Aurelia Butler

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On a typically sunny and breezy day at Lucky Cement in an industrial town outside Karachi, the powerful draughts from the Arabian Sea and Thar Desert and the scorching rays combine to generate more than half of the power it needs thanks to cheap Chinese wind turbines and solar panels.The 5mn tonnes of cement that its 1,300 workers produce at the Nooriabad plant is enough to build 100,000 houses. Since installing wind and solar sources last year, the facility now emits 60,000 fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide than it did when its electricity supply was fossil fuel-dependent.But the variability of the sun and wind means that it is relying for the rest of the time on dirty and expensive fossil fuel-based generators.Now Lucky Cement is working to plug the energy gap by storing power captured from 110-metre-tall wind turbines and a sea of shimmering solar panels sourced from China in a battery energy storage system — also sourced from China.The combination of a glut of lithium, a key battery material, and overcapacity of lower-tier China-made batteries has created a flood of cut-price battery energy storage systems for lower-income countries such as Pakistan.Lucky is investing roughly Rs1.5bn ($5.3mn) to convert a rubble-strewn site into a 20.7MW unit supplied by the world’s biggest battery maker CATL, which can hold enough energy to power up to 20,000 homes for an hour.The battery energy storage system will be Pakistan’s largest to date, Lucky said. “A price collapse in wind, solar and batteries has made the payback periods very competitive,” said Hassan Mazhar Rizvi, the factory’s general manager for power generation. “This will ensure smooth operations, and increase our solar and wind portions.”Chinese solar panel prices have plummeted in recent years as the cost of electricity from Pakistan’s grid has surged, prompting the country of 240mn people to import solar panels with the capacity to generate about 19GW last year, according to Jenny Chase, BloombergNEF lead solar analyst.Pakistan is still buying panels that collectively could generate 1GW to 3GW a month this year, she estimated, enough to power a city of millions.The battery storage system will help factories to more cheaply extend their operations beyond daylight hours and scale back the use of fossil fuels, compensating for reliability issues from the grid’s renewable sources.For households, hooking up to a battery is a way to store enough energy to cope with spontaneous blackouts and avoid higher rates for energy from the grid during peak usage times in the evenings.“The limit on the [solar] boom was always likely to be the number of daylight hours,” said Chase. “Larger solar systems are useful, because as well as meeting instantaneous demand they can charge the battery for later.”Show video info“Customer interest has gone through the roof,” said Mujtaba Haider Khan, chief executive of Reon Energy, a Karachi-based renewable energy and battery company.Reon’s energy storage systems, including the one purchased by Lucky, mix predictive software, CATL-made batteries and mostly Chinese-origin solar and wind technology, and can boost a factory’s clean energy usage and cut fossil fuel energy waste, said Khan.“Companies can now recover their investment in transitioning to predominantly renewable energy — using solar, wind and batteries — in less than two years.”The battery storage systems are still too expensive to be adopted as widely as solar has been in Pakistan in the near future. But distributors say prices are falling rapidly and demand continues to grow.Faaz Diwan, director at Karachi-based Diwan International, one of Pakistan’s largest solar and battery distributors, said the cost of the BYD batteries he sold had fallen by more than a third since last year to about Rs275,000 for a 5kWh unit that is enough to power a small house.His company has been importing more than 500 batteries a month since March, three times more than last year, as wealthier households, gyms, mosques and businesses gobble up storage systems to save money on air-conditioning ahead of summer.“Definitely, demand will go up this summer,” said Diwan, who estimated that the roughly Rs150mn in sales he was registering each month would double from July.Pakistan’s grid, meanwhile, faces what analysts have called a “death spiral” as usage falls and more bills go unpaid by poorer customers who cannot afford the jump in costs. Households that can afford solar panels are switching off.Since 2015, Pakistan has drawn in billions of dollars’ worth of sovereign-backed loans to finance new power plants and signed long-term liquefied natural gas deals with QatarEnergy and Italy’s Eni. Both efforts resolved the worst of the blackouts but proved costly, as Pakistan’s economic growth has not kept up with the demand projections made at the time. The result is a cash-strapped