Energy News Beat

Drivers of electric cars are being asked to pay more than twice as much for insurance as those who own petrol-fuelled models as EV premiums surge 50% in a year, data have revealed. The Telegraph has more.

The typical insurance premium for electric vehicles (EVs) has increased to £1,344, a rise of 50% compared with a year earlier, according to U.K. broker Howden Group.

That is double the cost of cover for combustion engine cars, which Howden blames on a higher cost of repairs for electric models.

Insurance premiums for all types of cars surged last year but the rise for EVs was bigger both proportionally and in real terms, the company said.

For example, while the cost of insuring a typical internal combustion engine (ICE) car jumped by 31%, the number itself rose from £514 to £676, some £668 less expensive per year than insuring an electric car.

Howden blamed this on a higher frequency of claims from EV drivers and a higher average cost per claim than for ICE-model drivers.

The average cost per claim for accidental damage was typically 35% higher for EVs, the company said.

Howden said this was due to the more complicated technology in electric cars which tended to require specialist mechanics with specific equipment.

Batteries were also “expensive and prone to damage”, Howden added.

Carl Shuker, the broker’s U.K. and Ireland boss, told Bloomberg: “You’ve got length of repair times going up, you’ve got the cost of the component parts going up, and you probably see more EVs written off because residual values are particularly low at the moment.”

It comes following reports that some EV drivers are being refused insurance completely, or being charged extortionate sums of up to £5,000 or more for a year’s cover.

Source: Dailysceptic.org

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Investors and governments are not adequately addressing Uyghur forced labour risks in the renewable energy sector, research has found.

Anti-Slavery International, the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice and the Investor Alliance for Human Rights published an investor guidance and policy briefing on green technology supply chains on Monday.

The co-authors said business leaders and ministers must develop more effective and proactive strategies to address systemic forced labour risks in the sector due to supply chain reliance on the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China.

The country has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region.

Both solar and electric vehicle industries have been heavily impacted by forced labour in the region, given its dominance in green technology material supply and production, the report said.

The researchers, who carried out interviews with investment professionals to understand how investors have responded to the risks in their portfolios, warned that any materials sourced or produced in the Uyghur region carry human rights risks.

The paper also notes that green technology processing in the Uyghur region is also heavily reliant on coal-generated electricity, which is key to the “cost-competitiveness” of the Uyghur region’s solar industry, according to the International Energy Agency.

The researchers therefore argued that this also puts the solar industry at risk of greenwashing and potentially delays the transition to net zero.

The report further found that investor and corporate actions to remove the threat of direct or indirect complicity in Uyghur forced labour are stymied by a lack of co-ordinated international governmental collaboration.

It calls for such collaboration from governments to scale up and support the growth of alternative green technology supply chains.

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Energy News Beat

​Some environmental advocates are striking a new tone as they urge skeptical neighbors to see the larger climate benefits of a proposed port that would help build future offshore wind farms in the Gulf of Maine.

The fast-warming area of the North Atlantic is thought to have one of the world’s best wind resources in its deeper waters. Tapping into this huge renewable energy potential will likely require massive floating turbines, with a deepwater port to help construct and assemble them before they’re towed out to sea.

A state announcement on one of two potential port sites in the small Midcoast town of Searsport is expected in the coming weeks. Amid a record spate of destructive extreme weather events, conservation groups are stepping up calls for the public to back some version of the port project for the climate’s sake.

“The number one best thing to do for the environment is to get turbines in the water and start generating renewable energy,” said Nick Lund, the advocacy and outreach manager for Maine Audubon. “This is a larger question than just Searsport, because it really does affect all of us.”

Offshore wind is crucial to Maine’s goals for reducing its carbon emissions, Lund said, and offers a unique chance for the state to contribute its resources to the national and global fight against climate change.

Maine Audubon, which predates and is separate from the National Audubon Society, hopes to reframe the debate around the port and offshore wind in general as more than a “lesser of two evils,” he said.

“This type of turbine is not something that can be built elsewhere,” Lund said. “This is a real opportunity to generate a ton of energy completely locally. Other states, other countries don’t have this opportunity.”

Maine depends more on carbon-intensive fuel oil for home heating than any other state, importing it largely from Texas, Louisiana and Canada, according to federal data. The state has encouraged residents to switch to electric heat pumps and hopes to get 80% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

But a boom in local solar projects has raised land-use concerns, and residents have repeatedly pushed back on transmission lines planned to bring Canadian hydropower or land-based wind from Northern Maine onto the regional grid. Some Maine fishing groups also oppose offshore wind development.

