Sunset view of Singapore's waterfront skyline, gardens and famous cloud forest greenhouse. Illustration by Nadya Nickels. Photo by lena_serditova via iStock.
Singapore has long punched above its weight as a financial and transportation hub, especially on its home turf of Southeast Asia. Now the island-nation aims to play a similar role in decarbonization and clean technology.
Studded with gleaming high rises and glitzy shopping districts, Singapore is deploying its strategic government owned investment company (Temasek) and central bank (the Monetary Authority of Singapore) to amplify the country's decarbonization plans across the region and beyond.
That's meant an investment push into clean technologies and an effort to build a carbon trading and services hub. The city state is also pushing for, and investing in, a regional, cross-border clean electricity grid.
South Africa energy minister vows change with ‘aggressive’ renewables rollout — Reuters Anca’s take: The shift in tone (and new green direction) comes after the ruling African National Congress's unprecedented majority loss in May. South Africa is among the world's top 15 greenhouse gas emitters.
Microsoft and Occidental sign carbon credit deal to help offset AI energy surge — Financial Times (subscription) Cat’s take: To deliver, Occidental will remove carbon emissions with its first commercial-scale direct air capture facility, Stratos, currently under construction in West Texas, and store the CO2 underground. ENTEK gets conditional $1.2 billion US loan for EV battery separator plant — Reuters Amena’s take: At full capacity, the U.S. Energy Department said the plant will help EV makers meet domestic sourcing requirements and support roughly 1.9 million mid-size EVs or 1.3 million electric sports utility vehicles.
World’s largest oil company bets on the enduring power of petrol — Financial Times (subscription) Bill’s take: While certainly a bet on petrol-powered engines, the move also recognizes the market for these will be shrinking, and consolidating, from here forward.
Temperatures 1.5C above pre-industrial era average for 12 months, data shows — The Guardian Cat’s take: From July 2023 to June 2024, the average global temperature was 1.64 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average, according to scientists at Copernicus. This reality needs to drive climate action.
China outspends the U.S. on fusion in the race for energy's holy grail — The Wall Street Journal
Amy's take: Staggering stats in this article, including that China has 10 times as many Ph.D.’s in fusion and double the federal fusion budget than the U.S.
The Electric: Seven EV Makers Prepare to Use the First Silicon-Powered Batteries — The Information (subscription) Bill’s take: Another sign that ingenuity is the magic formula for U.S. companies aiming to compete with Chinese battery titans. The key will be actually making these at scale, rather than leaving that to China.
Tourists Escape to Cooler Scandinavia Instead of Europe’s Hottest Spots — Bloomberg Cat’s take: This story feels timely and poignant here in the U.S., too. The July 4th holiday is a popular time for vacations. And much of the U.S. experienced dangerously hot temperatures in recent days.
‘Keir Starmer take note’: UK’s green transition must start now, say experts — The Guardian Anca’s take: The Labour Party won a landslide victory in the United Kingdom general election last week. Labour committed to fast-track the green energy transition (while the Conservatives pledged to slow it down). Interestingly, the results contrast with the right-wing shift in several EU countries.
A Rising Fortress in Sinking Land — The Washington Post Bill’s take: This story, which looks at costly efforts to prevent climate-related damage to fossil fuel infrastructure, goes to the heart of the challenge: to what extent do we race toward solving the problem, as opposed to just dealing with the fallout while continuing to make the problem worse?
More of what we're reading:
Amazon’s total emissions fell in 2023 as it meets renewable power goal — Reuters
Aggressive climate action needed to preserve stocks' value, paper says — Reuters
Former GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, famous for throwing a snowball in the Senate chamber, dead at 89 — Business Insider
Climate Negotiations Get the Shakespeare Treatment They Deserve — Bloomberg
Conservative challenge to NYC fossil-fuel divestments thrown out by judge — Financial Times (subscription)
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VOICES
Trade is key to countering China’s clean energy dominance
Bordoff is the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy and professor of professional practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. You can reach him at cgepdirector@columbia.edu.
