PLANYC 2030

Global shipments of personal computers are set to jump nearly 20 percent in 2010, led by surging shipments of mobile PCs, according to a forecast issued on Thursday by industry tracker Gartner.,

The research group expects worldwide PC shipments of 366.1 million units this year. PC spending rose 12.2 percent to $245 billion.

Gartner’s outlook for 2010 is more bullish than the one it issued in December, which forecast unit growth of 13.3 percent and a spending rise of 1.9 percent.

“We expect mobile PCs to drive 90 percent of PC growth over the next three years,” Gartner analyst George Shiffler said in a release. “In 2009, mobile PCs accounted for 55 percent of all PC shipments; by 2012, we expect mobile PCs to account for nearly 70 percent of shipments.”

Gartner sees home PC demand increasing, and businesses recovering from the recession are expected to begin replacing four- and five-year-old computers.

Analysts expect vendors such as Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc to benefit from the so-called corporate refresh of technology hardware, and and continuing strong market in refurbished desktops.

Gartner also noted opportunities in the new tablet segment, following Apple’s announcement of the iPad. HP and others are also expected to launch tablet devices this year.

Gartner said a total of 10.5 million tablets could ship in 2010.

Falling home prices have left many owners with little or no equity, making it harder to qualify for refinancing. Moreover, stricter lending standards and higher fees by banks and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and declining incomes have made it tougher and less attractive for borrowers to seek new loans.

Around 37% of all borrowers with 30-year conforming fixed-rate mortgages—who collectively hold about $1.2 trillion of home loans—have mortgage rates of 6% or higher, according to investment bank Credit Suisse. Many could reduce their rates by a full percentage point if they refinanced at current rates, about 5%. More than half could lower their rates nearly three-quarters of a percentage point, according to Credit Suisse.

New refinance applications in January stood near their lowest levels in the past year. Weekly data compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association also show that refinance activity has been muted, considering that rates are so low. “Traditionally, these borrowers would be aggressively refinancing,” said Mahesh Swaminathan, senior mortgage strategist at Credit Suisse.

One indicator of the economic impact of refinancing: Loans that refinanced in 2009 will result in $3.4 billion in savings for consumers this year, according to a report by First American CoreLogic, a research firm based in Santa Ana, Calif. That will return an additional $17.2 billion in savings to borrowers over the next five years. That’s money consumers can potentially use to help spur economic recovery.

About a quarter of all mortgage holders are “underwater”—they owe more on the house than it’s worth—which normally makes it impossible to get refinancing: Banks want collateral to back the value of home loans they make. The Obama administration recently extended a program intended to help underwater homeowners refinance, but few people have tapped it so far. The program has faced logistical hurdles, delays and confusion from brokers and lenders.

Some people are so far underwater, refinancing ends up being out of the question. John Albright, a retired Navy officer in Manassas, Va., hasn’t been able to refinance because the value of his home has plunged. He figures its market value is now around $275,000, but he and his wife still owe more than $500,000 on their mortgage.

Their refinance application was turned down last year because they lacked equity in the home. He says his lender told him he could refinance only if he could come up with about $200,000 to pay down his mortgage. So they are stuck with an interest rate of about 6.5% at a time when his wife’s income has declined. “We’re going from paycheck to paycheck, but what can you do?” Mr. Albright says.

Some mortgage bankers say higher fees by lenders have undermined the effort to encourage refinancing. Fees that Fannie and Freddie began imposing in 2008, as loan delinquencies began to rise, have made it unattractive for some borrowers to refinance. For example, a borrower with 20% down and a 695 credit score seeking to refinance must pay fees equal to 1% of the loan amount. Those fees rise for borrowers with weaker credit scores, higher loan-to-value ratios, or other risk factors.

Overcorrecting for the abuses of financial institutions “has defeated the Fed’s purchase program,” said Alan Boyce, a mortgage-securities-market veteran. Those loan fees, he said, are partly “responsible for why there’s been no refi boom.”

The higher fees and tight credit standards show the tensions facing Fannie and Freddie. As the government-controlled companies try to raise revenue to offset their losses, those efforts can conflict with their basic public-policy mission: to help stabilize the housing market.

Fannie and Freddie have to strike a balance between risk and access to credit. Figuring out “where that line is involves some trade-offs,” said Edward DeMarco, acting head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie and Freddie. The last time mortgage rates were at current levels, in 2003, refinancing activity hit $2.9 trillion, according to trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance. Last year, refinance volume reached $1.2 trillion, the highest amount since 2003 but not nearly as much as expected, considering how low interest rates have fallen. Traditionally, borrowers have an incentive to refinance when they can reduce their mortgage rate by one percentage point or more.