Lund said Maine Audubon is trying to turn toward saying “yes” rather than “no” to projects with a net benefit for the climate. The group has spent years developing habitat-minded siting guidance for solar developers, and executive director Andy Beahm wrote a newspaper commentary in 2023 urging support for offshore wind and calling climate change “the No. 1 threat to Maine wildlife and habitat.”

Around the same time, the National Audubon Society put out a report supporting transmission build-out for climate reasons despite potential impacts to birds. Environmentalist Bill McKibben also wrote that summer that “some NIMBY (not in my backyard) passion will need to be replaced by some YIMBY (yes in my backyard) enthusiasm — or at least some acquiescence” in order to fight the climate crisis equitably.

In an interview soon after his commentary was published, Beahm acknowledged that localized energy development may feel new to many Mainers: “Maine is highly dependent on others for our energy,” he said. “As a consequence, we haven’t had to see a lot of the power infrastructure from our communities.”

But his group and others are increasingly arguing that this needs to change. If Maine can’t tap into its offshore wind potential, it could see far more land used for solar, Lund said — or could help drive fossil fuel growth in already overburdened environmental justice areas of Appalachia and the Gulf South.

“If we say no to everything here,” Lund said, “someone else, someone with less power — their land is being developed.”

It will take a rare kind of port to help build and deploy turbine assemblies that are expected to be taller than the Washington Monument, with blades and installation vessels more than 400 feet long, according to a 2021 port feasibility study by the state Department of Transportation.

“Those locations in Searsport are, by far, the sort of best available — certainly in Maine and in New England,” Lund said. “Without a deepwater port, we’re simply not going to have floating offshore wind in the time that we need.”

The state has zeroed in on two potential wind port sites in Searsport: Mack Point, a piece of shoreline that now partly houses a Sprague Energy oil and cargo terminal; and Sears Island, a state-owned conservation area popular for birding and outdoor recreation.

Sears Island is one of the largest undeveloped islands in Maine, managed by a 2009 conservation easement that set about a third of its area aside for a potential future port. The island was unsuccessfully eyed for a nuclear plant, a coal plant, a container port and an LNG terminal in decades past, according to a state committee that overcame “years of acrimony and controversy” to negotiate the easement.

The 2021 study listed Sears Island as a preferable wind port site, partly because building one at Mack Point would require costly dredging. But some Mainers have pushed back hard against the idea of this use for part of DOT’s Sears Island set-aside, with officials predicting protest “sleep-ins” if they go this route.

A state working group has spent more than a year considering ways to minimize Mack Point’s potential cost and dredging issues — with buy-in from the site’s current owner, Sprague — and recent editorials in Maine newspapers have supported it as a better choice over Sears Island.

“Locating the offshore wind port at Mack Point consolidates industry in a single location and removes unused physical remnants of outdated energy production that offshore wind intends to replace with clean, renewable, more sustainable energy production,” Sierra Club Maine director Pete Nichols wrote in the Portland Press Herald on Jan. 18.

Lund said Maine Audubon agrees that Mack Point is the preferable site, and that choosing it could help the state avoid costly legal challenges. “And,” he said, “I’m better with delay than I am with not getting it built at all — that’s really the worst outcome.”

He said his group is most interested in seeing the project move forward, and in working to mitigate and offset any environmental impacts wherever it’s located.

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Energy News Beat

The current transit deal is due to expire at the end of this year but Bratislava is negotiating to extend it, Prime Minister Robert Fico says

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UAE’s energy giant Adnoc is looking to order liquefied natural gas carriers for its planned LNG terminal in Al Ruwais, according to shipbuilding sources.

Sources told LNG Prime that Adnoc recently issued a tender inviting offers from yards in China and South Korea for six firm plus four optional standard-size LNG carrier newbuilds.

The vessels will feature the latest technologies and GTT’s Mark III Flex+ and NO96 Super+ membrane systems are being considered.

The sources said that the LNG carriers are expected to serve Adnoc’s second LNG terminal in Al Ruwais, but they did not provide any further information.

Adnoc Logistics & Services, a unit of Adnoc, is already working to renew its fleet of LNG carriers and it has six 175,000-cbm vessels on order at China’s Jiangnan Shipyard worth more than $1.2 billion.

The firm will take delivery of these vessels in 2025 and 2026.

These “LNG Jumbo” dual-fuel carriers will feature GTT’s Mark III Flex membrane system and a partial reliquefaction system.

Adnoc L&S’s existing fleet of Moss-type, steam turbine LNG carriers serves the company’s 6 mtpa LNG terminal on Das Island.

Last year, Adnoc announced it will build its second LNG terminal in Al Ruwais.

The firm previously planned to construct the facility in Fujairah and is yet to take a final investment decision on the project.

