2024-09-23 07:57

NEW DELHI, Sept 23 (Reuters) - The Indian government will sell onions from its reserves to cool high prices, a top official at the consumer affairs ministry told reporters on Monday. Earlier this month, the government had removed a floor price on onion exports after a spate of export curbs on farm goods fuelled anger among farmers. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-sell-onions-reserves-check-prices-official-says-2024-09-23/

2024-09-23 06:59

STOCKHOLM, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Fortum (FORTUM.HE) , opens new tab said on Monday it had agreed to sell its 37.4% stake in Finnish biorefining technology firm Chempolis, including Fortum's biobased solutions businesses, and its stake in the firm that owns 40.3% of Assam Bio Ethanol in India. The Finnish energy group said in a statement the buyer is India's AM Green Technology & Solutions. Fortum said the divestment is a part of its strategic review and would not have a material impact on its result. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/technology/fortum-sell-its-stakes-biobased-solutions-businesses-india-2024-09-23/

2024-09-23 06:40

Sept 23 (Reuters) - Alaska Airlines (ALK.N) , opens new tab said on Monday that it experienced an IT outage that caused significant disruption to its operations, including delayed flights. Alaska issued a ground stop in Seattle, it said in a statement to Reuters, adding that the issue has been resolved but it expects some residual impact to operations. The ground stop was for arrivals in Seattle and lasted for about 2 hours, the airlines said. On Sunday night, the airline on its X account confirmed there had been an outage as multiple users complained they were facing issues accessing its website and app. "This was not a cyber attack or any kind of unauthorised activity. It was a certificate issue that impacted multiple systems," it added. In April, Alaska Airlines had to halt all its flights due to an issue while performing an upgrade to the system that calculates the weight and balance of its planes. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/alaska-airlines-hit-by-it-outage-causing-ground-stop-seattle-2024-09-23/

2024-09-23 06:15

LONDON, Sept 23 (Reuters) - British investment managers Legal & General (LGEN.L) , opens new tab and Schroders (SDR.L) , opens new tab are to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial property in the United States, but are largely steering clear of the hard-hit office sector, the companies told Reuters. The fund managers, which oversee more than 1.9 trillion pounds ($2.5 trillion) of assets between them, said they had separately been building up their U.S. real estate teams to make the push, anticipating that property prices will recover, aided by falling interest rates. Legal & General CEO António Simões told Reuters that U.S. real estate was a key expansion market for the company, adding that the market's fundamentals remained strong. Higher borrowing costs and widespread adoption of home working post-pandemic have hit property prices globally, with the U.S. office market hit particularly hard and investors still nervous about oversupply. But expectations of more interest rate cuts after the U.S. Federal Reserve announced a bumper 50 basis points reduction last week have improved the investment outlook. Property analysts also said the U.S. market tends to reset faster than continental Europe, with lenders and developers quicker to reprice assets. L&G plans to expand its fledgling U.S. real estate equity portfolio by hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years, while adding a similar level of exposure in its more established real estate debt business, the company said. The fund manager has built a team of around 20 people in Chicago to help with the equity investment push, with a focus on rental homes across the country that have fared better than offices. Schroders said it was aiming to grow its own nascent U.S. real estate equity portfolio from tens of millions of dollars currently, to hundreds of millions over the medium term. The firm this month made an investment in a pan-American data centre portfolio, one of its initial forays. "We see the beginning of the Fed journey to normal interest rates as a key to unlock some pent-up demand," said Michelle Russell-Dowe, co-head of private debt and credit alternatives at Schroders Capital, the London-listed manager's private markets arm. Schroders has also identified opportunities in real estate debt, as banks retreat due to tougher capital rules. "The scale of the opportunity is huge," said Jeffrey Williams, a New York-based investor at Schroders. "There's a big gap in financing that other lenders are going to have to fill." The company said it was not averse to office investments, but they would need to be high quality developments. British insurer Phoenix's (PHNX.L) , opens new tab fund arm, which manages around 290 billion pounds, told Reuters it also planned to "invest considerably" in U.S. real estate but declined to give details on the scale of potential investment. ($1 = 0.7520 pounds) Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/big-uk-investors-poised-buy-dip-us-property-2024-09-23/

