Directed energy weapons making jump from sci-fi to real world

Colin Demarest
Mon, September 18, 2023

WASHINGTON — Five Pelican dropships and two Phantom troop carriers glide into view near snowcapped hills on a world with biomes similar to Earth’s. A handful of the warplanes break formation, ultimately bound for farther-flung targets, as volleys of neon green anti-aircraft fire erupt.

Despite some dodging, the fire proves accurate, and one of the Pelicans is hit. It veers violently forward and smacks into another just in front. A cry for help is heard; then, an explosion. A voice over the radio warns of the dicey disembark to come.

“Brace yourselves.”

And, as players of Bungie’s smash-hit video game “Halo 3″ regain control of Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, the virtual super-soldier hoists to his shoulder what millions of gamers have affectionately nicknamed the “Spartan Laser,” a hulking, fearsome weapon powered by futuristic battery cells.

When primed with a squeeze and hold of the controller’s trigger, the device unleashes a blast of directed energy capable of devastating multiple targets, virtual infantry and armored opponents. Heat management forces downtime between shots, a nod to the realities that often limit fire in real weapons.

 screenshot

While such immensely powerful devices have long been a staple of computer games, movies and science-fiction novels, success in fielding practical weapons that can zap targets on real-world battlefields has eluded governments, scientists and defense contractors for more than a half-century. At least until recently.

“The hundreds of systems in the field? It’s coming,” Andy Lowery, the chief operating officer of defense company Epirus, a developer of directed-energy and counter-drone systems, said in an interview. “You’ll see tens of billions of dollars, I think, being applied once we get into production, manufacturing and then operations and sustainment.”
State of play

The U.S. Department of Defense is spending an average $1 billion a year on developing directed-energy weapons with the goal of using them to defeat threats including drones and missiles. It requested at least $669 million in fiscal 2023 for unclassified research, testing and evaluation and another $345 million for unclassified procurement, the Congressional Research Service reported.

Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu included directed energy on a list of 14 critical and emerging defense technologies released in February 2022.

Potential applications abound. High-energy lasers, HEL, and high-power microwave, HPM, systems can be used for short-range air defense, SHORAD, and to counter unmanned aerial systems, C-UAS, as well as rockets, artillery and mortars, C-RAM.

“What does a laser do to impart damage on the set target, utilizing directed energy? It just basically heats up and melts, right? Just a ton of energy. There’s no, really, wave interaction,” Lowery said. “With HPM, you’re actually trying to use the electro-magnetics in the air to cease the ability for anything that uses voltage and current to work, and you’re trying to do that as efficiently as possible, because it’s not easy.”

A look at how directed-energy weapons could be used in the field. Incoming drones and missiles are depicted. (Photo provided/GAO)

The weapons now in development come mainly in two forms: high-energy lasers, like Rafael’s Iron Beam, and Epirus’ HPMs. The former focuses a beam or beams of energy to blind, cut or inflict heat damage on a target. The latter unleashes waves of energy that overwhelm or fry electronic components.

Each has its respective strengths and weaknesses.

While HPMs can have a near-instant effect on electronic guts, its efficacy is stunted at greater ranges. And while high-energy lasers can punch holes through all sorts of material, certain atmospheric conditions including fog or wind can impede or distort the shot. Neither needs to be mechanically reloaded, like a rifle or tank, but they are reliant on power production and output, which can be disrupted.

“In very controlled conditions, they seem to perform as they should,” Thomas Withington, an analyst and author specializing in electronic warfare and military communications, said in an interview. The issue, though, is “how do you translate that to the front line in Ukraine?”

Testing, testing

The U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are all, right now, attempting to fold directed-energy systems into offensive and defensive capabilities.

The Pentagon’s Joint Counter-Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office and the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office in June tapped five companies to demonstrate weaponry capable of taking down one-way attack drones. The get-together at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona featured a Lockheed Martin-made Mobile Radio Frequency-Integrated UAS Suppressor, or MORFIUS, a tube-launched, fixed-wing drone that flies at a target and lets loose a high-power microwave pulse.

The service months earlier awarded a $66 million deal to Epirus for prototypes of its drone-zapping Leonidas device. The tech has since been paired with the Anduril Industries Lattice command-and-control program for the Marine Corps and DroneShield’s sensing-and-jamming DroneSentry system.

A model of a Stryker Leonidas directed-energy system is displayed at the Epirus booth at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. 

(Colin Demarest/C4ISRNET)

Similarly, the Air Force in April tested its Tactical High-power Operational Responder, or THOR, at Kirtland Air Force Base’s Chestnut Test Site in New Mexico. The system looks like a shipping container with a satellite dish welded to the top; its effects, however, are less innocuous.

Adrian Lucero, a program manager at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s directed energy directorate, in a statement at the time of testing said THOR “was exceptionally effective at disabling” its targets. The lab employs approximately 11,500 military, civilian and contractor personnel, and manages a $7 billion portfolio.

“The THOR team flew numerous drones at the THOR system to simulate a real-world swarm attack,” Lucero said. “THOR has never been tested against these types of drones before, but this did not stop the system from dropping the targets out of the sky with its non-kinetic, speed-of-light high-power microwave” pulses.

In December 2021, the Navy announced the successful testing of a high-energy laser aboard the USS Portland while it sailed through the Gulf of Aden. A previous test was done in May 2020, during which a small drone was disabled over the Pacific Ocean.

The service has been at the forefront of trying to deploy practical directed-energy weapons. Both Lockheed’s High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance, or HELIOS, and the in-house Optical Dazzling Interdictor Navy, or ODIN, to tackle small boats and intelligence-gathering systems, have been installed aboard destroyers.