When completed, the project, which consists of two 4.8 mtpa LNG liquefaction trains with a total capacity of 9.6 mtpa, will more than double Adnoc’s LNG production capacity.

Last month, Adnoc signed a heads of agreement with a unit of Chinese independent gas distributor ENN to supply the latter with 1 mtpa of LNG for a period of 15 years from its planned terminal in Al Ruwais.

This is the first Ruwais LNG supply agreement.

The deliveries are expected to start in 2028, upon commencement of the facility’s commercial operations.

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Energy News Beat

​New Hampshire’s energy department is preparing to road-test a grant program meant to help disadvantaged cities and towns access the environmental and financial benefits of solar power.

The state plans to use $1.4 million from the 2021 federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to help fund the installation of solar projects up to 60 kilowatts on municipal buildings or land. The grant will cover up to 95% of the costs of a qualifying solar project for lower-income cities and towns and 60% for other municipalities.

In addition to cutting carbon emissions, solar can also make a community more resilient in case of power outages. And using it to power municipal facilities can save money that can be reinvested in public projects or used to hold down property tax rates in the long-term.

The funding application has been submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy, and New Hampshire is now in “wait-and-see mode,” said Joshua Elliott, director of policy and programs in the state energy department.

The state is also looking at the program as something of a trial run, to see if it makes sense to continue and expand the grant offering in the future.

“We’re looking at this program as almost the guinea pig to see what demand is out there, what can we do, what we can improve,” Elliott said. “Then we’ll use this process to inform what potentially a [larger] municipal program could look like.”

As a whole, New Hampshire lags the region in solar adoption. The state ranks 41st in the country for installed solar capacity, behind even lower-population New England states like Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association. State policies to encourage solar are limited, with incentives for residential solar maxing out at $1,000 per project and rebates for commercial solar limited to $10,000.

On the municipal level, though, many New Hampshire cities and towns are very interested in solar power. For example, in Hanover, a more affluent town and the home of Dartmouth College, solar arrays provide nearly all the power used by municipal facilities. Smaller towns and those with lower average incomes, however, often have a harder time realizing their solar goals.

New Hampshire property owners already have one of the highest property tax burdens in the country, so proposing that the residents of small, disadvantaged towns pay more to install solar is a big ask, even if there could be financial benefits down the line. Beyond the issue of funding, there are the logistics: researching options, hiring consultants, assessing different grant options.

“If you have the idea that you want solar on the town hall, you have to go from the idea to the implementation,” said Margaret Byrnes, executive director of the New Hampshire Municipal Association. “For municipalities that don’t have that internal staff, it’s a significant lift.”

The grant program aims to lighten that burden. And to maximize the benefits these towns can achieve, the grant guidelines encourage municipalities to skip entering into leasing arrangements and instead buy their solar arrays outright, so they retain the rights to sell renewable energy credits.

“We want all of those benefits flowing to the community itself,” Elliott said.

Colebrook, a town of roughly 2,000 people just 10 miles south of the Canadian border, is looking at the grant program as a potential way to fund a solar array on the roof of its town hall. Tourism is the main economic driver in the remote and scenic town, and there is little industry and few high-paying jobs. The median household income in town is just over $48,000, well below the state median of $91,000.

“We can’t just go out and ask for $150,000 from the town to foot the bill” for a solar project, said Colebrook town manager Tim Stevens. “Any time you have to go back to the town and ask for more money than you did before, that has a negative impact on them.”

Hinsdale, a small town near the state’s southern border, has plans to open its transfer station full-time and hopes to build a solar array on the site to help power the operation. A recent report, however, found that most residents’ property taxes had increased between 25% and 48% between 2018 and 2022, making it challenging to ask for yet more money. And there’s a bridge in town that needs to be rebuilt and other pressing infrastructure issues.

“Unfortunately, solar is not on that priority list,” said Josh Green, Hinsdale’s community development coordinator.

He estimates that a 60-kilowatt array at the transfer station would cost about $260,000. With the grant, the town would only have to pay about $13,000 of that total tab.

“The solar grant would definitely help the town out tremendously,” Green said.

Though the planned grant program is modest in size — the total budget will likely be able to fund only a handful of projects — it is well-tailored to the needs of the state, said Melissa Elander of Clean Energy New Hampshire, a nonprofit advocacy group that has been working with municipalities in the northern part of the state to prepare for the launch of the grants.

“It’s a good fit to focus on smaller towns that often get forgotten in some of the larger grant programs,” she said. “I am thrilled that it’s going to be available at all.”

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Energy News Beat

The Dutch port of Rotterdam said its LNG bunkering volumes reached a record level in 2023 as prices dropped from 2022 and demand continues to increase.