Borrowers who are refinancing tend to be those who need it least. Fannie and Freddie refinanced 4.2 million borrowers last year. On average, borrowers who refinanced through Freddie Mac saved $2,600 annually. But the savings on the whole have gone to “very, very good credit borrowers and it really isn’t going very far down the credit spectrum,” said Michael Fratantoni, the head of research and economics for the MBA.

The experience of Connecticut resident Cathy Grandahl shows some of the trade-offs borrowers must grapple with in today’s low-interest-rate, high-fee environment. She wanted to refinance two loans on her West Simsbury, Conn., home: a fixed-rate mortgage with a 5.75% rate and a second mortgage with an adjustable rate that she worries will rise sharply in coming years.

Refinancing would save them around $125 a month on their first mortgage while providing a fixed rate on their second loan. But extinguishing that mortgage by refinancing into one larger loan—considered a “cash-out” refinance—would trigger an additional fee.

That, plus several thousand dollars in closing costs, ultimately persuaded the couple not to refinance after all. “It’s not a matter of our credit. We just can’t get a good enough rate to make the refi worth it,” says Ms. Grandahl, a 53-year-old land-records researcher who has three children in college.

Falling home values are one of the biggest factors raising borrowers’ refinancing costs. Borrowers with less than 20% equity may have to pay for mortgage insurance.

On Monday, the Obama administration said it would extend for a year a program launched last April to help homeowners with little or no equity to refinance. That program, which had been set to expire this June, was called a “failure” last week by analysts at Barclays Capital. While the administration had said it would benefit millions, so far just 188,000 borrowers who owe between 80% and 105% of the value of their homes had refinanced through December.

Last September, it was expanded to include borrowers who owe up to 125% of their home value, but fewer than 2,000 borrowers have used that program through December.

General Electric said Friday that Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt did not receive a 2009 bonus, the second straight year he gave up extra pay as the industrial and financial conglomerate struggled with one of its worst years on record.

GE’s board of directors agreed to Immelt’s request not to grant him a bonus even though it concluded he had performed well during a brutal year for the company, according a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Immelt’s last bonus was in 2007 and amounted to $5.8 million.

Last year was painful for GE, which makes everything from kitchen appliances to power plant turbines.

The company’s shares fell 80% early in 2009 before recovering somewhat. GE lost its top credit rating due to the struggles of its GE Capital lending unit. Immelt and the GE board cut GE’s dividend by 68% to conserve cash and decided to take part in a federally backed program when credit dried up.

“Jeff recognizes that it was a challenging year in which he had to make some difficult decisions that he is convinced were in the best interests of GE but that can only be assessed over a period longer than the last 18 months,” GE spokeswoman Anne Eisele said, explaining Immelt’s decision not to take a bonus.

However, GE did not leave Immelt empty-handed. He was paid a $3.3 million salary, the same as a year ago, and granted him 150,000 performance share units worth $1.8 million that will convert to GE stock if the company meets certain financial goals. GE also gave Immelt 2 million in stock options Thursday worth between $7 million and $8 million, though those options do not appear on his 2009 pay package.

Overall, Immelt’s 2009 pay fell slightly to about $5.6 million, from $5.7 million in 2008. It also fell below the compensation of the four other top GE executives listed on GE’s proxy, who all received bonuses.

In a letter to GE shareholders, Immelt said that the “world has been reset” by the sharp economic decline over the past two years. GE is in the process of cutting down the size of GE Capital, which once made up half of the company’s overall profits but is still saddled by a big number of bad loans.

GE, which is based in Fairfield, Conn., has turned to its industrial divisions, which make jet engines, oil and gas drilling equipment and power plant turbines to lead it out of the recession. It has also reached a deal with cable operator Comcast to eventually sell its majority stake in NBC Universal, which includes the NBC network.

“GE must be an industrial company first,” Immelt wrote.

GE expects that 2010 profits will be roughly flat with the $11 billion it earned in 2009, which was down 37% from 2008.

The company forecasts a growth in earnings beginning in 2011.

The AP’s calculations of total pay includes salary, bonus, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations exclude changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the SEC.

Hitching her wagon to the nascent slow-cooking craze, Mable Hoffman created one of the fastest-selling cookbooks.

