"Shadow Diplomats." The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
ARRANGEMENT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
AND
THE INSTITUT DE RADIOPROTECTION ET DE SURETE NUCLEAIRE OF FRANCE
FOR THE EXCHANGE OF TECHNICAL INFORMATION AND COOPERATION
IN THE FIELD OF NUCLEAR SAFETY RESEARCH
++++++++++++
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is proud to bring you our latest investigation:
Today, we’re publishing our first installment of the Shadow Diplomats investigation, with more investigative stories by ICIJ, ProPublica, and 160 journalists in 46 countries to come in the next few weeks.
++++++++++++
The National. Europe's energy security measures could lead to fuel starvation in developing countries
The continent's gas hunger has hit world's poorest countries, which have effectively been shut out of the LNG market
By Robin M Mills
Imagine that Karachi and Dhaka are each served by a single power plant. Germany demands for its own political reasons that the plants are turned off, spends heavily to enforce this, and both cities are plunged into darkness.
It sounds incredible — but current European policy has the same effect.
In the face of Russia’s floundering campaign in Ukraine, its near?shutdown of gas supplies to Europe, impending bans on Russian oil, and September’s explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines, European capitals have elevated their security of supply above all. They rightly blame Moscow for denying food to poorer countries, but do not face up to the?energy starvation?their policies impose on others.
After much angst, Berlin finally decided to keep two of its three remaining nuclear power plants on standby — but not generating — until April. The country has fired up its mothballed coal power stations, and is building at least six terminals to import liquefied natural gas. Europe has bought and stored so much gas that, after prices hit all-time records in August, they are now at barely a quarter of that level.
Germany, the UK and others have announced enormous financial?support packages?to households to cope with their energy bills. Spain’s gas consumption for electricity almost doubled in October as it capped fuel prices. Meanwhile, efforts on energy efficiency and conservation have been mostly voluntary and weak.
In response, the LNG price has become simply unaffordable for South Asian countries. Or, when they are ready to pay, they find that the seller has diverted the cargo to Europe, realising higher profits that more than cover the modest contractual penalty for non-delivery. Pakistan issued a tender in August for LNG supplies from this December to December 2028 — and received no bids at all.
Last month, Bangladesh endured its worst power cut since 2014, when about 80 per cent of the country lost electricity.?Pakistan has suffered endemic power cuts?this year, worsening a political and economic crisis.
So how can lower-income countries in South Asia and Africa satisfy their own energy needs?
Can they outbid Europe for LNG? No, since the continent is richer, and will provide financial backing to make sure its citizens don’t go cold. Berlin is providing a €200 billion aid package, of which €31 billion will go to energy trader Uniper, nationalising it and making sure it can stand behind its supply contracts to German utilities.
Much global LNG supply is also sewn up by other wealthy countries in East Asia — Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — under long-term contracts. By the end of next year, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy and other European nations will have added 50 billion cubic metres of?LNG import capacity,?equivalent to a third of prior gas supplies from Russia, at a time that hardly any new LNG export plants are starting up.
Can they develop their own fossil fuel resources? No, because international financial institutions, banks and insurers have increasingly forbidden lending to oil, gas and coal projects, either at government insistence or because of their own “net-zero” policies. Developing countries are usually reliant on external financing for such ventures.
International oil companies, especially those in Europe, have restricted their new ventures to a handful of the most promising countries. The few projects that do progress are export-orientated, with creditworthy customers in Europe or East Asia, not focused on bringing energy to African or South Asian consumers.
What if developing countries build gas or coal-fuelled power or industry with?carbon capture and storage?to eliminate most emissions? Unfortunately, that runs into three problems. First, out of 197 CCS projects operational or in different stages of development worldwide in the Global CCS Institute’s latest report, only six are in middle-income Asian countries, and those are relatively wealthier ones — Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Timor-Leste. There is not a single venture in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or anywhere in Africa.
