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Sounding warning, Kerry urges new ways on climate finance

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Sounding warning, Kerry urges new ways on climate finance

Washington (AFP) – Veteran envoy John Kerry called Friday for the United States to find major new climate finance methods, warning of “huge disappointment” if historic promises to transition from fossil fuels go unheeded.

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Kerry, who is stepping down as the US climate envoy, described an agreement in December in Dubai at the last UN summit as historic for its call on the planet to move away from fossil fuels in large part responsible for the planet’s rising temperatures.

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But he warned that the COP28 agreement must not be “reduced to mere words on a piece of paper.”

“If we don’t do what we’ve said we’re going to do in these next months, that’s exactly what could happen, encouraging cynicism and dropout-ism and huge disappointment around the world,” Kerry said at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Kerry, an 80-year-old former secretary of state, senator and presidential contender, has said he will focus outside of government on mobilizing private funding to complement government efforts on climate.

Kerry said that the United States should consider a system of financial guarantees for investors, which would cover risks if projects fail.

“It’s time for creativity. We’ve come up with new financial instruments when we needed them before, and my judgment is we need them now,” he said.

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He pointed to his work as envoy with Indonesia and Vietnam on so-called Just Energy Transition Partnerships, or JETPs — financing deals between a small group of wealthy countries and an emerging economy to reduce reliance on fossil fuels or take other climate action.

Calling such deals “very bespoke,” Kerry said, “We don’t have time to do that.”

“We need to help deploy larger sums with greater confidence that the deal is bankable and we de-risked it sufficiently,” he said.

A recent study by the Climate Policy Initiative pointed to assessments that credit guarantees could mobilize between six and 25 times as much financing as traditional loans, with developing countries in particular looking to reduce uncertainties.

Seeking common ground with China

Kerry also repeated his call for the world to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels — often politically sensitive in countries reliant on oil and gas.

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“Why in God’s name we (are) subsidizing the creators of the problem is beyond me,” he said.

He voiced admiration for the European Union’s new “CBAM” carbon tariff, although he acknowledged it was not politically feasible in the United States.

President Joe Biden has overseen the investment of billions of dollars in green technology as part of his signature legislative achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act, in a sharp difference from his predecessor Donald Trump, his likely challenger in November elections.

Trump has cast doubt on the science behind climate change and walked out of the Paris climate accord, which Kerry helped negotiate as top diplomat under president Barack Obama.

Kerry credited the Dubai agreement in part to cooperation between the United States and China, the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters and frequent adversaries on the global stage.

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Kerry developed an unusually warm relationship with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua, who even brought his grandson to Dubai to meet the US negotiator.

Kerry hinted that he had internal resistance even within the Biden team, saying, “I had to convince some people in the administration that we really needed to work with China at a time where, as you all know, the rhetoric of Washington and most of the currents are kind of moving against that idea.”

But he said that Biden agreed that on climate, “This is not and should not be an ideological fight.”

“We don’t have time to argue about the climate thing,” Kerry said.

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Finance

New Resource: Finance Fundamentals – Richardson ISD

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New Resource: Finance Fundamentals – Richardson ISD

We’ve launched a new Finance Fundamentals page to help our community better understand how Richardson ISD’s budget works. This resource breaks down where funding comes from, how dollars are spent, and how financial decisions support students and schools.

Whether you’re a parent, staff member, or community member, this page offers a clear, easy-to-understand look at district finances.

Explore the Finance Fundamentals webpage.

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India’s Adani Green quarterly profit slumps on higher finance costs

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India’s Adani Green quarterly profit slumps on higher finance costs

BENGALURU, Jan 23 (Reuters) – India’s Adani Green Energy posted a 99% drop in third‑quarter profit on Friday, as higher finance costs inflated its ​expenses and offset gains from strong power sales and improved capacity ‌utilisation.

Shares of Adani Group’s green arm were down 13.8%.

Group stocks fell 2% to 11% after the ‌U.S. SEC sought court approval to serve summons to Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani by email in a fraud and $265 million bribery case.

For Adani Green, consolidated profit slumped to 50 million rupees ($544,051.88) in the quarter ended December 31, from 4.74 billion rupees ⁠a year earlier.

A sharp ‌27.14% rise in expenses to 29.61 billion rupees and a 35.73% surge in finance costs absorbed most of the company’s topline, ‍even as power sales remained strong.