US Army working through challenges with laser weapons

“As the technology moves forward, it will be a technology that is adopted for certain niches. Perhaps ship defense against anti-ship missiles, counter-drone, that kind of thing,” Withington said. “Will it become a replacement for the anti-ship missile? Would it be something that you can sling under the belly of a B-21 and vaporize an air ministry in downtown Damascus? I don’t know. I’m inclined to think in the short- to medium-term probably not.”

A dazzling future

There is often a long lag between the development of technology and its implementation and procurement, a period of time known as the “valley of death” among those in the defense community. Lately, military leaders are voicing a greater sense of urgency about the need to get these systems fully built and deployed.

When asked about directed-energy weapons at a National Defense Industrial Association conference last month, Navy Adm. John Aquilino had two words for investors and builders: “Bring it.”

Aquilino serves as the top man in the Indo-Pacific, a region the Biden administration considers vital to international security and financial well-being. His remit includes China and North Korea, as well as allies Australia, Japan and South Korea.

“I’m very encouraged by the high-energy laser capability that’s being experimented with and utilized,” Aquilino said at the time. The key? Acceleration.

“If that capability exists, and we can deliver in 18 to 24 months, I’m ready to plug it in,” Aquilino said. “I’m ready to experiment with it tomorrow. I’ve got the largest test range on the globe.”

Some big names are digging in: Booz Allen Hamilton last year announced the establishment of a high-energy laser division dubbed HELworks. The defense consultancy unveiled three product lines at the time including a High Energy Laser Mission Equipment Package meant for the Army’s Stryker combat vehicle.

The USS Portland fires a laser weapon at a target floating in the Gulf of Aden on Dec. 14, 2021. (Staff Sgt. Donald Holbert/U.S. Marine Corps via AP)

“Between one and five years, you’re going to see an exiting of the AoA, of the analysis of alternatives, and then entering into programs of record,” Lowery said. “And that is going to mark a much bigger spend.”

International markets are also heating up. The U.K. and France are particularly interested in directed energy.

Raytheon UK, a division of RTX, plans to integrate a high-energy laser onto a Wolfhound armored vehicle. During four days of testing in the U.S., the laser system “successfully acquired, tracked, targeted and destroyed dozens of” drones, according to the company, which is opening an advanced laser integration center in Scotland.

And while militaries may be many years away from fielding anything like the fictional, shoulder-mounted Spartan Laser, the technology now being developed is proving itself too important to ignore, according to experts.

“Everybody thinks it’s laser guns and death rays,” Withington said. “I would say there won’t be a ‘Big Bang,’ but it should probably be a ‘Big Zap’ for directed energy weapons.”

 Analysis-Lula struggles to revive Brazil's 'soft power' amid US-China tensions

Mon, September 18, 2023 


Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva holds a press conference


By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Since he returned to office in January, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has traveled to 21 countries and met with more than 50 heads of state, including two kings and the Pope.

The globe-trotting leftist leader, the first head of state to address the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, has prioritized foreign trips in his third term so far, as he strives to restore his country as a global player.

"Brazil is back," he repeats in speeches across five continents, in contrast with the growing isolation that came with his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro's hard-right political stance and dismal environmental record.

But diplomats and foreign policy experts say Lula is far from restoring the "soft power" status Brazil enjoyed after his first two terms, from 2003 to 2010, when the country became a voice for the rising global south while remaining independent from both the U.S. and China.

In part, that reflects the choppier waters the 77-year-old Brazilian leader now navigates, as Beijing and Washington flirt with a new Cold War while war rages in Ukraine. Brazil has also become increasingly dependent on Asian markets, which buy half of its exports. China alone, Brazil's main trading partner, buys 37% of its farm exports.

"This is a very tricky balancing act and Lula so far has not been able to find the right equilibrium," said Oliver Stuenkel, an associate professor of international relations at the FGV think tank in Sao Paulo. "There is a perception in Brazilian society now that he is tilting towards the Sino-Russian axis more than the West."

On Wednesday, Lula is scheduled to meet U.S. President Joe Biden to discuss the climate crisis on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, focusing where the Brazilian leader has shined.

Lula has helped to restore Brazil's central role in climate diplomacy, leading a regional rainforest summit, drawing global contributions to protect the Amazon and overhauling policies to bring down deforestation sharply.

Even before he took office, Lula was greeted like a rock star last November at the U.N. climate change conference in Egypt. His polices have helped to nearly halve deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon through August, compared to the first eight months of last year, rebuilding Brazil's credibility for climate talks.

But his comments about the war in Ukraine - he has said both sides are responsible for the conflict as he sought to broker a peace deal - have angered U.S. and European allies, who have accused him of parroting Russian rhetoric.

Lula's penchant for off-the cuff remarks have occasionally made matters worse.

During a G20 meeting in India this month, he said there was "no way" Russian President Vladimir Putin would be arrested if he attended next year's summit in Rio de Janeiro. When reporters probed him on Brazil's commitments to enforce an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, he rowed back his comments but suggested Brazil could leave the ICC.

"There have been some bruising moments. The whole Russia -Ukraine issue was a lesson learned," said Thomas Shannon, a former U.S. ambassador to Brazil who is now senior international policy advisor at Arnold & Porter.

At last month's BRICS summit in South Africa, where the group of leading emerging economies expanded its membership as China called for, Brazil got Chinese backing for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat it wants. But that is unlikely to happen any time soon, according to Shannon.

The closer ties to Beijing could complicate Brazil's relationship with Washington, including access to key technology, Shannon added.