Ms. Hoffman, who died Feb. 9 at 88, was author of “Crockery Cookery,” an early entry among books of recipes for an old technique transformed.

The late 60’s and early 70’s were a boon time for kitchen appliance manufacturers and many homemakers were enthralled by redesigned gadgets such as blenders and indoor grills.

Crock-Pots debuted in 1971 and sold in the millions, spurred in part by the increase in working women who wanted to present a fresh-cooked meal when they came home in the evening. But conventional stew recipes turned to mush or solidified in these newly popular kitchen appliances because meats and vegetables acted differently when cooked for long periods at low temperatures.

“The cookbooks that came with the Crock-Pots did not work,” says Howard Fisher, an editor at HP Books who hired Ms. Hoffman to provide answers.

A home economist and food stylist, Ms. Hoffman had experience developing recipes for another emerging kitchen labor-saver, the roaster oven. She was soon cooking up a storm with 20 or more slow cookers bubbling around the clock.

“There was dinner ready every night, but some of those pots you really didn’t want to eat from,” says Ms. Hoffman’s daughter, Jan Robertson, who pitched in to help with the culinary explorations.

Crock-Pot Cooking

“Crockery Cookery” presented more than 250 recipes for solid middle-American fare, such as pot roast and “squash medley,” but also more exotic fare including baked beans cassoulet and fresh pears in wine. Some critics have derided slow cookers for encouraging “dump cooking,” but most contemporary reviews hailed the book for extolling inexpensive and convenient food.

An unexpected best-seller, “Crockery Cookery” dethroned “The Joy of Sex” as the No. 1 selling trade paperback in June of 1975, providing a clue as to which is the stronger human urge. More than six million copies have been sold in several editions, says Mr. Fisher.

Ms. Hoffman was born in Virginia, the daughter of a postman and his wife, a superior Southern cook. She majored in home economics at the University of Maryland. She had a stint writing marketing reports for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She later moved to California and consulted as a recipe developer for Sunkist Growers and Hunt Foods, and as a food stylist for publications such as Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

Ms. Hoffman followed “Crockery Cookery” with a dozen more cookbooks, some elaborating on slow-cookers and others dealing with chocolate, ice cream, pasta and entertaining. Her husband, Gar Hoffman, a civilian Navy employee, was her co-author on several books, helping with research and production. The Hoffmans traveled the country doing cooking demonstrations and television appearances.

A voluble hostess who never tired of extolling the advantages of slow cooking, Ms. Hoffman liked food. A San Diego Union-Tribune interviewer who dropped by her kitchen in 1985, when Ms. Hoffman was promoting, “Make-Ahead Entertaining,” noted that she served coffee with dainty napkins that said, “Skinny cooks can’t be trusted.”

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said it plans to introduce five new drugs, including treatments for cancer, diabetes and heart disease, by 2012, as its top-selling medicine, the blood-thinner Plavix, loses patent protection.

The company also said today in a statement that earnings, excluding some costs, will drop to as low as $1.95 a share in 2013 from projected 2010 profit, topping the average estimate of analyst by 7 cents.

The five new drugs may generate more than $4 billion by 2016, according Seamus Fernandez, an analyst with Leerink Swann & Co. Bristol-Myers is meeting with investors today in New York to detail its plan to overcome the loss of as much as $11 billion in annual sales to generic competition over the next six years. Lamberto Andreotti, 59, named March 2 to replace Chief Executive Officer James Cornelius in May, said he will make acquisitions and has as much as $10 billion to spend.

“Like other drug companies, Bristol-Myers may also acquire its way to its stated financial targets if needed,” Tim Anderson, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York, said today in a note to investors. “Although it has been steadfast in saying it would only pursue smaller deals as part of its ‘string of pearls’ approach, we continue to wonder whether a larger transaction might ultimately occur.”

New treatments expected to reach the market are apixaban for blood clots, belatacept for kidney transplants, brivanib for cancer, dapagliflozin for diabetes and ipilimumab for skin cancer, the New York-based drugmaker said today in statement.

Skin Cancer Drug

Bristol-Myers said it plans to seek regulatory approval this year for the experimental melanoma treatment ipilimumab. The company may also ask regulators to clear an added use of its cancer drug Sprycel and an injectable form of Orencia for rheumatoid arthritis.

