Trump, N.Korea’s Kim to hold 2nd summit in late February

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. President Donald Trump will hold a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late February but will maintain economic sanctions on Pyongyang, the White House said on Friday after Trump met Pyongyang’s top nuclear negotiator.

The announcement came amid a diplomatic flurry in Washington surrounding the visit of Kim Yong Chol, a hardline former spy chief, and marked a sign of movement in a denuclearization effort that has stalled since a landmark meeting between Trump and the North Korean leader in Singapore last year.

“President Donald J. Trump met with Kim Yong Chol for an hour and a half to discuss denuclearization and a second summit, which will take place near the end of February,” White House spokesman Sarah Sanders said.

Sanders insisted that while Trump’s talks with the North Korean were productive, the United States “is going to continue to keep pressure and sanctions on North Korea.”

Trump declared after the Singapore summit in June that the nuclear threat posed by North Korea was over. But hours before Kim Yong Chol’s arrival on Thursday, Trump unveiled a revamped U.S. missile defense strategy that singled out the country as an ongoing and “extraordinary threat.”

The first summit produced a vague commitment by Kim to work towards the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, but he has yet to take what Washington sees as concrete steps in that direction.

Nevertheless, both Trump and Kim had expressed an interest in arranging a second meeting, which some U.S.-based analysts say would be premature due to the lack of obvious progress so far. Some critics say the first summit only boosted Kim’s international stature without much to show for it.

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0005489620

Solar Investment Plunges Amid Panel Glut

Global spending on solar energy declined by almost a quarter last year to US$130.8 billion, mainly on the back of a regulatory policy overhaul in China that led to an oversupply of solar panels, driving prices down. This, in turn, resulted in an 8-percent slide in overall renewable energy investments to US$332 billion, data from a new report by Bloomberg New Energy Finance has shown.

China took markets by surprise in June last year by announcing that it would not issue approvals for any new solar power installations in 2018 and would also cut the feed-in tariff subsidy that has been a major driver of the solar business in the country that accounts for as much as 50 percent of capacity.

Following the June decision of the Chinese planning commission, global PV panel prices dropped by 12 percent, which benefited buyers of PV panels but served a blow to producers, and not just those in China. Yet, the investment cut was the largest in China: investments in renewable energy there fell by about 50 percent or US$40 billion last year.

This had a beneficial effect on capital costs, the BNEF analysts said. In 2018, the cost of installing a megawatt of solar generation capacity shed 12 percent. Now, this was not because of major cost reductions as much as a global PV module oversupply that was already emerging before China overhauled its solar industry regulations, but it was still substantial as far as cost cuts go.

While the news about falling panel costs is certainly good as it is making solar energy more competitive, the BNEF report was generally of the “cold shower” variety as a whole. The Bloomberg researchers warned that despite a surge in renewable energy investment since 2004, when the world spent less than US$62 billion on cleaner energy, as global energy demand grew, so did the consumption of fossil fuels. This effectively offset the gains in carbon emissions reductions achieved through the growing use of alternative energy sources.

Commenting on the report’s findings, BNEF analyst Jenny Chase, head of solar analysts, said “2018 was certainly a difficult year for many solar manufacturers, and for developers in China. However, we estimate that global PV installations increased from 99GW in 2017 to approximately 109GW in 2018, as other countries took advantage of the technology’s fiercely improved competitiveness.”

This year promises to be tough as well, at least in China. Earlier this month, the government said it will only approve new solar and wind power capacity if it matches the country’s coal benchmark on price.

One of the reasons for this move is the weight of subsidies that prompted last year’s regulatory change. Another, according to Forbes’ John Parnell, was the fact that Chinese companies are building solar projects abroad that produce electricity much more cheaply than the installations at home.

China is still the biggest spender on renewables, the BNEF report established, so it will remain key to the world’s total carbon emission reduction success, regardless of where capital costs of solar installations go.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-18/solar-investment-plunges-amid-panel-glut

>>4813878

>>4813941

>>4814118

>>4814161

Hitachi pulls plug on U.K. plant due to investment shortfall, in latest blow for Japan's nuclear export ambitions

The Hitachi Ltd. board decided Thursday to suspend a plan to build two nuclear reactors in the U.K. after facing difficulties in finding investors to help finance the ¥3 trillion ($27.5 billion) project.

The freezing of the project in Anglesey in Wales would mean that all major overseas nuclear projects involving Japanese companies have seen setbacks amid the government’s efforts to promote exports of nuclear technology.

Hitachi said it will book a special loss of ¥300 billion in the year ending in March, and cut its net profit outlook for the year to ¥100 billion from its previous forecast of ¥400 billion.

“We’ve reached limits in further investing (in the British nuclear project),” Hitachi President Toshiaki Higashihara said at a news conference, noting that the Japanese conglomerate will focus on domestic business over nuclear power operations “in the years ahead.”

Higashihara said he cannot rule out restarting the project but that the prospects of doing so are unclear. He denied that the political turmoil regarding the Brexit deal affected the decision-making.

The project, which Hitachi joined in 2012, was part of the conglomerate’s strategy to expand its nuclear power business abroad, amid dimming prospects for new reactor demand in Japan in the wake of the Fukushima meltdowns that was triggered by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.

Hitachi’s Japanese rivals are facing more or less the same situation. Toshiba Corp. decided in 2017 to exit its nuclear power businesses outside Japan after incurring huge losses in the United States, while Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. is considering withdrawing from a nuclear project in Turkey amid ballooning safety-related costs, according to company sources. Hitachi had planned to secure ¥2 trillion from the British government and financial institutions, but the prospects of raising the rest has proved problematic.

Hitachi has said it also wants to remove its wholly owned unit, Horizon Nuclear Power Ltd., which oversees the project, from its group structure, amid growing business uncertainties. By reducing its stake in Horizon, Hitachi is hoping to avoid adverse business repercussions for its entire group. It acquired Horizon from two German companies in 2012.

In December, Hitachi Chairman Hiroaki Nakanishi said the company told the British government it “can’t go any further” with the current construction plan.

Hitachi and the British government had aimed to start construction of the advanced boiling water reactors in 2019, and to begin operations by 2025.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/01/17/business/corporate-business/hitachi-decides-halt-u-k-nuclear-project-due-investment-shortfall/