Venerated as incarnations of Hindu deities, India’s sacred cows are also being touted as agents of energy transition by a government determined to promote biogas production to cut its dependence on coal.It is an understatement to say that Nakul Kumar Sardana is proud of his new plant at Barsana, in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state.Firstly, says the vice-president of a biomass joint venture between India’s Adani Group and France’s TotalEnergies, because it occupies “one of the holiest sites in the world”.A four-hour drive south of the smog-filled capital New Delhi, among fields bristling with brickyard smokestacks, the small town of Barsana welcomes pilgrims who come to honour the Hindu goddess Radha.But Sardana is also proud because his methanisation plant that opened in March is the “most technologically advanced and the largest biogas facility” in India.It was built in Barsana to be as close as possible to its raw fuel — cattle dung and harvest stubble.”This region is home to a million cows,” he said. “Their dung has been used as fuel for centuries in cooking”.Cows have been blamed for contributing to global warming because they produce methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — in their manure or when they belch.But in this case, the region is finding a creative use for the waste produced by the cattle, which are used for their milk. Eating them is taboo for many Hindus. Stalks left behind after the rice harvest — that would otherwise be burned — join the slurry.”Farmers are traditionally burning them, creating smog and pollution”, he added.”In using natural waste, we are not only producing compressed biogas, but also high-quality organic fertiliser.”Long lines of tractors dump dung and straw in the factory’s tanks, from which 10 tonnes of gas and 92 tonnes of fertiliser are produced each day.- ‘Convert waste’ -In its endless quest for power to fuel its economic growth, the world’s most populous nation — and third-largest fossil fuel polluter —  has pushed biogas to achieve a much-promised transition to carbon neutrality by 2070.In 2018, the government set itself an ambitious goal of building 5,000 biogas plants in six years.But despite generous subsidies and the introduction of a buyback guarantee, the project attracted little initial interest — until the government forced the hand of producers. From April 2025, at least one percent of liquid gas fuelling both vehicles and for domestic use must be biogas — rising to five percent by 2028.That prompted a response from key players, starting with billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani — both close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi — eying lucrative public contracts.Ambani promised his Reliance group would build 55 biogas plants by the end of 2025 to convert “food producers to energy producers” and generate 30,000 jobs.His rival Adani plans to invest around $200 million in the sector in the next three to five years.”The government is pushing to convert waste for the wealth of the country,” said Suresh Manglani, CEO of Adani Total Gas.The International Energy Agency (IEA) says both China and India are leading global growth in bioenergy, seen as one solution to mitigate global heating.Even though biofuel remains more expensive than conventional gas, Indian production is expected to grow by 88 percent by 2030, it predicts.Biogas is considered a clean energy because the waste used to produce it is completely natural, said Suneel Pandey of The Energy and Resources Institute.It is “a sustainable solution to make wealth from waste,” he told AFP.- ‘Potential is huge’ -But the contribution of biogas to India’s transition away from heavily polluting coal — currently fuelling nearly 70 percent of electricity — will be relatively small.India plans to more than double the share of gas in its energy mix — from six to 15 percent by 2030.But the bulk of that will be liquefied natural gas (LNG), with Adani and TotalEnergies opening an LNG port on India’s eastern coast at Dhamra.Burning gas to produce electricity also releases damaging emissions, although less than coal and oil.Total argues its backing of biogas is more about environmental responsibility than commercial opportunity.”Biogas goes way beyond figures and business plans,” said Sangkaran Ratnam, TotalEnergies chairman and managing director for India.”It has also a tremendously positive knock-on effect on the rural communities in terms of jobs, in terms of care for the environment, and alternative forms of income.” Tejpreet Chopra, head of renewable energy company Bharat Light and Power, said the biogas market is “small in the big picture of things” but the “potential is huge”.But the investments required are vast. The Barsana plant cost $25 million, while the price of biogas remains uncompetitive: $14 per cubic metre, compared to $6 for LNG.Yet Sardana remains more convinced than ever that biogas is key.”We will learn the nuts and bolts of it and improve all processes,” he said. “We stop wasting energy, we create rural jobs, and we are contributing to a more sustainable environment.”