country that owes some $18bn in mounting power and gas sector debts.To bring down costs, the government, with the help of the military and intelligence services, has renegotiated contracts signed with local power producers. It has also pleaded with China to extend the time needed to repay the sovereign-backed loans and sought to defer or redirect LNG shipments.The government has introduced a levy on industries that use captive natural gas plants instead of energy from the grid, and converted savings from contract renegotiations and a downturn in global commodity prices into a power tariff reduction of between 12 and 17 per cent. It has also offered 2,000MW worth of excess power for crypto miners and artificial intelligence data centres.In April, power generation involving the grid, a proxy for consumption, rose almost 22 per cent year on year, but overall demand in the 10 months to April is still below where it was the year before. Javed Hassan, an Islamabad-based independent economic analyst, said the gain was “likely to be temporary”.Pakistan’s power minister Awais Leghari told the Financial Times that the government was working to create a more competitive electricity market and find other ways to sustain power cost reductions.“I can’t stop the evolution of technology,” he said. “Competition is a very healthy way to bring about efficiencies in the entire system.”Climate CapitalWhere climate change meets business, markets and politics. Explore the FT’s coverage here.Are you curious about the FT’s environmental sustainability commitments? Find out more about our science-based targets here More

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Europe’s patience with Benjamin Netanyahu’s war in Gaza and Israeli settlers’ aggression in the occupied West Bank may finally be running out. In the past few weeks, EU foreign ministers have triggered a review of Israel’s association agreement with the bloc, Britain has halted trade talks, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund blacklisted an Israeli company for facilitating energy deliveries to West Bank settlements, and the leaders of France, the UK and Canada threatened to put sanctions on the country. Even Germany, Israel’s most stalwart backer in Europe, is criticising the country’s conduct.Too little too late, some will say. And they will point to how fast the west imposed sanctions on Russia, in meaningful and unprecedented ways, after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and put the difference down to hypocrisy. No doubt the west has treated Russia and Israel differently, and hypocrisy is part of it. But an analogy to the war in Ukraine is also misguided. Russia never faced a campaign against its very existence, nor a heinous attack by Ukraine the way Israel did at the hands of Hamas.But this simple comparison misses the point. It is possible — indeed sensible — to think Israel is entitled to wage war against Hamas in Gaza, while insisting that it may only do so in lawful ways and concluding that these lawful limits have long since been transgressed. Indeed, the UN has found overwhelming evidence of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and in connection with the increasingly brutal occupation of the West Bank.There is no need, in other words, to deem the two wars in any way equivalent to judge that sanctions may be justified in both. And that is why it is time for Europe to clarify specifically how it might place sanctions on Israel, and to develop its ad hoc sanctions decisions into a systematic policy framework for how to use this geoeconomic tool generally.On the specifics, it is obvious that if European countries opt for sanctions, they will have to do so without the US. So the time is right to map out the areas where sanctions on Israel by Europe alone (or with any other willing allies) would have the most impact.Banking and financial sanctions are mostly likely to be ineffective, as the US can easily duplicate any payment and funding channels. There is one exception: immobilising foreign exchange reserves, as the west has done with Russia, would impose an economic cost. The Bank of Israel invests about a quarter of its relatively large stock of reserves in Europe, which a freeze would make unavailable for their financial stabilisation function and could in time be put towards any compensation due to Palestinians.The hardest-hitting sanctions would probably be on trade and travel. Israel sources nearly half of its goods imports from Europe and sends more than a third of its exports to the continent, according to its statistics bureau. A significant share of the imports consists of fuels, a trade Europe has outsize influence over due to its dominance of shipping-related services. At least a quarter of Israel’s large services trade is also with European markets. Restrictions on business services and tourism would be highly disruptive.Preparing for sanctions is important beyond