Secondly, such projects in developing countries would still fall foul of anti-fossil lending rules. Even if the plant itself qualified, the coal mine or gasfield that feeds it would not. Yet Pakistan has major undeveloped coalfields, as do southern African countries, while unused gas resources abound across Africa.
Thirdly, in Europe and the US, generous tax credits or carbon prices, amounting to $65-85 per tonne, encourage CCS. Developing countries do not have access to these, while international carbon offsets price at $20 per tonne at best, much too low to cover the cost of CCS projects, and usually don’t include CCS as eligible anyway.
So that leaves?renewable energy.?But despite abundant sun, wind and land, the Mena region accounts for just 3 per cent, and sub-Saharan Africa 2 per cent, of 2030 renewables targets. Clean energy investment in developing countries needs to step up from $150 billion in 2020 to more than $1 trillion in 2030. But as debate heats up at the Cop27 conference in Egypt, wealthy nations are still falling well short of their climate financing commitments.
Such policies are not just morally unjustified — they undermine Europe’s own critical environmental and energy security objectives. Countries that have nothing to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or the decade of European energy policy failures that preceded it, are made to bear the burden. This in turn damages attempts by Berlin, Brussels, London and Washington to build a diplomatic front.
To solve this, Europe needs to reflect on the wider impacts of its scramble for energy security. It should be pragmatic rather than rigidly ideological on fossil fuels, and create mechanisms to support carbon capture internationally. It could work with the existing programmes of Gulf states, notably the UAE and Saudi Arabia, for a massive scale-up of renewable energy in developing countries. Rather than turning others’ lights off, Europe will gain by illuminating them.
Robin M Mills is CEO of Qamar Energy, and author of 'The Myth of the Oil Crisis'
领英推荐
++++++++++
The Hill: Pence’s new book details Trump’s lengthy Jan. 6 pressure campaign
Then-Vice President Mike Pence was getting on the phone with then-President Trump the evening of Dec. 13, 2020, just as chatter was exploding on the internet that he could delay or block the certification of Trump’s electoral loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
In his new memoir, “So Help Me God,” Pence wrote about how Trump told him during that call that he should decline to participate in Congress’s certification of that vote if he wanted to be “popular.”
“He told me I was trending number two on Twitter as people began speculating whether I was going to participate in the January 6 proceedings at all,” Pence wrote. The Hill obtained an advance copy of the memoir.
“Given the widening concern of so many people about election fraud, supporters around the country were arguing that I should decline to participate altogether. The president concurred,” Pence wrote.
“‘If you want to be popular, don’t do it,’ he suggested,” Pence’s memoir stated.
“He then went a step further: I might convene the session and then at some point walk out. ‘It would be the coolest thing you could do,’ he said jokingly, ‘otherwise you’re just another RINO’… We both laughed at the controversy and his crack,” Pence continued. “At that point, there was no angst between us and there was no talk of rejecting electors or returning votes to the states.”
But the friction grew in the following days and weeks, Pence wrote in his book, which is set to be released Tuesday.
For much of the book, Pence wrote extensively about the Trump administration’s policy achievements, its controversies, and his role as an “active” and loyal sidekick to Trump.?
But in the book’s final chapters, which revolve around the aftermath of the 2020 election, Pence described weeks of persistent pressure from Trump and his allies who insisted he had the authority to intervene in the electoral certification on Jan. 6, 2021.
Shortly after the election, Pence grew concerned that Trump was relying on the legal counsel of Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and not his White House and campaign lawyers such as Pat Cipollone, Matt Morgan and Justin Clark. But it was Dec. 5, 2020, when Trump first raised the possibility of challenging the election results in the House, Pence said.?
From there, Pence detailed numerous instances of Trump pushing him to delay the Jan. 6 certification, to return electors to the states or to boycott the proceedings altogether.
On Dec. 21, Pence said he advised Trump that once they had exhausted their legal options and the vote was certified, Trump should go on a “thank-you tour” to speak to supporters and then run again in 2024.
On Christmas Day of 2020, Pence said he called Trump as he had in previous years, but the conversation quickly turned to talk of the election.
