German industry called on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration to take action to address rising energy costs, saying that some companies are considering relocating.
“The rising power and gas prices threaten to crush the economy,” Siegfried Russwurm, president of the BDI industry lobby, said in an interview with the Rheinische Post newspaper yesterday. “Rapid political action is required.”
Germany has long had some of the developed world’s highest energy prices, but the situation has worsened as Europe’s largest economy shutters nuclear plants and winds down coal as well.
With an expansion of renewable power generation struggling to keep pace, the country has become more reliant on gas imports from Russia, and prices have surged amid tensions on the Ukrainian border.
A BDI survey found that 23 percent of companies see their existence threatened by higher energy prices, while 65 percent deemed it a significant challenge.
About one-third of companies are delaying climate-related investments because of energy costs, Rheinische Post reported.
German Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck has promised quick support for company efforts to invest to become climate neutral.
In an interview with Handelsblatt published on Sunday, he vowed to require power companies to completely pass on savings directly to customers from the end of renewable power fees.
Russwurm said the price of emissions certificates is pushing up energy costs and that the government needs to react by cutting taxes and fees.
“The increase in energy costs is higher than at any point since the oil crisis of the 1970s,” he said.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
PARTNERSHIPS: TSMC said it has been working with multiple memorychip makers for more than two years to provide a full spectrum of solutions to address AI demand Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it has been collaborating with multiple memorychip makers in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications for more than two years, refuting South Korean media report's about an unprecedented partnership with Samsung Electronics Co. As Samsung is competing with TSMC for a bigger foundry business, any cooperation between the two technology heavyweights would catch the eyes of investors and experts in the semiconductor industry. “We have been working with memory partners, including Micron, Samsung Memory and SK Hynix, on HBM solutions for more than two years, aiming to advance 3D integrated circuit
RSS