US lowers coal exports forecast for April and May
The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday revised its April coal exports forecast downward by 33% and lowered its view for May by 20% due to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and resulting port closure.
The EIA had expected U.S. coal exports to rise by about 1% this year, but now expects a 6% decrease from last year’s levels following the bridge collapse.
U.S. coal shipments slowed following the closure of the Port of Baltimore, the second-largest coal export channel in the country, after a huge cargo ship crashed into the bridge on March 26.
“There is significant uncertainty based on the timeline for the port reopening and how quickly exporters can adjust to export through alternative ports,” said EIA Administrator Joe DeCarolis.
While coal has dwindled to about 15% of total U.S. power generation as natural gas, renewable energy and other cleaner energy sources take its place, coal supplies about a third of the world’s electricity.
Microsoft to expand AI, cloud infrastructure in Japan
Microsoft said on Tuesday it would invest $2.9 billion over two years to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure in Japan, the latest in a series of overseas expansions by large tech firms to support the development of artificial intelligence.
The investment – the company’s largest in the 46 years of its operations in the country – will also go toward training 3 million people in AI and setting up a Microsoft Research Asia lab in Tokyo.
Server operators are expanding their data centers and cloud computing assets globally to support a boom in AI applications and workloads, after the late 2022 launch of ChatGPT.
Amazon’s cloud unit is investing $10 billion in Mississippi and another $5.3 billion in Saudi Arabia on data centers. Google is building a data center just outside London for $1 billion.
Microsoft’s Azure, Alphabet unit Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services are the top three cloud computing companies in the world.
Enterprise Products gets port license for Texas oil terminal
Enterprise Products Partners said on Tuesday it had received a deepwater port license for its Sea Port Oil Terminal in the Gulf of Mexico from an agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
The project, located near Freeport, Texas, would become the biggest offshore oil export terminal in the U.S. after completion, with a capacity to load two supertankers at a time and export 2 million barrels of crude oil per day.
The company has said it expects to start operations in 2027.
In January, environmental groups had sued the U.S. to overturn the approval for the project, saying it would boost oil production and increase emissions.
BMW, Croatia’s Rimac partner on EV battery technology
BMW and Croatia’s Rimac have agreed to partner on high-voltage electric vehicle battery technology, they said on Tuesday, a European tie-up aimed at challenging Asian dominance in the field.
Rimac, an electric hypercar maker owned 45% by Porsche AG, is expanding its reach as a supplier of battery systems and powertrain components to other automakers, with the aim of reaching 100,000 batteries a year between 2024 and 2026.
Automakers are under increasing pressure to cut capital spending on electric vehicles. Premium EV startup Lucid is also trying to augment relatively small sales of its own EVs by selling its electric drive technology to other automakers such as Aston Martin.
Rimac CEO Mate Rimac said in 2023 that an undisclosed German carmaker would use a Rimac battery system in a high-performance model – with annual production of around 40,000 units – starting this year, with more signed up.
BMW declined to provide further details on which batteries or models would be developed in the partnership, saying only that it did not apply to the new cylindrical batteries powering the “Neue Klasse” EV line that goes into production in 2025.
BlackBerry gains on partnership with AMD for robotics systems
BlackBerry shares jumped more than 7% on Tuesday after the Canadian company teamed up with Advanced Micro Devices to roll out a platform that will enable better robotics capabilities for the industrial and health care industries.
The collaboration, announced at the Embedded World conference in Nuremberg, Germany, will use BlackBerry’s ONX platform.
BlackBerry’s U.S.-listed shares hit a nearly three-month high before settling at $3.
The company, which now generates revenue from its cybersecurity offerings and licensing software to a range of sectors, has struggled to grow in recent years. Its New York-listed stock is down 13% year-to-date, compared to a 9% rise in the benchmark S&P 500.
The technology “takes the future of robotics technology well beyond the constraints experienced until now,” Chetan Khona, senior director of industrial, vision, health care and sciences markets at AMD, said in a statement.