. “The donors who are unique to him and would be affected by this message are people who would not have donated at all,” said Josh Holmes, a political adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader.

Mr Holmes also said that when the Biden administration introduced new guidelines like a nearly $ 2 trillion relief bill, Republicans would band together in the opposition and develop new constituencies for fundraising.

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Politics

How Biden’s Solidarity Emboldened a Liberal Push for Energy in Alabama

How Biden’s Solidarity Emboldened a Liberal Push for Power in Alabama

While union leaders, local union activists, and national progressive politicians are all in support of an Amazon union in Alabama, this sentiment does not reflect the mood in the camp itself. Less than a month before the union vote, the 5,800-worker camp is divided among union supporters, strong dissidents and an apathetic center that is fed up with national attention.

Outside the factory – where some workers work 12-hour shifts – union activists and journalists are likely to experience a number of angry refusals when asking to speak to employees. Some workers wear “Vote No” needles while others speak of anti-union literature in public areas and bathrooms. And on social media, employees report their longing for March 29, when the election ends.

Amazon has aggressively countered union efforts, highlighting the company’s benefit package and its $ 15 minimum wage, as well as job growth in an economically stagnant area of ​​the south.

Last week, at an Amazon-hosted round table of anti-union warehouse workers, some said in the media that Mr Biden’s message was unnecessary and that they were not intimidated by the company. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment directly on the president’s remarks.

“I know the president weighed,” said JC Thompson, a litigation assistant at the warehouse. “And I can’t imagine the pressure our leadership is feeling because there are a few people – a minority – who are upset.”

Carla Johnson, a warehouse clerk, said she was voting to not join in unionization.

“I can speak for myself,” she said. “I don’t need someone from the outside to come in and say this or that.”

The diversity of opinion suggested why Mr Biden’s message was so calibrated – to support workers’ right to fair elections but not to support the union itself. And some observers, including Amazon camp workers, believe the president’s words will have little impact on the outcome of the union vote.

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Business

Mexico Set to Reshape Energy Sector to Favor the State

Mexico Set to Reshape Power Sector to Favor the State

MEXICO CITY – President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has never lacked criticism of his predecessor’s legacy. But he reserved a particular disdain for the major overhaul that opened Mexico’s strained energy industry to the private sector.

He has called the changes a form of legalized “looting,” the product of corruption and resounding failure. He has suggested that some foreign energy investors are “looting” the nation and that Mexican lawyers who work for them are guilty of treason.

He is now formalizing his most aggressive attack on the measures to date.

A bill is expected to be passed in the next few days to strengthen the dominance of the Mexican state-owned electricity company. The measure, recently approved by the Mexican Congress with the firm support of Mr López Obrador, would also limit the participation of private investors in the energy sector. Both effects are of central importance for his long-term goal of restoring energy self-sufficiency and securing Mexican sovereignty.

Mexico’s reliance on foreign hydrocarbons was highlighted last month when a winter storm in Texas disrupted supplies of natural gas from the United States, the source of most of the natural gas used in Mexico. Mr López Obrador pointed to the resulting blackouts as evidence of the need to reduce dependence on foreign energy.

However, the legislation, hastened by the Mexican Congress by Mr López Obrador’s party, has been criticized by opposition lawmakers, environmentalists, industry analysts, Mexican and international corporate groups, and even Mexico’s antitrust watchdog almost everywhere.

Many critics see the bill as a political move to excite the president’s grassroots ahead of the June midterm elections, through which Mr López Obrador hopes to turn his party’s congressional majority into the super-majority required to amend the constitution.

Opponents of the legislation say that not only would it not revitalize the energy sector or help achieve energy independence, it would violate Mexico’s international commitments to reduce carbon emissions, violate trade deals, and further cool foreign investment in Mexico struggles to regain economic dynamism amid the pandemic.

Legislation also threatens to re-grasp the relationship between Mr López Obrador’s administrations and President Biden, which got off to a rocky start when the Mexican President became one of the last world leaders to congratulate Mr Biden on his election victory.

“I think the effects of this reform are a big reversal,” said Lourdes Melgar, who was a senior energy official in the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto, the predecessor of Mr López Obrador. The Mexican president, she said, “had a very nationalist view of resource management.”

She added, “He wants to bring private producers to their knees, and we see it in the most absurd way.”

