Wednesday, January 25, 2023

LIKE THE IRS
Depleted Under Trump, a 'Traumatized' EPA Struggles With Its Mission


Lisa Friedman
Tue, January 24, 2023 

A coal-fired power station in Euharlee, Ga., Oct. 19, 2022. (Kendrick Brinson/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — The nation’s top environmental agency is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration. The chemicals chief said her staff can’t keep up with a mounting workload. The enforcement unit is prosecuting fewer polluters than at any time in the past two decades.

And now this: The stressed-out, stretched-thin Environmental Protection Agency is scrambling to write about a half-dozen highly complex rules and regulations that are central to President Joe Biden’s climate goals.

The new rules have to be enacted within the next 18 months — lightning speed in the regulatory world — or they could be overturned by a new Congress or administration.

The regulations are already delayed months past EPA’s own self-imposed deadlines, raising concerns from supporters in Congress and environmental groups. “It’s very fair to say we are not where we hoped we’d be,” said Miles Keogh, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents most state and local air regulators.

As staffing at the EPA thinned out, the workload only increased, both the agency and its critics say.

Career employees are being “worked to death,” said Betsy Southerland, a former top EPA scientist. “They’re under the greatest pressure they’ve ever been.”

Biden administration officials insist the agency has delivered more environmental protections than any previous presidency and listed dozens of new policies, including the creation of a high-level office focused for the first time on addressing racial disparities when it comes to environmental hazards.

The agency’s administrator, Michael S. Regan, has promised that new regulations being written by his staff now will be made public by spring. Agency officials said that the EPA has stepped up its recruitment efforts and has purchased software that has helped it identify more potential job candidates, particularly from universities.

“The agency is moving further and faster than ever before,” Dan Utech, Regan’s chief of staff, said in a statement. He added that accomplishments had come “despite depleted staffing levels, persistent funding challenges and a previous administration that left the agency neglected and scientifically compromised.”

The EPA is at an unusual juncture. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and the climate law enacted last year have begun to pump $90 billion into the agency over the next 10 years for climate projects such as $1.5 billion for new technologies to monitor and reduce methane emissions from oil and gas wells, $5 billion for states to purchase low-emission school buses, and $3 billion to cut pollution at ports. For the first time the EPA has “a little bit of walking-around money,” Regan joked to staff at a recent meeting.

But experts said they worry the EPA’s regulatory and enforcement work is taking a back seat to issuing grants.

“EPA is a regulatory agency, and I worry the huge piles of money they now have to administer and manage could end up obscuring the regulatory work the statutes say they have to do,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group.

And time is running out.

Biden wants to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions roughly in half this decade in order to avoid the most severe climate disruptions. Analysts say that even with the new climate law, the president can’t achieve his goal without new regulations designed to cut carbon dioxide and other pollutants from power plants, cars and trucks.

The process from proposing a regulation to enacting it can take months, and the current delays may mean that some rules are not completed until next year. Under the Congressional Review Act, lawmakers can repeal any regulation within 60 legislative days of being finalized with a simple majority vote. So any final rule issued in late 2024 could be repealed by Republicans if they maintain control of the House and pick up seats in the Senate in the November 2024 elections.

Moreover, Biden administration climate rules are also likely to face legal challenges. If a new administration is elected in 2024, it might opt not to defend the rules in court.

A recent report card from Evergreen, an environmental group, found the EPA was behind its own deadlines on nine key environmental regulations, including limits on power plant emissions of mercury and other toxic substances, ozone standards, and curtailing the storage of coal ash to avoid spills and contamination. Most worrisome, climate advocates said, is that the agency has yet to propose rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new gas-fired power plants and existing coal and gas plants — measures that energy analysts say will be necessary to eliminate fossil fuels from the electricity sector by 2035 as Biden has pledged to do.

In a recent interview, Regan said his agency has recently been reassessing its regulatory plans. The millions of dollars now available through the climate law to make it cheaper and easier for utilities and automobile manufacturers to move away from fossil fuels has led the agency to consider whether it could impose more stringent emissions goals than initially conceived, he said. That would move the power and transportation sectors of the economy even faster away from fossil fuels. He said developing the legal and economic justification for such regulations would take time but was nearing completion.

“This spring, you’re going to see a number of actions taken by EPA,” Regan said.

Despite the billions earmarked for climate programs, EPA remains underfunded and understaffed when it comes to its other obligations, including enforcing environmental laws and evaluating chemicals to ensure they don’t pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.

The nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project recently found that federal environmental enforcement was slipping under Biden. EPA’s civil cases against polluters hit a two-decade low in 2022, with 72 such enforcement cases closed in court. That’s fewer than during the Trump administration, which bristled against restrictions on industry yet closed an average of 94 enforcement cases per year. The Obama administration averaged 210 per year, the report found. EPA officials said they were focused on protecting heavily polluted communities by increasing inspections and targeting the most serious violations.

Industries regulated by the EPA are also frustrated, saying the agency is taking too long to determine whether new and existing chemicals pose an unreasonable risk to the environment or human health.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents companies such as Dow, DuPont and ExxonMobil Chemical, is frustrated by “constant delays and lack of transparency in how resources are being deployed,” according to a statement from Kimberly Wise White, vice president of regulatory and scientific affairs at the trade group.

Michal Freedhoff, who leads the EPA’s chemical unit, told Congress recently that the office of chemical safety would fall short of its obligations and miss many “significant statutory deadlines.” She blamed the fact that after a 2016 law significantly increased the agency’s duties, the EPA under the Trump administration never sought the resources from Congress that were required to perform the work.

In fact, former President Donald Trump tried each year to slash the EPA budget by at least 30%. Highly skilled scientists and other experts left the agency as the Trump administration dismantled science advisory panels, disregarded scientific evidence and weakened protections against pollution.

“They beat down the EPA workforce; a lot of people left dispirited,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., chair of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, which oversees the EPA.

The result is that the EPA’s chemical safety office is way behind, Freedhoff told Congress. Attracting and retaining staff have been difficult because of the heavy workload, she said.

Carper said he was “impatient,” particularly with the regulatory delays, and had expressed that to Regan personally.

The EPA is hiring and, in the past two years, has increased its payroll by 3%, up to 14,844 employees. But that has brought total staffing levels to slightly more than when Ronald Reagan was president.

