Bloomberg The South Korean government unveiled a 76 trillion won ($62 billion) ‘New Deal’ spending plan to reshape the economy in the aftermath of the pandemic after slashing its growth forecast for the year. The plan, first outlined by President Moon Jae-in in April, aims to refocus the economy through 2025 by supporting job growth and new industries. It will ...

Bloomberg Chinese manufacturers that dominate nearly every step in the global solar power supply chain are being forced to slash prices as the coronavirus disrupts projects around the world. Costs for components like wafers and cells have fallen by as much as 20% since the start of the year. They likely haven’t bottomed out yet, either, as the outlook for ...

Bloomberg India’s two main power exchanges started real-time electricity trading on Monday, a bid to allow buyers greater flexibility in balancing supply and demand. Auctions will be conducted every 30 minutes and deliveries will be made within an hour of the session end, Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) Ltd, the country’s largest power trading platform, said. Day-ahead transactions currently account for ...

Bloomberg Europeans need to urgently increase the solar power that their economies generate or face a reckoning with climate change they could regret. Those are the stark choices outlined by top European Union scientists whose advice will be published by Elsevier BV. They see massive new solar investments not only for the bloc to meet its 2030 climate goals, but ...

Bloomberg JinkoSolar Holding Co, the world’s biggest solar panel maker, started operations at the first phase of a massive 11 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) factory in China’s eastern Zhejiang province that will eventually double its manufacturing capacity. When finished, the entire plant is designed to produce 16 gigawatts of panels a year in Yiwu city, a division of the local ...

From the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute (BFI) — named for Milton Friedman and Gary Becker, two of the university’s 30 Nobel laureates in economics — comes this warning: Recovery from the pandemic’s economic damage will be protracted and perhaps made more so by some of Congress’ intendedly ameliorative measures. In their report “Covid-19 Is Also a Reallocation Shock,” ...

Covid-19 became a pandemic because airplane passengers carried the new coronavirus with them around the world. As that became clear, airlines grounded nearly all of their fleets, governments issued travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines, and tourist attractions and conferences closed down. With no reason to fly, a quick recovery for air travel seemed unlikely. Warren Buffett dumped his airline stocks, ...

The story of Covid-19 has been pretty bleak, from the scale of the novel coronavirus’s death toll to the pain of draconian lockdowns imposed by, in many cases, unprepared and under-resourced governments. But several weeks after the tentative lifting of tough stay-at-home restrictions in several major European countries, there are reasons to be optimistic about the risk of a second ...

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has said Hong Kong is no longer autonomous from China after a monthslong crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. This has paved the way for the Trump administration to strip the territory of some of its privileged trade status. But alas, if Hong Kong would have been just another Chinese city. Hong Kong is defined by ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG may have won its battle for state aid, but its surrender of airport slots to appease regulators heralds heightened conflict between European aviation’s old guard and low-cost challengers. A rivalry that’s been simmering for years has been given fresh impetus by the coronavirus crisis, with former flag carriers falling back on government support as discounters including ...