'OUTDATED AGENDA'

Closer to home, Lula has reaped little in concrete terms from Latin America's broad left-of-center alignment. The Mercosur trade bloc took nearly half a year to respond formally to a new European position on a trade deal now on the ropes.

And Lula's longstanding sympathies with leftist governments in Nicaragua and Venezuela accused of human rights abuses have him looking out of step with a new generation of progressive Latin American leaders.

Lula rolled out the red carpet for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Brasilia at a regional summit in May, helping to bring the socialist leader out of isolation. Other leaders, including Chile's leftist President Gabriel Boric, criticized Maduro's presence.

Impressions of ideological bias may hurt Brazil's image as the country returns to the international spotlight, putting Lula at odds sometimes with his Foreign Ministry, said Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to London and Washington.

"Where is Brazil the defender of human rights? It's not clear what Brazil stands for today when it picks Putin and Maduro as allies," said a South American ambassador in Brasilia, who asked not to be identified.

"Brazil is rapidly wasting its soft power by trying to be an international player with an outdated agenda," he said.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Brad Haynes and Paul Simao)

Alibaba tells Erdogan it plans to invest $2 billion in Turkey

Reuters
Sun, September 17, 2023 

 Illustration shows Alibaba logo

ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has told Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan it plans to invest $2 billion in Turkey.

Michael Evans, president of Alibaba, made the comments in a meeting with Erdogan, according to a statement from the company's Turkish unit. It did not specify when the investment would be made.

Evans also said Alibaba has invested $1.4 billion in Turkey through its unit Trendyol, one of Turkey's best known e-commerce platforms, the statement said.

Erdogan is in the United States to attend the 78th session of the U.N. General Assembly.

Trendyol, whose president Caglayan Cetin also met with Erdogan, said Evans shared details about new investments such as a data centre and a logistics centre in Ankara and an export operation centre at Istanbul Airport.

(Reporting by Can Sezer; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
View comments

Developing countries double down on technology at Havana summit

Marc, Frank and Nelson Acosta
Sat, September 16, 2023 

G77+China summit opens in Havana

By Marc, Frank and Nelson Acosta

HAVANA (Reuters) - Developing nations on Saturday declared Sept. 16 the annual "Day of Science, Technology and Innovation in the South" as they prepared to wrap up a two-day summit on the subject.

"We note with deep concern the existing disparities between developed and developing countries in terms of conditions, possibilities and capacities to produce new scientific and technological knowledge," the final declaration of the G77 group of developing nations and China said.

"We call upon the international community, the United Nations System and the International Financial Institutions to support the efforts of the countries of the South to develop and strengthen their national science, technology and innovation systems," the organization, which now counts 134 countries, stated.


The statement cited the pandemic and unequal distribution of vaccines as an example, pointing out that all but Cuba's were developed outside the block and rich nations were disproportionately vaccinated.

China maintains that it is not a G77 member, despite being listed as one by the bloc, but Beijing says it has supported the group's legitimate claims and maintained cooperative relations.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, whose country holds the organization's presidency this year, said on Friday that U.N. data shows that 10 countries account for 90% of patents and 70% of exports of advanced digital production technologies.

"Creation and dissemination of advanced digital production technologies worldwide remain concentrated, with minor activity in most of the emerging economies," he said.

The G77, which is the largest within the United Nations by population and number of members, called for a special meeting to tackle the issues raised at the summit.

The 46-point final declaration reiterates long-standing demands for a more equitable international economic and social order which it states is impossible without ending developed country technological domination.

At the same time, it calls for more cooperation between member nations in science, technology and innovation as strategies for their development.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told the gathering Saturday the group should promote sustainable industrialization, investment in renewable energy, in the bioeconomy and low-carbon agriculture "without forgetting that we do not have the same historical debt as rich countries for global warming."

While more than 100 member delegations participated in the summit, only Brazil and a few dozen others were led by heads of state.

(Reporting by Marc Frank and Nelson Acosta; Editing by David Gregorio)

 Soaring rice prices sow hope - and trouble - for indebted Thai farmers

Updated Mon, September 18, 2023 




Thai rice farmers choose a risky path, trapped between debt and drought


By Devjyot Ghoshal, Napat Wesshasartar and Pasit Kongkunakornkul

CHAI NAT, Thailand (Reuters) -After finishing her latest rice harvest, Sripai Kaeo-eam hurriedly cleared her fields and planted a new crop in late August — ignoring a Thai government advisory to restrict further sowing of the grain this year to conserve water.

"This crop is our hope," said the 58-year-old farmer in Thailand's central Chai Nat province, pointing to her green paddy seedlings only a few inches tall.

Sripai, who is trying to dig her way out of more than 200,000 Thai baht ($5,600) of debt, is motivated by the global spike in rice prices, which are close to their highest level in about 15 years after India — the world's biggest shipper of the water-intensive grain — curbed exports.

Farmers across the agrarian heartland that makes Thailand the world's second-largest rice exporter should be poised to benefit.

Instead, the amount of land under rice cultivation in Thailand decreased 14.5 percent in August compared to the same month last year, according to previously unreported government estimates. The figure has declined every year since 2020.

Thailand's centuries-old rice cultivation system is under severe stress from climate change, unsustainable farm debts and a lack of innovation, according to interviews with two experts and a review of government data.

These pressures on the sector, reported in detail for the first time by Reuters, are squeezing debt-laden Thai farmers despite tens of billions of dollars in subsidies over the past decade.

The handouts came in place of boosting agricultural research spending, which hammered productivity, the experts said. Many farming families are financially burdened after borrowing to fund their crops, according to government data, with debt now spanning generations.