the immediate moral and political imperative of reacting to violations of international law. The EU, in particular, needs to upgrade sanctions decision-making. Its strong measures against Russia have happened despite political squabbles and claims of legal uncertainty. These shortcomings, even though they have been repeatedly overcome against Moscow, will continue to hamper the union’s ability to project diplomatic power. The EU needs to clarify and systematise which behaviours will trigger which reactions, and ideally remove decisions regarding sanctions from the current unanimity requirement, which undermines its foreign policy leverage.Preparations are also needed to counter any US sabotage, which is already under way with Washington’s debilitating moves against the International Criminal Court.By showing it is ready to act against Israel if it so chooses, the EU would show it is ready to act against grave breaches of international law by anyone. Legal consistency would make threats of sanctions more credible; incentives to respect European red lines would strengthen them and signal consequences for crossing them.It was a US president who advised speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Today, it is the EU that can make most of his [email protected] More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Stanley Fischer, a former top policymaker at the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of Israel whose thinking was highly influential among generations of economists, has died at the age of 81.A former vice-chair of the Fed, Fischer also served at the IMF, where as first deputy managing director he worked on the response to the Asian and Russian crises of the late 1990s. He also served as chief economist at the World Bank. Fischer’s death was announced on Sunday by the Bank of Israel, where he served as governor from 2005 to 2013. The country’s president Isaac Herzog paid tribute to him as “a world-class professional, a man of integrity, with a heart of gold”. While he attained some of the most senior positions in global economics, Fischer’s career was no less significant because of his academic and teaching work, including at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi and former Fed chair Ben Bernanke were among the students whose PhD dissertations he helped supervise. “The human dimension of Stan’s work was as impressive and impactful as his brilliant economic analysis and his remarkable communication skills,” said Mohamed El-Erian, president of Queens’ College Cambridge and chief economic adviser at Allianz. “This quality was consistently evident — whether in his approach to individual country reform cases, his pursuit of a comprehensive, durable, and just peace in the Middle East or his contributions to the functioning of the international economic order.”Fischer, a citizen of the US and Israel, was born in Zambia and described himself as ‘a product of the British empire’ More

This article is an on-site version of our The Week Ahead newsletter. Subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every Sunday. Explore all of our newsletters hereHello and welcome to the working week.It’s decision time on a number of fronts during the next seven days. I’ll start with South Korea, which will on Tuesday elect a new president at a crucial time for Asia’s fourth-largest economy. South Korea is wrestling with slowing growth while being battered by global trade tensions. The clear frontrunner, according to the polls, is the 61-year-old leftwinger Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party of Korea. Meanwhile, the ruling right of centre People Power party has fallen into disarray, largely due to its reluctance to break with disgraced former PPP president Yoon Suk Yeol, a hardline former prosecutor who was impeached halfway through his five-year term and subsequently removed following his ill-fated martial law declaration last year. Whoever triumphs on Tuesday will have to grapple with a slowing economy under pressure from the effects of US President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policies, as well as a North Korea emboldened by its growing nuclear arsenal and its blossoming relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. For more on that, read this.The Eurozone will be making both economic and political choices this week. On Wednesday, the European Commission is expected to publish its long-awaited view on whether Bulgaria is ready to adopt the euro. Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov is confident of getting the green light and making the currency legal tender as soon as January 1 2026.The other bit of euro news this week will be from Frankfurt, where the European Central Bank’s rate-setting committee has a decision to make. The hawks have been lining up to urge caution, but a 25 basis points cut is taken as a given, priced in at close to 100 per cent probability, according to Reuters. Want to keep up to date with interest rates (and inflation) globally? The FT has a tracker for that.In UK politics, the choice is more between guns and butter as we await the publication of the government’s strategic defence review on Monday, which will outline new threats, the capabilities needed to tackle them, the state of the British armed forces and the resources available. The answer to that last question is likely to be not much. The overall solution, like the answer to so many of life’s modern questions it seems, is to go digital.Some decisions are already made, but need backing. With this in mind Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is heading to Saskatoon on Monday, hoping to nurture a love-in among the first ministers of the Canadian provinces and push his “strongest economy in the G7” ambition. A key goal in this effort (led by Canada’s minister for transport and internal trade, and former FT deputy editor, Chrystia Freeland) is to exorcise federal trade barriers, estimated to cost the economy $200bn a year, by July 1 (Canada Day). Carney is also expected to outline “One Canadian Economy” legislation to fast track projects such as ports, critical mineral mines and trade corridors.The corporate results trickle through again, bulging in the middle of the week. It’s a similar story for the economic reports, the most notable being US employment figures, the OECD economic outlook and the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) comparisons between the larger economies. More details below.One more thing . . . Some of us were turned on to computer gaming by Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum. For my Gen Z kids, it was the Nintendo Switch. This will be a momentous week for them (and one in which I feel the generation gap yawning ever wider) as Nintendo launches its much anticipated next-generation Switch 2 games console with forecasts of 15mn unit sales in the company’s current financial year. The new machine promises a larger screen, upgraded magnetic controllers, called Joy-Cons, and a new chat function. The only feature I wish for them to keep is the app that enables me to see how much time my offspring spend on the device when they might have been studying.Are you excited about a new games console? Can Nintendo top the communal shout fest that is Super Smash Bros? Email me at [email protected] or, if you are reading this from your inbox, hit reply.Key economic and company reportsHere is a more complete list of what to expect in terms of company reports and economic data this week.MondayUS Federal Reserve board member Christopher Waller speaks on the economic outlook at the 2025 Bank of Korea International Conference: Structural Shifts and Monetary Policy, in SeoulCatherine Mann, a Monetary Policy Committee member at the Bank of England, joins a fireside chat at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors IF 75th anniversary conference in WashingtonCanada, Eurozone, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, UK, US: S&P Global/HCOB/HSBC May manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dataChina: Dragon Boat Festival holiday (Tuen Ng). Financial markets closed.UK: British Retail Consortium May Economic Monitor report and Nationwide May House Price IndexResults: The Campbell’s Company Q3, Sirius Real Estate FYTuesdayBank of Japan governor Kazuo Ueda gives a speech at the Naigai Josei Chosa Kai meeting in Japan.Sarah Hunter, assistant governor (economic) at the Reserve Bank of Australia gives a keynote speech at the Economic Society of Australia Queensland Business Lunch in BrisbaneDe La Rue shareholders to vote on the proposed takeover of the company by Atlas at a general meeting. If approved, the deal will become effective on July 2OECD Economic OutlookChina: Caixin May manufacturing PMI dataEU: flash May inflation estimate and April unemployment dataUS: April Job Openings and Labor Turnover (Jolts) dataResults: British American Tobacco HY trading statement, Chemring HY, CrowdStrike Q1, Dollar General Q1, FD Technologies FY, Ferguson Q3, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Q2, Pennon FYWednesdayAustralia: Q1 GDP estimateCanada: interest rate announcementCanada, Eurozone, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, UK, US: S&P Global/HCOB/HSBC May services PMI dataUK: International Reserves dataUS: Beige Book publishedResults: B&M European Value Retail FY, Descartes Systems Q1, DiscoverIE FY, Dollar Tree Q1, Empiric Student Property AGM and Q1 trading statement, Ninety One FY, Paragon Banking Group HY, Seraphim Space Investment Trust Q3, WHSmith trading statementThursdayNintendo releases its new Switch 2 games console, featuring a bigger screen and better graphics than its highly popular predecessor. The company is forecasting sales of 15mn in the new product’s first year, despite US tariffsEcondat’s two-day spring meeting at King’s College