Europe’s largest bunkering port reported LNG volumes of 619,243 cubic meters in 2023, a rise of 53 percent compared to 406,599 cbm in 2022 when volumes dropped considerably due to high prices.

However, LNG bunkering volumes also rose 2.6 percent compared to record 603,690 cbm in 2021.

During the fourth quarter last year, LNG bunkering volumes reached 148,933 cbm, down from the previous quarter’s 204,418 cbm.

The port of Rotterdam said that only its LNG bunkering volumes increased last year due to lower prices of the fuel.

Last year, shipping firms bunkered less fuel in the port Rotterdam with volumes reaching 9.9 million tonnes, down 6.7 percent from 10.6 million tonnes in 2022, it said.

The Rotterdam port is home to Gasunie’s and Vopak’s Gate LNG import terminal.

Gate LNG also handled a record number of vessels last year mainly due to a rise in demand for LNG as fuel.

Gate’s small-scale jetty, which launched operations in 2016, handled record 151 vessels, loading close to 900,000 cbm of LNG last year.

Earlier this month, classification society DNV said that there are now 1006 LNG-powered vessels in operation on order, showing the fuel’s continued importance in the maritime energy transition.

These statistics do not include dual-fuel LNG carriers and smaller inland vessels.

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Energy News Beat

Ankara has assured Russia it will continue to abide by the Montreux Convention, the foreign minister says

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Kiev is now only fighting to prolong the life of Zelensky’s regime, that’s why it’s doing stupid things

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This is funny, in a central-bank kind of way.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The Fed confirmed today in a press release at 7 PM EST that its infamous tool to deal with the March 2023 bank-panic and bank-liquidity crisis, the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), will cease making new loans to banks, as scheduled, on March 11. Existing loans can continue for their term of up to one year. This decision was disclosed on January 9 by Michael Barr, Fed Vice Chair for Supervision, at a panel appearance.

What’s new – the funny part – is that the Fed also said that, “effective immediately,” it would shut down the arbitrage with which banks have been gaming the BTFP to make some extra bucks. We’ve been discussing this BTFP arbitrage for a while, including here with a chart. The whole thing was a hoot.

The BTFP was conceived in all haste over a weekend in March 2023 and was announced on Sunday after two regional banks, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, had collapsed and were shut down by regulators on Friday, with visions of contagion turning this into a full-fledged financial crisis.

But the BTFP had a fatal flaw: under certain conditions, the interest rate that the Fed charges on loans at the BTFP (the rate is market-based) could fall substantially below the interest rate the Fed pays on its reserve balances (the Fed sets this rate).

And that’s exactly what happened starting early November during rate-cut mania. It opened up a riotous risk-free arbitrage opportunity that banks took advantage of.

Today the Fed had had it with this deal and shut down the arbitrage for new loans “extended from now through program expiration.” In the press release, it says that the interest rate to borrow at the BTFP will be “no lower” than the interest rate on reserves. And with this change, the arbitrage becomes unprofitable for new loans. The press release:

“As the program ends, the interest rate applicable to new BTFP loans has been adjusted such that the rate on new loans extended from now through program expiration will be no lower than the interest rate on reserve balances in effect on the day the loan is made.

“This rate adjustment ensures that the BTFP continues to support the goals of the program in the current interest rate environment. This change is effective immediately. All other terms of the program are unchanged.”

On the new BTFP term sheet released today, applicable to new loans, the rate calculation paragraph now reads (I marked the new language in bold; IORB = interest on reserve balances):

“The rate for term advances will be the one-year overnight index swap rate plus 10 basis points, provided that the rate may not be lower than the IORB rate in effect on the day the advance is made; the rate will be fixed for the term of the advance on the day the advance is made.

When the worker bees at the Fed hashed out the terms for the BTFP over the weekend (eating pizza and sleeping on the floor?), they overlooked the possibility that the market-based interest rate to borrow at the BTFP – the one-year overnight index swap rate, plus 10 basis points – could fall substantially below the Fed-set interest rate that banks earn on their reserve balances.

In March 2023, the rate at the BTFP was close to the rate the Fed paid on reserves. But during rate-cut mania starting in early November, Treasury yields from one-year on up plunged, and related yields plunged in parallel. By mid-December, banks could borrow at the BTFP below 4.8%, and then leave the cash in their reserve accounts at the Fed and earn 5.40%. Risk free, hassle-free income for nothing.

From July through October, the BTFP balance was around $110 billion. But at the beginning of November, it began to surge. Last week, it jumped by a $14 billion. Since November 1, it has jumped by nearly 50%, or by $52 billion, to $161 billion.

On Thursday, the Fed will release the new figures through Wednesday, and the balance likely jumped again. But that should be the last increase in the BTFP balance because the door to make money on this circus has effectively closed now:

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