A drop in cultivated land could slash Thailand's rice output, adding to already rampant food inflation after drought conditions in other key rice-producing countries and hitting billions of consumers for whom the grain is a staple food, said agricultural expert Somporn Isvilanonda.

Thailand exported 7.7 million tonnes of milled rice in 2022 to countries across the Middle East, Asia and Africa, according to Krungsri Research.

"The cultivated area is down because of lack of rainfall and irrigated water," said Somporn, a senior fellow at the state-affiliated Knowledge Network Institute of Thailand (KNIT).

The water shortage is likely to worsen into 2024 as the dry El Nino weather phenomenon strengthens, according to government projections.

On the line for millions of farmers is not only their current crop, but a narrow window to escape a life crushed by debt. A good harvest could fetch prices that are up to double or triple that of most years, Sripai said.

"Now I am dreaming," she said, "because India has stopped exporting."

The Thai government's rice department did not respond to questions sent by Reuters.

Rice is central to Thailand. A little under half its farmland is marked for rice cultivation, with over five million households involved, according to Krungsri.

Successive governments have spent 1.2 trillion Thai baht ($33.85 billion) on price and income interventions for rice farmers in the last decade, estimates Somporn.

"But the government didn't do enough ... to improve productivity," he said.

Though prices are now high, "farmers cannot take the opportunity to produce rice," Somporn said, adding that he expected output to drop around 30% over the next two growing seasons due to the water shortage.

DEBT AND DROUGHT

On a sweltering August morning, dozens of farmers and land owners protested outside a state-run agricultural bank in Chai Nat, where they had waited overnight to meet officials.

Danai Saengthabthim, 60, was among those at the hours-long meeting, where he sought to convince officials not to seize his land for failing to repay debts that have swelled over two generations.

The Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives said it does not have a policy of confiscating land from farmers who unintentionally default.

He is now pinning his hopes on Thailand's new coalition government for help. "The debt has just kept increasing over time," he said.

Even before the new government took office, Sripai and other farmers from the region made repeated trips to the capital, Bangkok, to lobby the agriculture ministry.

"All the farmers in our group have debts," said Sripai, who pays a rate of 6.875% on her loan. "We got the debt when we faced droughts, floods, and pests."

Thailand has one of Asia's highest household debt levels. In 2021, 66.7% of all agricultural households were in debt, largely from farming-related activities, according to government data.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin said in his first policy statement before parliament last week that the government will seek to improve farm incomes.

"There will be a consolidation of water management resources, innovations ... to increase yields as well as finding new markets for agriculture product," he said, adding that there would also be a moratorium on some farm loans.

"Extreme weather patterns brought on by the El Nino phenomenon are creating risks for farmers."Rainfall this year has been 18% lower than normal and key reservoirs are filled to only about 54% of total capacity, according to the Office of the National Water Resources.

Climate change will likely exacerbate matters, with experts expecting a decline in average rice yield and wider fluctuations in production.

'TRAPPED IN OUR SUCCESS'

The foundation for Thailand's rice sector was laid in the late 19th century during the reign of King Chulalongkorn, who promoted free trade and agricultural and land reforms, said Nipon Poapongsakorn, an agricultural expert at the Thailand Development Research Institute.

Decades of investment in research and infrastructure allowed farmers to switch to high-yielding varieties beginning in the 1960s, cementing Thailand's then-position as the world's largest rice exporter, said KNIT's Somporn.

"When you grow high yielding variety, you have to grow it in irrigated areas," he said.

Thai governments largely steered clear of market interventions until former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in 2011 rolled out a scheme that paid rice farmers above-market rates for their crop, both experts said.

That move kicked off a decade of handouts that stymied productivity in Thailand's rice sector, leaving average yields per rai (0.4 acres) lower than those of Bangladesh and Nepal, said Nipon.

Yingluck was sentenced in absentia to prison on negligence charges for her role in the scheme that cost the state billions of dollars. She has previously denied wrongdoing and did not return a request for comment sent through a representative.

In 2018, according to data provided by Nipon, Thai farmers produced 485 kg of rice per rai, compared to 752 kg and 560 kg in Bangladesh and Nepal respectively.

"We got trapped in our success," he said, underlining a drop in rice research investment from 300 million baht a decade ago to the 120 million baht allocated for this year. "Our rice variety is very old, our yield is very low."

Farmers can only legally grow varieties approved by the government and could face challenges finding buyers if they were to grow variants from elsewhere, which may not be suitable for cultivation in Thailand, said Somporn.

In recent years, countries like India and Vietnam made sizeable investments in research, pulling ahead of Thailand in terms of productivity and gaining traction in the export market, the experts said.

The average Thai farmer's income has dwindled. In the last decade, rice growers made positive net returns from their first crop in just three years, according to government data.

In the years since Sripai followed her family into the paddy fields, the challenges have multiplied, but current prices offer a rare opportunity.

"We're hoping we can clear our debts," Sripai said, sitting in front of a ramshackle wooden building where she lives. "We're keeping our fingers crossed."

($1 = 35.4500 baht)

(Reporting by Devjyot Ghoshal and Napat Wesshasartar in Chai Nat, and Pasit Kongkunakornkul in Bangkok; Editing by Katerina Ang and Kay Johnson.)

Indian e-scooter maker Ather readies new models and exports after subsidy cuts

Mon, September 18, 2023 

Ather electric scooters are seen outside the showroom in Mumbai

By Aditi Shah

BENGALURU (Reuters) - Indian electric scooter maker Ather Energy will accelerate new model launches at home and test export markets, its chief executive told Reuters, raising new money to boost growth after the government lowered subsidies for the vehicles.