2024-09-23 05:50

BANGKOK, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Thai businesses are pressing the central bank to take measures to stabilise the baht currency, which has rapidly gained strength and could impact fourth-quarter growth, a senior chamber of commerce official said on Monday. The baht has strengthened faster than anticipated and was affecting exports and tourism, deputy chairman Phot Aramwattananon told a press conference. Both sectors are key drivers of the Thai economy, Southeast Asia's second-largest, which has been struggling since the pandemic and lagging regional peers. The impact of the baht strengthening has been immediate, already hitting competitiveness of exports, especially in agriculture and food product sectors, the chamber said in a statement. The central bank should oversee the baht stability so that it was in line with global and domestic economic conditions, it added. On Monday, the baht hovered around 32.8 to the U.S. dollar, trading at its strongest level in more than 19 months. It has gained 13% against the dollar since a low in April of 37.17. An appropriate level was 34 baht to the greenback, said the chamber's chair, Sanan Angubolkul, adding it was seeking a meeting with the central bank and finance ministry to discuss economic stimulus, interest rate reduction and debt resolution. Thai household debt was $484 billion as of March this year, or 90.8% of gross domestic product, among the highest ratios in Asia. Bank of Thailand (BOT) Governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput said on Friday the central bank was monitoring the baht, which he said has become stronger and more volatile, driven by a weaker dollar. However, he said the baht's strength had not impacted exports much, but the BOT wanted to ensure it was not overly volatile. The chamber of commerce also adjusted its 2024 growth forecast upwards from 2.5% seen previously to a range of 2.6% to 2.8% due to policies of the new government to revive the economy. Stimulus measures are expected to add 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points of growth, said Thanavath Phonvichai, president of the Thai Chamber of Commerce University. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/thai-businesses-urge-central-bank-take-measures-stabilise-baht-2024-09-23/

