Group items tagged

Today renewable energy supplies only about 6 percent of American demand. And most of that comes from water flowing through dams. Solar energy contributes next to nothing.

The arithmetic is merciless. To make it likely that the world’s temperature will rise no more than 2 degrees Celsius above the average of the preindustrial era — a target agreed to by the world’s governments in 2010 — humanity must spew no more than 900 billion more tons of carbon dioxide into the air from now through 2050 and only 75 billion tons after that, according to an authoritative new study in Britain.

The United States Energy Information Administration forecasts that global energy consumption will grow 56 percent between now and 2040.

The only way around this is to put something in coal’s place, at a reasonably competitive price. Neither the warm glow of the sun nor the restless power of the wind is going to do the trick, at least not soon enough to make a difference in the battle to prevent climate change.

From a standing start, China now has 12% of graduates in the world's big economies - approaching the share of the UK, Germany and France put together. The incumbent superpower, the United States, still towers above with 26% of the graduates.

On February 10, Appliance Park opened an all-new assembly line in Building 2—largely dormant for 14 years—to make cutting-edge, low-energy water heaters. It was the first new assembly line at Appliance Park in 55 years—and the water heaters it began making had previously been made for GE in a Chinese contract factory.

In the 1960s, as the consumer-product world we now live in was booming, the Harvard economist Raymond Vernon laid out his theory of the life cycle of these products,

Amana, for instance, introduced the first countertop microwave—the Radarange, made in Amana, Iowa—in 1967, priced at $495. Today you can buy a microwave at Walmart for $49 (the equivalent of a $7 price tag on a 1967 microwave)—and almost all the ones you’ll see there, a variety of brands and models, will have been shipped in from someplace where hourly wages have historically been measured in cents rather than dollars.

Even as recently as 2000, a typical Chinese factory worker made 52 cents an hour.

But competitiveness based on cost, rather than brand value or innovation, makes the Polish economy vulnerable.

And Poland’s cost advantage would disappear if the złoty were to strengthen sharply.

the country must be careful about joining the exchange rate mechanism (ERM II) – the narrow band within which applicant currencies must operate for at least two years prior to adopting the euro. Doing so could cause the złoty to strengthen, as it did to the Slovak koruna, and wipe out Poland’s competitive advantage.

One in four employees is on a fixed-term contract or self-employed.

But flexible labor markets have disadvantages, too. Companies tend not to invest in talent or develop new skills, and the quality of existing skills can suffer. In the longer run, flexible labor markets also increase structural unemployment and fuel the informal economy.

Finally, Poland needs sound public finances – that is, fiscal space for automatic stabilizers during economic crises.

Externalities do not fix themselves. In the absence of effective individual property rights they require government action, in this case the action of close to 200 governments.

Why should they do this? The answer is: because a low-carbon atmosphere is a global public good.

It is by now impossible to be optimistic that anything like this will happen. This is partly because the needed agreement must be long-term and global. That, in turn, raises difficult questions of intragenerational and intergenerational equity.

Suppose that, despite all the logic, it proves impossible to achieve a relevant global agreement. Does it make sense for any country or group of countries to take determined action on their own? If the aim is to deal with climate change, the answer is: absolutely not, unless the countries are China or the US.

But it might be possible for a country to demonstrate proof of concept:

The size of the banking sector and exposure to Greece were known risks but at that time there was no banking problem in Cyprus

The containers were part of a shipment going from Iran to Syria that was intercepted in Cypriot waters after a tip from the U.S. The president took the decision to keep the ammunition. [NOTE: An independent prosecutor found that Christofias has ignored repeated warnings and pleas to destroy or safeguard the ammunition, apparently in hopes of one day returning it to Syria or Iran.]

Instead, they started lobbying the Russian government to give them a loan that would help them finance the country for a couple more years, and Russia came through, unfortunately,

I say unfortunately because as a result the government could keep operating and accumulating deficits without taking corrective action.

The next important date was the October 26-27, 2011 meeting of the EU council in Brussels where European leaders decided to wipe out what ended up being about 80% of the value of Greek debt that the private sector held. Every bank operating in Greece, regardless of where it was headquartered, had a lot of Greek debt.

For Cyprus, the writedown of Greek debt was between 4.5 and 5 billion euro, a substantial chunk of capital.

The Basle II framework that governments adopted internationally, and that the EU supervisory framework during this period also incorporated, specifies that holdings of government debt in a states' own currency are a zero-risk-weight asset, that is they are assigned a weight of zero in calculating capital requirements.

the governments should have agreed to make the EFSF/ESM available for direct recapitalization of banks instead of asking each government to be responsible for the capitalization.

