January 8, 2024

German Deindustrialisation

De-industrialisation in Germany dramatically reduces emissions in 2023

Germany led Europe in reducing emissions in 2023, but the fall had more to do with the painful de-industrialisation the country is going through as a result of the end of cheap Russian gas rather than green policies. / bne IntelliNews

By bne IntelliNewsJanuary 5, 2024

Germany led the way in reducing emissions in 2023, but the fall had more to do with the dramatic de-industrialisation due to the effects of the war in Ukraine and soaring energy costs than it did with green policies.

Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany fell by approximately 20% in 2023, reaching their lowest level since the 1950s, according to a report by Berlin-based think-tank Agora Energiewende, as reported by the Financial Times on January 4.

The country emitted 673mn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2023, with about half of the reduction attributed to a decline in coal-fired power generation.

However, emissions from the construction and transport industries remained largely unchanged in 2023, following several years of failure to reach reduction targets. The chemical industry, Germany’s third largest industrial sector, has also lost 23% of its production volume within two years, Handelsblatt reports. As a result, Germany is expected to miss EU-wide emission reduction goals as set out under the so-called Effort Sharing Regulation, Agora said.

Leading industrial managers in the German chemistry are sceptical as to whether the industry will be able to return to the production volume of 2021 in the next few years. “We are in the middle of a deep, long valley,” Markus Steilemann, president of the Chemical Industry Association (VCI) and CEO of Covestro, told Handelsblatt, one of Germany’s leading business newspapers.

0124 EURO German chemical production index HANDELSBLATT

This failure highlights that the headline reduction in emissions has more to do with Germany’s economic slowdown than successful implementation of green policies. Lethargic German industrial activity, influenced by the war in Ukraine and energy price crises, played a crucial role, accounting for half of the emissions drop, the report found, whereas the growth in renewable energy contributed 15% to the fall in emissions.

However, the leading German industrial companies report that the fall in customer orders since spring 2023 is now slowing and the market appears to be finding a new, albeit lower, equilibrium, according to leading suppliers such as BASF and the world’s largest chemical retailer Brenntag. But that’s not enough to create any optimism, because there is a lack of real growth. German companies’ hopes are based on a slow recovery starting in the second half of 2024.

As reported by bne IntelliNews, the sanctions on Russia and the halt in delivery of Russian piped gas after the Nord Stream 1 & 2 gas pipelines were destroyed last September have had a heavy impact on Germany’s heavy industry.

Accounting for about a quarter of German GDP – twice the level of other large European powers – some 10% of heavy industry has been forced to close down or dramatically reduce production.

German chemical companies are now very cautious when it comes to investing at home: around 40% of them will reduce their investments in Germany in 2023 and 2024, according to recent industry survey. However, the majority of companies are planning to increase foreign investments or leave completely.

Up to a third of Germany’s heavy industry is either planning to move, or has already started the process of moving, abroad to lower-cost markets. The biggest hope for the chemical industry is China, where almost half of global chemical demand already comes from.

The German industrial lobby has said that German heavy industry should start recovering in 2025, but that assumes energy prices will fall to previous levels. A recent IMF white paper concluded that the higher prices, caused by the remake of Europe’s energy markets and the end of cheap Russian gas imports, means the higher energy prices are likely to be a permanent change that will fundamentally affect Germany’s business model.

Germany’s economy has already stalled as a result of the seismic changes to its economic make-up. Agora said that while preliminary figures showed German economic output dropped 0.3% in 2023, the equivalent figure for energy-intensive production in industries such as chemicals and steel was 11%, the FT reports.

German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck acknowledged the decline in fossil fuel use but highlighted the importance of distinguishing between the impact of the war and energy price crises on industrial production. He emphasised the need to maintain Germany as a strong industrial location while transitioning to climate neutrality.

Siegfried Russwurm, president of Germany’s industrial lobby, criticised the government for not grasping the critical situation facing manufacturing businesses, the FT reported. Rising energy costs and a lack of government support were identified as challenges for industries aiming to be both green and globally competitive.