The US Federal Reserve shrugged off concerns about the economic impact of Donald Trump’s election victory and moved ahead with a quarter point cut Thursday.   The Fed sits just a short walk from the White House, where Democratic President Joe Biden will in January hand back the keys to Trump following the Republican’s election win.But as expected, policymakers did their best to ignore the political drama playing out up the road, voting unanimously to trim interest rates by 25 basis points to between 4.50 and 4.75 percent, according to a Fed statement.”In the near term, the election will have no effects on our policy decisions,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters after the rate cut was announced, noting there was still uncertainty about what President-elect Trump’s actual economic agenda would be.”We don’t guess, we don’t speculate, and we don’t assume,” he said. Powell also insisted he would not resign if asked to leave early by the president-elect, adding that firing any of the other leaders among the Fed’s seven governors was “not permitted under the law.”The US central bank’s rate decision should help ease the costs of mortgages and other loans — welcome news for consumers, who had widely cited the cost of living as a top concern ahead of Tuesday’s vote. But the cost of borrowing will also depend on how financial markets think a Trump victory will impact the economy over the longer term, and where the Fed’s interest rates will need to settle to ensure inflation remains under control.Powell “stayed clear of commenting on the election outcome,” Nationwide chief economist Kathy Bostjancic told AFP on Thursday. “But I do think as we get into 2025 they are going to have to consider that.”- ‘Economy looks quite resilient’ -Polls and surveys indicate that Trump’s victory was aided by unhappiness over a post-pandemic surge in US inflation — which saw consumer prices rise more than 20 percent.Thursday’s decision adds to a previous rate cut in September, when the Fed kicked off its easing cycle with a larger half point decrease, and penciled in additional rate reductions this year.The Fed’s favored inflation gauge has since eased to 2.1 percent in September, while economic growth has remained robust.The labor market has also stayed strong overall, despite a sharp hiring slowdown last month attributed in large part to adverse weather conditions and a labor strike.”Generally speaking, the US economy looks quite resilient, and the labor market still looks very good,” Jim Bullard, the long-serving former St Louis Fed president, told AFP in an interview ahead of Election Day.”While the December meeting will depend on the data over the next six weeks, the tone from Powell today made us marginally more confident in our call for another 25bp (basis point) cut then,” JP Morgan’s chief US economist, Michael Feroli, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.  – Fiscal discipline ‘broken down’ -With a Trump victory assured, a lot still depends on whether Republicans can hold onto the House of Representatives, as they appear on track to do — giving them a “Red Sweep” of both houses of Congress along with the White House.”Markets tend to like divided government as a way to control spending and keep deficits down,” said Bullard, who is now dean of the Daniels School of Business at Purdue University.”What’s distressing to an economist like me is that, really, fiscal discipline has broken down for both political parties,” he said.Trump’s victory also raises questions about the independence of the Fed. The president-elect has repeatedly accused Powell — whom he first appointed to run the US central bank — of working to favor the Democrats, and has suggested he would look to replace him once his term expires in 2026. Republicans are now in control of the US Senate, which votes on nominations to the Fed, giving Trump significant control over who the next head of the US central bank will be. Trump has also said he would like “at least” a say over setting the Fed’s interest rate — something that runs against the bank’s dual mandate to act independently of Congress and the White House to tackle inflation and unemployment.

