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Efforts by the US to reduce its reliance on China for rare earths have taken a new turn, with the Department of Defense now bankrolling a rare earths refinery in Texas, to be built by Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths. We look into this new example of state-level investment in rare earths projects, and what it could mean for the future of an ever-escalating resource conflict.

The natural gas sector has not had a good week after Shell was ordered by a court in the Hague to slash its carbon emissions by 45 per cent before the end of 2030.

Shell has substantial liquefied natural gas assets in Australia and there is every reason to believe that its local operations will come under the microscope as well.

Strong Asian LNG demand for summer and tight supply amid maintenance and outages at multiple terminals have helped the market absorb the spot LNG cargoes rejected by India due to its COVID-19 related lockdowns, according to traders and market participants.

The world’s seven largest advanced economies have agreed to stop international financing of coal projects that emit carbon by the end of this year, and phase out such support for all fossil fuels, to meet globally agreed climate change targets.

According to the United Nations more than 50 million tonnes of electronic waste was discarded in 2019

Last week a raft of oil majors released their first-quarter results, with companies like Royal Dutch Shell Plc showing a return to pre-pandemic profit levels. At the same time, some of the majors increased their energy transition commitments: as my Bloomberg Intelligence colleagues Salih Yilmaz and Will Hares noted on Twitter, Spanish firm Repsol SA devoted 40% of its capital expenditure to low-carbon projects, and France’s Total SE stated plans to increase its renewable energy capacity five-fold over the next four years.

Gas customers in the ACT face higher bills in the next five years after the energy regulator allowed a network request to extract more money from its customers before many of them switch to alternative technologies such as renewables.