🌍 The wind industry is hitting turbulence

Hi there Intriguer. We missed a key commemoration yesterday, for which we apologise: two years ago, the New Zealand Long-Tailed Bat was named 2021 Bird of the Year (despite not being a bird).

Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• 🌬️ The wind sector is hitting some turbulence.

• 🇧🇴 Bolivia severs ties with Israel. 

• ➕ Plus: Protests in Bangladesh’s biggest export sector, how the papers are covering Serbia’s snap election announcement, and why folks in Belgium are googling a Spanish princess.

1. 🇰🇿 Kazakhstan: French President Macron visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan yesterday (Wednesday) in an effort to secure uranium for French nuclear plants. The two countries are France’s largest and third-largest suppliers of uranium respectively (Niger is second).

2. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: 28 countries, including the US and China, signed an agreement on managing AI and tech risks during a summit in England yesterday. British PM Sunak and Elon Musk are expected to hold a live conversation there today (Thursday). 

3. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh: The opposition has announced it’ll boycott upcoming elections if Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina refuses to step down. The party has boycotted, one way or another, the last two elections (Hasina won around 73% of the vote in each).

4. 🇵🇦 Panama: The Panama Canal Authority has again cut the number of ships it will allow to pass each day from an average of 36 to 25. Authorities say the month of October was the driest along the canal since 1950, partly due to El Niño.

5. 🇬🇦 Gabon: US President Joe Biden has announced he’s looking to remove Gabon, Niger, Uganda, and the Central African Republic from a US-Africa trade program, citing human rights and rule of law concerns. The initiative grants duty-free access to the US market.

🌬️ Ørsted | Energy

The global wind sector is hitting turbulence

Danish company Ørsted, the world’s largest offshore wind developer, released its latest financial report yesterday (Wednesday).

What’d it say? This year, the company has:

• ❌ Cancelled two large US offshore wind projects, and

• 📉 Suffered $4B in impairment losses (ie, abrupt asset value drops).

Hours after this report dropped, the company’s shares had tanked 26%.

Where’s the intrigue? Most wind developers are now facing headwinds:

• 🇯🇵 Various trading houses have cancelled wind projects in Japan, and

• 🇸🇪 Swedish group Vattenfall halted one of the UK’s largest offshore wind projects in July due to “market conditions”.

What’s the problem?

1. 📈 High interest rates have made project finance costly

2. 💸 Stubborn inflation has caused production costs to spike

3. 🚢 Supply chain bottlenecks have caused delays, and

4. 💼 Governments are struggling to adjust their rules and incentives to keep projects viable over long time horizons.

Intrigue's take: There’s a whirlwind of different objectives at play here: maximise shareholder value; keep energy costs low; hit net-zero targets; and put government debt on a sustainable trajectory.

When you mix them all together, the result is some clear market signals right now: renewable energy stocks have dropped around 30% since July, while fossil fuel stocks keep rising (and the sector looks as bullish as ever).

The path to net-zero is looking a little rocky.

📰 How newspapers covered…

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić calling snap elections

🤝 From our friends at Semafor 🤝 

Inside Washington's halls of power

Semafor Principals is a daily newsletter featuring transparent, unbiased reporting on politics and policy — covering your blindspots inside the halls of power. Read by senior leaders in Washington and beyond.

🇧🇴 Bolivia | Geopolitics

Israel is under pressure in Latin America

Bolivia announced (🇧🇴) Tuesday it was severing ties with Israel in response to the “aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive” in Gaza.

It’s the first to sever ties, though Argentina and Chile have echoed the sentiment, while Brazil and Colombia have accused Israel of genocide.

For its part, Israel says it expects fellow democracies to support Israel’s right to protect its citizens, and to call on Hamas to release its hostages.

Intrigue’s take: Israel is no stranger to isolation. And Hamas’s remarks overnight (calling for Israel’s “annihilation” and vowing to repeat the October 7th attacks) will have reaffirmed Israel’s sense of the stakes here.

But for its backers like the US, invested in sustaining support for a world order under pressure, each new repudiation will be cause for concern.

Also worth noting: 

• The UN Human Rights Office says this week’s Israeli airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp “could amount to war crimes”. Israel says it was targeting Ibrahim Biari, Hamas Commander for Central Jabaliya.

🎧 Our co-founder John (who was previously a diplomat in China) is on the latest Red Line Podcast, chatting about the hollowing of Hong Kong. Give it a listen here. 🎧

➕ Extra Intrigue

Here’s what people around the world googled yesterday: 

• 🇧🇪 Belgians googled ‘Espagne princesse Leonor’ (Spanish Princess Leonor) as she took the constitutional oath on her 18th birthday.

• 🇸🇦 Saudis turned to Google for updates on ‘اليمن’ (Yemen) after deadly clashes between the Saudi military and Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis.

• 🇮🇩 And Indonesians searched for ‘Harga BBM Pertamina’ (Pertamina fuel prices) as a price drop for non-subsidised fuel took effect.

🗳️ Poll time!

📸 Photo of the day

Thousands of garment workers took to the streets of Bangladesh earlier this week to protest against low wages in the sector. The textile industry accounts for more than 80% of the country’s exports. 

Yesterday’s poll: What should South Africa prioritise first?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⏰ Increasing any kind of power production, asap (36%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🌱 Green energy production (26%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 ⚖️ Prosecuting corruption within the energy sector (35%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (3%)

Your two cents:

• ⏰ D.E.E: “Once the lights stay on, they have breathing room to address other factors.”

• 🌱 T.C: “Green energy can be installed faster while potentially creating good paying jobs, reducing if not eliminating rolling blackouts and improving the economy.”

• ⚖️ J.B: “When corruption abounds, there's no way to fix other issues. Money allocated to fix those problems will simply disappear.”

• ✍️ M.G: “Walk and chew gum at the same time – do all of the above!!”