Quote of the day…
The Chinese President's remarks came a day after China held large-scale exercises off the coast of Taiwan.
LE MONDE WITH AFP Most read…
Why China Could Dominate the Next Big Advance in Batteries
China is far ahead of the rest of the world in the development of batteries that use sodium, which are starting to compete with ubiquitous lithium power cells.
NYT, BY KEITH BRADSHER, REPORTING FROM CHANGSHA, NINGDE AND FUZHOU IN CHINA, APRIL 12, 2023 Xi says China must step up training for 'actual combat'
The Chinese President's remarks came a day after China held large-scale exercises off the coast of Taiwan.
LE MONDE WITH AFP, PUBLISHED TODAY AT 2:04 PM (PARIS) China to close airspace north of Taiwan April 16-18, sources say
According to a senior official with firsthand knowledge of the situation, the flight ban will impact between 60% and 70% of flights between Northeast and Southeast Asia, between Taiwan and South Korea, and between Japan and North America.
REUTERS, EDITING BY GERMÁN & CO Analysis: LNG imports test EU resolve to quit Russian fossil fuel
The EU's commitment to stop using Russian fossil fuels by 2027 has been undermined by the EU's growing overall purchases of Russian LNG.
REUTER BY KATE ABNETT, MARWA RASHAD AND GABRIELA BACZYNSKA, EDITING BY GERMÁN & CO The Mysteries of the Biggest Intel Leak in a Decade
What We Know So Far About the Allegedly Leaked Classified U.S. Military Documents…
We don’t know who’s behind this. We don’t know what the motive is,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said at briefing Monday. “We don’t know what else might be out there.” Asked if the leak had been contained, Kirby said, “We don’t know. We truly don’t.”
TIME BY VERA BERGENGRUEN 
“We’re living in a volatile world…
it’s easy to get distracted by things like changeable commodity prices or a shortage of solar panels. But this wouldn’t be true to our purpose – we can’t allow ourselves to lose sight of our end goal; said Andres Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES Corp
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A vehicle charging station, with large batteries supplied by CATL, in Fuzhou, China, in February. CATL is the world’s largest manufacturer of electric car batteries.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times Why China Could Dominate the Next Big Advance in Batteries
China is far ahead of the rest of the world in the development of batteries that use sodium, which are starting to compete with ubiquitous lithium power cells.
NYT, BY KEITH BRADSHER, REPORTING FROM CHANGSHA, NINGDE AND FUZHOU IN CHINA, APRIL 12, 2023 In Changsha, deep in China’s interior, thousands of chemists, engineers and manufacturing workers are shaping the future of batteries.
The city’s Central South University churns out the graduates who are advancing the technology, much as Stanford University molded the careers of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who pioneered microchips. Across the Xiang River, vast factories mix minerals into the highly processed compounds that make rechargeable batteries possible.
These batteries, mostly made of lithium, have powered the rise of cellphones and other consumer electronics. They are transforming the auto industry and could soon start doing the same for solar panels and wind turbines crucial in the fight against climate change. China dominates their chemical refining and production.
Now China is positioning itself to command the next big innovation in rechargeable batteries: replacing lithium with sodium, a far cheaper and more abundant material.
Sodium, found all over the world as part of salt, sells for 1 to 3 percent of the price of lithium and is chemically very similar. Recent breakthroughs mean that sodium batteries can now be recharged daily for years, chipping away at a key advantage of lithium batteries. The energy capacity of sodium batteries has also increased.
Central South University in Changsha produces graduates who are helping China advance in sodium battery development. Credit...Keith Bradsher/The New York Times And sodium batteries come with a big advantage: They keep almost all of their charge when temperatures fall far below freezing, something lithium batteries typically do not do.
In Changsha, graduates from Central South University’s leafy campus are working on sodium battery technology at nearby research laboratories run by companies including Germany’s BASF, the world’s biggest chemical maker. One of the first large factories for sodium battery chemicals is already under construction a few blocks away from the labs.
Chinese battery executives said in interviews that they have figured out in the past year how to make sodium battery cells so similar to lithium ones that they can be made with the same equipment. Chinese giant CATL, the world’s largest manufacturer of electric car batteries, says it has discovered a way to use sodium cells and lithium cells in a single electric car’s battery pack, combining the low cost and weather resistance of sodium cells with the extended range of lithium cells. The company says it is now prepared to mass produce these mixed battery packs.