Agora Energiewende stressed the importance of preventing emissions from being relocated abroad and called for a stable framework to encourage investment in climate-friendly technologies. The think-tank highlighted the need for an “investment offensive” to achieve long-term goals, including the rollout of hydrogen pipelines and improvements to electricity grids.

While the 21% drop in emissions is a positive development, after Germany shuttered its six nuclear power stations last year it has been forced to start importing electricity. However, that also contributed to the drop in its emissions, as almost half of electricity imports came from renewable sources, mainly hydro and wind, and another quarter from nuclear. Coupled with a 5% increase in domestic renewable energy supplies thanks to record solar and wind production investments, this took the share of total renewable energy in Germany to more than 50% for the first time.

https://intellinews.com/de-industrialisation-in-germany-dramatically-reduces-emissions-in-2023-306518

January 7, 2024

50 Years of Video Games

Visualizing 50 Years Of Video Game Revenues, By Platform

by Tyler Durden

Sunday, Jan 07, 2024 – 08:45 AM

Video killed the radio star.

And the video game industry’s explosive growth over the last five decades has killed any skepticism of its strength and staying power in the larger media and entertainment space.

Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao and Niccolo Conte visualize the video game industry’s inflation-adjusted revenues every year, from its humble beginnings in 1970 to the media juggernaut it is now, worth more than $180 billion of revenue in 2022.

All data presented in the chart and in this article was provided by UK-based market intelligence firm Pelham Smithers.

Note: Numbers are rounded to the nearest billion.

From an industry that was nearly wiped out by a market crash, to the highest-earning media sector today, video games have had a tumultuous journey.

As medium has evolved, so too have the consumer preferences for different gaming platforms. Which formats led the overall industry’s revenue growth through the years?

Arcades, Home Consoles, Handheld Gaming

The history of mass-market consumer-oriented video games starts with Atari.

The company that released Computer Space (1971) and Pong (1972) on coin-operated arcade machines took the market by storm, spawning a series of competitors, earning an estimated $35-40 per day, and selling nearly 8,000 units in two years.

For an industry that barely existed until a couple years prior, those numbers spurred the inception of video games as a legitimate (and profitable) form of entertainment.

Note: Numbers are rounded to the nearest billion.

Within just seven years, thanks to the proliferation of arcade games, the video game industry generated more revenue than the American box office and music industry put together.

Then, in the 1980s, a once little-known playing card company in Japan released one of the best-selling video game franchises ever, Super Mario Bros on their home console the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

A few years later, at the cusp of the ’90s, Nintendo released the iconic Game Boy on which enthusiasts could play Tetris—a popular arcade game—from the comfort of their bed, cementing video games’ place in consumers’ homes.

PC Gaming, Mobile Gaming, and Virtual Reality

By the ’90s, another technological boom was taking place: the rise of personal computing.

Naturally, companies developed video games (like Doom, Prince of Persia, Dangerous Dave) for this new platform, taking advantage of increased computing power, bigger screens, and more flexibility in programming.

While home consoles still accounted for the majority share of the industry’s revenues, handheld devices and PC gaming split the difference as arcade revenues began to drop rapidly.

Note: Numbers are rounded to the nearest billion.

However, handheld gaming revenues peaked in 2007, the year the iPhone launched, and have steadily declined since then as smartphone adoption has grown.

With smartphones came the mobile gaming juggernaut, which has made up more than half of the gaming industry’s revenues since 2019.

In the last few years however, the development of augmented and virtual reality’s more immersive, and sensory-heavy experiences have created yet another platform for video games, and yet another avenue for growth.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/visualizing-50-years-video-game-revenues-platform

January 4, 2024

Spot Container Rates Rise

Spot Container Rates Surge By 173% Due To Red Sea Disruptions

by Tyler Durden

Thursday, Jan 04, 2024 – 07:45 AM

Drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants on commercial vessels in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes have resulted in firms sending ships around the Cape of Good Hope, entirely avoiding the Red Sea region. Reroutings have added a week or more to sailings, thus straining cargo capacity, which, in return, has sent containerized shipping rates soaring. 

Bloomberg cites new data from Freightos, a cargo booking and payment platform, that shows the spot rate for a 40-foot container from Asia to northern Europe has jumped 173% to $4,000 since mid-December. 