London, where central bankers and researchers will gather to discuss the economics involved in non-traditional data and analytical tools.The CBI National Business Dinner is held in London, traditionally addressed by a senior member of the governmentChina: Caixin May services PMI dataEurozone, France, Germany, Italy, UK: S&P Global/HCOB construction PMI dataEU: European Central Bank interest rate announcementGermany: April manufacturing orders dataUK: May Decision Maker Panel researchUS: April international trade in goods and servicesResults: Broadcom Q2, Brown-Forman Q4, Ciena Q2, CMC Markets FY, Dr Martens FY, Lululemon Athletica Q1, Mitie FY, PVH Q1, Samsara Q1, Victoria’s Secret Q1, Wise FY, Wizz Air FY, Workspace FYFridayEU: Q1 GDP estimateJapan: Consumption Activity IndexSouth Korea: Memorial Day. Financial markets closedUK: Halifax House Price IndexUS: May employment reportResults: ABM Q2World eventsFinally, here is a rundown of other events and milestones this week. MondayCanada: Prime Minister Mark Carney joins the elected heads of the north American country’s provinces at the Meeting of First Ministers in SaskatoonPoland: two-day EU-US Justice and Home Affairs ministerial meeting begins in WarsawUK: government publishes its strategic defence reviewTuesdayAustria: Vienna hosts the Austrian World Summit. The event, now in its ninth year, is organised by the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative, a body created by the Austrian-American actor Arnold SchwarzeneggerSouth Korea: presidential electionWednesdayThursday50th anniversary of the UK voting to join the Common Market, which later became the EU, in a national referendum. It voted to leave the EU in 2016Naksa Day observed by Palestinians to recognise the “Day of the Setback” in 1967 when Israel won the six-day war, taking control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip resulting in thousands of Palestinians being displacedBelgium: Nato defence ministers meeting in BrusselsBurundi: parliamentary and local electionsUK: start of the fifth London Design Biennial, showcasing the role of design in solving challenges. This year’s theme is Surface ReflectionsFridayEid al-Adha, the second of the two main festivals in Islam, begins this evening. Celebrations and observances are generally carried forward to the three following days, known as the Tashreeq days.SaturdayFrance: Roland-Garros French Open 2025 tennis women’s singles final day in Paris. The men’s final will take place on SundayUK: 13th Liverpool Biennial, Britain’s largest free contemporary visual arts festival, begins. Events will take place across the city’s public spaces, galleries and museums until September 14 under the theme BedrockSundayGermany: Uefa Nations League final, concluding the fourth edition of the international men’s football tournamentUS: 78th Tony Awards for the American theatre industry, presented in New York’s Radio City Music HallRecommended newsletters for youWhite House Watch — What Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world. Sign up hereFT Opinion — Insights and judgments from top commentators. Sign up here More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldTreasury secretary Scott Bessent has insisted the US would never default on its debt as he sought to assuage Wall Street concerns over the state of the country’s public finances. “The United States of America is never going to default, that is never going to happen,” Bessent told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “We are on the warning track and we will never hit the wall.”Investor jitters over the size of the US federal debt have mounted as President Donald Trump has urged Congress to push through his “big beautiful” budget bill, which is expected to ratchet up the federal deficit.Bessent dismissed concerns raised by JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon on Friday that the US bond market would “crack” under the weight of the country’s rising debt. “I have known Jamie a long time and for his entire career he’s made predictions like this. Fortunately, none of them have come true,” he said.The Congressional Budget Office, the government’s fiscal watchdog, warned in March that, even without the new budget legislation, US debt as a share of GDP would exceed its 1940s peak in the coming years. Last month, rating agency Moody’s stripped the US of its triple A debt rating.The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has warned that, as written, Trump’s bill would add about $3tn in debt over the next decade.Investors are also worried that the issue of raising the debt ceiling — which would increase by $4tn under the proposed legislation — is now beholden to Congressional wrangling and Republican party infighting. The bill passed the House of Representatives last month and is set to be debated by the Senate. But some members of the upper chamber have expressed unease over both the high spending levels