“We are ready to industrialize it,” Huang Qisen, the deputy dean of CATL’s research institute, said in an interview at the company’s headquarters in Ningde, China. CATL, which is short for Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., relies partly on chemicals from Changsha and recently built its first large-scale sodium battery assembly line in Ningde.
Multinational corporations are taking notice of sodium.
“It will shave off the peak of demand for lithium,” said Mike Henry, the chief executive of BHP, the world’s largest mining company. “I am confident we will start seeing sodium replace lithium for certain applications.”
An employee works on the production line of sodium batteries at a factory engaged in researching, developing and making batteries, in China in 2020.Credit...Tan Yunfeng/Visual China Group Research into using sodium for batteries began in earnest in the 1970s, led then by the United States. Japanese researchers made crucial advances a dozen years ago. Chinese companies have since taken the lead in commercializing the technology.
Out of 20 sodium battery factories now planned or already under construction around the world, 16 are in China, according to Benchmark Minerals, a consulting firm. In two years, China will have nearly 95 percent of the world’s capacity to make sodium batteries. Lithium battery production will still dwarf sodium battery output at that point, Benchmark predicts, but advances in sodium are accelerating.
At next week’s Shanghai auto show, carmakers and battery producers are expected to announce plans for sodium batteries in at least some limited-range subcompact cars for the Chinese market.
The most immediately promising use for sodium batteries is for electric grids, the networks of wires and towers that transmit electricity. Batteries for grids are a fast-growing market, especially in China. Tesla said this week that it would build a factory in Shanghai to make lithium batteries for energy providers.
Sodium batteries need to be bigger than lithium ones to hold the same electrical charge. That is a problem for cars, which have limited space, but not for electricity grid storage. Utilities that switch from lithium to sodium can simply put twice as many big batteries in an empty lot near solar panels or wind turbines.
The nearly completed CATL Cheliwan Production Base in Ningde, China, in February.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times Utilities around the world have an increasing appetite for massive amounts of battery storage as they move to climate-friendly sources like solar and wind. They need to be able to store energy while the sun shines and the wind blows, and then use it later as a replacement for electricity powered by coal or gas.
Electricity in one large Chinese province, Shandong, already sells for up to 20 times more in early evening, when demand is high, than at mid-day, when the grid is flooded with more solar power than factories and homes need. The power generation companies use lithium batteries to distribute their renewable electricity across more hours.
But some utilities, like Three Gorges Corporation in west-central China, are beginning to experiment with sodium batteries. Many provinces have begun requiring newly built solar or wind power farms to install enough batteries to store 10 to 20 percent of the electricity that they generate, said Frank Haugwitz, a consultant who specializes in China’s solar industry.
CATL has installed lithium batteries the size of minivans at electric car charging stations in cities like Fuzhou. The batteries automatically charge whenever electricity is cheap, like overnight or when the sun is shining on the charging station’s rooftop solar panels, and are ready whenever motorists drive up to recharge. CATL is studying whether sodium can be used in such locations.
A CATL charging station.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times Unlike lithium batteries, the latest sodium batteries do not require scarce materials like cobalt, a mineral mined mainly in Africa under conditions that have alarmed human rights groups. The newest sodium batteries also do not require nickel, which comes mainly from mines in Indonesia, Russia and the Philippines.
Yet as China races toward leadership in sodium, it still faces challenges. For starters, there is where to get the sodium.
While salt is abundant, the United States accounts for over 90 percent of the world’s readily mined reserves for soda ash, the main industrial source of sodium. Deep under the southwestern Wyoming desert lies a vast deposit of soda ash, formed 50 million years ago. Soda ash there has long been extracted for America’s glass manufacturing industry.
With minimal natural reserves of soda ash and a reluctance to rely on imports from the United States, China instead produces synthetic soda ash at chemical plants fueled by coal.
China’s synthetic soda ash industry has a record of hazardous water pollution. That includes the collapse of a pile of alkali slag in east-central China in 2016 that washed away cars and fouled a major river. The country’s environment agency is working to clean up the industry.
Another question hanging over sodium is whether lithium will remain costly. Lithium prices quadrupled from 2017 to last November, but have since dropped by two-thirds.
There are also doubts about the durability of sodium batteries. Power companies want to see how sodium batteries perform for years outdoors, not just in labs, said David Fishman, a power sector consultant at Lantau Group, a consulting firm.
But Mr. Fishman and others are now watching sodium battery development closely. Demand for batteries is growing fast, and lithium is unlikely to remain the dominant material indefinitely.
“Yes, sodium has a role,” said Mr. Henry of BHP. “China is at the forefront of driving research in this.”
