🇯🇵 Japan Power Prices Surge to Highest Since 2023

Japan’s nationwide day-ahead electricity price soared by 20% in one week to settle on Monday at the highest level since January 2023, as gas supply disruptions from the Middle East and an intense heatwave pushed up prices and consumption.

The day-ahead power price in Japan has jumped to $0.16 (25.18 Japanese yen) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) on Monday, per data from the Japan Electric Power Exchange cited by Bloomberg.

The heatwave in Japan is set to intensify later this week, with temperatures peaking on Wednesday, according to weather forecasts.

While the heatwave is boosting consumption, the oil and gas supply disruption in the Middle East has raised Japan’s fuel costs as LNG prices have doubled from before the Iran war began and Qatar’s LNG supply was trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz.

Japan, one of the world’s biggest LNG importers, earlier this summer reduced gas-fired generation in favor of coal as the price of liquefied natural gas remained elevated.

Japan has been burning more coal and less gas for power generation since the war in the Middle East started, and it is not the only one. All Asian countries have made the switch from gas to coal on affordability and availability grounds.

Moreover, surging oil prices have led to a significant increase in Japan’s import bill for oil and LNG.

The price of spot LNG deliveries into northeast Asia soared to a five-month high at the end of last week amid the renewed hostilities in the Middle East and the return of the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, which cut off Qatar’s LNG supply again.

The average spot LNG price for October delivery into north-east Asia was estimated at $22.50 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) at the end of last week, the highest level since the early days of the Middle East conflict.

As a result, fuel costs for power supply in resource-poor Japan jumped to the highest level in over three and a half years.

🔗 https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Japan-Power-Prices-Surge-to-Highest-Since-2023.html

🇪🇺🚙 High oil prices, subsidies and affordable models rev up European EV sales

Electric vehicle sales accelerated across much of Europe in July, as high oil prices, subsidies and availability of more ​affordable models encouraged consumers to ditch their combustion-engine cars, data provided to Reuters showed.

EV sales have soared across Europe since the Iran war began in February ‌and caused pain at the pump. The big question for many in the auto industry is whether consumer interest will fade if and when oil prices retreat, while a lack of public charging options remains a major concern.

Two years ago, just 10% of Renault's UK sales ​were electric. By contrast, in July this year EVs made up more than 50% of the company's orders and the Renault 5 - a ⁠revived version of the top-selling Renault model originally launched in 1972 - was last month Britain's best-selling electric car, its original boxy shape having evolved into a more curvy design offering ​what Renault's website says is a range of up to 250 miles.

Later this year Renault will also start selling the electric Twingo, which will start at less than £20,000 ($26,984) — before a possible ​UK government subsidy for which Renault hopes to qualify.

Amsterdam-based online marketplace OLX said since the Iran war began, customer enquiries for EVs had jumped across its online car marketplaces in France (84%), Romania (59%), Portugal (30%) and Poland (19%). Chinese brands known for affordable models make up a growing portion of EV listings, it said.

"People are getting far more confident around this new technology," said OLX CEO Christian Gisy.

In a late July poll of 1,000 users by German online marketplace Carwow, 62% of respondents said switching to an EV is the best long-term response ​to persistently high fuel costs.

In ​Europe, traditional automakers and Chinese rivals alike ⁠have launched a growing number of more affordable models that are also supported by subsidies.

In the year through July, 29% of new cars in France were EVs. And in July alone, EVs accounted for a record 35% of new car registrations, versus 17% a year before, ​as the country's "social leasing" EV subsidies program for lower-income car buyers kicked in.

It's a somewhat different picture in the U.S., where the Trump administration killed a federal EV tax break last year. So although second-quarter EV sales rose 15% versus the first quarter, they fell more than 20% year-on-year.

Cox Automotive projects U.S. EV sales will fall 23% this year versus 2025, for a market share of just ⁠6.2%, also ​reflecting a lack of affordable models.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/high-oil-prices-subsidies-affordable-models-rev-up-european-ev-sales-2026-08-24/

🇺🇸🇰🇷 US cancels joint marine drills with South Korea over Iran war-related force constraints

The U.S. Marine Corps formally notified its ​South Korean counterpart in June that force availability ​would be constrained for the division-level exercise, known ⁠as Ssangyong, a South Korean Marine Corps spokesman told a ​press briefing.