India's electric scooter market is small but growing, with e-models accounting for 5% of total scooter and motorcycle sales in the last fiscal year against a government target of 70% by 2030.

But in a surprise move in May, the government, without explanation, slashed cash incentives on the vehicles to a maximum of 15% of the price before taxes from 40% earlier. The next month total e-scooter sales more than halved.

Ather's sales also dropped but are rapidly picking up. CEO Tarun Mehta said in an interview that the company is now working on two new models, one of which will be launched six months earlier than originally planned.

"The transition to electric vehicles could have been faster if not for the (subsidy) change but even then, there will be no major impact in the mid to long term," he said.

"This shift means we are having to fast track product launches and invest more in product development," he added.

As part of a long-term growth strategy, Ather is aiming for more than 50% of its sales to come from global markets by the end of the century, Mehta said.

Ather, India's third-largest e-scooter maker after Softbank Group-backed Ola Electric and local TVS Motor, plans to add a scooter designed for use by different members of a family to its current two-model lineup aimed at individual riders, Mehta said.

Valued at around $750 million, Ather will raise more money before the end of 2023 to back its growth plans, he said, without giving more details.

A source with direct knowledge of Ather's plans said the company is looking to raise an amount similar to the $108 million garnered from existing shareholders Hero MotoCorp and Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC in a recent rights issue.

Ather will also pilot sales in one Asian export market in a couple of months.

"India will not only be the largest market in the world for electric two-wheelers but also the largest exporter," he said.

(Reporting by Aditi Shah; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

OPINION
Granderson: The Panama Canal is running dry. That's the U.S.'s fault and the U.S.'s problem

LZ Granderson
Mon, September 18, 2023

A cargo ship headed toward the Pacific Ocean after passing through the Panama Canal. Officials recently limited traffic because water to fill the locks was scarce. 

(Agustin Herrera / Associated Press)

A slight competition between transit and human consumption.

That’s how Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, an official with the Panama Canal Authority, described a possible water crunch in the region as a historic drought threatens the trade route he oversees.

Although the canal connects two oceans, its operation depends upon fresh water from a nearby lake, which has been dwindling during a 20-year drought. As a result, there is not as much water for vessels to sail through — or for local communities to drink.

In August, the average wait time for ships went from less than a week to nearly a week and a half, creating a bottleneck. At one point more than 160 ships were hanging out waiting for a Panama official to swipe right.

Read more: Granderson: Nuclear power could save our air quality. At what cost to the water?

Today that number is down, but … part of the relief came from using more fresh water.

Did I mention the region is experiencing a 20-year drought?

It’s similar to the two-decade drought that has choked the Colorado River and left Nevada’s Lake Mead at 34% of capacity.

Read more: Granderson: Yacht-busting orcas and board-stealing otters? The Earth is angry

Except this lake in Panama is key for global supply chains — as if they need one more problem. The pandemic’s effect on the supply chain was a major contributor to last year’s spike in inflation worldwide. The canal sees roughly 40% of global cargo ship traffic. I wonder what’s going to happen to prices if Panama doesn’t get more rain soon?

I also wonder what’s going to happen to the local residents facing a “slight competition” for fresh water.

According to NASA, this summer was the hottest on record. Last month was the fifth straight in which ocean temperatures set record highs. The United Nations estimates that the increase in natural disasters displaces more than 20 million people worldwide each year.

Read more: Granderson: Republican denial will add to the climate change body count

Evidence of human influence on climate change is so pronounced even Fox News moderators brought it up during the first debate of the Republican presidential primary season.

Sadly Vivek Ramaswamy provided the most memorable response: "The climate change agenda is a hoax."

What’s even sadder is he got a bump in the polls afterward.

Meanwhile Panama officials plan to spend $2 billion to redirect more rivers toward the man-made lake to supply the man-made canal. We’re changing the Earth and the atmosphere.

Some hoax.

The 50 million gallons of fresh water used to fill the locks of the canal are lost to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The fresh water sources involved with moving the vessels also supply drinking water for half the country. And diverting water will have repercussions on the ecosystem … if anyone still cares about that sort of thing.

In the meantime, Panama is expected to lose out on tens of millions of dollars in revenue because of the bottleneck.

Two out of every three ships that use the canal are connected to the U.S. economy. It’s the cheapest way to move grain and other food supplies.

There are no easy answers. But it is a problem the U.S. helped create, and too many powerful people in the U.S. are still making it worse. The climate change deniers in Congress and in the Republican presidential field would be at the top of that list.

Electing officials who tell us what we want to hear doesn’t change what is. Last year Lake Mead’s water levels were so low that local authorities found bodies that had been dumped there decades earlier. Now cargo ships risk running aground in the Panama Canal.

Climate change deniers who prefer to look away are running out of places to look. For people in power in the U.S., that’s not only counterproductive but also immoral. Our economy has a direct effect on how fresh water is used in Panama. And remember, it wasn’t just American ingenuity that built the canal, but also American imperialism. Not until 1999 did we relinquish control.

Now changes in the climate — ones that U.S. industrialization and consumption fueled — may trigger a “slight competition” between transit and human consumption. Or between capitalism and humanity, as it ever was.

I’m not saying the answers are easy to find. But the least we can do is elect leaders who acknowledge we are part of the problem.

@LZGranderson

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Georgia is generating more solar power. 

Getting it where it needs to go is a major challenge

Kala Hunter, Gautama Mehta
Mon, September 18, 2023 

To wean America off fossil fuels, the federal government is pouring billions of dollars into building renewable energy across the country.