Staffing at the EPA peaked in 2004 during the George W. Bush administration, when there were 17,611 employees, according to the agency. Those levels ebbed and flowed slightly, but began to take a sharp dip during the Obama administration amid Republican control of the House and Senate.

When Trump entered the White House, the EPA had 15,408 employees. The following year it dropped to 14,172 employees, a level that stood more or less steady until the Biden administration.

It was only last month that the agency received its first significant budget increase in years, an additional $576 million, for enforcement and compliance, as well as clean air, water and toxic chemical programs.

Max Stier, head of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to make government more effective, said the EPA faced a “consequential hurdle” to both accomplishing the long list of rules that Biden has promised and to expanding further to make sure money from the new climate law gets spent effectively.

“You have an organization that was at some level traumatized to begin with, that was facing difficulties created over many, many years of divestment, and now you have a new set of requirements that are going to call for new capabilities,” he said. “They’re going to have to build up their strength, and that does not happen overnight.”

© 2023 The New York Times Company
Biden rolls out 'Renters Bill of Rights' as lawmakers push for federal rent control laws

Jennifer Schonberger
·Senior Reporter
Wed, January 25, 2023 

In the face of sky-high rents, President Joe Biden is rolling out a new set of principles the White House is calling a "Renters Bill of Rights" in an effort to improve rent affordability and protections for tenants.

The president is directing the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to examine limits on rent increases for future investments and actions promoting renter protections. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have been tapped to root out practices that unfairly prevent applicants and tenants from accessing or staying in housing.

This rollout comes as progressive Democrats have asked Biden to direct different agencies, including the FTC, to limit rent increases. While rent control is common in some cities, there has never been federal residential rent control.

Nearly 50 progressive lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), sent a letter to Biden earlier this month urging the president to take executive action to protect tenants from rising rents.


Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) meets with (L-R) Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), near the entrance to the Capitol Building on August 03, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

"In the absence of robust investments in fair and affordable housing, it is clear that additional timely executive action is needed to address the urgent issue of historically high rental costs and housing instability," the lawmakers wrote. "…We urge your Administration to pursue all possible strategies to end corporate price gouging in the real estate sector."

Specifically, lawmakers had called on the president to direct the FTC to issue new regulations defining excessive rent increases and enforce actions against rent gouging, suggestions that are aggressive than what the administration has so far put forth. The letter also asked to have FHFA put in place rent protection for tenants living in properties financed with government-backed mortgage properties, which is more closely aligned with what the president outlined on Wednesday.

In Wednesday's announcement, the administration also sought to rally state and local governments — as well as the private sector — to protect renters.

The Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority and Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, for instance, have agreed to cap annual rental increases to 5% per year for federal- or state-subsidized affordable housing.

In the private sector, the National Association of Realtors has also agreed to put new resources towards property managers in their network to promote practices like advertising to prospective tenants that Housing Choice Vouchers are accepted at their property, providing information about rental assistance, and using alternative credit scores for applicants without a detailed credit history.

Despite Wednesday's action, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Sen. Warren think the actions fall short.

"We believe that the administration can go significantly further to help tenants struggling to pay rent as soon as next week," Bowman said. "We need actions that will urgently address skyrocketing housing costs, keep people housed, and rein in corporate profiteering...I look forward to continuing to work with the Biden Administration on this issue."

Bowman said he plans to work with colleagues in Congress to work on legislation to address high rents.

The limits of FTC power


In advance of receiving the letter, the White House held several conversations with staff from Rep. Bowman and Sen. Warren’s offices about ensuring rental markets are fair and affordable for renters. Lawmakers argued the FTC already has the power to limit rent increases, given Congress has granted the agency power to police unfair and deceptive acts and practices. The argument is that rent hikes which are not proportional to higher costs for the landlord are unfair or deceptive.

But analysts are skeptical the FTC could impose rent controls and that courts would uphold these policies if put in place.

"The Supreme Court is more conservative. It is less inclined to let agencies assert authorities that Congress did not explicitly give them. Congress never empowered the FTC to limit how much residential rents may increase," Cowen analyst Jaret Seiberg said in a recent note. "It is why we would expect the courts to reject this type of regime."

Seiberg also questioned how a federal regime would actually work, given costs vary from city to city and buildings may get remodeled or upgraded. "The FTC is a relatively small agency," Seiberg added. "We don't see how it could account for all this in a way that could survive court challenges."

While legislation could accomplish this, Seiburg said he doesn't see Congress adopting federal rent control.

Rent prices rose 7.45% year over year in November, according to the latest available data from the Rent Report, the slowest annual rise over the last 15 months. Still, this increase is more than triple the 2.2% annual rent increase seen during the same month two years ago.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
One of Wall Street’s most feared short-selling research firms just accused Asia’s richest man of a multibillion-dollar fraud


Chloe Taylor
Wed, January 25, 2023 


Asia’s wealthiest person saw his fortune take a hit on Wednesday, after a famed U.S. short seller accused him of “pulling the largest con in corporate history.”

In a report published on Tuesday, Hindenburg Research said Adani Group and its founder Gautam Adani – one of the richest people in the world – had engaged in “a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.”

Adani serves as the Indian conglomerate’s chairman.


Hindenburg Research has a history of shining a light on corporate malpractice, successfully predicting the demise or exposing the shortcomings of several companies, including Nikola, Riot Blockchain and China Metal Resources Utilization.

It announced on Tuesday that it had concluded a two-year investigation into Adani Group, which involved speaking with dozens of insiders, including former senior executives, as well as reviewing thousands of documents and carrying out “diligence site visits” in several countries.

‘Precarious financial footing’

Adani Group’s aggressive expansion efforts have seen it rack up massive debts.

The firm’s financial problems have been widely reported on, but Hindenburg warned that the company’s use of its “inflated stock” as loan collateral was “putting the entire group on precarious financial footing.”

However, the problems with Adani Group’s finances were much deeper than its stock being overpriced, Hindenburg said.

Through its wide-reaching investigations, Hindenburg said it had uncovered a “vast labyrinth of offshore shell entities” being managed by Adani’s older brother, Vinod.

Thirty-eight of those shell companies were in Mauritius, the report claimed, with others discovered in Cyprus, the UAE, Singapore and the Caribbean.