Copies of the company’s top-selling Plavix and the blood- pressure medicine Avapro are set to flood the market in 2012, erasing $7.4 billion in sales, or about 40 percent of 2009 revenue. Plavix generated $6.1 billion of those sales. The company will lose an additional $3 billion in annual revenue from its antipsychotic Abilify by 2016 from generic competition.

Sales of the HIV treatment Sustiva are also expected to fall by $800 million from 2014 to 2015, according to Steve Scala, an analyst with Cowen & Co.

In 2013, analysts were expecting Bristol-Myers to report earnings of $1.88 a share, on average, according to a survey by Bloomberg. Bristol-Myers said it plans to have “sustained growth” starting in 2014. The company projects 2010 adjusted earnings of $2.15 a share to $2.25 a share.

The earnings estimate for 2013 excludes the potential impact of legislation overhauling the health-care system and acquisitions or licensing deals, the company said in the today’s statement. It also assumes additional cost cutting, strong sales of its current products, and U.S. approval of medicines now in late-stage testing.

In private, Greek analysts have been debating for months exactly when the Socialist government would make what was widely seen as an inevitable U-turn on the economy.

That shift – in the form of the toughest fiscal package in the country’s post-second world war history – came yesterday after several months of sustained pressure from financial markets.

In the aftermath of a sweeping victory at national elections last October, George Papandreou, prime minister, had been unwilling to abandon pre-electoral promises of wage increases, higher social spending and huge public investment in “green” development.

It took both turmoil on Greek bond markets and a “series of private ear bashings”, as one Athens official put it, from Europe’s most senior political and economic personalities to persuade Mr Papandreou to chart a radically different course.

José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, and Angela Merkel, German chancellor, all warned the prime minister in recent weeks that, without more aggressive reforms, Greece risked being cut adrift by its European partners.

At yesterday’s cabinet session called to approve a freeze on pensions, cuts in Christmas and Easter bonuses for public sector workers and rises in value added tax, Mr Papandreou is said to have told a potentially rebellious minister that socialist ideology would have to be set aside, at least temporarily.

In public the prime minister, who still enjoys high approval ratings, has ratcheted up the rhetoric to reflect a deepening sense of crisis among Greeks. The new measures, he said, were necessary to avert “a catastrophe” – a word associated in Greece with the disastrous 1922 military defeat by the Turks that plunged the country into years of economic crisis, including a sovereign default.

The new measures are due to be approved by parliament this week under emergency procedures, opening the way for Mr Papandreou to travel to Berlin and Paris at the weekend to argue the case for Greece to receive some form of financial support from its eurozone partners.

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The Colbert Report	Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Greece’s Economic Downfall – Scheherazade Rehman
www.colbertnation.com
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Such support he hopes could allow Greece to return to international markets to finance its bloated public debt. However, a raft of challenges lies ahead. Deadlines loom for the Socialists to push through legislation modernising the tax system and announce an overhaul of the debt-burdened state pension system.

Moreover, Greece’s recession could be deeper than the “worst-case” scenario for this year’s budget. IOBE, a private sector think-tank, predicts the economy will shrink this year by 2.2 per cent, a significantly higher figure than the government’s minus 0.3 per cent target.

Meanwhile, the stand-off with the unions escalates. Ominously, Mr Papandreou appeared yesterday to have lost the backing of Adedy, the main public sector trade union. Spyros Papaspyros, Adedy president, said that by cutting the bonuses, which grant two extra annual salaries to public sector workers, the Socialists crossed a red line. “We are not going to become sacrificial victims, regardless of the struggle to save the country,” he said.

Given the unions’ capacity to create havoc in the streets of Athens, as well as the ability of officials to delay the implementation of reforms, it is too early to say whether the Socialists’ third try will succeed. The markets, too, still have to be persuaded the Socialists can turn Greece round.

Mr Papandreou, a famously patient politician, will have to persevere to turn his announcements into reality.

There’s a “Wizard of Oz” joke to be made here: The city of Topeka, Kansas has unofficially changed its name to “Google” in an attempt to get on the Mountain View tech giant’s radar as a test bed for new fiber-optic technology that would bring it Internet connections at top speed.

The Topeka Capital-Journal wrote that Mayor Bill Bunten signed a proclamation Monday that designates the town as “Google” for the duration of March, in an attempt to make it a more palatable choice for a test market than some of the other cities in the running–like Grand Rapids, Mich., and Baton Rouge, La. It’s not intended to be as permanent as the Oregon town that actually renamed itself Half.com in exchange for some cash, free stuff, and mockery.