To counter China’s cleantech dominance without hampering the energy transition, the United States needs to expand its circle of friends.
Along with the urgent task of supporting Ukraine, another issue dominating this week’s meeting of NATO leaders in Washington, D.C. is countering Chinese aggression through deeper partnerships with Indo-Pacific nations. These discussions will build on last month’s meeting of the Group of Seven nations in Italy, which saw a sharp pivot from casting China as a potential partner on issues like climate change to a pernicious force on matters both economic and military.
The focus on expanding Washington’s circle of friends to counter China is needed not only from a military standpoint, but also to accelerate the clean energy transition. Contrary to today’s protectionist trends, the best antidote to concerns about China’s cleantech dominance is more trade, not less.
The new era of great power rivalry between the U.S. and China has profound implications for the urgently needed transition to clean energy by complicating cooperation between the world’s two largest emitters and prompting Western nations to erect significant barriers to cheap Chinese clean energy products.
While many concerns about China are valid, even if some may be exaggerated, trade barriers risk undermining the clean energy transition not just by raising the costs of Chinese goods, but by fueling broader protectionist sentiments already on the rise. Countering China’s dominant position in clean energy while minimizing deceleration of the energy transition requires policymakers to embrace open markets with the rest of the world.
Read the full article on Cipher’s website, including the announcement of a new initiative at Columbia.
DATA DIVE
Electric vehicle prices remain higher than traditional cars everywhere but China
Source: International Energy Agency • All includes all car sizes (small, medium, SUV, large and pick-up trucks). Based on prices before subsidies. SUV = sports utility vehicle. Averages are sales-weighted.
Electric vehicle prices plunged below those of traditional, petrol-fueled cars in China over the past five years but remain higher than the price of traditional cars in the United States, according to the International Energy Agency.
The chart above compares the prices of EVs relative to traditional petrol-fueled cars. The 0% mark on the y-axis signals where EVs become less expensive than traditional cars. Government subsidies for buyers are not included in the calculations.
EV sales grew 25% in the first quarter of this year globally. China, where more than four out of ten new cars sold are electric, accounted for the lion’s share of sales overall. In Europe, 25% were electric and in the U.S. 11%.
Small EVs in China saw the sharpest decline in prices compared to traditional cars between 2018 and 2022, as Chinese automakers fell into a savage competition for market share and the prices of batteries fell sharply. The small-car segment also dominates sales in China, so that competition pushed the overall average price across all segments below the cost of traditional cars. This trend was also helped by increasingly competitive models of medium-sized cars and SUVs, which nearly reached cost parity with traditional SUVs by 2022.
The market in the U.S. is at the other end of the spectrum. Prices for larger and more expensive electric vehicles — which dominate the U.S. market — fell relative to traditional cars, but they didn’t fall nearly enough to compete with traditional models without subsidies. Still, EVs continued to close the gap last year and this year as Tesla, which accounts for a large share of EV sales, cut prices.
The Biden administration’s recent move to slap 100% sanctions on Chinese-made cars is likely to keep the price of all EVs sold in the U.S. higher than they would be otherwise compared to traditional cars.
The picture in Europe is mixed, with electric vehicles generally closer in price to traditional cars but with a persistent gap.
AND FINALLY... Solar scales
Cipher reader and president of Holzer Strategies Ben Holzer took these photos of the SunStyle “dragonscale” solar panels on the roof of Google’s Mountain View campus while on a recent hike in the Bay Area. When built, it was estimated the panels would provide about 40% of the campus’s annual energy needs.
Each week, we feature a photo that is somehow related to energy, the thing we all need but don’t notice until it’s expensive or gone. Email your ideas and photos to news@ciphernews.com.
Editor’s note: In addition to supporting Cipher, Breakthrough Energy also supports and partners with a range of entities working to tackle climate change, including nonprofits, corporations, startups and research firms. For more information on Cipher’s editorial policy, click here.