“The shells seem to serve several functions, including stock parking/stock manipulation and laundering money through Adani’s private companies onto the listed companies’ balance sheets in order to maintain the appearance of financial health and solvency,” Hindenburg’s report said. “This offshore shell network also seems to be used for earnings manipulation.”

One offshore fund had allocated around $3 billion almost exclusively to shares of Adani Group companies, Hindenburg’s report also claimed.

A former trader at the fund reportedly said it was obvious the Adanis controlled those shares, but that the fund had been “intentionally structured to conceal their ultimate beneficial ownership.”

In India, shares of publicly listed companies that are held by those involved with establishing or controlling the business must be disclosed by law.

The rules also dictate that listed firms have at least 25% of their shares held by “non-promoters” in order to mitigate manipulation and insider trading.

“Four of Adani’s listed companies are on the brink of the delisting threshold due to high promoter ownership,” the report alleged.

“Our research indicates that offshore shells and funds tied to the Adani Group comprise many of the largest ‘public’ (i.e., non-promoter) holders of Adani stock, an issue that would subject the Adani companies to delisting, were the Indian securities regulator’s rules enforced.”

As well as using offshore shell companies to hold stock, Hindenburg’s researchers also detailed how the family was using them to send money to their publicly traded firms.

“The funds then seem to be used to engineer Adani’s accounting (whether by bolstering its reported profit or cash flows), cushioning its capital balances in order to make listed entities appear more creditworthy, or simply moved back out to other parts of the Adani empire where capital is needed,” they said.

They noted that Adani’s personal fortune had been boosted over the past three years by Adani Group stock price appreciation, with its seven core firms seeing an average price rise of 819% over that period.

However, they argued that these elevated prices – and thus Adani’s net worth – could not be sustained.

“Even if you ignore the findings of our investigation and take the financials of Adani Group at face value, its seven key listed companies have 85% downside purely on a fundamental basis owing to sky-high valuations,” they said in Tuesday’s report.

‘Baseless allegations’

Representatives for the Adani Group did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment on Hindenburg’s investigation.

However, the organization publicly refuted the allegations on Wednesday, arguing that they had been made in an attempt to sabotage the success of Adani Enterprises’ upcoming Follow-on Public Offer (FPO), which is expected to go live on Friday, Jan. 27.

Last year, Adani Group announced it would inject more shares of Adani Enterprises – one of its public divisions – into the market after its stock price surged more than 3,300% in three years.

Since debuting on the stock market in the 1990s, shares of Adani Enterprises have seen their value rise by more than 50,000%.

On Wednesday, it was reported that the company’s $2.45 billion secondary share offering – India’s largest-ever FPO – was oversubscribed by anchor investors.

Initial bids included offers from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Citigroup and Morgan Stanleyaccording to news agency Reuters.

“The report is a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India’s highest courts,” the company’s CFO Jugeshinder Singh said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The Group has always been in compliance with all laws, regardless of jurisdiction, and maintains the highest standards of corporate governance,” he insisted.

“Our informed and knowledgeable investors are not influenced by one-sided, motivated and unsubstantiated reports with vested interests.”

Despite Singh’s assertion that “the investor community has always reposed faith in the Adani Group,” Hindenburg’s report triggered a massive sell-off of the corporation’s listed businesses on Wednesday.

On average, the group’s listed firms saw more than 5% wiped off of their value during Mumbai’s trading session on Wednesday, according to the Financial Times – amounting to a $10.8 billion hit on the companies’ combined market caps.

The retreat from the company’s stock also had wider implications for Indian businesses, generating a ripple effect that saw Indian shares as a whole take a downward turn.

What does Adani Group do?

Headquartered in Ahmedabad, Adani Group is an Indian corporation comprised of seven publicly traded companies.

It has interests in energy, infrastructure, agriculture and transport.

The company, founded by Gautam Adani in 1988, employs more than 23,000 people.

Who is Gautam Adani?

As his company’s stock nosedived on Wednesday, Adani personally lost almost $1 billion – or 0.8% – of his fortune, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, which ranks Adani as the fourth wealthiest person in the world.

Forbes’s list of the world’s richest people, which uses a slightly different methodology, puts Adani in third place – above Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Last year, Adani briefly held the title of the World’s Second Richest Person, as his fortune continued to climb while sinking U.S. tech stocks bit into the wealth of Bezos and other billionaires whose fortunes were tied to the success of Big Tech.

Bloomberg reported at the time that Adani’s fortune had risen more than anyone else’s in 2022.

Regardless of his position among the top five wealthiest people on earth, the self-made tycoon – who describes his company’s operations as “nation building” – is firmly the richest person in Asia, with a net worth of around $119 billion.

However, Adani’s phenomenal rise in wealth and power hasn’t been without controversy.

In the past, Adani’s close relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has led to allegations that his success has arisen from “brazen cronyism.”

The 60-year-old mogul controls India’s biggest port, Mundra Port, and acquired a 74% stake in Mumbai International Airport in 2020, according to Forbes, making him India’s biggest airport operator.

He also holds stakes in other airports around the country, after scooping up all six airports that were approved for privatization by the Indian government in 2018 after officials relaxed the rules about which companies were permitted to operate them.

Since 2020, his personal fortune has skyrocketed by more than 1,200%, data from Forbes shows.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Adani Group shares fall after Hindenburg report. What we know so far

Story by India Today Web Desk • 2h ago


Shares of seven listed Adani Group companies fell sharply between 1-9 per cent after a report by US-based investor research and activist short-seller firm, Hindenburg Research, led to panic among domestic investors.


Adani Group shares fall after Hindenburg report. What we know so far© Provided by India Today

Adani Group listed companies such as Adani Total Gas, Adani Enterprises, Adani Transmission, Adani Green Energy, Adani Ports, Adani Power and Adani Wilmar fell sharply and led to a cumulative market cap erosion of nearly Rs 1 lakh crore at the end of today's trading session.

In fact, shares of cement manufacturing firms Ambuja Cements and ACC – two companies acquired by Adani Group last year – also fell 6-7 per cent amid the broader selloff in Adani Group listed companies.

What did the Hindenburg report say?

The report by Hindenburg Research, released on January 24, 2023, suggested that Adani Group was "engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades".

Revealing the findings of its "two-year investigations", Hindenburg said companies under the Gautam Adani-owned conglomerate "have taken on substantial debt, including pledging shares of their inflated stock for loans, putting the entire group on precarious financial footing".