But this agenda faces a major hurdle: the existing network of transmission lines is inadequate.

With a massive energy transition underway, the century-old practice of transmitting energy from point A to point B requires a new set of rules, federal and state support and utility buy-in throughout the U.S.

More than 18,000 transmission lines in Georgia move power from a myriad of energy sources.

“They usually take years to build, you have to meet the demand when it comes online,” Craig Heighton, director of external affairs for Georgia Transmission Corporation said. “Those days are gone where you just draw chalk on the map to go from point A to B. We have to do the least obtrusive way to get the job done, and that happens through an extensive routing and siting process.”

Now, both power sources and demand are changing, and the process to get transmission lines built is growing more complicated, hindering clean energy development.

The issues slowing the transmission buildout include inadequate planning at the state levels, as well as procedural hurdles like opposition from local landowners — from whom developers must secure easements — and counties that have authority to issue permits.

“If you wanted to have transmission in place, say, by 2030, you better have already started planning and working on it right now. It takes that long. That’s the problem with trying to do this: people think 2030 is a long way off. In planning terms, that is today,” Howard Smith, a renewables developer who managed Georgia Power’s integrated resource plans from 1992 to 2001, told McClatchy.

The Biden administration is paying attention. The U.S. Department of Energy Grid Deployment Office is addressing the transmission buildout issue through needs studies and billions in loans and grants.

“There is a pressing need for additional electric transmission infrastructure and increasingly extreme weather events must all be accommodated by the future power grid,” the Grid Deployment Office found in their 2023 National Transmission Needs draft study funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.


A transmission needs study broken down by terawatt of existing transmission and anticipated needs to decarbonize by 25% in 2030 and 95% in 2035 . Courtesy of Grid Deployment Office.

The Inflation Reduction Act is providing $769 million in grant authority to facilitate the siting and permitting of interstate (and offshore) electric transmission lines.

Additional funding from the Inflation Reduction Act will provide $2 billion in direct loan authority for facility financing.

“There are efforts to incentivize renewables from the IRA and there is a lot of money to deal with this transmission challenge. I’m hopeful there is going to be help,” Public Service Commissioner Jason Shaw said.

According to the study, the Southeast would need an increase of 5-8 million megawatt miles of transmission by 2035 to decarbonize by 95%.

Solar and hydroelectric power are the two renewable energy sources that are the most likely to meet this demand. Georgia already ranks seventh in the nation for total installed solar capacity, at 5,041 megawatts, which is enough to power roughly half a million homes.

Solar throws a wrench in the gears

When Georgia’s grid was built, power plants were sited where it made the most sense to put coal and natural gas plants: next to bodies of water and railroads and near the places where large amounts of energy were consumed, cities like Atlanta, Augusta and Macon.

Today, both sides of that equation are changing: the coal plants that still operate are slated to be decommissioned by 2035, and the demand for the electricity they generate is increasingly concentrated in just one part of the state — the Metro Atlanta area — as it experiences rapid population growth and becomes home to new industrial sites.

The challenge that this dual shift in the production and consumption of energy presents for the planners of Georgia’s grid is how to adapt the transmission system — the fabric that links power plants to customers.

“Transmission is a very important consideration to expansion in the state, particularly with renewables and with retirement of generating units,” said Mike Robinson, Georgia Power’s vice president of grid transformation, who oversees the utility’s transmission and distribution plans.

Simon Mahan, executive director of Southern Renewable Energy Association, put it more bluntly: “Transmission constraints have made it hard to retire coal.”

Comparatively little information is publicly available about the state of Georgia’s transmission system. The Southern Company claims much of the details of its utilities’ grids are trade secret, exempt from public disclosure.

In regions of the country where utilities buy power from generation facilities on markets, grid operators show real-time energy prices on publicly available maps. But Georgia Power’s vertically integrated structure — in which one company controls generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity — means there are no energy prices to show, so little information is publicly available about the operations of the grid at any given time.

Once every three years, a window into this opaque system is opened to the public when Georgia Power submits its Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) for review by the Public Service Commission, the elected body that regulates the power company — if the PSC staff or intervenors request specific information during this process.

Renewables advocates were encouraged by the PSC’s decision, in its 2022 IRP, to approve plans for 2,300 megawatts of new solar energy and 500 megawatts of battery storage — though less so by its decision to also approve 2,000 megawatts of new natural gas generation.

All of this new energy was needed to replace the energy from coal plants, which the state is decommissioning for a number of reasons, including decarbonization, the local health impacts of pollution from coal plants and the growing regulatory costs of operating them.

This summer, the first of two new nuclear units at Plant Vogtle in Burke County began generating power, helping replace a likely significant chunk of the coal-generated power Georgia is slated to lose with carbon-free energy — although the utility has not made public its estimate of the new units’ fuel savings.

Transmission lines between Barlett’s Ferry Dam and Goat Rock Dam in Lee County, AL.

Where to put solar panels

The state’s best conditions for solar panels are in South Georgia, where land is cheap, sunny, sparsely inhabited and flat.

The large-scale deployment of solar generation in South Georgia would require an accompanying transmission buildout to get this energy to the Atlanta region.

There is some disagreement among renewables developers on how to address this issue.

While it’s widely acknowledged that the right solution will involve a mix of all these methods, some are pushing for more rooftop solar development north of I-20 in order to bypass the transmission hurdles altogether, and advocating for legislative solutions like net metering in order to incentivize more property owners to install solar.