The cancellation follows U.S. President Donald ‌Trump's ⁠surprise order to scale back a separate annual joint military exercise that ended last Friday, citing the cost and Seoul's refusal to take part in the Iran ​war.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-cancels-joint-marine-drills-with-south-korea-over-iran-war-related-force-2026-08-24/

🇺🇸🇵🇰🇮🇷 Pakistani Field Marshal, Asim Munir, decided to go to Tehran at the behest of the Trump Administration who wants to reopen negotiations with Iran — Reuters

@CIG_telegram

🇨🇳⚔️🇺🇸 China vows to protect its rights as US readies Iran sanction — Xinhua

China's ​foreign ministry said on ‌Monday Beijing will closely watch developments and do what is necessary ​to protect its rights ​as the U.S. prepares to unveil new ⁠Iran sanctions that are ​expected to target Tehran's trading ​partners.

China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Monday the ​situation in the Middle East and ‌Gulf region had again reached a critical juncture and urged parties involved to return to ​dialogue and negotiations as soon as ​possible.

Wang said "the old script of recurring conflict should not be repeated" and ​the top priority is to de-escalate ​the situation.

Iran dismissed the U.S. threat and ​vowed to shut down all ​oil ⁠exports from the Gulf "if the economic war continues" and issued a new warning to ⁠shipping ​not to pass through the ​Strait of Hormuz without its permission.

@CIG_telegram

🇺🇸🇮🇷⚡️ — President Trump via Truth Social:

IRAN IS COMPLETELY COLLAPSING!!!

🛢 Over the past seven complete days, the Middle East region has exported nearly six million barrels of crude oil per day via the US Navy blockade line to global markets.

During entire February 2026, the daily average stood over nineteen million barrels per day.

🔗 TankerTrackers

🌍❌🐣 Global fertility rates fall below the replacement rate for the first time

A new paper called "Terra Incognita: The Economics of a Shrinking World" by Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde of the University of Pennsylvania and Patrick Norrick of Northwestern University, prepared for the Annual Review of Economics and circulated this month, concluded: "As of 2026, humanity is likely below replacement fertility. That has never happened before, not in wars or pandemics."

The replacement rate is usually quoted as 2.1 births per woman, which is the figure for a rich country with low child mortality; globally, the authors put it nearer 2.20 to take into account the higher mortality rates in poor countries - and the world's own fertility rate is now at roughly that level. The UN's central projection still has the crossing two decades away.

If Fernandez-Villaverde and Norrick are right, world population peaks at about 9bn around 2056 and then falls, "first slowly, then fast". The UN's medium variant has it rising to about 10.3bn into the mid-2080s. That is not a rounding difference; it is thirty years and 1.3bn people, and it is the difference between a problem for someone else's career and a problem for this one.

Their evidence is that the decline has stopped being a rich-world story. Fitting a single-factor model to 236 countries since 1950, the authors find the common component peaked in 1978; what is driving fertility down now is country-specific, and of those country trends 219 are negative and not one has levelled off. The steepest falls are in low- and middle-income countries and among poorer, less-educated women - the groups every projection assumed would keep the average up. In recent data, 37 countries recorded about 1.65mn fewer births than the UN had projected, a shortfall of 9.3%.

No standard explanation fits. The authors run through several candidates - income, housing costs, childcare, women's education, urbanisation - and conclude none accounts for the pattern, offering instead a conjecture: modernity itself, which makes a third child expensive and childlessness cheap. IntelliNews has tracked the same phenomenon through the baby bust that crept up on everyone and the demographic point of no return as the number of women of child-bearing age is now in decline.

🔗 https://www.intellinews.com/global-fertility-rates-fall-below-the-replacement-rate-for-the-first-time-463085/

🛢 Usually, shipping a barrel of crude from the Middle East to Asia costs around $1.50–$2.50. But with VLCC rates soaring in 2026, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné says freight and insurance costs have surged to roughly $10 per barrel—turning transportation into a significant part of the delivered cost of crude.

🔗 OilPrice