The report also said that Adani Group's seven key listed companies have an "85 per cent downside purely on a fundamental basis owing to sky-high valuations". In addition, the report also levelled allegations of fraud and stock manipulation against the group.

The report triggered massive panic in domestic stock markets, with listed Adani Group companies falling sharply. This also led to a nearly 1 per cent drop in benchmark equity indices Sensex and Nifty.

How Adani Group responded?


Related video: Hindenburg Research Short Position Triggers Adani Selloff (Bloomberg)
Duration 2:16

 

More videos


CNBCTV18Adani Group Stocks Fall In Trade After Reuters Report | Trading Hour | Business News | CNBC-TV18
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CNBCTV18Adani Group Stock Falls, Metal Prices Surge Over Production Concerns | Markets Today | CNBC-TV18
5:04



Adani Group released an official statement to rubbish allegations levelled by Hindenburg Research in its report. The group also questioned the timing of the report, released days before the Adani Enterprises FPO.

Adani Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh said, "We are shocked that Hindenburg Research published a report on January 24, 2023, without making any attempt to contact us or verify the factual matrix."

"The report is a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations that have been tested and rejected by India's highest courts," he said.

"The timing of the report's publication clearly betrays a brazen, mala fide intention to undermine the Adani Group's reputation with the principal objective of damaging the upcoming Follow-on Public Offering from Adani Enterprises, the biggest FPO ever in India," Singh added.

"Our informed, and knowledgeable investors are not influenced by one-sided, motivated and unsubstantiated reports with vested interests."

How analysts reacted to the Hindenburg report?

Analysts quoted in several media reports have questioned the timing of the report as many of the facts mentioned by Hindenburg report are already in the public domain and have not been proven.

"The timing of the report is suspicious," said Kranthi Bathini, Director, Equity Strategy, WealthMills, in an interview to Business Today TV.

"They (Hindenburg) could've brought this report under public domain months earlier. This timing is suspicious and as Adani Group's statement says they have mentioned that all these are malicious rumours about the group, and they stick to their corporate governance," Bathini said.

He also explained the reason behind the panic selling witnessed in Adani Group listed companies today and said, "As investors are aware, all the Adani Group shares are high beta stocks and their valuations always look strange. So, whenever these kinds of allegations surface, the stocks tumble."

However, he assured investors that there is no reason to panic and added that "existing investors can hold their positions and have nothing to worry about". He also reiterated that the allegations made in the report have not been proven to date.

Asia’s richest man slams short-seller’s fraud claims as ‘baseless’ and ‘malicious’

By Diksha Madhok, CNN
Published 8:18 AM EST, Wed January 25, 2023

Chairperson of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, Gautam Adani, speaks at the World Congress of Accountants in Mumbai on November 19, 2022.Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
New DelhiCNN —

India’s Adani Group on Wednesday denounced allegations of fraud made by US-based short seller Hindenburg Research as “baseless” and a “malicious combination of selective misinformation.”

Hindenburg Research published an investigation on billionaire Gautam Adani’s sprawling conglomerate on Tuesday, accusing it of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades.”

Hindenburg said it has taken a short position in companies in the Adani Group “through U.S.-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivative instruments.” Short sellers aim to make money by betting that the stock price of the companies they target will fall.

Adani’s business empire contains seven listed companies — in sectors ranging from ports to power stations — and shares in most of them fell by between 3% and more than 8% on Wednesday.

In its investigation, which Hindenburg said took two years to compile, the research firm questioned the “sky-high valuations” of Adani firms and said their “substantial debt” puts the entire group “on a precarious financial footing.”

The research firm concluded its report with 88 questions for the Adani Group. These range from asking for details on Adani’s offshore entities, to why it has “such a convoluted, interlinked corporate structure.”

CNN has not verified the claims in the report, and India’s stock market regulator did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shares of Adani’s companies have surged in the last few years, making him Asia’s richest man.

In a statement released a few hours after Hindenburg published its report, the Adani Group’s chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh said that Hindenburg did not make “any attempt to contact us or verify the factual matrix,” adding that the allegations made by the short seller are “stale, baseless and discredited.”

The conglomerate has faced scrutiny from Indian authorities in the past. In 2021, shares in Adani’s companies tumbled after The Economic Times newspaper said that foreign funds that hold stakes worth billions of dollars were frozen by the country’s National Securities Depository. The Adani Group called that report “blatantly erroneous.”

Nate Anderson, who founded Hindenburg Research, has made a name for himself in the past few years by targeting companies that he thinks are overvalued and have suspect financials. Anderson is best known for going after electric truck company Nikola in 2020, calling it an “intricate fraud,” and causing the firm’s stock to plunge sharply. In 2022, Nikola’s founder was convicted by a US jury of fraud in a case alleging he lied to investors about the company’s technology.

But some have accused Hindenburg of trying to push stocks lower with its research reports in order to make a profit.

Its report on the Adani Group comes at a sensitive time. Later this week, Adani Enterprises, the conglomerate’s flagship company, is aiming to raise 200 billion rupees ($2.5 billion) by issuing new shares.

Singh said that the “timing of the report’s publication clearly betrays a brazen, mala fide intention to undermine the Adani Group’s reputation with the principal objective of damaging the upcoming follow-on public offering.”

The conglomerate is also considering taking five new businesses to the stock market in the next two to five years.

A college dropout and a self-made industrialist, Adani is worth nearly $120 billion, making him the world’s fourth richest man, ahead of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. He is also seen as a close ally of India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi.

But this is not the first time analysts have expressed fear that the rapid expansion of his business comes with a huge risk. Adani’s juggernaut has been fueled by a $30 billion borrowing binge, making his business one of the most indebted in the country.

Last year, CreditSights, a research firm owned by Fitch Group, published a report about Adani Group titled “Deeply Overleveraged” in which it expressed strong concerns about its debt-funded growth plans.

Adani Group responded to CreditSights with a 15-page report, saying that the “leverage ratios” of its companies “continue to be healthy and are in line with the industry benchmarks in the respective sectors” and that they “have consistently de-levered” in the last nine years.

Adani stocks fall in India on fraud, stock manipulation claims

Nivrita GANGULY
Wed, 25 January 2023 


Asia's richest man Gautam Adani saw his net worth drop six billion dollars on Wednesday after a US investment firm accused him of "brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud".

