Recently described as "250 grams of magic and perfection" by President Emmanuel Macron, the French baguette is at risk from surging energy prices, with some bakers warning they can no longer afford to fire up their ovens.
Already struggling with sharp hikes in the price of butter, flour and sugar over the last year and a half, the prized industry is now alarmed by astronomical electricity bills looming in 2023.
"It was absolutely inconceivable to me that a power bill could make me close my shop and stop my life here," Julien Bernard-Regnard, a distraught baker in the village of Bourgaltroff in eastern France, told AFP by phone.
He is still coming to terms with closing his doors for the final time in early December having decided that continuing his business, built up over the last five years, was impossible given the cost of electricity.
"I had to renew my contract at the beginning of September and it increased by three and half times," he said.
His monthly power costs rose from around 400 euros ($420) a month to nearly 1,500, while shopping around for an alternative supplier brought no relief.
"I'm in lots of online groups with other bakers and on social media. There are bakeries closing every day. Some have bills that are multiplied by 10 or 12. There's someone else 40 kilometres (25 miles) from me who's just shut down," he added.
In a country where the availability of crusty daily bread is a political issue fraught with danger for any government, Macron's cabinet is keen to show it is doing everything possible to safeguard the nation's 35,000 bread and croissant makers. READ MORE...
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Saturday slammed President Joe Biden for pledging to shut down America’s coal plants in a speech in California.
“President Biden’s comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs,” Manchin (D-W.Va.) said in a statement just days ahead of the midterm elections.
“Comments like these are the reason the American people are losing trust in President Biden. … It seems his positions change daily depending on the audience and politics of the day.” READ MORE...
A man walks past OPEC headquarters in Vienna on Tuesday on the eve of the 45th meeting of the Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee and the 33rd OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting. The in-person meeting of OPEC members led by Saudi Arabia and allied members headed by Russia will be the first in the Austrian capital since the spring of 2020. Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images
A supply cut could also exacerbate tensions between Saudi Arabia and the U.S., where President Biden has been trying to rein in prices at the gas pump ahead of the midterm elections.OPEC+, formed in 2016, includes the 13 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries members and 11 other non-OPEC members. READ MORE...
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China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, is on the cusp of a clean energy transition as new solar power becomes cheaper than coal throughout most of the country, according to a new study.
By 2023, China will have the capacity to deploy solar power nationwide at the same price as coal, and currently has that ability in three-quarters of the country, according to a joint study from Harvard, Tsinghua, Nankai and Renmin universities.
“Today subsidy-free solar power has become cheaper than coal power in most parts of China” in a trajectory spreading across the country, study coauthor Xi Lu said in a statement.
While the country is a long way from tapping that theoretical potential, the new research highlights “a crucial energy transition point” at which solar becomes a “cheaper alternative to coal-fired electricity and a more grid-compatible option,” said co-author Michael McElroy.
By 2060, the study found, China will have the capacity to meet 43 percent of its power needs with solar energy that costs less than 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour — less than half of China’s 2019 price for coal energy, and less than a quarter the current average U.S. energy cost.
That projection is much faster than previous studies, which researchers say failed to account for the way that China’s growing solar sector — which now represents a third of total global solar production — has benefited from technical advances and economies of scale.
The report comes ahead of the global climate summit in Scotland next month, where China’s plans to transition away from coal will be a major factor in the world’s ability to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
One key accelerant of China’s solar growth is the “cost of capital:” how much solar developers have to pay in interest or dividends to secure funding for new projects.
This number plummeted 63 percent in China between 2011 and 2018, even as government subsidies fell away, researchers said. READ MORE...