“We’re looking at building solar above I-20, because that’s where even though the land may be more expensive, it’s closer to the Atlanta load; it’s what’s needed. So I think you’re going to see more companies migrate that direction,” said Smith, the former Georgia Power IRP manager, who now runs a renewable energy consultancy.

Others emphasize the importance of upgrading existing transmission lines in South Georgia and building new ones.

But to do this requires planning — and some observers say transmission is the weak spot in Georgia Power’s grid planning.

Georgia Power’s profit model

In much of the country, energy grids are planned and operated by regional transmission organizations (RTOs) — systems within which the power companies buy and sell electricity across a wide region on an open market.

In Georgia (and other Southeastern states), by contrast, power companies are granted monopolies over the generation, transmission and distribution of energy for a given region. State regulators guarantee Georgia Power a certain profit rate and set customers’ electricity rates to match it.

A 1973 law known as the Territorial Act divided the state into regions to be exclusively serviced by Georgia Power (the state’s major player in energy), a handful of small local utilities, and “unassigned” areas where rural electric cooperatives generally operate. The transmission system is jointly owned and operated by Georgia Power, the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, the Georgia Transmission Corporation, and the city of Dalton.

Smith says Georgia Power is “still in the mindset of the 20th century” when it comes to planning its transmission for new solar projects — in that the utility treats transmission as an “afterthought” to the planning of new generation.

“South of Macon, anything that is open, cheap land, solar has gone there, and it wasn’t designed from a strategic standpoint,” Smith said. “They didn’t worry about transmission.”

Robinson said the suggestion that Georgia Power doesn’t plan transmission adequately is “inaccurate.”

“With the vertically integrated model that we have, all three of those things are planned together: generation, transmission, and load,” he told McClatchy.

In the 2022 IRP, Georgia Power recognized the difficulty of building transmission lines to connect generation in South Georgia by proposing to require the new solar to be built north of I-20.

This was part of a broader proposal Georgia Power called the North Georgia Reliability and Resilience Action Plan, which Robinson said showcased the power company’s “openness to consider proactive transmission.”

The PSC eventually rejected the north-of-I-20 requirement after critics pointed out the infeasibility of this plan, due to the expensive land values in North Georgia as well as the unsuitability of mountainous terrain for large solar farms.

Georgia Power priorities

Some critics of Georgia Power say its monopoly model disincentivizes effective transmission planning for the energy transition.

Daniel Tait, an Alabama-based researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, a pro-renewables watchdog, said Georgia Power’s approach to transmission planning — build generation first, then worry about transmission — is characteristic of Southeastern utilities.

Tait offered two potential reasons for this, but both boil down to profit.

The first is a resistance to interconnection with the rest of the country’s electric grids.

In its push to decarbonize the American energy grid, the Biden administration is seeking to encourage the construction of interregional transmission lines — those that connect different RTO regions to one another and are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

This buildout could help iron out the inefficiencies caused by the nationwide patchwork of energy grids, and bring down energy prices overall.

“If we were proactively planning for transmission, and had better connectivity to our neighbors, it would be much more likely that low cost wind energy, for instance, from the upper Midwest would be able to get down to the Southeast and compete, because it’s so cheap,” Tait said.

But Georgia regulators allow Georgia Power to earn more profit than federal regulators would.

“If you have two ways to solve the same problem — one is a new transmission line that would be federally regulated and one is a new natural gas power plant that would be state-regulated — they are almost always going to pick the state-regulated gas plant because they could earn more profit even if the investment were the exact same,” Tait said. “The transmission system is their prized asset. They are drawing a ring around it and saying, ‘We don’t want anyone to touch this.”

Robinson said Georgia Power builds interregional transmission when necessary, and has included such projects in several recent IRPs.

“We do regional planning within the Southeast and with our neighboring utilities,” he said.

The second reason Georgia Power might seek to avoid better transmission planning, Tait said, is that, at the state level, the company benefits from having little excess capacity in its transmission system — and risks competition from rival suppliers if it builds too much new transmission.

While Georgia Power is typically the only builder of traditional power plants in the state, renewable projects are often built by third-party developers.

If the builder of a new energy project seeks to bring their facility online, they are responsible for paying to connect it into the grid.

But “the more spare capacity that you have in your transmission system, the more you can add to your system at a cheaper clip,” Tait said, so more power lines built proactively would allow more third-party developers to compete with Georgia Power. “If somebody is going to build a natural gas plant, who’s going to do that? Only Georgia Power — so they’re going to do that, in northern Georgia.

“They’re going to make their profit. If they build a transmission line or multiple lines into south Georgia to bring renewable energy up, those renewable projects will actually go out for bid, and Georgia Power or a Southern Company affiliate may or may not win the bid.”

Robinson defended the utility’s structure and said the proof of its success is in its results: “Our longstanding history of reliability.”

“We believe strongly that the vertically integrated model serves the citizens of Georgia best,” Robinson said, noting that Georgia Power did not have to impose rolling blackouts during the Feb. 2021 winter storm that devastated Texas, or during last December’s Winter Storm Elliott.

Germany to Surpass 50 Percent Renewable Power This Year, Official Says

Yale Environment 360
Mon, September 18, 2023 

A rooftop solar array in Alsfeld, Germany. UuMUfQ via Wikipedia

Germany is on track to generate more than half of its electricity from renewables this year, an official said Monday.

Speaking at a conference organized by the Heinrich Boell Foundation, economy minister Robert Habeck said that Germany has seen a boom in renewable power, Reuters reported.

In the first half of this year, renewables, including hydropower and biomass, accounted for 52 percent of power production in Germany, Europe’s largest economy. If trends continue, 2023 will mark the first full year in which the nation generates more than half of its power from renewable energy, largely wind and solar.

