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LE BOURGET — European aircraft maker Airbus made a splash on the first day of the Paris Air Show with the announcement of the biggest-ever order for civil aircraft, as the French president joined a big crowd for the event's return after a four-year COVID hiatus.

The 500-plane deal with low-cost Indian carrier IndiGo kicked off what organisers have billed as the "recovery airshow" after the coronavirus ravaged the sector and the biennial trade fair was cancelled in 2021.

Fighter jets and civilian aircraft streaked across the sky while besuited and uniformed delegations, including Ukrainian military officials and President Emmanuel Macron, toured the stands.

This year's airshow has a new focus on defence following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, along with the industry's efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, with French President Emmanuel Macron arriving in a helicopter partly using sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

Macron called for "restraint" to protect the environment but said measures for aviation should be "reasonable" rather than "punitive", adding that the world shouldn't "give up on growth". 

Huge traffic jams around Le Bourget airport outside Paris were testament to the interest in this year's show, as aircraft makers field hundreds of orders and airlines brace for a near-record number of passengers this year.

The Ukraine conflict has also prompted countries to step up military spending, which could benefit aerospace defence firms.

While Russia has been excluded from the event, Ukrainian military officials toured the huge exhibition space at Paris-Le Bourget airport, some taking photos of missiles on display.

There were star turns for the Rafale fighter made by France's Dassault and the American F-35 jet, with hundreds of visitors turning their phone cameras to the skies and some plugging their ears against the deafening flypasts.

Le Bourget offers a forum to announce deals with some 2,500 firms lining up to show off their latest planes, drones, helicopters and prototypes such as flying taxis.

With 125,000 square metres of exhibition space — the equivalent of nearly 18 soccer pitches — around 320,000 visitors are expected during the week-long event.

"Passion for the air hasn't disappeared, that's good news," said Bertrand Godinot, Easyjet's Belgium and France director.

Big deals 

Along with the Farnborough airshow in England, which takes place in even numbered years, Le Bourget is a key sales event for the civil and defence industries.

Airbus and rival Boeing compete fiercely in announcing orders for aircraft running into the billions of dollars.

Monday's IndiGo-Airbus deal covers A320 family planes at a list price of $55 billion.

Although closely-held actual sale prices are usually lower, it marks the largest ever civil aviation order by volume, hailed by Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury as "an enormous milestone".

Airbus and Boeing are also battling to solidify supply chains as they increase production to meet growing demand.

At least 158 planes, helicopters and drones will be on display, from the latest long-haul commercial jets to the F-35 stealth fighter.

The United States has a strong presence with 425 exhibitors, while firms from 46 other nations are present.

China, which lifted COVID restrictions only at the beginning of this year, is also represented. 

However, Beijing is not displaying its first homegrown medium-haul passenger jet, the C919, built to compete with the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX.

Flying taxis 

The airshow also hopes to open a window into the future as projects for flying taxis and other vertical take-off aircraft abound.

Several prototypes will be on display as part of a "Paris Air Mobility" exhibition to showcase the latest innovations that developers hope will change how people travel.

Engine maker Safran announced early Monday that it would open four production lines in France and Britain making electric motors for small planes.

For his part, Macron arrived aboard Airbus' latest helicopter, the H160, in a flight fuelled with 30 per cent SAF before visiting the European group's stand laying out its net-zero-by-2050 plan.

Macron had on Friday announced $2.2 billion to help develop technologies to reduce aircraft emissions.

Air travel accounts for nearly three percent of global CO2 emissions but serves only a small minority of the world's population.

With the industry targeting net zero emissions by mid-century, firms are turbocharging efforts to achieve it.

The initial focus is on SAF, made from sources such as municipal waste, leftovers from the agricultural and forestry industry, crops and plants, and even hydrogen.

But companies are also working to develop battery- and hydrogen-powered aircraft.

GENEVA — The Swiss, feeling the impact of global warming on their rapidly melting glaciers, on Sunday backed a new climate bill aimed at steering their country towards carbon neutrality by 2050.

Near-final results showed almost 59 per cent of voters supporting the new law, which will require Switzerland to slash its dependence on imported oil and gas, scaling up the development and use of greener and more homegrown alternatives. 