2024-09-23 05:13

Groups' cooperation presents a new challenge to the industry Several groups believe governments, developers downplaying environmental risk Groups accused of links to right-wing and fossil fuel interests LOS ANGELES/SYDNEY, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Bill Thompson's fight to stop offshore wind farms was once confined to the tiny U.S. state of Rhode Island where he lives. Today, he is part of a global movement. In April, Thompson, who is director of the activist group Green Oceans, got an email from a fellow anti-offshore wind group more than 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away called Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter). They were looking for advice on ways to combat projects off Australia’s southeast coast. In August, he got another request, this time from French group PIEBIEM fighting projects in Brittany. "It's always nice to know that other people are thinking the same way you are," he told Reuters. These groups are among a dozen or more local activist organizations across the U.S., Europe and Australia who told Reuters they have begun sharing tactics, talking points and other resources in their common mission to derail offshore wind – a development they hope will transform what was once a disorganized scattering of local activists into an increasingly sophisticated global network. Several anti-offshore wind groups said they believe governments and wind developers, such as Orsted (ORSTED.CO) , opens new tab, Avangrid (AGR.N) , opens new tab and Shell (SHEL.L) , opens new tab, are downplaying the environmental damage caused by projects as they promote the renewable energy source as a solution to climate change. In most cases, the groups are looking to anti-offshore wind activists on the U.S. East Coast for advice, citing their years of success in slowing or cutting the size of major projects, eroding public support for the technology, and winning over conservative politicians like former President Donald Trump, whose administration had supported offshore wind, but now opposes it virulently as the Republican presidential nominee. Offshore wind is a nascent industry in the U.S. and a key pillar of President Joe Biden's plan to fight climate change. However, plans to install turbines along every U.S. coastline have been challenged by soaring costs and supply chain snags and attracted multiple lawsuits over concerns about the industry's impact on tourism, property values, fishing and marine habitats. Reuters reporting reveals how the groups' global cooperation presents a fresh challenge to the industry as it allows new opposition groups to quickly tap into years of work done by others. In many cases, it also helps to propagate viral, politically powerful, but sometimes false talking points, including that turbines kill endangered whales and do nothing to slow global warming. "It's a huge problem, and I don't think the industry has got its head around A, what's happening, and B, what to do about it," Ben Backwell, CEO of the Global Wind Energy Council, a Lisbon-based industry trade group, said. Opposition groups say they are just getting started. "We would like to go further, for example with joint declarations, and a better media impact, to alert public opinion," said Eric Sartori, secretary of PIEBIEM, which in French stands for Preserving the Environmental Identity of Southern Brittany and the Islands against Offshore Wind. A U.S. West Coast group told Reuters this month it is starting a national anti-offshore wind organization. Other groups, including Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter), said they have discussed forming a global coalition, especially as the rest of the world steps up trying to catch up with China, Britain and Germany, the top producers of offshore wind energy. INCUBATED ONLINE Sartori of PIEBIEM said he first contacted Green Oceans and another group in Nantucket after seeing pictures of broken wind turbine blades washing ashore in Massachusetts this summer on social media platform X. Sartori said Green Oceans' Thompson helped, including by providing him a quote from a U.S. government agency suggesting offshore wind has no climate benefit. That quote - “it is anticipated there will be no collective impact on global warming as a result of offshore wind projects” - now appears on PIEBIEM's web site next to photos of fiberglass shards littering Nantucket's coast. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management told Reuters the quote was part of an environmental analysis of a project, and that the second half of the sentence - not present on PIEBIEM's site - says wind projects "may beneficially contribute to a broader combination of actions to reduce future impacts from climate change." BOEM routinely states in its environmental reviews that wind power will not change the course of global warming on its own but can help when combined with other actions. In other groups, posts range from skepticism about whether wind turbines can survive high winds to fears they will obstruct ocean views. The most viral, however, is that offshore wind development threatens whales. That claim caught fire in the U.S. in early 2023 after several New Jersey and New York groups blamed the industry for a spate of whale deaths and caught the attention of conservative media. The claim is now repeated by opponents across the globe, including in France and Australia. The U.S. government says the claim has no merit, and links most human-caused whale deaths to vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear. A clean energy trade group, American Clean Power Association, said it is addressing opposition by working to communicate the benefits of offshore wind, such as economic growth and energy independence. "Misinformation undermines trust, fosters confusion, and divides communities at a time we need more American energy," a spokesperson for ACP said. EXPERT BACKING Green Oceans has enlisted the support of Spanish marine biologist Josep Lloret, who has raised concerns about the potential environmental harms of offshore wind in the Mediterranean Sea, and hosted a talk by Texas-based journalist Robert Bryce who is skeptical of the renewable energy transition. Other groups piggy-back off their work. “Green Oceans ... the beauty of them is they have scientists behind them, so we could look at the papers they are saying are factual and determine they are peer reviewed,” said Jenny Cullen, president of Australia's Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter). "It wasn't Charlie down the road using ChatGPT to pull up BS." The tactics are already helping turn an industry that received little opposition during its early days in Europe decades ago into a political hot potato. In New Jersey, where opposition to offshore wind is arguably stronger than in any other U.S. state, support for the industry stood at 50% late last year from 80% four years earlier, according to a poll by Stockton University. Trump has also joined the movement, promising to halt offshore wind projects if he wins back the presidency in November. His administration several years ago had promoted offshore wind as a part of his “America First” agenda, and held a record offshore wind government auction in 2018. Trump's campaign did not respond to requests for comment. In Australia, which is a new target for offshore wind developers, the main opposition party has also swung behind the movement, and public opposition has been growing – reaching 18% in September, from 12% a year earlier, according to polls from Freshwater Strategy. In France, meanwhile, a Senate committee in July recommended cuts to the nation’s offshore wind target, arguing the technology is expensive and lacks maturity. The nuclear powerhouse is already lagging its neighbours on renewable energy and has fallen behind targets set by the European Commission. In tandem with their successes, groups opposed to offshore wind have been dogged by accusations they are backed by right-wing interests linked to the fossil fuel industry. A 2023 study by researchers at Brown University mapped links between U.S. groups and conservative think tanks, including a case in which the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute supported a lawsuit to block the Vineyard Wind project filed by a Nantucket group, ACK4Whales. Amy DiSibio, a board member of ACK4Whales, said her group is not partisan and has distanced itself from the pro-fossil fuel think tank. A New Jersey group, Protect Our Coast NJ, said the same. "It takes away from our message," Robin Shaffer, president of Protect Our Coast NJ, said in an interview. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/offshore-wind-opponents-australia-europe-lean-us-groups-advice-2024-09-23/