This year, Germany will add at least 9 gigawatts to its 67 gigawatts of solar capacity, with much of the growth driven by rooftop installations. It will also add around 3 gigawatts to its 58 gigawatts of onshore wind.


Unlike these power sources, offshore wind continues to stutter. The sector remains frustrated by supply chain issues that have led to shortages of some components.

Habeck emphasized that Germany is still not on pace to reach its goal of 80 percent renewable power by 2030. The country will need to accelerate its buildout of renewables to keep up with rising electricity demand, particularly as a growing number of electric cars connect to the grid.



BP to Invest $10.7B for Clean Energy Initiatives in Germany

Zacks Equity Research
Thu, September 14, 2023 

BP plc BP is allocating a budget of up to $10.7 billion for investing in low-carbon fuels, renewables and electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure in Germany by the end of this decade, per a Reuters report.

The latest move is in line with the company’s strategy to rival the local energy firms.

BP recognizes Germany as one of the key countries in its strategy to significantly expand the use of low-carbon fuels and electricity, while moving away from fossil fuels.

As part of its investment efforts in Germany, BP intends to expand its local network of high-speed EV charging stations, decarbonize its refineries and proceed with wind power initiatives. The company is also exploring the possibility to set up a regional center for importing low-carbon hydrogen.

Increasing global awareness of climate change has put significant pressure on countries, including Europe’s largest economy, to accelerate their transition to cleaner energy sources. Firms at the forefront of the energy transition could secure a competitive edge in an upcoming global economy characterized by low-carbon emissions.

Hence, BP intends to allocate a budget of $55-$65 billion toward its emerging transition ventures from 2023 to 2030, eventually matching its financial commitment to oil and gas. The magnitude of this investment is likely to pose a significant challenge for established power utilities, which are finding it difficult to rival the financial strength of oil companies.

BP’s presence in Germany spans more than a century. BP operates two refineries in Germany’s Lingen and Gelsenkirchen. It also oversees Aral, which happens to be the largest petrol station network in Germany. BP provides more than 1,700 fast EV loading spots in Germany through its Aral brand.

BP plans to achieve up to 20,000 charging points by 2030, capitalizing on the increasing embrace of electric vehicles, with various automakers like Volkswagen and BMW introducing the latest models.
Price Performance

Shares of BP have underperformed the industry in the past six months. The stock has gained 6.7% compared with the industry’s 12.3% growth.

•  

  

  Zacks Investment Research

  
  Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

WAR IS RAPE

UN experts say Ethiopia's conflict and Tigray fighting left over 10,000 survivors of sexual violence

JAMEY KEATEN
Mon, September 18, 2023 

 A Tigrayan refugee rape victim who fled the conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray sits for a portrait in eastern Sudan near the Sudan-Ethiopia border, March 20, 2021. 

(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)

GENEVA (AP) — U.N.-backed human rights experts say war crimes continue in Ethiopia despite a peace deal signed nearly a year ago to end a devastating conflict that has also engulfed the country's Tigray region. The violence has left at least 10,000 people affected by rape and other sexual violence — mostly women and girls.(WHICH MEANS SOME WERE BOYS AND MEN)

The experts' report, published on Monday, comes against the backdrop of an uncertain future for the team of investigators who wrote it: The U.N. Human Rights Council is set to decide early next month whether to extend the team's mandate in the face of efforts by the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to end it.

The violence erupted in November 2020, centering largely — though not exclusively — on the northern Tigray region, which for months was shut off from the outside world. The report cites atrocities by all sides in the war, including mass killings, rape, starvation, and destruction of schools and medical facilities.

Mohamed Chande Othman, chairman of the international commission of human rights experts on Ethiopia, said the situation remains “extremely grave” despite a peace accord signed in November.

”While the signing of the agreement may have mostly silenced the guns, it has not resolved the conflict in the north of the country, in particular in Tigray, nor has it brought about any comprehensive peace,” he said.

“Violent confrontations are now at a near-national scale, with alarming reports of violations against civilians in the Amhara region and on-going atrocities in Tigray,” Othman added.

The report said troops from neighboring Eritrea and militia members from Ethiopia's Amhara militia continue to commit grave violations in Tigray, including the “systematic rape and sexual violence of women and girls.”

Commissioner Radhika Coomaraswamy said the presence of Eritrean troops in Ethiopia showed not only "an entrenched policy of impunity, but also continued support for and tolerance of such violations by the federal government.”

“Entire families have been killed, relatives forced to watch horrific crimes against their loved ones, while whole communities have been displaced or expelled from their homes," she said.

Citing consolidated estimates from seven health centers in Tigray alone, the commission said more than 10,000 survivors of sexual violence sought care between the start of the conflict and July this year.

But accountability and trust in the justice system in Ethiopia have been lacking.

The commission said it knows of only 13 completed and 16 pending military court cases addressing sexual violence committed during the conflict.

The figures in the report offer a sweeping look at a conflict that was known to be rife with cases of sexual violence, even after the signing of the peace deal.

Ethiopia has also announced a state of emergency in the Amhara region last month, and the experts said they have received reports of “mass arbitrary detention of Amhara civilians,” including at least one drone strike carried by government forces.

Amhara, Ethiopia’s second most populous region, has been gripped by instability since April, when federal authorities moved to disarm its security forces following the end of the war in neighboring Tigray.

“This evolving situation has huge implications for stability in Ethiopia and the wider region, and in particular the tens of millions of women, men, and children who call it home,” Othman said, and stressed the need for continued monitoring.