Adani, 60, is the world's third-richest person, with an estimated fortune of around $120 billion and interests ranging from Australian coal mines to India's busiest ports.

But the magnate was the biggest loser on Forbes' real-time billionaires list on Wednesday, dropping nearly five percent -- or $6.4 billion -- of his net worth overnight as investors rushed to sell shares in his group of companies.


Hindenburg Research published a report on Tuesday alleging that Adani Group "has engaged in a brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades".

The firm said it had taken a short position in Adani Group companies after a two-year investigation based on interviews with former executives, site visits in multiple countries and document reviews.

Its report claims that Adani's elder brother Vinod "manages a vast labyrinth of offshore shell entities" in tax havens including Mauritius, Cyprus and several Caribbean islands.

Hindenburg said it had identified numerous instances of undisclosed related-party transactions and earnings manipulation "to maintain the appearance of financial health and solvency" of listed Adani companies.

The allegations come ahead of an ambitious $2.5 billion follow-on public offer -- India's biggest-ever -- due to open for bids on Friday and aimed at bolstering the business empire's balance sheet.

"The report is a malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations," Adani Group chief financial officer Jugeshinder Singh said in a statement.

Singh added that the report had been deliberately timed to undermine the conglomerate's reputation "with the principal objective of damaging the upcoming follow-on public offering".

- 'Afraid to speak out' -

Adani Group is India's second-largest conglomerate, with the combined market capitalisation of its seven listed companies exceeding $218 billion.

Shares in Adani business units have soared up to 2,000 percent in the past three years, adding more than $100 billion to its founder's net worth and vaulting him up the ranks of the world's richest people.

Critics of the billionaire attribute his meteoric rise to a close association with Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi and support for his policies.

Hindenburg's report said there had been a pattern of "government leniency towards the group" stretching back decades.

"We believe the Adani Group has been able to operate a large, flagrant fraud in broad daylight in large part because investors, journalists, citizens and even politicians have been afraid to speak out for fear of reprisal," the report said.

Shares in flagship Adani Enterprises fell as much as three percent on Wednesday, before recovering to trade 1.41 percent lower in the afternoon.

Other business units fell as much as 6.5 percent over the day's trade.

ng/gle/mca

Brazil official says Yanomami region looks like 'concentration camp'


Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva looks on, as he visits the Yanomami Indigenous Health House (CASA Yanomami) in Boa Vista

Anthony Boadle
Tue, January 24, 2023 

By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's military should evict illegal gold miners who have caused malnutrition and starvation in a region of the Yanomami reservation near the Venezuelan border, Indigenous Health Secretary Weibe Tapeba said on Tuesday, urging

"It looks like a concentration camp," Tapeba, a doctor appointed to the position by Brazil's new government, said in a radio interview.

Tapeba said 700 members of the community were going hungry and healthcare is non-existent due to presence of well-armed gold miners that scared away medical workers from the health post and block people from bringing in supplies of medicine and food.

Brazil's ministry of health on Friday declared a medical emergency in the Yanomami territory, the country's largest indigenous reservation, following reports of children dying of malnutrition and other diseases brought by gold mining.

On Saturday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited the state following the publication of photos showing Yanomami children and elderly people so thin their ribs were visible.

"It's an extreme calamity, many Yanomami are suffering from malnutrition and there is a total absence of the Brazilian state," Tapeba said.

An invasion by more than 20,000 wildcat gold miners has contaminated the rivers with mercury that has poisoned the fish the Yanomami eat he said, citing children with their hair falling out due to the mercury used to separate gold from ore.

"Health teams cannot get here because of the heavily armed bandits. This can only be resolved by removing the gold miners and that can only be done by the armed forces," he said.

Brazil's Supreme Court ordered the removal of the gold miners. But the previous government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro never complied. Yanomami leaders said their pleas for help were ignored.

In four years of Bolsonaro's presidency, 570 Yanomami children died of curable diseases, mainly malnutrition but also malaria, diarrhea and malformations caused by the mercury in the rivers, the Amazon journalism platform Sumauma reported, citing data obtained by a FOIA.

The reservation has been invaded by illegal gold miners for decades, but the incursions multiplied since Bolsonaro won office in 2018 promising to allow mining on previously protected indigenous lands and offering to legalize wildcat mining.

Justice Minister Flavio Dino said on Monday that there was "evidence of genocide" that is being investigated.

In December, Survival International warned about the extent of the crisis, citing a study by UNICEF and Brazil's FioCruz biomedical research center that found that 8 out of 10 Yanomami had chronic malnutrition, and deaths from preventable diseases among children under five were 13 times the national average.

"The Yanomami rarely suffer from malnutrition in normal circumstances. Their forests are bountiful and they are experts at growing, gathering and hunting everything they need, and they enjoy excellent health," said Survival International director Fiona Watson in a statement.

"This is a deliberate, man-made crisis, stoked by President Bolsonaro, who has encouraged the mass invasion and destruction of the Yanomami's lands," she said.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
US board says Boeing Max likely hit a bird before 2019 crash
CANADIANS WERE ON THAT FLIGHT

Wreckage is piled at the crash scene of Ethiopian Airlines flight ET302 near Bishoftu, Ethiopia, March 11, 2019. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, that a sensor which gave false readings about the plane was damaged by striking a foreign object, most likely a bird. That conflicts with a finding by Ethiopian officials. 
(AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)


Tue, January 24, 2023 a
U.S. accident investigators disagree with Ethiopian authorities over the cause of a sensor malfunction that preceded the March 2019 crash of a Boeing 737 Max shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that it determined that the bad sensor reading was caused by impact with an object, most likely a bird.

Ethiopia's aviation authority said false readings by the sensor, which measures the direction of the plane's nose, were caused by electrical issues that had existed since the plane was manufactured.

The NTSB said in a document dated Jan. 13 and released Tuesday that Ethiopia's final report on the crash provides no details to support the finding of an electrical problem. The U.S. board relied partly on a fault analysis by Collins Aerospace, which made the sensor.

Both sides agree that the sensor readings caused an automated flight-control system new on the Max to pitch the nose of the plane downward. Pilots were unable to regain control. The crash killed all 157 people on board and occurred less than five months after a Max crash in Indonesia killed 189 people.