Voters also overwhelmingly backed adopting a global minimum tax rate of 15 per cent for multinational corporations in a second referendum, with nearly 79 per cent in favour, with full results in from all but one of Switzerland's 26 cantons.

Voter participation in the referendums stood at around 42 per cent.

Recent opinion polls had indicated strong but slipping support for the climate bill, amid an anxiety-infused campaign around electricity shortages and economic ruin driven by the populist right-wing Swiss People's Party (SVP).

Supporters insisted the law was needed to ensure energy security and independence, and to help address the ravages of climate change, highlighted by the dramatic melting of glaciers in the Swiss Alps, which lost a third of their ice volume between 2001 and 2022.

Leading Swiss glaciologist Matthias Huss, who has been closely following the glaciers' decline, hailed in a tweet the "strong signal" sent by Sunday's vote, and said he was "very happy the arguments of climate science were heard". 

Socialist Party parliamentarian Valerie Piller Carrard celebrated the vote as "an important step for future generations".

Climate-friendly alternatives 

Energy has long been a tricky issue in Switzerland, which imports around three quarters of its energy, with all the oil and natural gas consumed coming from abroad.

Concerns around Switzerland's reliance on external sources have been swelling since Russia's invasion of Ukraine threw into doubt Swiss access to much of the foreign energy it uses.

Climate activists had initially wanted to push for a total ban on all oil and gas consumption in Switzerland by 2050.

But the government baulked at the so-called Glacier Initiative, drawing up a counter-proposal that scrapped the idea of a ban but included other elements.

The text promises financial support of two billion Swiss francs ($2.2 billion) over a decade to promote the replacement of gas or oil heating systems with climate-friendly alternatives, as well as aid to push businesses towards green innovation. 

Nearly all of Switzerland's major parties supported the bill, except the SVP — the country's largest party — which triggered the referendum against what it dismissed as the "electricity-wasting law".

It warned the bill's goal of achieving climate neutrality in just over a quarter-century would effectively mean a fossil fuel ban, which it claims would threaten energy access and send household electricity bills soaring.

The SVP voiced disappointment Sunday, with campaign chief Michael Graber insisting to 20 Minutes that "the bill for adopting this law will be presented much later". 

His colleague Kevin Grangier said the result should not be seen as a failure for the SVP, "but rather as a failure for the (Swiss) pocketbook". 

The SVP, which just two years ago managed to block a similar law that would have curbed greenhouse gas emissions, also highlighted that backing for the new climate bill was uneven.

There appeared to be far less support in rural regions — seven of the 26 cantons voted against the law — amid concerns over wind turbines littering landscapes and the impact of dwindling access to fossil fuels on mobility.

Support meanwhile was particularly strong in urban areas like Geneva, where nearly 75 per cent of voters backed the law.

Corporate tax hike 

The backing was far more uniform in the second referendum on hiking the tax rate for large businesses.

A vast majority of voters and all cantons supported amending the constitution so Switzerland can join the international agreement, led by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to the near-final results

The plan is to impose the new rate on all Swiss-based companies with a turnover above 750 million euros.

Until now, many cantons have imposed some of the lowest corporate tax rates in the world, in what they often said was needed to attract businesses in the face of high wages and location costs.

The Swiss government estimates that revenues from the supplementary tax would amount to between 1.0 and 2.5 billion Swiss francs in the first year alone.

NEW YORK — US chip giant Intel will invest up to $4.6 billion to build a new site in Poland, creating around 2,000 jobs, the company said on Friday.

Its new facility, to be located in the southern Polish city of Wroclaw, "will help meet critical demand for assembly and test capacity that Intel anticipates by 2027", Intel said in a statement.

The investment in Poland is aimed at helping the European Union develop a more resilient semiconductor supply chain and reducing dependence on Asia, the statement added.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki hailed the announcement as an element of "cementing and consolidating transatlantic cooperation" with the US.

"From now on, from this investment by Intel, Poland will be a key part of the not-so-extensive supply system of these most advanced technologies," Morawiecki told reporters in Wroclaw.

Intel is one of the world's leading semiconductor firms, making a wide range of products, including the latest-generation chips.

The EU aims to reclaim 20 per cent of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity by 2030 — twice its current production — and has invested billions in Intel's chip facilities in Germany and Ireland.