Following a downgrading in late June 2012, all three major rating agencies rated the sovereign paper Cyprus below investment grade. According to ECB rules, that made the government debt not eligible as collateral for borrowing from the eurosystem, unless the ECB suspended the rules, as it had done for the cases of Greece, Portugal and Ireland. In the case of Cyprus, the ECB decided not to suspend the eligibility rule.

The governments have created risk in what before last week were considered perfectly safe deposits. This is going to have a chilling effect on deposits in any bank in a country perceived to be weak. This will mean the cost of funding will increase in the periphery of Europe and as a result, the cost of financing for businesses and households will increase. That will add to the divergences we already have and make the recession in the periphery of Europe deeper than it already is. This is really a disaster for European economic management as a whole. 

Domestic oil production has rocketed by roughly 70 percent over the last six years to 8.7 million barrels a day, and imports from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have already been cut roughly by half.

many oil experts predict that the country’s output will rise to as much as 12 million barrels a day over the nex

Shale oil is predominately light, sweet oil, meaning it is low in sulfur content and flows freely at room temperature.

United States exports of oil could reach three million to four million barrels a day in a few years, more than most OPEC producers currently provide world markets.

Yet educational attainment has slowed so much that the United States has lost its once-enormous global lead.

the biggest reason to think economic growth may translate more directly into wage gains is the turnabout in health costs. After years of rapid increases, they have slowed sharply in the last three years. Mr. Obama likes to give more credit to the 2010 health care law than most observers do, but he’s not wrong about the trend’s significance.

It’s also possible that the forces behind the great wage slowdown – from globalization to our often-sclerotic government to (at least for many workers) technological change – are still more powerful than the positive forces.

Analysts say a revamped A330 would probably not be able to compete with the fuel economy of Boeing’s three-year-old 787 Dreamliner or with the updated 777, which in addition to new engines will have lighter wings made of carbon fiber instead of aluminum.

A more attractive price tag, combined with earlier availability — analysts say a revamped A330 could be ready for service in four years — would probably attract a wide range of customers.

Still, a revamped A330 would burn around 15 percent more fuel than its newer competitors, meaning that it could be a tough sell, even at a discount.

"Will you end up selling any more than you would have if you stuck with the old version and cut the price?” asked Mr. Cunningham, the London analyst. He noted that the current low interest-rate environment was already reducing customers’ sensitivity to list price, while the recent instability in the Middle East was refocusing attention on the risk of rising oil prices.

“There is much more fragmentation” of the wide-body jet market, Mr. Lasou said. “Each aircraft type is covering a smaller range of routes. The market is becoming much more specialized.”

Mr. Mir noted there were hidden costs that needed to be taken into account for both renewable energy and fossil fuels. Solar and wind farms, for example, produce power intermittently — when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing — and that requires utilities to have power available on call from other sources that can respond to fluctuations in demand.

“Renewables had two issues: One, they were too expensive, and they weren’t dispatchable. They’re not too expensive anymore.”

Especially in the interior region of the country, from North Dakota down to Texas, where wind energy is particularly robust, utilities were able to lock in long contracts at 2.1 cents a kilowatt-hour, on average, she said. That is down from prices closer to 5 cents five years ago.

Already, solar executives are looking to extend a 30 percent federal tax credit that is set to fall to 10 percent at the end of 2016.

"There's no risk to Polish clients," PGNiG spokeswoman Dorota Gajewska said, but added that it was forced to suspend its so-called "reverse flow" transfers to Ukraine.

The move caused the Russian ruble to plunge to another record low against the dollar on Thursday.

"It also can be seen as a kind of response to EU sanctions, targeting the smaller EU members in Moscow's former sphere of influence, not its larger Western partner." "But it's a risky policy, as it further undermines Moscow's credibility in Western Europe. It's not the best idea: either you're a reliable supplier of gas or you're not," he said.

When teachers demand rigorous work, students often rise to the occasion, whereas tracking students at different cognitive levels tends to “diminish learning and boost inequality”. Low expectations are often duly rewarded.

America’s classrooms do not fare well in this book. Against these examples of academic achievement, the country’s expensive mistakes look all the more foolish. For example, unlike the schools in Finland, which channel more resources to the neediest kids, America funds its schools through property taxes, ensuring the most disadvantaged students are warehoused together in the worst schools.

To be sure, one can reasonably argue that austerity in the eurozone has been excessive, and that fiscal deficits should have been much larger to sustain demand. But only governments with access to market finance can use expansionary fiscal policy to boost demand.

Had Greece not received financial support in 2010, it would have had to cut its fiscal deficit from more than 10% of GDP to zero immediately. By financing continued deficits until 2013, the troika actually enabled Greece to delay austerity.