Global stocks mostly rose Thursday, with US indices hitting fresh records as a Federal Reserve interest rate cut extended a post-election rally.While the Dow finished flat, both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq jumped to new all-time highs as the Fed shrugged off concerns about the impact of Donald Trump’s election victory and moved ahead with a quarter point interest rate cut.The central bank voted unanimously to reduce interest rates by 25 basis points to between 4.50 and 4.75 percent.Markets were cheered by Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s tone, which kept the door open to further interest rate cuts.”Of course, there’s going to be a debate about the pace of rate cuts, but policy makers and chair Powell mentioned that they continue to think that policy is restrictive,” said Angelo Kourkafas, senior investment strategist at Edward Jones.All three major indices had hit all-time highs on Wednesday as markets greeted Trump’s election win with the hope that tax cuts and the scaling back of regulation would offset the hit from higher tariffs.Analysts have cautioned that aggressive growth-oriented policies could reignite inflation.But Powell noted there was still uncertainty about what Trump’s actual economic agenda would be.”We don’t guess, we don’t speculate, and we don’t assume,” he said at a news conference.Large tech companies were big winners, with Apple, Google parent Alphabet and Facebook parent Meta all up more than two percent.But banking shares pulled back after a torrid session on Wednesday. Bank of America dropped 1.4 percent, while JPMorgan Chase fell 4.3 percent.Earlier, the Bank of England announced a widely expected 25-basis-point cut, its second reduction since August, as inflation in Britain fell below its target rate.  Sweden’s central bank also dropped borrowing costs by 50 basis points, its biggest reduction in a decade, while Norway made no change.Frankfurt stocks rose by 1.7 percent as the conservative opposition heaped pressure on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s crisis-hit government to allow for speedy elections by calling a confidence vote next week rather than in 2025.Christian Democrats chief Friedrich Merz made the demand after Scholz’s three-party coalition imploded Wednesday over the 2025 budget and fiscal policy.In Asia on Thursday, Chinese stocks rallied as investors brushed off concerns that China in particular would be the target of Trump’s tariffs.- Key figures around 2130 GMT -New York – Dow: FLAT at 43,729.34 (close)New York – S&P 500: UP 0.7 percent at 5,973.10 (close)New York – Nasdaq Composite: UP 1.5 percent at 19,269.46 (close)London – FTSE 100: DOWN 0.3 percent at 8,140.74 (close)Paris – CAC 40: UP 0.8 percent at 7,425.60 (close)Frankfurt – DAX: UP 1.7 percent at 19,362.52 (close)Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.3 percent at 39,381.41 (close)Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 2.0 percent at 20,953.34 (close)Shanghai – Composite: UP 2.6 percent at 3,470.66 (close)Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0801 from $1.0729 on WednesdayPound/dollar: UP at $1.2985 from $1.2879Dollar/yen: DOWN at 152.92 yen from 154.63 yenEuro/pound: DOWN at 83.18 pence from 83.31 penceWest Texas Intermediate: UP 0.9 percent at $72.36 per barrelBrent North Sea Crude: UP 1.0 percent at $75.63 per barrelburs-jmb/sst

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said that the head of its China operations had been detained, after reports the firm was under investigation for potentially illegal data collection and drug imports.Leon Wang, president of AstraZeneca China, “has been detained”, a representative of the firm’s global media team said in an email received by AFP on Thursday.”If requested, we will fully cooperate with the Chinese authorities,” the representative had previously said on Tuesday.”We continue to deliver our life changing medicines to patients in China and our operations are ongoing.”AstraZeneca stocks in London on Tuesday fell by more than 8.0 percent and have remained down following reports from China about the investigation against the company, analysts said.Last month, the firm confirmed that Wang had been placed under investigation.China is a key market for AstraZeneca, developer of a Covid-19 jab widely administered throughout the world during the coronavirus pandemic.But in September, the firm confirmed several employees were under investigation in China after a report said they were being questioned about potentially illegal data collection and drug imports.The probes involved five current and former employees of the firm — all with Chinese citizenship — and were being led by authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen, Bloomberg said.One investigation related to the firm’s collection of patient data, which authorities suspect may have breached Chinese privacy laws, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the situation.Another probe related to imports of a liver cancer drug that had not been approved in mainland China, according to Bloomberg.The firm, headquartered in the United Kingdom, has 90,000 employees globally.Global firms have faced an increasingly difficult business environment in China in recent years, industry groups say, citing a lack of transparency on data laws and prolonged detentions of employees in the country.