The Chaerhan Salt Lake in Golmud, China, in 2021. The salt lake is an industrial base for extracting a variety of minerals, including lithium, magnesium, and potassium.Credit...Qilai Shen for The New York Times LI YOU CONTRIBUTED RESEARCH. KEITH BRADSHER IS THE BEIJING BUREAU CHIEF FOR THE TIMES. HE PREVIOUSLY SERVED AS BUREAU CHIEF IN SHANGHAI, HONG KONG AND DETROIT AND AS A WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT. HE HAS LIVED AND REPORTED IN MAINLAND CHINA THROUGH THE PANDEMIC. MORE ABOUT KEITH BRADSHER Chinese President Xi Jinping applauds at the closing ceremony for China's National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Monday, March 13, 2023. ANDY WONG / AP, editing by Germán & Co Xi says China must step up training for 'actual combat'
The Chinese President's remarks came a day after China held large-scale exercises off the coast of Taiwan.
LE MONDE WITH AFP, PUBLISHED TODAY AT 2:04 PM (PARIS) Chinese President Xi Jinping called on the country's armed forces to "strengthen military training oriented toward actual combat," state media reported on Wednesday, April 12, after Beijing conducted military drills intended to intimidate Taiwan.
Xi's comments, delivered on a naval inspection trip on Tuesday, come amid heightened tension in the region after the show of force by Beijing, which sees self-ruled Taiwan as its territory.
China on Monday concluded three days of military drills launched in response to a visit last week by Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen to the United States, where she met a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
Xi on Tuesday told the People's Liberation Army's Southern Theatre Command Navy that the military must "resolutely defend China's territorial sovereignty and maritime interests and strive to protect overall peripheral stability," state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Beijing is also enraged by a plan for US forces to use a growing number of bases in the Philippines, including one near Taiwan.
The US and the Philippines are holding their largest-ever joint military drills this week, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken committing to "standing with the Philippines against any intimidation or coercion, including in the South China Sea."
Xi added Tuesday that China must be "innovative in its concepts and methods of combat."
Chinese and Taiwanese national flags are displayed alongside military airplanes in this illustration taken April 9, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration, Editing by Germán & Co China to close airspace north of Taiwan April 16-18, sources say
According to a senior official with firsthand knowledge of the situation, the flight ban will impact between 60% and 70% of flights between Northeast and Southeast Asia, between Taiwan and South Korea, and between Japan and North America.
REUTERS, EDITING BY GERMÁN & CO April 12 (Reuters) - China is planning to close the airspace north of Taiwan from April 16 to 18, four sources with knowledge of the matter said, a move that could disrupt flights around the region.
China and Taiwan's foreign ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Four officials outside China, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the ban would disrupt Taiwan's northern flight information region (FIR) and that they were not aware of the reason for the restrictions.
It comes as China rounds off several days of military training around self-ruled Taiwan, a response to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's recent meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California which infuriated Beijing.
One senior official with direct knowledge of the matter said the flight ban would affect 60%-70% of flights going between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as flights between Taiwan and South Korea, Japan and North America.
According to OPSGROUP, an aviation industry cooperative which advises on flight risks, previous restrictions imposed during Chinese military drills last August resulted in significant disruptions to flights in the region, with some pilots forced to carry extra fuel.
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country
…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.
More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
Model of LNG tanker is seen in front of the EU flag in this illustration taken May 19, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Analysis: LNG imports test EU resolve to quit Russian fossil fuel
The EU's commitment to stop using Russian fossil fuels by 2027 has been undermined by the EU's growing overall purchases of Russian LNG.
REUTER BY KATE ABNETT, MARWA RASHAD AND GABRIELA BACZYNSKA, EDITING BY GERMÁN & CO BRUSSELS/LONDON, April 12 (Reuters) - Political pressure is building within the European Union to tackle the daunting challenge of closing a loophole in its efforts to stop using Russian fossil fuels: liquefied natural gas (LNG).
In the year since Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the EU has placed sanctions on seaborne oil and coal imports from Russia.
It has drastically cut reliance on Russian pipeline gas, despite not imposing sanctions on the fuel. But at the same time, EU countries have increased their overall purchases of Russian LNG, undermining the bloc's pledge to end its use of Russian fossil fuels by 2027.
As a consequence, the EU has sent billions of dollars to Russian gas firms Gazprom and Novatek that can be used to finance the war in Ukraine, as the energy companies, via corporate taxes, are among the largest contributors to Russia's budget.