Of course, Greece is not the first country to request emergency financing to delay budget cuts, and then complain that the cuts are excessive once the worst is over. This typically happens when the government runs a primary surplus. When the government can finance its current spending through taxes – and might even be able to increase expenditure, if it does not have to pay interest – the temptation to renege on debt intensifies.

The practical problem for Greece now is not the sustainability of a debt that matures in 20-30 years and carries very low interest rates; the real issue is the few payments to the IMF and the ECB that fall due this year – payments that the new government has promised to make.

 Second, it is the responsibility of the leading centrist parties to recognize the options explicitly. If they do not, extremist parties either of the right or the left will take control of the debate, and convert what is a conflict between different economic sectors into a nationalist conflict or a class conflict. If the former win, it will spell the end of the grand European experiment.

First, as long as Spain suffers from its current debt burden, it does not matter how intelligently and forcefully it implements economic reforms. It will not be able to grow out of its debt burden and must choose between two paths

Most currency and sovereign debt crises in modern history ultimately represent a conflict over how the costs are to be assigned among two different groups

The country accounts for over a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Even assuming that China’s population does not grow at all over the next 30 years, that the energy efficiency of its economy increases at a faster pace than most developed and developing countries and that it manages to decarbonize its energy sources faster than pretty much anybody else, China would still be emitting a lot more carbon in 2040 than it does today, according to E.I.A. calculations.

Can the United States or anybody else do anything to speed China down a low-carbon path?

The latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued in April, suggested several ways to allot responsibilities. If one starts counting in the 18th century and counts only emissions from industry and energy generation, the United States is responsible for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gases that humanity has put into the air. China, by contrast, is responsible for 10 percent.But if one starts counting in 1990, when the world first became aware that CO2 was a problem, and includes greenhouse gases emitted from changes in land use, the United States is responsible for only 18 percent, and China’s share rises to 15 percent. Rich and poor countries, unsurprisingly, disagree on the proper measure. Photo

Not everybody will meet their Copenhagen pledges. Japan, which unplugged its nuclear energy after the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, will fall behind. So will Canada and Australia, whose new conservative governments have lost interest in the pledges of their predecessors.

“Do you believe that things are going to get better? If you do, you don’t want to be in Treasuries at 2.5 percent,” he said. “Some things don’t make sense to me. It’s frustrating.”

For all of 2013, gross domestic product increased by 1.9 percent, compared with 2.8 percent for 2012.

Orders and shipments of durable goods

were flat in 2013, and housing has weakened. February was the eighth consecutive month of declines in pending home sales, leaving them down 10.2 percent from 12 months earlier.

the industrial sector, which includes manufacturers of business equipment. Another preferred segment is banks; he expects them to flourish as interest rates rise and the gap widens between what they charge in interest and what they pay.

Mr. Morris encourages stock investors to buy American.

Russia accounts for 13 percent of Ukraine's iron and steel exports, and the political crisis has already hit shipments from Ukrainian steelmakers this year.

Sales of rebar - a steel bar or mesh of steel wires used in reinforced concrete - to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a bloc of former Soviet states, fell 70 percent to 45,000 tonnes in January compared with the average monthly export figure in the first half of 2013.Russian steelmakers have aggressively lobbied their government to implement measures to defend domestic producers from Ukrainian imports.

Tough competition on the international steel market makes the chance of (steelmakers) expanding their export market presence very low," Eavex Capital metals analyst Ivan Dzvinka said in Kiev

Manufacturers of train carts and turbo engines, which together account for 2.5 percent of Ukraine's total exports, will be hit particularly hard.

"Re-orienting these industries to Europe would be nearly impossible without very heavy investment,

"The point of the FTA is not to make it possible for Ukraine to export Soviet-era tractors to Europe. That's not going to happen. But it could eventually lead to Ukraine becoming a producer of Peugeots, Volkswagens, fridges or Nokia telephones," the EUISS's Popescu said.

To do so, CO2 emissions from industry and energy use would have to fall to at most 1.6 tons a year for every person on the planet by midcentury.

That is less than a tenth of annual American emissions per person today and less than a third of the world average

Lacking any understanding of the feasibility of the exercise, governments postured and jockeyed over which country should be responsible for what

This is not achievable by going after low-hanging fruit, such as replacing coal with natural gas in power plants.

The decarbonization paths rely on aggressive assumptions about our ability to deploy new technologies on a commercial scale economically.

Russia, for instance, hit the target. But Oleg Lugovoy of the Environmental Defense Fund, who worked on the Russian plan, observed that “if we don’t have carbon capture and storage we would have to reconsider.”