The NTSB released its new comments three weeks after its initial criticism of Ethiopia's findings around the cause of the crash, which led to a worldwide grounding of all Max jets for nearly two years.

Boeing is to be arraigned Thursday in a federal court in Texas on a charge of defrauding the United States. More than a dozen relatives of crash victims have asked the court for time to speak after Boeing enters a plea to the fraud charge.

The families are pushing the Justice Department to re-open a 2021 settlement in which Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion in exchange for not facing criminal prosecution over the way it obtained regulatory approval for the plane. Both Boeing and the Justice Department oppose reopening the settlement.

The judge ordered Boeing to be represented by an “appropriate person.” Boeing has not publicly identified that perso
FLORIDA FUHRER
DeSantis Cracks Down on Teachers’ Unions, Proposes Limits on Leader Pay, Dues Collection


Ryan Mills
Tue, January 24, 2023


Florida governor Ron DeSantis is taking aim at the state’s teachers’ unions, releasing a series of proposals this week that would rein in their power by limiting how they can collect dues, where they can promote their union efforts, and how much they can pay their leaders.

The Republican governor’s proposals targeting the unions are part of a broad legislative push he’s making around education that also includes an additional $1 billion in state funding to raise teacher pay, establishing a teacher’s bill of rights, and further reducing school-board term limits. He announced the proposals on Monday at a Jacksonville charter school.

As part of a series of proposals he has deemed “Paycheck Protection” for teachers, DeSantis is calling for a ban on automatic payroll deductions for public employee union dues, requiring public employees who join a union to sign a form acknowledging that Florida is a right-to-work state, and requiring unions to notify members every year of their membership costs.


DeSantis said unions often “don’t even tell you how much is being deducted. That’s not right.”

“We believe that a school union has a responsibility to notify the members of the cost of membership,” he said during the Jacksonville announcement.

DeSantis is calling for lawmakers to prohibit teachers’ union members from distributing union literature at work, and a ban on union officials doing union business while on the clock for their taxpayer-funded jobs. “We also believe that you should not have the school be a focus of school-union politics, and politicking, and handing out literature, and doing all that stuff,” he said. “You do that on your own time, not on the public’s time.”

DeSantis’s proposals include new requirements that teachers’ unions provide financial reports to the state annually, that they submit annual financial statements certified by an independent Florida-licensed Certified Public Accountant, and that they represent at least 60 percent of the employees eligible for representation, up from 50 percent now. He’s also taking aim at union-leader pay, proposing a requirement that no union leader can be paid more than the union’s highest-paid member. He claimed that there are some union leaders “making huge amounts of money, and the teachers are making half of that amount of money. How is that fair?”

The Florida Education Association responded Monday, saying in a prepared statement that DeSantis “continues to show that anyone who is not in lockstep with him will face his ire.”

“While Governor DeSantis seeks to punish and divide, we seek to unite,” Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said. “We respect the voices of parents, teachers, school boards, administrators and students. All have a crucial role in providing our students with the best possible education, and students’ needs must be our focus. Our schools don’t need to go back to 1950; we need to move forward toward 2050.”

In addition to his proposals targeting teachers’ unions, DeSantis also proposed what he deemed “teacher empowerment” or a “teachers’ bill of rights.” The bill of rights would protect teachers from litigation if they take action to restore order in a disrupted classroom, clarify that joining a teachers’ union is optional and that teachers won’t face repercussions if they don’t join, and allow teachers to file administrative and civil complaints against a school board or district leaders who direct them to violate a Florida law and discipline them for following the law.

Last year, DeSantis signed laws that banned the teaching of critical race theory in Florida schools and that prohibited teaching young children about sexual orientation and gender identity. He said Monday that “there may be certain school boards or school districts who don’t necessarily like some of those policies.” But, he added, that teachers “should not be put in a situation where they are being told they have to violate clear policies of the state of Florida that are enacted in statutes.”

“At the end of the day, we’re a state, and a country, and a society based on the rule of law,” DeSantis said. “So, if you don’t like the policies enacted by the legislature, signed by the governor, you have an election every two years where you can go make your voice heard.”

DeSantis also called for school board term limits to be reduced from 12 years to eight, and for lawmakers to amend the state constitution to allow for school-board candidates to run with a political party affiliation to increase transparency. School board races in Florida are currently non-partisan, but that has led to some confusion he said.

“What we’ve seen over the years is, you’ll have counties in like southwest Florida, voted for me by 40 points, and yet they’re electing people at the school board who are like totally the opposite philosophy,” DeSantis said. “But those people are running, saying they share the philosophy, then they get on and do something different.”

DeSantis also called Monday for an additional $1 billion in funding to continue increasing teacher pay in the state. He said that would be on top of the roughly $2 billion increase that has already been approved since he’s been governor.

DeSantis said the increased pay has helped to recruit and retain good teachers. The Florida Education Association pushed back, alleging that Florida still isn’t paying teachers enough. “Teachers and staff in our public schools struggle to pay rent, homeowners insurance and other bills because their pay is so low, just like so many Floridians,” Spar said. “Teachers and staff are leaving at an alarming rate, in large part due to the policies implemented under Governor DeSantis.”

DeSantis, who cruised to re-election in November by a nearly 20-point margin, is widely believed to be considering a 2024 presidential run. Education is one of the areas where he may be looking to win legislative victories to burnish his credentials as a conservative champion. Republicans on the national stage have attacked teachers unions for their role in injecting K-12 curricula with progressive notions about race and gender, and their insistence on conducting school remotely long after it became clear that Covid posed a minimal threat to children.

Florida has made headlines recently for rejecting a pilot Advanced Placement course in African-American studies. Critics of the course argue that the last section dealing with contemporary political and cultural controversies is dominated by mostly hard-left voices, and omits conventional liberal and conservative perspectives.

DeSantis stood by the decision to reject the course on Monday, telling reporters that it advocates for radical political positions and attempts to indoctrinate students, noting that one section of the course is focused on “Black Queer Studies.”

“Who would say that an important part of black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids,” he said. “And so, when you look to see, they have stuff about intersectionality, abolishing prisons. That’s a political agenda.”

Last week, Florida House Speaker Paul Renner unveiled a bill that would make almost all Florida students eligible for a school voucher that could be used to pay for a private school or home school education. On Twitter, Renner called House Bill 1 the “the largest expansion of school choice in the history of our state.”