Analysts at CapraView, a global gas forecasting firm, estimate almost half of the LNG Russia exported in the first ten months after its invasion of Ukraine flowed to Europe, representing approximately $14 billion in revenue.
Russian LNG exports by region Russian LNG exports by region EU analysis found Russian LNG imports increased to 22 billion cubic metres (bcm) last year, up from 16 bcm in 2021. Those volumes are far smaller than the 155 bcm of pipeline gas the EU used to receive each year from Moscow, although some countries have seen a significant uptick since the war.
Belgium and Spain nearly doubled their imports of Russian LNG in the 12 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, analysis by Kpler showed.
LNG exports from Yamal LNG exports from Yamal The appetite to address the issue is mounting within the 27-member European Union, but there is no agreement on how as the risks of inflating energy prices and inadvertently boosting Russian energy revenues further are considerable.
EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson last month urged member states and EU companies to stop buying Russian LNG, calling it a "reputational risk" to have LNG imports rising while the bloc touts its efforts to cut revenue to Russia.
Also last month, Spanish Energy Minister Teresa Ribera asked Spanish buyers not to sign new Russian LNG contracts. But she said that unless there were sanctions, EU companies that stopped buying Russian LNG could be forced to pay penalties for breaking their existing contracts.
"I think it should be part of the discussion in a sanctions package, because otherwise the situation is quite absurd," Ribera told Reuters.
"It's true that in total amounts, it's not so much. But I think it is not easy to explain why we still accept these LNG imports," she said.
Given the political hurdle of approving sanctions, which require unanimity, some in the EU are turning to other options.
Last week, member states collectively proposed that the bloc create a legal option to let countries stop Russian firms booking the infrastructure capacity needed to ship LNG to Europe.
The proposal, which is part of a law containing broader rules on EU gas markets, must be negotiated with the European Parliament. The Parliament wants to go further, and has proposed an effective ban all EU imports of Russian gas.
"Unprecedented times require unprecedented responses," said parliament's lead negotiator on the law, former Polish prime minister Jerzy Buzek. He said the proposal aligned with the EU's strategy to end its reliance on all Russian fossil fuels.
PRACTICAL AND LEGAL QUESTIONS
Some EU officials, however, said the Parliament's proposal was extremely unlikely to win political support from member states, in part because of legal issues.
Klaus-Dieter Borchardt, a Senior Energy Advisor at law firm Baker McKenzie, said World Trade Organisation law only allows countries to ban a specific product from their market in certain limited circumstances.
"I personally would have my doubts whether such a rule would be compatible with these non-discrimination rules under the WTO," he said of the Parliament's proposal. Borchardt was previously a senior official in the European Commission's energy department.
Dutch Energy Minister Rob Jetten told Reuters there was the practical difficulty that some countries cannot diversify their supplies quickly enough to cope with an immediate halt.
"For some EU member states, this would be a bit too much," he said, referring to the prospect of sanctions on Russian LNG.
The Netherlands has eliminated its Russian pipeline gas imports since the war and reduced, but not eliminated, Russian LNG imports.
TO BAN OR NOT TO BAN
Halting Russian LNG imports would be double-edged, analysts say.
It could drive up European gas prices without necessarily reducing Russian export revenues, since LNG can easily be redirected to markets in Asia that have not imposed sanctions on Russia, CapraView Chief Analyst Tamir Druz said.
"Unlike pipeline gas exports, which are essentially stranded in Russia, it will be much more difficult to reduce Russian revenues or global gas market dependence on Russian LNG," he said.
Enforcing a ban could also be challenging, given the difficulty of ruling out that LNG cargoes from other countries do not contain Russian volumes, especially via ship-to-ship transfer.
Some EU diplomats expressed concern suppliers could be deterred from sending cargoes to Europe if they were required, for instance, to provide documents proving their LNG is not Russian, when buyers in other markets do not require such proof.
With the LNG market currently tight, some analysts said Europe may struggle to replace Russian LNG with alternatives, threatening gas shortages if countries cannot fill the gap.
"The 101 of sanctions is not to hurt yourself more than the party you want to sanction," said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a researcher at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.
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The Mysteries of the Biggest Intel Leak in a Decade
What We Know So Far About the Allegedly Leaked Classified U.S. Military Documents…
We don’t know who’s behind this. We don’t know what the motive is,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said at briefing Monday. “We don’t know what else might be out there.” Asked if the leak had been contained, Kirby said, “We don’t know. We truly don’t.”