Intel has said its European sites will help with cost efficiency in the EU's supply chain, and that it plans to produce 80 billion euros worth of chips in Europe over ten years.

Intel has said construction of its plant in Germany, scheduled to start in the first half of 2023, has yet to begin, due in part to inflation. 

Germany's Ministry of Economic Affairs has said it is looking to support construction with additional public aid.

The announcement of Intel's new Poland site follows a difficult first quarter of 2023 for the firm.

In April, it announced a massive fall in sales for the January-March period because of a steep drop in demand for semiconductors, especially those used in PCs.

The company was also affected by falling demand for chips that power data centers, and is struggling to compete with Nvidia for the semiconductors that undergird ChatGPT-style generative AI, a major new chip-hungry sector.

The chip industry is well-known for its volatility, with demand and supply see-sawing with the dips and rises in the world economy.

Its central role in the global supply chain became clear during the height of the Covid pandemic.

Lockdowns and health restrictions diminished production in Asia, leaving surging demand for chips unmet just as everyone turned online for work, shopping and entertainment.

Semiconductors have also become a political pawn between the US and China, with Washington urging its allies to stop supplying China with cutting-edge chips.

JAKARTA — TikTok's chief executive said on Thursday the company would pour billions of dollars into Southeast Asia in the coming years, as a report showed its nascent venture into online shopping is paying off.

The popular video-sharing app's e-commerce affiliate has gained a substantial market share in the region just a year after its launch.

"We're going to invest billions of dollars in Indonesia and southeast Asia over the next few years," Shou Zi Chew told a forum in Indonesian capital Jakarta.

"From a humble team of about 100 people, we now have nearly 8,000 employees in southeast Asia."

Chew said 125 million Indonesians comprised the majority of the app's 325 million Southeast Asian users every month and more than 2 million sell their wares on TikTok Shop in Indonesia, the region's biggest economy and most populous nation.

Users sell a range of tech, fashion, homemade products and other goods on the platform.

Chew's comments came as Singapore-based consultancy Momentum Works released a report on Thursday detailing how TikTok Shop capitalised on legions of users to expand its business in 2022 after testing the waters in Indonesia a year earlier.

While it lagged older rivals Shopee and Lazada, TikTok Shop posted the fastest growth rate, expanding its gross merchandise value (GMV) — the total value of goods sold, including cancelled, returned and refunded orders — sevenfold to $4.4 billion last year from just $600,000 in 2021.

"You can think of it as TikTok already having a captive audience coming onboard for entertainment trying different means to convert them and their attention into purchase and GMV," Weihan Chen, head of insights at Momentum Works, told AFP.

From Indonesia, TikTok Shop "aggressively expanded into five additional Southeast Asian markets, many of which boasted large populations of TikTok users" and invested to improve its e-commerce capabilities, Chen added.

TikTok is owned by Chinese technology giant ByteDance.

'Game changer' 

Overall, the GMV of the region's nine top e-commerce platforms was valued at almost $100 billion in 2022, up 14 per cent on-year, led by Singapore-based Shopee and Lazada, a subsidiary of China's Alibaba Group.

Shopee, a unit of Singapore's Sea Ltd, accounted for $47.9 billion of that, a 13 per cent increase, the report said.

Lazada was at a distant second with $20.1 billion, down from $21 billion in 2021.

Indonesia remains Southeast Asia's largest e-commerce market, accounting for 52 per cent of the region's total GMV.

The return of offline shopping after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted led to a moderation in e-commerce sales, but it is expected to continue growing, the report said.

It noted that the region may benefit from Chinese brands and manufacturing firms expanding into other countries as they reduce reliance on the US market and escape rising competition at home.

"That might be a real game changer for Southeast Asia's e-commerce landscape, which has for a long time suffered from a lack of variety of goods," it said.

PARIS — Global oil demand could peak before the end of this decade as the energy crisis has accelerated the transition to cleaner technologies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.

The Paris-based agency, which advises developed nations, forecast in its Oil 2023 medium-term market report that annual demand growth would slow sharply over the next five years.

"The shift to a clean energy economy is picking up pace, with a peak in global oil demand in sight before the end of this decade as electric vehicles, energy efficiency and other technologies advance," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

"Oil producers need to pay careful attention to the gathering pace of change and calibrate their investment decisions to ensure an orderly transition," Birol said.