The town can’t legally change its name if it intends to change it back, and then there’s the fact that Google owns all sorts of intellectual property pertaining to its brand name. But the Capital-Journal says that there is technically no legal barrier to the issuance of a proclamation gently encouraging people to refer to Topeka as “Google.” You know, it’s sort of like when you’re a little kid and you wish your name were cooler so you start telling everyone to call you by a new one of your choice, and the blitheness of childhood prevents you from noticing the smirks that ensue every time you politely ask an adult to start referring to you as “Jethro Skywalker.”

And in Topeka, there is precedent. As the Capital-Journal explains:

    “(A local TV station manager) told the council Monday about how Mayor Joan Wagnon in August 1998 issued a proclamation temporarily changing Topeka’s name to “ToPikachu” in recognition of the nationwide kickoff here of the ‘Pokemon’ media franchise, which features a fictional species of creatures named ‘Pikachu.’”

Um, wow?

As for what the local media really thinks, let’s just make note of the fact that the Capital-Journal listed an Associated Press version of the story explaining the Google proclamation under its “Strange” category, alongside “Florida man allegedly calls 911 200 times” and “Ohio police officers get drunk on purpose.”

But hey, if this campaign actually gets the city a super-fast Internet connection, I’ll stop laughing.

Valence CEO Robert Kanode — with Bénéteau’s Wayne Burdick, left, during a recent boat show in Miami — said his battery company’s deal with Bénéteau could generate more than the $45 million in revenue forecast by the French yacht maker. 

 

Austin-based Valence Technology Inc. has signed an agreement to provide rechargeable batteries to the world’s largest maker of sailing yachts.

France-based Bénéteau Group will use a Valence rechargeable battery in all of its hybrid electric boats that use a hybrid drive system. The new yachts are equipped with electric drive pods instead of the diesel engines commonly used to power boats out to sea. Those drive pods can also be used to generate electricity, which is stored in the battery.

Valence’s batteries will also be able to meet the yacht’s internal needs while at sea for up to three days, Valence CEO Robert Kanode said.

“They’re on the cutting edge, and it’s where we belong,” Kanode said.

The hybrid boats emit little or no emissions, reduce fuel use and require less maintenance than traditional diesel marine systems.

“It is a new way of sailing without any noise or polluting gas emissions, with the battery making it possible to store enough energy to live comfortably onboard for several days,” said Dieter Gust, a member of Bénéteau Group’s management board.

Bénéteau representatives estimated that the agreement will produce $9 million in revenue for Valence in the first year, once marine battery shipments begin in the second half of 2010, with total revenue of $45 million possible over the five years of the agreement.

Kanode called the $45 million estimate conservative. In the past 12 months, Valence’s revenue totaled about $17.4 million. The company, which makes rechargeable batteries for marine use and electric vehicles such as trucks and motorcycles, has not made a profit since it was founded in 1989.

Valence shares gained almost 16 percent to close at 95 cents on Thursday.

It would be, he repeated in his State of the Union address last month, the country that led the transformation in the clean-tech and clean energy sectors.

The US has watched its early dominance of the silicon solar panel industry being assumed by China and Japan.

It now fears that not only China but India, Brazil and others will seize the initiative to dominate other emerging industries and technologies.

The Copenhagen climate change talks may have ended in disarray, hopes for a binding treaty anytime soon may be in retreat and some conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may be under the spotlight, but it seems clear that the transition to a low-carbon economy and towards clean technology is inevitable and accelerating. “China is not waiting to revamp its economy,” Obama said in his speech. “Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. They are not standing still . . . They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.”

The question for Australia is how it seeks to position itself in what some are branding as the new space race.

Present policies, particularly the proposed emissions trading scheme and faltering renewable energy target, have been framed, or at least justified, with a global climate change treaty in mind.

But too little of the push to innovate has been sold on the need to maintain pace with companies equally concerned with energy security and other environmental measures as about climate change. And too little about gathering some share of the trillions of dollars that will be directed towards clean technology and investments.

In the absence of an international treaty, most leading economies are pushing for change, as a national or regional initiative, in the form of an ETS, mandated clean energy targets, green stimulus packages and a host of subsidies, taxes and financing initiatives.

“The lack of a binding international agreement on any of these issues at the Copenhagen summit last December has understandably created uncertainty in the minds of many potential climate change investors,” Deutsche Bank’s head of asset management Kevin Parker says in a recent report. “This is unfortunate because what matters far more is that national and local governments all over the world are not waiting for a supra-national framework. They are already pushing ahead with their own policies that will do far more than international regulation in the short to medium term to stimulate private investment.”

