1. Why the battle for critical materials is heating up climatefrontiers.substack.com/p/why-the-ba... US restrictions on advanced chips to China has sparked a series of Chinese restrictions on critical materials. So far China has blocked the rare earth processing tech and graphite

2. While the investment will allow lithium to be processed in Bolivia raising revenue for the country - concerns around the secrecy of the contract has raised questions. China has become Bolivia's biggest trade partner & creditor raising concerns around its influence over the Bolivian economy

It also highlights the funding gap between what is being spent and what needs to be spent to get to net-zero - and the gap is very wide despite climate finance spending doubling in the last couple of years

The Climate Policy Initiative have a brilliant graphic which neatly summarises Climate Finance Flows - where it comes from and what it is spent on. www.climatepolicyinitiative.org/publication/...

4. Oil and gas remain the Achilles heel of Chinese energy security - imports continue to grow after a covid induced downturn. But as consumers switch to electric cars China may start to reduce its import bill.

3. Renewable energy relies on imports of critical materials to produce solar panels and batteries, but since China dominates these supply chains and manufacturing of climate tech, clean power is far less prone to disruption