“As we ended the call, he said with a sigh, ‘If we prove we won a state and [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi [D-Calif.] certifies anyway… I don’t think we can let that happen.’”
“‘You’ll figure it out,’ he added,” Pence wrote.
Pence spoke again with Trump on New Year’s Day of 2021, when the president “came on strong” about why Pence had opposed a lawsuit from Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) that sought to establish the vice president had the power to reject electoral votes.
After Pence explained that he did not believe the argument in the lawsuit was consistent with the Constitution, Trump told him, “You’re too honest” and predicted that “hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts.”
On Jan. 2, Trump referred Pence to attorney John Eastman for the first time, Pence said. In the process, Trump suggested to Pence that he could delay the certification of the Electoral College votes by 10 days.
The next day, Pence wrote, Trump called him in the morning and said, “You have the absolute right to reject electoral votes.”
“‘You can be a historical figure,’ he said, his tone growing more confrontational, ‘but if you wimp out, you’re just another somebody,’” Pence wrote of the conversation, adding that he told Trump he was going to do the right thing and follow the Constitution.
After holding a rally for Georgia Senate candidates on Jan. 4, Pence attended an Oval Office meeting with Trump, Giuliani, Eastman and others. Pence said he pressed Eastman on his legal theories and argued to Trump that even Eastman was not certain that the vice president had the authority to return electoral votes to the states.
That night, Trump held a rally in Georgia, where he said, “I hope that our great vice president comes through for us! Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him so much. No, the one thing you know about Mike, he always plays it straight.”
On Jan. 5, Trump made multiple appeals to Pence about preventing the certification of Biden’s victory. Trump sent a tweet that day saying Pence had the power “to reject fraudulently chosen electors.”
In an Oval Office conversation that day, Trump told Pence he had the power to “decertify,” which Pence pushed back on. At that point, Pence wrote, Trump called his vice president “naive” and suggested Pence lacked the courage needed to reject the votes. Pence responded that he had courage and Trump knew it.
“Hearing that, he relented and said with more than a little sadness, ‘Well, I’m gonna have to say you did a great disservice,’” Pence wrote.
“With that I stood up, buttoned my jacket, and said, ‘Mr. President, you need to say what you need to say, but you know, other than your family, no one in this administration has been more loyal to you than me,’” Pence continued.
Trump called Pence twice more before the end of the day on Jan. 5 and in the evening issued a statement claiming Trump and Pence were in “total agreement” that the vice president had the authority to decertify the election results, Pence wrote, contradicting their earlier conversations.
Pence and Trump had one final phone call on the morning of Jan. 6 after Pence had issued a statement outlining why he would not intervene in the certification process. On that call, Pence wrote, Trump “laid into me.”
“‘You’ll go down as a wimp,’ he predicted, adding ‘If you do that, I made a big mistake five years ago!’” Pence wrote.
Pence went on to describe the events of Jan. 6, describing how rioters breached the Capitol and he was hurried off the Senate floor. He recounted how he refused to leave the Capitol grounds and instead coordinated with congressional leaders from a loading dock under the Capitol as a mob ran through the building, some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”
The former vice president and Trump did not speak for several days after the events of Jan. 6, though the two eventually met in the Oval Office, where Pence told Trump he was angry about the day’s events and said he’d be praying for the president.
Ultimately, Pence wrote, it was Trump’s ongoing fixation on the 2020 election and his outrage at those who stood in the way of his attempts to cling to power that led to a complete break in communication between the two men.
“Since leaving office, people have often asked me about my relationship with President Trump. I tell them I will always be grateful that he chose me to be his vice president,” Pence wrote. “He was my president and he was my friend. For four years, we had a close working relationship. It did not end well.?
“But as you have read on these pages, we parted amicably when our service to the nation drew to a close,” Pence continued. “In the months that followed, we spoke from time to time, but when the president returned to the rhetoric that he was using before that tragic day and began to publicly criticize those of us who defended the Constitution, I decided it would be best to go our separate ways.”
The End++++++++++++