Deutsche Bank notes that immediately before and after the Copenhagen summit ended in disarray, more than 25 significant policy announcements were made from nations and states worldwide, with some of the most notable coming from the US, China, India, Taiwan, Brazil, Japan, Britain and South Korea.

“All this new national legislation is a hugely encouraging sign that many countries not only understand the urgency of the climate change problem but see the competitive advantage of moving towards a low carbon economy,” Parker writes.

He describes it as the “opportunity of a lifetime”, but warns investors to focus on the quality of regulation provided by individual countries because huge differences are emerging. “We believe these disparities will, over time, translate into massive differences in the amount of investment capital countries attract and the jobs they create in renewable energy and other climate change industries. Investment capital will find the best returns, wherever they are. Countries that fail to provide them will get left behind.”

In a small but symbolic sign of the changing nature of technology and established industries, the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla last month signalled it would conduct a $US100 million ($111m) initial public offering this week. It will be the first IPO in the US auto industry since Ford listed on the stock exchange in 1956.

Tesla may well be a loss maker, but its public float has attracted the support of four heavyweight financiers — Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — which clearly have a vision of where their future bread will be buttered.

Morgan Stanley and HSBC also have taken principal positions in the $US350M raising by Better Place, the electric car battery network provider, which has completed the largest venture capital raising in the world in the past two years. And Warren Buffett, long touted as the world’s smartest investor, is sitting on an eight-fold return on a $US230m investment made two years ago in BYD. The Chinese battery and EV maker has ambitions of being the world’s largest car manufacturer and is already the biggest manufacturer of any sort in China.

Closer to home, Ausra, the company that began as an academic case study at the University of NSW and was then taken to the US to gain some financial backing, has been sold to Areva, the world’s biggest nuclear energy group. Areva intends to use the Ausra technology as a flagship product in its push to dominate the solar thermal energy industry.

Numerous other Australian clean-tech and clean energy developers find themselves at a similar crossroads. A report by the advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions found that Australia, in theory, could be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020. But at its present rate of progress it seems unlikely that more than a few villages and hamlets, along with a handful of desalination plants, will be renewable at that time.

Meanwhile, talented and innovative Australian developers are packing their bags for greener pastures overseas, where broader market-based subsidies, tax incentives and loan guarantees are encouraging innovation in wind, solar, marine, energy storage and a host of other areas.

The irony is that while the likes of Scotland declare their intention to be the Saudi Arabia of marine battery and energy systems, and Chile and Arhgentina make similar claims in regard to lithium ion batteries, the key technology for EVs, Australia’s natural resources could give it the ambition to become the Saudi Arabia of whichever energy source it wants. It has the capacity for geothermal, solar, wind or marine energy and advanced battery technology, and to develop a corresponding industry.

So while the cadence of Australian policy continues to be directed by the pace of international agreements, what of the future of UN climate change talks? Is there any prospect that such an agreement could be enacted?

The absence of a legally binding agreement did not surprise those who followed these negotiations closely, but there was no doubt they were stunned by the chaotic and dysfunctional ending to the two-week conference in Copenhagen in December.

And there are now few who believe an agreement can be struck in Mexico later this year, or can be struck at all if under the auspices of the UN.

Even the status of the so-called Copenhagen Accord, produced at the last minute by a group including the US, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, is under doubt. India and China this week indicated they were unsure if they wanted to be associated with the accord, which sets a goal of limiting global warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial times. “This does make it less likely that we will see a global agreement,” says Graham Stuart, head of the European climate change practice at Baker & McKenzie. “What we will get is a bottom-up approach [from individual nations]. At some point, maybe, those national pledges will coalesce into a binding treaty.”

Nevertheless, Stuart says there will be much activity in the realm of national actions, bilateral agreements between, say, China and the European Union on carbon credits and the power sector, as well as regional agreements. “We are looking at a whole set of national actions and bilateral treaties,” Stuart says.

This a view supported by Freehills, another legal firm closely following the action at domestic and international levels. It says a global consensus may not be possible and smaller bilateral and multilateral treaties may be more productive.

On the domestic front, however, the positions of the government and the opposition appear intractable, and may be resolved only through an election.

“The signs still remain that some form of carbon regulation in Australia is inevitable,” it says. “But the precise format is not certain.”