Many of the most important power companies have started to either change or review their targets to develop renewable energy because of high costs in development and low costs of electricity.
This comes as a sign of the general difficulties that present in transitioning away from fossil fuels. The continent’s largest renewable energy producer, Starkraft, announced the review of their annual targets for new renewables capacity, while EDP, an important Portuguese energy company started cutting back its plans quoting high interest rates and low power prices.
On the other hand also Denmark’s Ørsted, recognized as the world’s largest offshore wind developer, downgraded its targets for renewable energy for 2030 by more than 10GW, a measure enough to potentially supply millions of homes. The downgrade of this particular target came as a result of being forced to leave two large projects in the US due to rising costs.
Also mediterranean countries started to change their targets with Spanish energy giant Iberdrola announcing a more scrupulous approach to renewable energy and an increase in focus on electricity grids, abandoning its 80 GW renewables target for 2030. Also Italian giant Enel announced a reduction in investments in renewables, from €17 billion between 2023-2025 to €12.1 billions between 2024 and 2026, however it also announced that it would maintain its increasing renewable capacity to reach its target of 73 GW by 2026.
Despite all of these changes by European energy giants, there’s still a growing political focus on renewables with countries agreeing at the COP28 summit to work towards triplicating capacity to 11,000 GW by 2030. However new projects are limited by the rise of interest rates and the increase of raw materials prices and decrease of electricity prices just work against the developer’s plan.
Biden’s new sanctions against China’s exports
US President Joe Biden decided to introduce new tariffs on Chinese imports. This comes as a result of China’s great financial support for its businesses that was rated as “cheating” and not competition by the US, saying that the country is “flooding global markets with artificially low-priced exports”. The most affected by the tariffs are electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.
As a result frictions between the two world’s largest economies have increased as $18 billions of imports have been affected, with EV facing a quadrupled duties to more than 100% and duties on semiconductors reaching 50%. The introduction on tariffs also comes to show that Biden is going really hard on China in order to gain some voters as he’s in the middle of a heated campaign with Trump, who also imposed tariffs to China during his presidency.
But the tariffs could also backlash Biden as they could make EV prices raise in general, hurting his climate goals and his aim to create manufacturing jobs.As a result of these tariffs China has hinted at possible “tit-for-tat” action against the trade barriers imposed.
On Sunday, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the launch of an anti-dumping probe into POM copolymers, a thermoplastic used in various industries and imported from the US and other countries.The investigation should take a year to complete, and in response to the tariffs China has vowed to take all necessary actions to protect its legitimate rights.
Author: Luca Sesena