Jeremy M. Martin, vice president of energy and sustainability at the Institute of the Americas, a public order think tank in San Diego, said the legislation is likely to resonate with supporters of Mr López Obrador, who have been made feel like it finally have a president who puts the Mexican people first.

“It doesn’t make economic sense, but it makes a lot of sense for people who feel like they’ve been screwed in Mexico for years,” he said. “It’s pure ideology, it’s political.”

The legislation would rewrite the rules for the electricity sector. Among other things, this would change the so-called shipping rules, which regulate the order in which plants feed their electricity into the national grid, and give higher priority to the plants of the state electricity company, the Federal Electricity Commission.

The energy market liberalization approved by Mexican legislators in 2014 gave priority to low-cost power generation, with increasing preference for solar and wind power plants, which led to an increase in private investments from Mexico and abroad in the renewable energy sector.

However, the new legislation restores preferences for government fossil fuel plants, which generate electricity at higher costs and cause higher CO2 emissions.

Mr López Obrador and his allies have argued that the bill seeks to correct a trend in the 2014 overhaul that gave private companies an unfair advantage.

“We level the ground, we establish clear rules, we prioritize national security,” said Rocío Abreu Artiñano, Senator of the ruling Morena Party and President of the Energy Commission of the Mexican Senate.

The current system, she said, “stifles” the Federal Electricity Commission.

When more than 4.5 million homes and businesses in northern Mexico lost electricity last month after Arctic weather froze cross-border pipelines and the Texas governor issued an order restricting natural gas exports, López Obrador said it was a lesson the need for energy independence.

Gas-fired power plants generate more than half of Mexico’s electricity. According to the Mexican government, the vast majority of natural gas is imported, with the majority coming from the United States.

“We always have to look for self-sufficiency and produce what we consume in Mexico: food, energy,” said López Obrador in mid-February when Mexico was recovering from the blackouts.

However, analysts and industry leaders say that although Mr López Obrador insists on moving Mexico to greater energy independence, the new legislation could actually make the nation more dependent on foreign energy sources by increasing reliance on fossil fuels, which it has to import .

While household energy bills are likely to remain isolated from price increases from government subsidies, industrial users could see an increase in electricity bills that they would likely pass on to their customers, analysts said.

“This has no economic logic,” said Víctor Ramírez Cabrera, spokesman for the Mexico, Climate and Energy Platform, a research group in Mexico City. He called the new model for power sourcing “absurd”.

Environmentalists and other critics have also devastated the legislation, saying it will undo hard-fought gains in cutting carbon emissions and put Mexico on a course that contradicts global efforts to combat climate change and goes against its international treaties and possibly his violates own laws.

Mr López Obrador said the government was planning to upgrade its hydropower plants, which will be given a higher priority under the new energy supply system, to help meet its climate change commitments. However, critics of the legislation are deeply skeptical.

“Under these conditions there is no way to keep the Paris Agreement,” said Ramírez. “Just give it up for dead.”

Equally worrying, critics say, is the negative impact of the legislation on FDI in Mexico. The law would essentially hamper many private renewable energy companies that have invested since the energy sector opened up and cripple their chances of making a profit.

“It’s going to hit them big and hard,” said Gonzalo Monroy, a Mexico City-based energy consultant.

Investors “came to invest in the country, trusting the rules and the law,” said Xóchitl Gálvez Ruiz, senator of the opposition National Action Party. “Overnight they are told, ‘You know what? I don’t like that, I’ll change the rules. ‘”

Analysts and industry experts say litigation against the law is inevitable, including potential challenges on the grounds that doing so may violate clauses in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The legislation is just the latest what analysts say is a string of foreign investment violations by Mr Lopez Obrador, including the cancellation of a $ 13 billion airport project in 2018 and the lockdown of a partially built brewery in northern Mexico last year .

After the Senate approved the new law last week, the peso fell to a four-month low against the dollar. And a Reuters poll found the currency could be unpredictable for a few months, partly due to energy transition concerns.

“Investment levels are falling and nobody wants to invest here,” said Israel Tello, a legal analyst at Integralia, a Mexico City-based advisory group. “Legal uncertainty is the deadliest weapon against investment.”