Renner’s bill comes on the heels of last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Carson v. Maine that it is unconstitutional to exclude religious schools from state tuition-assistance programs. Renner told National Review last year that school choice-expansion is a priority of his, including expanding eligibility for existing voucher programs and making education-savings accounts available to students statewide. With Florida being the third most populous state in the nation and the world’s 15th largest economy, he said, the state has “the capacity to create a really exciting market that will induce a lot of education innovators to come in and get great educational results.”




 


ANTI-WOKISM THE NEW RED SCARE
Florida plans to ‘curb’ diversity efforts at colleges, universities, Nunez says


Divya Kumar, Tampa Bay Times
Tue, January 24, 2023 

Florida will be looking to “curb” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the state’s colleges and universities, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez said Tuesday, offering a preview of what higher education leaders can expect from lawmakers during the upcoming legislative session.

Her statements, delivered at a state Board of Governors meeting in Miami, marked the first time the DeSantis administration has explained why its budget office this month requested a detailed accounting of how much colleges and universities spend on such efforts.

“I can give you a few insights as to what we’re working on coming this session,” Nunez said before mentioning a statement last week from the presidents of Florida’s 28 state colleges. It pledged to root out any policy or practice that “compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts.” The lieutenant governor then suggested that effort would soon extend to the state’s 12 universities.

“I believe (the colleges are) looking at ways to curb those initiatives, and I think we’ll look at ways to more broadly curb those initiatives as well,” she said.

In a speech that earlier praised the university system for its high rankings and relatively low student debt, Nunez said “real forces” were “undermining the good work taking place” at the state schools.

“These new threats that are creeping and taking hold are things that we need to face,” she said. “I believe one of the biggest threats that’s infiltrating our universities is a permeating culture — one might call it woke culture, one might call it woke ideology, one might call it identity politics.... We don’t need to get into all the names, but I do believe that some of these issues are taking hold. The policies they advocate are based on hate and based on indoctrination.”

Nunez also previewed proposals to review general education courses and give university presidents more control over faculty hiring.

“We want to further empower our presidents to make sure that they own the responsibility of hiring individuals to work in their campuses and make sure it stays in the hands of the leader of the institution more so than in hidden hiring practices and faculty committees,” she said.

The legislative session begins March 7.

In their responses to the governor’s budget office, the 12 public universities said they collectively are spending about $34.5 million this year on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. About $20.7 million came from state funds.

The University of South Florida reported the highest expenses at $8.7 million, though only $2.5 million came from state funds. Money was spent on initiatives such the university’s supplier diversity program; non-mandatory trainings; a list of 10 courses including “Theatre Appreciation” and “Language in the USA;” and funding for its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

Florida A&M University had the highest amount of state funds used at $4.1 million. The school’s expenses included a research center and museum for Black archives and its Center for Environmental Equity and Justice, created by the Legislature in 1998.

Shortly after those responses were submitted, the governor’s budget office sent out a second request requiring universities to report details on any procedures and treatments they had offered related to gender affirming care since 2018. The request did not specify how the information would be used.

Divya Kumar is a higher education reporter for the Tampa Bay Times, in partnership with Open Campus.

'Black history is not inferior': Black leaders object to Florida's 'culture war against African Americans'

Marc Ramirez and Douglas Soule, USA TODAY
Tue, January 24, 2023 at 9:03 AM MST·6 min read

Black religious leaders, including the man who said the closing prayer at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ first inauguration, sent a message to the state Monday over its rejection of the College Board's new AP African American Studies course.

"Black history is not inferior, and Black history does not lack educational value," said Rev. Dr. R.B. Holmes Jr., pastor of Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee, a former Republican.

In a letter earlier this month, the Florida Department of Education told the College Board – which creates and oversees Advanced Placement courses and exams as well as the SAT and other standardized tests – its African American studies course “significantly lacks educational value."

“In the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion,” the letter said.

The letter also called the course “inexplicably contrary to Florida law" but did not explain how.

Holmes and the others gathered Monday in Tallahassee promised additional protests and rallies, including one later this week set to include civil rights attorney Ben Crump and another next month featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Opinion: Ron DeSantis is fulfilling his promise to oust the 'woke mob.' Is he taking it too far?

They also cited a litany of frustrations some Black leaders have voiced with the DeSantis administration.

Rev. Dr. Joseph Wright, pastor of Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church, spoke about DeSantis’ decision to get rid of two Black-led congressional delegations. Tallahassee Commissioner Curtis Richardson decried the governor’s “culture war against African Americans.” Richardson accused him of voter suppression and blasted school voucher extensions that he said would destroy public education.

“We’re here today to tell the governor we’re not going to stand by and just let these things happen to African Americans in our state,” Richardson said.

Holmes said the group aims to create a statewide movement, one he hoped would spark positive conversations about the value of “learning about all people’s history, and not at the expense of erasing and eliminating Black studies.” Holmes became an independent after taking issue with the governor’s handling of COVID-19 – such as penalizing mask mandates.


Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs his "Stop Woke" bill in last year.

Rejection part of DeSantis' reshaping of Florida education system

DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has spent much of his time in office reshaping the state’s education system and fighting against what he calls “woke” politics, signing bills restricting the discussion of race, gender and sexual orientation in schools.

More: DeSantis aims to create 'Hillsdale of the south' with conservative overhaul of a Florida college's board

Such efforts have been embraced and parroted by Republican leaders and candidates across the country and by parent groups such as Moms for Liberty, a group born of frustrations over mask and vaccine mandates that has tapped concerns about “parental rights” and “indoctrination” of kids to gain influence while inspiring armies of moms nationwide to take up its crusade.

On Monday, DeSantis spoke publicly about the state's rejection for the first time. He said the state is blocking the course because it included the study of “queer theory” and political movements that advocated for “abolishing prisons.”

“That’s a political agenda,” DeSantis said during a press conference. “That’s the wrong side of the line for Florida standards. We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them when you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”
What is the AP African American Studies course?

The College Board’s AP African American Studies class has been in the works for more than 10 years and launched as a pilot this school year, debuting at 60 high schools across the country.

Additional high schools will have the chance to offer it during the 2023-24 school year, and the course will be available at all schools the following year, the College Board has said.


