With the Basic Hydrogen Strategy (hereafter, the Strategy) released on December 26, 2017, Japan reiterated its commitment to pioneer the world’s first “Hydrogen Society”. The Strategy primarily aims to achieve the cost parity of hydrogen with competing fuels, such as gasoline in transport and Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in power generation. 

On June 5th 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar and agreed to isolate the Emirate via an air and land blockade.

Since its creation in 2005, the European emission trading system (EU ETS) has been through several periods of turmoil. With emission allowances (EUA) averaging around 7 euros per ton from 2012 to 2017, European Member States have been trying to remedy the depressed price signals successively through market design reforms at both European level (backloading, market stability reserve) and national level, with the UK introducing a carbon price floor for its domestic power sector in 2013.

In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India rendered its verdict in a landmark case with major implications for the Aadhaar biometric identification project as well as the application of right to privacy in India, but the Aadhaar Matter raises important questions about the shortcomings of the Supreme Court’s practice of judicial review.

During its two sessions (lianghui) in March 2018, the National People’s Congress (NPC) announced China’s most important institutional reforms in the last 30 years. These changes occurred right after Xi Jinping consolidated his power and at a time when stakeholders working in the energy field were expecting more clarity on policy orientations. 

Under particular US legal rationale, such as calling foreign imports a “national security threat”, President Donald Trump has started imposing tariffs and/or quotas and has launched national security investigations on a growing number of imported goods from US allies and others alike.

For some time, Western sources have been accusing Moscow of backing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Recently, Zambian politics have been changing in a pretty checkered manner. The threat of corruption, political violence and ethnic-politics has been growing since the ruling Patriotic Front Party (PF) assumed power in 2011.