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Politics

Vernon Jordan, Civil Rights Chief and D.C. Energy Dealer, Dies at 85

Vernon Jordan, Civil Rights Leader and D.C. Power Broker, Dies at 85

After graduating from law school in 1960, he became a trainee lawyer with Donald Hollowell, who had a busy one-man civil rights practice in Atlanta. Mr. Jordan worked closely on the University of Georgia overturned case and was close to Charlayne Hunter (later the journalist and author Charlayne Hunter-Gault), one of two young black plaintiffs admitted to court after winning. On the day of her first school visit, Mr. Jordan was photographed escorting her to campus, surrounded by a hostile crowd.

After the Georgia case, he served as the field director of the NAACP in Georgia. Because of his job, he had to travel the southeast regularly to oversee civil rights cases, large and small. He said he tried to follow a friend, vaunted director of the Mississippi bureau, Medgar Evers, who was later murdered.

He quickly became director of the Southern Regional Council’s Voter Education Project and, in 1970, was appointed Executive Director of the United Negro College Fund. A year later, his friend Whitney Young, the leader of the Urban League, drowned on a trip to Lagos, Nigeria, and Mr Jordan was recruited to fill the unexpected position.

The National Urban League, the embodiment of the black establishment, brought Mr. Jordan to New York and exposed him to another world. The organization relied on a wide range of prominent citizens, both white and black, and was closely associated with American corporations. During his tenure, the group published a widely read annual report entitled “The State of Black America”.

While holding that post on a trip to Fort Wayne, Indiana in May 1980, he was in the company of a local Urban League executive Martha Coleman, a white woman, when a group of white teenagers sat in a car and passed them she mocked. Later, when Ms. Coleman fired him at his hotel, he was shot in the back by a man with a hunting rifle. Mr Jordan almost died on the operating table, had six operations and stayed in the hospital for 89 days.

Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist, was charged with the crime but acquitted in court, though he would later boast that he was the shooter. He was later convicted of other crimes, including the fatal shooting of two black joggers who ran with white women, and executed in Missouri in 2013.

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Houston mayor says state ought to pay for prime energy payments

Houston mayor says state should pay for high power bills

Workers repair a power line in Austin, Texas, United States on Wednesday, February 18, 2021.

Thomas Ryan Allison | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner on Sunday called on the state of Texas to pay the huge electricity bills reported by numerous Texans after severe winter weather turned off electricity and increased energy prices.

Last week’s freezing conditions caused major grid outages and skyrocketing demand, leaving millions of people without heat and electricity. Now that power has resumed for most of Texas, some households can expect utility bills of up to $ 10,000.

“People who are getting those exorbitant utility bills and having to pay to have their homes repaired shouldn’t be held responsible,” Turner said during an interview on CBS ‘Face the Nation. “These exorbitant costs should be borne by the state of Texas and not by the individual customers who did not cause this disaster this week.”

The high electricity bills in Texas are due to the state’s unregulated power grid, which is almost cut off from the rest of the country. In the market-oriented system, customers choose their own electricity suppliers. In many cases, prices rise as demand increases.

Texas’ Electric Reliability Council (ERCOT), which powers around 90% of the state, was unprepared for the cold and the surge in electricity demand as people tried to heat their homes.

“Everything that happened in the past week was predictable and preventable. Our system in Texas is designed for the summer heat, not necessarily a winter event,” said Turner.

“Climate change is real and these big storms can happen at any time,” he added. “These systems have to be weathered … we have to open the Texas grid.”

The exorbitant bills prompted Republican Governor Greg Abbott to hold an emergency meeting with lawmakers on Saturday to discuss how the state can ease the burden on consumers.

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The Texas Public Utility Commission held an emergency meeting Sunday to put in place a moratorium on reducing customer power on non-payments. There are also plans to prevent vendors from sending customer invoices, Abbott announced at a press conference on Sunday.

“Texans who have been freezing for days without electricity shouldn’t face skyrocketing energy bills due to a surge in the energy market,” Abbott said at the briefing.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said during an interview on CNN Sunday that the state would use the federal government’s disaster relief to help high utility customers.

After more than 3 million people lost power in Texas last week, ERCOT announced that it had been restored to normal and power was restored for millions of customers. According to current data from PowerOutage.us, more than 30,000 people in Texas had no electricity on Sunday morning at 11:30 a.m.

According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, more than 1,300 public water systems were disrupted by the extreme weather on Saturday and more than 15 million people were forced to boil their water on Saturday.

President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration for 77 Texas counties on Saturday that unlocked state aid to Texans, grants for temporary repairs to homes and houses, and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property damage. The goal of the state is to finally put all 254 counties under the declaration.