Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden has warned that Europe may need to ration access to energy for several years as the crisis confronting the region is likely to last more than one winter. The forecast from the head of Europe’s largest oil and gas company came after further cuts to Russian supplies sent European…
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After nearly 40 years of protesting against the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, Linda Seeley thought victory was finally at hand. Seeley and other members of Mothers for Peace — an activist group with roots in the 1960s antiwar movement — cheered when Pacific Gas and Electric, the utility that operates the California’s last nuclear…
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Financial groups included on a blacklist of companies that Texas considers hostile to fossil fuels have attacked the process as politicised and arbitrary. Texas comptroller Glenn Hegar is implementing a 2021 law that requires state pension and school funds to divest shares they hold in listed financial groups which, in the government’s view, “boycott energy…
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Japanese carmaker Honda and South Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution will invest $4.4bn to build a new battery plant in the US amid increasing pressure from Washington to cut China out of supply chains for electric vehicles. It will be the first manufacturing facility for EV batteries in the US for Honda, which has…
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Last year, a British oil exploration company and a tech start-up joined forces on a project to permanently lock away untapped fossil fuel reserves in Greenland. The idea was simple: the energy company, Greenland Gas and Oil, would not extract oil from an area on the east coast that it had exploration licences for. Instead…
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More than 1,000 people have been killed and nearly 1mn homes damaged in the worst flooding to hit Pakistan in at least a decade, as the latest in a series of climate change-induced catastrophes imperils its economic recovery. Torrential rains and flooding have swept through Pakistan in recent weeks, hitting Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,…
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Climate-related legal action threatens to push corporate insurance costs even higher, with the industry warning that success for activists would force a repricing of cover that has already become much more expensive in recent years. Businesses face growing legal threats from activists looking to challenge sustainability claims deemed disingenuous or untrue, and decarbonisation targets considered…
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One of the world’s biggest shipbuilders expects orders for methanol-powered ships to surge in the coming decades, as tougher environmental regulations intensify a push to use alternative fuel sources. The bullish forecast by Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering comes as the company accelerates away from fossil fuels and competition with Chinese rivals intensifies. “Orders for…
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Yves Couvreur traces the lineage of his winemaking family in Champagne back through almost a dozen generations to 1644. But it is only since he took over the business in the 1980s that the farming calendar has been radically transformed, with the grapes being harvested earlier and earlier because of the hotter summers triggered by…
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The writer is a financial journalist and author of ‘More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy’ If 2022 has demonstrated anything, it is that the abundance, and price, of energy is vital for the health of the global economy. The Industrial Revolution that emerged in the 18th century had many causes but the necessary…
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