TIME BY VERA BERGENGRUEN But the recent leak of more than 100 pages of classified U.S. intelligence documents, which could be the most damaging disclosure of U.S. government documents in a decade, has baffled current and former officials and security analysts. The documents, some of which are marked “Top Secret” and normally accessible only to officials with the highest level of security clearance, surfaced in early March on Discord chat servers dedicated to the popular game Minecraft and fans of a Filipino YouTube star. There they sat for a month, only breaking through to the public—and, it appears, U.S. military officials—when they were posted on a pro-Russia Telegram channel and the far-right imageboard 4chan and made their way to Twitter.
Those aren’t the only odd aspects of the documents’ emergence. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was first briefed on the leaks on April 6, the Pentagon said Monday, the same day their existence was first reported by the New York Times and a day after screenshots of the documents began circulating on mainstream social platforms. The documents, some of which TIME reviewed but could not authenticate, appear to be hastily folded and smoothed-out sheets of paper that were sloppily photographed instead of scanned. Online sleuths have apparently pieced together some of the items in the background—American hunting magazines, a bottle of Gorilla glue, a nail clipper.
None of this is typical for an intelligence leak of this magnitude, with assessments of the war in Ukraine and sensitive briefings on other countries. “The way that it was disseminated, that it was put on some website and not quietly or secretly given to an agent…it was done in the full open, so anyone could see it,” says Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine during the Obama Administration. “It was almost daring people to notice it.”
U.S. military, law-enforcement, intelligence and diplomatic officials are now scrambling to respond. The mystery isn’t only who leaked the documents, but also for what purpose. “The way intelligence is revealed and shared is really very much a part of war-making,” says Farkas. “And here it’s unclear who they intended to help and who they intended to hurt.”
Some of the documents were marked “SECRET/NOFORN,” meaning it is not meant to be shared with foreign countries. Others, which appeared to be briefing documents, had the seal of the Joint Chiefs’ intelligence arm. But the existence of the leaks and their bizarre appearance could be more damaging than what they actually divulge, according to analysts and former U.S. officials. The documents, if authentic, contain details on military activities in Ukraine, including the weaknesses of the country’s air defenses. But they do not reveal specific war plans or new information that contradicts what was publicly known ahead of an expected counteroffensive from Ukrainian forces.
The diplomatic fallout could be substantial. Some of the documents, if authentic, contain information that the U.S. would have obtained by spying on allies, including Israel, Ukraine, Turkey, and South Korea, raising concerns that the leak could impact these sensitive relationships and imperil U.S. allies’ willingness to share intelligence. The leak includes documents that purport to show the U.S. intercepting President Volodymyr Zelensky’s communications with defense officials, which has frustrated the Ukrainians .The cache also includes detailed information seemingly collected by the U.S. from Russia’s intercepted communications, including the operations of the mercenary Wagner group. The disclosure of such information could change the group’s procedures or imperil human sources, former officials say.
The leaks are “damaging, for sure, especially to trust and in that it possibly reveals what we know,” says Ben Hodges, a retired U.S. Army officer who served as commanding general in the United States Army Europe. “But I’m not sure how much of this is real or deception…Investigations will turn up more insight about credibility and gaps and vulnerabilities in our systems.”
The unusual format has also provided an opening to spread further disinformation and confusion. At least one version of the documents, posted on a pro-Russian Telegram, appears to have been crudely altered to inflate the U.S. estimates of Ukrainian casualties. One document in the cache appeared to show that Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, encouraged its staff to support anti-government protests against a proposed judiciary overhaul. The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently denied the allegations in the document on Sunday, calling them “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”
Investigators are working to determine who had the access and the motive to leak all this. Senior defense officials are taking “a closer look at how this type of information is distributed and to whom,” Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher told reporters on Monday, calling the leak a “very serious” risk to national security. Austin has been convening military officials daily since April 7 to discuss the leaks, he said. At the State Department, spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters that U.S. officials “are engaging with allies and partners at high levels over this, including to reassure them, commitment to safeguarding intelligence and the fidelity of securing our partnerships as well,” but declined to go into specifics. The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation, and the Pentagon has set up an “interagency effort” to get to the bottom of the leak and assess “the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” according to deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh.
As the investigation unfolds, officials are bracing for the possibility that more information could be circulating online. There is no obvious rhyme or reason to the disclosures; some of the documents on 4chan appeared to have been posted by someone looking to settle an argument about the war in Ukraine.
“We don’t know who’s behind this. We don’t know what the motive is,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said at briefing Monday. “We don’t know what else might be out there.”
Asked if the leak had been contained, Kirby said, “We don’t know. We truly don’t.”
Image: Germán & Co