The price for a 40-foot container from Asia to the Mediterranean has increased to $5,175, as reported by Freightos. Additionally, they noted that major shippers have announced even higher prices, surpassing the $6,000 mark for this route in the next two weeks. Shipping rates from Asia to the East Coast of North America also soared 55% to $3,900. 

The Red Sea connects to Egypt’s Suez Canal and is the fastest way to transport consumer goods, petroleum products, and food from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and North America. About 10% to 12% of global trade flows through the critical waterway. 

On Wednesday, no container ships with destinations to North America and Europe were transiting the Red Sea. These vessels were rerouted to Africa’s southern Cape of Good Hope to avoid the attacks – adding anywhere from 7 to 20 days to their voyages. This indicates that the Pentagon’s Operation Prosperity Guardian has failed to protect commercial vessels in the region. 

Spot container rates are moving higher because diversions around the Cape of Good Hope add extra time to sailings, reducing capacity. 

New data from the International Monetary Fund’s PortWatch platform, produced with Oxford University, shows that for the ten days through Monday, sails through the vital Suez Canal trade route plunged 28% compared with a year earlier. This means about 3.1% of global trade has been rerouted from the Red Sea. 

Even though container prices are far off Covid highs, prices are more than double from early 2019 levels and come at a time when central banks have unleashed more than a year of interest rate hikes to combat inflation. 

Meanwhile, Red Sea disruptions are spreading across the shipping industry, leading to a surge in oil tanker shipping costs. 

Shipbroker Braemar said daily shipping costs for a tanker from the Mediterranean to Japan through the Suez jumped from $8,000 a day in early December to $26,000 earlier this week. 

“Any route involving the Red Sea is red hot,” the Braemar analysts said.

In a separate note, Goldman’s Daan Struyven shows oil flows via tankers through the Bab-El-Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea have plunged. 

Struyven said, “We estimated a potential $3-4/bbl boost to crude prices from a hypothetical prolonged and full redirection of all oil flows through the Bab-El-Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea…” 

The biggest fear for energy prices, shipping costs, and supply chains is if a regional conflict erupts across the Middle East. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/spot-container-rates-surge-173-due-red-sea-disruptions

January 2, 2024

5 Years of U.S. Vehicle Sales

Not Much Impact from the Strike

https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_total_vehicle_sales

January 1, 2024

Gasoline Consumption Keeps Growing

Record Global Gasoline Consumption Defies IEA Forecast

By Tsvetana Paraskova – Dec 28, 2023, 1:30 PM CST

Global gasoline consumption hit a record 26.9 million barrels per day (bpd) this year, exceeding the 2019 peak and defying estimates that the last pre-pandemic year was the time when gasoline demand worldwide would peak. 

The data, reported by Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas, shows the latest figures from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The same agency, which has been strongly advocating for a faster energy transition for years, had predicted just this year that 2019 was the peak demand for gasoline globally.  

Back in June, in its Oil 2023 annual report, the IEA said that “Growth is set to reverse after 2023 for gasoline and after 2026 for transport fuels overall.” 

“Gasoline demand will be disproportionately impacted as EVs progressively replace vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE),” the IEA said, adding that “This means that the fuel is likely to exhibit the earliest and most pronounced peak in demand.”

And it also said that “Usage will never return to 2019 levels and the post

pandemic peak could come as early as 2023. Following a brief plateau, the decline is forecast to accelerate from 2026 onwards.” 

However, the IEA’s latest figures not only show that 2019 wasn’t the peak demand year for global gasoline consumption, but that demand in both 2023 and 2024 would surpass the pre-pandemic levels. 

Per the latest data reported by Bloomberg’s Blas, gasoline demand globally is set to further rise next year, to top 27 million bpd. 

In the June report, the IEA predicted that “Following a brief plateau, the decline is forecast to accelerate from 2026 onwards, with 2028 demand 900 kb/d below that of 2019.” 

The IEA also famously said earlier this year that global demand for all three fossil fuels – oil, natural gas, and coal – is set to peak before 2030, which undermines the case for increasing investment in fossil fuels.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Record-Global-Gasoline-Consumption-Defies-IEA-Forecast.html