and the scale of the increase to the debt limit.Elon Musk, who this week stepped down from his role in the Trump administration, said in a CBS interview aired on Sunday that he was “disappointed” with the “massive spending bill”, which he said undermined the cost-cutting work of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The Trump administration has insisted the bill will not increase the deficit and that projections fail to take into account increases in economic growth. “I am telling you this is going to reduce the deficit,” Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “We are going to spur on tremendous economic growth here.”Bessent said that many projections had also not accounted for the “substantial” income boost from Trump’s sweeping new import tariffs, which could add trillions of dollars to government revenues. “The deficit this year is going to be lower than the deficit last year and in two years, it will be lower again,” said Bessent. Trump’s tariff plans hit a hurdle last week after a court ruled the president did not have the authority he relied on to impose most of the levies. The White House won a temporary stay against the order. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said that even if the president was blocked from imposing tariffs under certain powers, he would find other avenues to do so. “Rest assured, tariffs are not going away,” Lutnick told Fox News Sunday.“He has so many other authorities that even in the weird and unusual circumstance where this was taken away, we just bring on another or another or another.” More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the worldJonathan Reynolds, UK business and trade secretary, will next week urge Donald Trump’s administration to quickly put in place a deal to cut taxes on UK steel exports to zero, even after the US president vowed to double his global steel tariff to 50 per cent.British officials admit there is still no “clarity” about how Trump’s new 50 per cent tariff on steel and aluminium imports — due to take effect on Wednesday — will hit the UK steel sector and its £400mn of exports to the US.But the outlook does not look good, with UK officials admitting that “bringing trade deals into force normally takes several months”. Trump and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer signed their non-legally binding trade pact on May 8, but London is still waiting for a clear signal from Washington about when it might take effect.Reynolds will meet Jamieson Greer, US trade representative, in Paris on the margins of an OECD meeting next week in a bid to thrash out “timelines” for implementing the so-called Economic Prosperity Deal.After clinching the first accord on trade with the US since Trump started imposing high tariffs, Starmer hailed it as a major coup.“The steel situation is still unclear,” said one British official, while another said there was a particular focus on London to persuade Trump to accelerate a separate agreement to cut tariffs on UK cars.Gareth Stace, director-general of the UK Steel trade body, warned that Trump’s plan to double steel and aluminium tariffs from 25 per cent to 50 per cent was “a body blow”.“Uncertainty remains as to whether and when our second-biggest export market will be open for business or is being firmly shut in our faces,” he added.  Trump agreed on May 8 to cut a 27.5 per cent tariff on cars to 10 per cent for the first 100,000 vehicles shipped from the UK, an agreement that Starmer said would save jobs at carmakers including Jaguar Land Rover.The prime minister also said at the time that the US had agreed to lower tariffs on UK steel and aluminium exports to zero, but they are set at 25 per cent at present.In return for cuts to Trump’s tariffs, the UK granted the US greater market access for beef, ethanol and industrial products. None of the proposed tariff cuts on either side of the Atlantic has yet taken effect.The UK government said: “We are working to ensure that businesses can benefit from the deal as quickly as possible and will confirm next steps in due course.“The US will need to follow due process on their side, and we will work with them very closely so that this happens as quickly as possible in the coming weeks.“The Economic Prosperity Deal and any implementing legislation will be presented to parliament in due course.” Officials in the UK embassy in Washington are working with the US Department of Commerce to try to expedite the enactment of the accord. One British official said: “The original deal stands, in our view.”Trump’s sectoral tariffs on cars and steel were not affected by the US Court of International Trade’s decision on Wednesday that the “liberation day” tariff scheme was illegal — a ruling later paused by a US federal appeals court. But trade experts warn that the US president will now be distracted by his battle in the courts and is unlikely to be focused on a trade deal with Britain.  More