People protest outside the offices of the New Mexico Public Education Department's office in 2021 after the education department proposed changes to the social studies curriculum that critics describe as a veiled attempt to teach critical race theory. Supporters say the new curriculum, which includes ethnic studies, is "anti-racist."More

The course emerges in the midst of a national clash over the teaching of race-related curriculum and battles over critical race theory, a concept examining how racism permeates American institutions. The concept isn’t traditionally taught in public schools, but the legacy of slavery is.

More: First AP African American Studies class to be offered in some high schools this fall

The White House criticized Florida's rejection of the course Friday.

“It is incomprehensible,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, responding to a question by USA TODAY. “Let’s be clear. They didn’t block AP European history. They didn’t block our art history. They didn’t block our music history.”

"When you think about the study of Black Americans, that is what he wants to block," she said.

‘Incomprehensible’: White House slams DeSantis administration for rejecting AP Black studies

Last week, after the state's letter to College Board became public, Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. shared a list of ways the course violates Florida law on Twitter.

The list cites references in the AP course to movements for Black lives, Black queer studies and the reparations movement.

"Despite the lies from the Biden White House, Florida rejected an AP course filled with Critical Race Theory and other obvious violations of Florida law," he said in his tweet. "We proudly require the teaching of African American history. We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education."



How did the College Board respond?


In outlining its standards for Advanced Placement courses on its website, the College Board said it opposes both censorship and indoctrination, adding that such courses are designed to "foster an open-minded approach" while enabling students "to develop as independent thinkers and to draw their own conclusions."

In response to Florida's letter, the College Board noted that as with all new AP courses, its African American Studies course is being subjected to "a rigorous multi-year pilot phase" in which feedback is collected from teachers, students, scholars and policymakers.

"We will publicly release the updated course framework when it is completed and well before this class is widely available in American high schools," the College Board said. "We look forward to bringing this rich and inspiring exploration of African-American history and culture to students across the country."

More: Schools are becoming hotbeds of political conflict – especially in purple districts
How are some parents reacting?

In a statement, the National Parents Union said it was outraged by Florida’s rejection of the course, particularly its timing: within a week of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“Make no mistake: This is a direct attack on the Black and all BIPOC communities,” the union said. “… This behavior is dangerous and should concern every American.”

Nehemiah Frank, publisher of the Black Wall Street Times and the union’s founding delegate, said it would challenge the move.

“We will fight for the right of all children to learn the truth – and turn this into an opportunity to teach our children what it looks like to confront and organize against white supremacy,” Frank said.

Contributing: Kathryn Varn, Tallahassee Democrat

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Black leaders object to Florida, DeSantis rejecting proposed AP course
The Energy Crisis Is Fueling A Nuclear Energy Renaissance


Editor OilPrice.com
Tue, January 24, 2023 at 12:00 PM MST·4 min read

Is this the dawn of a new nuclear era? Across the world, there are rumblings of a new push for nuclear as a solution to decarbonizing global energy production, even from environmentalist groups, representing a stark turnaround for many. Even the most anti-nuclear countries, such as Germany and Japan, have been extending the lives of their existing nuclear plants, flying in the face of their previous pledges to phase out the divisive technology altogether. While nuclear power never died in some key economies, such as China and Russia, more influential world leaders in the West are now getting on board, signaling a potential sea change for the nuclear power industry.

For decades, nuclear disasters such as Fukushima, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl have loomed large in the public consciousness, and very few people want a nuclear reactor in their backyard, or even in their home state. Nuclear meltdowns are very rare, however, and it has been calculated that on the whole nuclear energy actually saves lives, by preventing millions of deaths that would otherwise be attributed to air pollution. But even with the relatively low risk of nuclear disaster, there is still the very real issue of nuclear waste, which is extremely costly to maintain and stays hazardous for thousands of years. But with the impending doom posed by catastrophic climate change and the ever-increasing urgency to address it, nuclear power just seems like the far lesser of two evils. It’s efficient, dependable, and totally emissions-free, and it’s a proven technology with infrastructure and supply chains already in place around the world.

The United States remains the world’s single biggest producer of nuclear energy, but the industry has been in decline for decades, the country’s nuclear fleet is getting concerningly long in the tooth, and the cost of maintaining nuclear waste is weighing heavily on taxpayers. But for the first time in years, the future of the nuclear industry seems a bit brighter in the U.S. as the urgency of decarbonization amps up the pressure on policymakers and private industry leaders. While public opinion is still divided, it is slowly changing in favor of nuclear energy, and Silicon Valley is throwing its full weight behind the nuclear option. Now, the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act is keeping the momentum building for nuclear power in the U.S. by providing a production tax credit for existing reactors, incentivizing advanced nuclear deployment, and providing funding for advanced assaying of low-enriched uranium to help build up domestic supply chains for the essential nuclear fission fuel source.

In the United Kingdom, there is also an increasing groundswell of support for nuclear energy, including at the highest levels of governance. Back in the second month of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson told his constituents that the answer to weaning the nation off of Russian energy imports was investing in the country’s own nuclear plants. “Johnson’s plan was to offer an unexpected lifeline to a divisive industry by promising to build 24 gigawatts of nuclear power capacity over the next three decades, up from just 5.88GW at present,” according to a report from the Financial Times. The plan would not only relieve the U.K.’s dependence on the Kremlin, it would also revitalize the nation’s profile as a global leader of the nuclear industry. “Our aim is to lead the world once again in a technology we pioneered so that by 2050, up to a quarter of our power consumed in Great Britain is from nuclear,” Johnson proclaimed.

Of course, Boris Johnson has been sacked, but his replacement Rishi Sunak has continued to show enthusiasm for ramping up nuclear power production capacity in the United Kingdom. After just a month in office, Prime Minister Sunak inked a £679 million (approximately $840 million) deal with French state-backed utility EDF to build a 3.2GW nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast. Upon completion, this plant would have enough electricity generation capacity to power six million homes.

However, critics point out that this isn’t the first time England has tried (and failed) to kick-start a new golden age of nuclear energy. “The government is already in a battle against time simply to replace its existing nuclear generation, let alone expand the fleet,” reports the Financial Times. “All but one will be decommissioned by 2028.” However, this time feels different. We’re seeing a stark shift in public and private opinion about nuclear power, and the energy crisis in Europe, as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine, have redrawn all the rules. In a time when we need both energy security and decarbonization in a hurry, many are coming to the conclusion that we can no longer ignore the benefits of nuclear energy.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com