- Arvind's Newsletter
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- Arvind's Newsletter
1.Turning dream into reality: Bullet train moves from vanity to vision; Dhruvaksh Saha for Business Standard
The 508-km long Mumbai-Ahmedabad HSR corridor worth Rs 1.08 trillion aimed completion by 2022 when it was announced; it is expected to be delayed by at least six years, owing to political differences and technical delays.
With land acquisition completed and infrastructure work streamlined, India’s bullet train dreams are slowly, but finally, inching closer to reality.
According to senior executives of National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRC) present at the review of multiple MAHSR projects on Friday, the financial bid by Japanese firms Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Hitachi Rail will be opened on February 29, and the contract is expected to be awarded by mid-2024 as the proposal will be assessed in the following months.
India and Japan previously finalised design changes in the trains, owing to the different climatic conditions in India.The Centre is targeting full operation of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor by 2028, a top executive of NHSRCL told Business Standard
In 2017, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had called the project an “exercise in vanity”. The flagship project of the Centre has been criticised often by political opponents as one that only caters to the rich.
In the six years of the project’s delay, the estimated cost has been reported to have been increased by at least Rs 60,000 crore. The Centre has taken a stance that it does not know the cost or deadline.
2.US sanctions on Russia's oil-shipping firms may leave India at sea
Washington is slowly but steadily cutting the umbilical cord that links Russian oil to India — shipping. The US, on Friday, unleashed the largest sanctions package, partly directed at Sovcomflot, Russia’s state-owned shipping behemoth, and on 14 of its vessels, which are some of the biggest carriers of Russian oil to India regularly.
Since January 2023, the newly-sanctioned tankers have transported around 68 cargoes to India, equivalent to around 6 per cent of the total Russian crude imports last year.
Some of the ships are en route, carrying crude to India. For instance, Georgy Maslov is scheduled to discharge a 621,000 barrels parcel of Urals at Reliance’s Jamnagar port in early March, according to Kpler data.
It is unlikely that Indian banks will process payments for crude carried on a sanctioned vessel, a state-refining official said, leaving the fate of the cargo in uncharted waters.
3.Why Are Asia’s Democratic Leaders So Popular; James Crabtree in Foreign Policy
Everywhere you look in Asia, there are well-liked heads of government. Prabowo replaces the even more popular Jokowi (who had 80% approval rating)… Prabwo won by an unexpected landslide of 58% of votes. In the Philippines, Marcos Jr. has high approval numbers, as did Rodrigo Duterte. And in India’s election in April Modi looks all but certain to produce his third overwhelming win in a row.
No leader of a major western country has 50%+ approval. Donald Tusk of Poland comes close, but that’s probably just a passing phase before even he sinks back down. Everyone is else is pretty much reviled.
All this isn’t classic “populism”. Rather I could think of 3 reasons. First, clever communication. Second, what Arvind Subramaniam calls “New Welfarist” economic policies. And third, a perception that these leaders keep their countries safe in a geopolitically more dangerous world.
4.Why don’t nations buy and sell territory more? Tyler Cowen in Marginal Revolution
Egypt has agreed to a $35bn deal with the United Arab Emirates to develop the town of Ras el-Hekma town on its northwestern coast, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced on Friday after weeks of speculations.
Madoubly said at a news conference, which was attended by Egyptian and Emirati officials, that Egypt will receive an advance amount of $15bn in the coming week, and another $20bn within two months.
The deal is the largest foreign direct investment in an urban development project in the country’s modern history, the prime minister said. It is a partnership between the Egyptian government and an Emirati consortium led by ADQ, he said.
5.A 5,000-acre, 452-megawatt solar farm was completed in Texas.
The $600 million Solar Nova installation in Kent County, with 1.1 million panels, should generate enough electricity for 190,000 homes. Texas has the second largest solar capacity of any US state, and is expected to overtake the leader California within five years, industry analysts say. Republican-held states are also dominating wind power: The five states with the largest share of wind power are all red. They’re building renewable energy, the environmental scientist Hannah Ritchie noted last month, not for climate reasons but because it’s cheaper and they have “extremely large wind and solar resources.” The Financial Times noted that Texas has more permissive permit laws than most progressive-held cities.
6.Geologists signal start of hydrogen energy ‘gold rush’
Geologists are signalling the start of a new energy “gold rush” for a previously neglected carbon-free resource — hydrogen generated naturally within Earth.
As much as 5tn tonnes of hydrogen exists in underground reservoirs worldwide, according to an unpublished study by the US Geological Survey. Previewing the results at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver, project leader Geoffrey Ellis said: “Most hydrogen is likely inaccessible, but a few per cent recovery would still supply all projected demand — 500mn tonnes a year — for hundreds of years.”
The demand for hydrogen as a fuel and industrial raw material, particularly to make ammonia for fertiliser production, has been mainly met so far by chemically reforming gas that is made up largely of methane, known as “blue hydrogen” when the carbon emissions are captured or “grey hydrogen” when they are not.
A smaller amount is made by splitting water through electrolysis using renewable energy sources, known as “green hydrogen”.
But Mengli Zhang of the Colorado School of Mines said tapping natural hydrogen — also known as geologic or gold hydrogen — would be cleaner and cheaper than blue or green hydrogen. “A gold rush for gold hydrogen is coming,” she told the conference. The prospect is beginning to attract interest from investors. US start-up Koloma raised $91mn last year from funds including Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
US company Natural Hydrogen Energy has drilled an exploratory well in Nebraska. “It will take a couple of years to ramp up to commercial production,” said Viacheslav Zgonnik, chief executive. “We are doing everything we can to get there faster.”
Previous scientific opinion held that little pure hydrogen was likely to exist near Earth’s surface because it would be consumed by subterranean microbes or destroyed in geochemical processes. But geologists now believe hydrogen is generated in large quantities when certain iron-rich minerals react with water, Alexis Templeton of the University of Colorado, Boulder, told the AAAS conference.
Geologists are now finding natural hydrogen reserves around the world. This month researchers reported that more than 200 tonnes of hydrogen a year were flowing from the Bulqizë chromite mine in Albania.
7.Mineral-rich countries in the Southern Hemisphere want to find ways to benefit from the lucrative electric vehicle market.
Bolivia, home to the world’s largest lithium reserves, partnered with Chinese firms in the hopes of increasing its annual production volume of the mineral from 540 to 50,000 tons, while Tesla invested in a massive nickel mine in the French territory of New Caledonia, despite environmental concerns over deforestation and pollution.
The projects show the sprawling impacts of the global EV boom and smaller countries’ efforts to exert more control over the supply chain, Nikkei reported. But the economic boosts may be limited: Indonesia banned raw nickel exports in 2020 to encourage local battery and car plants, but EV companies have not rushed in, The Wall Street Journal reported.