Energy prices soared last year after Russia, a major exporter of fossil fuels, invaded Ukraine and cut deliveries of natural gas to Europe.

Western powers imposed bans and price caps on Russian oil exports in efforts to drain a major source of cash for Moscow's war effort.

Oil and gas prices have fallen in the past several months.

World demand for oil will rise by 6 per cent between 2022 and 2028 to reach 105.7 million barrels per day due to the needs of the petrochemical and aviation sectors, the IEA said.

But annual growth will slow significantly, from 2.4 million bpd day this year to just 400,000bpd in 2028.

"Growth in the world's demand for oil is set to slow almost to a halt in the coming years," the IEA said.

China demand to slow 

In its 2022 World Energy Outlook, the IEA had forecast world demand peaking and stabilising after 2035.

But the energy crisis is "hastening the shift towards cleaner energy technologies", the organisation said.

The use of oil for the transport sector should decline after 2026 as more and more electric vehicles hit the road, it said.

The need for oil will decline from 2024 in the 38 nations that are part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, whose members range from Australia to European countries, Japan, Mexico and the United States.

"Nevertheless, burgeoning petrochemical demand and strong consumption growth in emerging economies will more than offset a contraction in advanced economies," the IEA said.

Demand growth in China, the world's second biggest economy, will slow "markedly from 2024 onwards" following a post-COVID rebound this year.

Oil investments rise 

"Global oil markets are still slowly recalibrating after three turbulent years in which they were upended first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by Russia's invasion of Ukraine," the agency said.

"Global oil markets could tighten significantly in the coming months," it added, noting production cuts by the OPEC+ alliance of major producers led by Saudi Arabia and Russia.

"However, the multifaceted strains on markets look set to ease in the following years."

While demand is set to slow, global investments in oil and gas exploration, extraction and production are "on course to reach their highest levels since 2015" with a 15 per cent annual rise to $528 billion in 2023.

Earlier on Wednesday, British oil giant Shell said it would keep its oil production steady into 2030, angering environmental activists who saw the announcement as a "climate-wrecking U-turn".

Another British oil major, BP, announced in February that it expected to boost its profits between now and 2030 by investing more in both renewable energy and hydrocarbons, slowing the pace of its transition. 

DUBAI — Salvage teams are close to starting the transfer of more than one million barrels of oil from a decaying tanker anchored off Yemen after two weeks of preparatory inspections, the United Nations said.

The FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since the Arabian Peninsula country plunged into civil war more than eight years ago.

A team of experts last month started inspecting conditions aboard the vessel and kickstarted preparations for the operation intended to avert a major oil spill.

"I think we are getting very close to the point where we can start the ship-to-ship transfer which will be the next and perhaps most important phase," David Gressly, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, told a news conference in The Hague on Monday.

"We have a few steps to take care of in terms of insurance and other issues that we need to resolve before bringing in" a replacement vessel, he said.

The operation will see private company SMIT Salvage pump the oil from the Safer to the Nautica, a super-tanker the United Nations purchased for the operation, then tow away the empty tanker.

"After two weeks of inspection, our crew are convinced that the Safer is strong enough for such an operation," said Peter Berdowski, CEO of Boskalis, the parent company of SMIT Salvage.

"I think we are almost there. As far as we are concerned, we are ready to start the ship-to-ship transfer any day in the coming days."

Berdowski was speaking on the same panel as Gressly ahead of the opening of the Yemen International Forum in The Hague on Monday.

Berdowski said the removal of the oil could take between one week and one month, depending on how easily it can be pumped.

"The most important next step obviously is the arrival of the Nautica" replacement vessel, he said.

Berdowski said some issues still needed to be resolved, including inspections to determine whether there is any oxygen inside the oil tanks which could result in an explosion if exposed to a spark.

His team would also need to embark on an underwater inspection of the Safer's hull to make sure it is strong enough for a ship-to-ship transfer.

The Safer is carrying four times as much oil as that which spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska, one of the world's worst ecological catastrophes.

A spill could cost up to $20 billion to clean up, to say nothing of the environmental and human toll, and the UN is negotiating with an insurance consortium to insure the operation.