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The company also booked a 1.03 billion rupees from its associates and joint ventures, offering a modest cushion to earnings.

Power consumption in India is expected ​to rise as the economy expands, requiring an estimated 40% increase in ‌coal‑fired capacity to more than 307 gigawatts by 2035, according to government projections.

The country, which currently meets about a third of its power demand from thermal plants, aims to achieve net‑zero emissions by 2070 and plans to more than double its renewable capacity to 500 gigawatts as part of that effort.

Finance costs for ⁠the company include interest on borrowings as well ​as currency‑related gains and losses on its foreign‑currency ​loans and the impact of derivative hedges used to manage those exposures.

The renewable energy arm of billionaire Gautam Adani’s group, which operates ‍solar, wind and ⁠hybrid assets across India, said revenue from power supply rose 21% to 19.93 billion rupees, helped by 5.6 GW of capacity additions over the ⁠past year.

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The company said the growth also reflected strong plant performance and the commissioning of new ‌capacity at resource‑rich sites in Khavda, Gujarat, and in Rajasthan.

($1 = 91.9030 ‌Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Yagnoseni Das in Bengaluru)

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Why I’m Not Reporting on Campaign Finance Reports Right Now – Montgomery Perspective

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Why I’m Not Reporting on Campaign Finance Reports Right Now – Montgomery Perspective

By Adam Pagnucco.

Yesterday was the deadline for candidates to file their Annual 2026 campaign finance reports.  It’s an important moment in this election season as candidates show their financial strength heading into the period when voters are paying attention.  For candidates in traditional financing, the next report is not due until April 21.  So normally, I would be crunching and reporting on all of these numbers, at least for candidates in Montgomery County.

But I’m not going to do that quite yet.

The reason is that the State Board of Elections (SBE) just rolled out a new reporting system for campaign finances and many candidates are struggling to use it.  I have been using this data for almost 20 years and I have never heard complaints of such volume and ferocity as those I have received this week.  (An aside: I’m a former campaign treasurer and you better believe I will never be one again after this!)  I can’t get into the specifics of these complaints because it would risk compromising my sources, something I will never do.  But I expect there to be MANY late reports and amended reports as campaigns try to report accurate information while minimizing fines – fines for which most of them bear no responsibility.

As an analyst, these failures impede my ability to analyze campaign finance data.  First, SBE has inexplicably removed all campaign finance information predating the 2019-22 cycle from its website.  Previously, the site included data from 2005 on.  I asked SBE to fix this issue last month.  They told me it would be fixed.  It has not been fixed.  Until it is, my ability to provide historical context is limited at best.

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Second, I have noticed that on some reports, the summary sheets do not match the totals of downloaded data.  I don’t know why.  For now, I am going to rely on the spreadsheet downloads, but that is going to limit my processing speed.

Third, loans previously appeared in contribution downloads.  Now they don’t.  Instead, I have to locate them in individual filings and manually enter them.  There is no reason why this change needed to occur.

Fourth, aggregate totals for contributions appear to be inaccurate in some reports.  That’s a big deal for candidates in public financing, who are currently limited to $500 per individual in this cycle.  If their aggregates are inaccurately reported as higher than $500, they will appear to be in violation of the public financing law when they in fact did nothing wrong.

Finally, I expect a significant volume of amendments as candidates work through their issues with the reporting software.  That’s a problem because the data in any analysis that I do may shift without warning.  Analyses of data like this take a long time, and changes due to state reporting issues will undermine that work.  Let’s just stipulate that when I start posting analyses, the resulting data will be estimates at best.

As a result of the above issues and others, I’m reluctant to start crunching this data right now.  At minimum, I’m going to wait a few days while candidates resolve their issues with SBE.

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New reporting systems always have glitches and this one has to cover hundreds of accounts and millions of records from all across Maryland.  SBE should have rolled out this new system at the start of a campaign cycle when the stakes are lower and glitches can be fixed quietly.  By rolling it out in the heat of election season, when lots of new candidates are filing and all of them are scrambling to show their strength, SBE has compounded its problems and hindered analysis of campaign finances.

All of this is tremendously unfair to the folks who are running for office as well as their treasurers.  For their sake as well as that of the public, these problems must be fixed as soon as possible.

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