Philippines Becomes World's Top Solar Panel Buyer

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com

People in the Philippines are flocking to install solar power ​on rooftops and escape the burden of soaring electricity prices, making it the world's biggest spender on solar panels since ‌the war in Iran started. 

Top Philippines power distributor Meralco has raised prices by 10% since the Middle East conflict began in late February. Now, a median household spends around 12% of monthly income on electricity, assuming it consumes 200 kilowatt-hours, approximately the monthly average for three people. 

Amid record-beating electricity prices and a supply crunch in fossil fuels, many Filipinos have opted to install rooftop solar panels over the past three months.

The spending on solar panels in the Southeast Asian country, which has been one of the worst-hit Asian economies in the energy supply crisis triggered by the Middle East conflict, topped $407 million between March 1 and May 31, per China customs data compiled by Reuters.

The Netherlands was the biggest spender with $1.1 billion on solar panels but it is a major transshipment hub for solar equipment imports and re-exports, so it’s not really part of the analysis of which country has spent the most.

After the Philippines comes Pakistan, another Asian economy severely hit by the halt of LNG supply from the Middle East. Pakistan has managed to negotiate with Iran some LNG cargoes form Qatar to exit the Persian Gulf in recent weeks. But the energy crisis in Pakistan has also prompted a rush to solar power installations.

Pakistan’s solar boom was already evident before the Middle East crisis.

Distributed solar drove a 21% increase in Pakistan’s national electricity demand in two years, clean energy think tank Ember said in a report last week.

A total of 27 gigawatts (GW) of distributed solar was deployed in just two years, the same as all the operating coal, gas, and oil plants built in Pakistan ever, Ember said.

In the Philippines, rooftop solar has nearly doubled over the past 12 months, according to a separate Ember analysis from the end of May.

Philergy German Solar, a Manila-based ​installer, received more than 2-1/2 times the number of customer enquiries in the first five months of this year compared to last year. At one point it ‌fielded 3,000 ⁠inquiries a day, according to managing partner Jochen Staudter. Customers are deciding to buy "much faster than before," Staudter said. "Demand will continue to be driven by high electricity prices."

In two years, distributed solar capacity could nearly triple to 3,500 megawatts (MW), matching the current size of the Philippines' utility-scale solar fleet, as loan payback times shrink to 3.1 years from 4 years, said Alnie Demoral, analyst at energy think tank Ember. Solar accounts for under 4% of national ​power consumption, government data shows.

The Philippines is China’s second-largest solar panel export market in 2026, only behind the transshipment hub the Netherlands, suggesting significant rooftop pick-up in the Southeast Asian country. China exported over 3,000 MW of solar panels to the Philippines in March and April alone, according to Ember’s data.

Still, the solar boom in the Philippines faces challenges, including high upfront costs for Filipino households and supply chain issues.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 20:55

John Fetterman Warns Mamdani About Defying SCOTUS Immigration Order

The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a pair of clean immigration wins last week, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded by announcing he would ignore them. Now Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is sounding the alarm.

The Court ruled 6-3 Thursday in Mullin v. Doe to allow the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants. This ruling set off predictable outrage from the progressive wing of the party. Mamdani was first out of the gate. In a video statement, he declared the decision "cruel" and invoked the specter of the Haitian Revolution to frame deportation enforcement as a betrayal of universal freedom.

"To have people who frankly taught the world about freedom have their own freedom put into jeopardy by the actions of a Supreme Court and federal administration - it is not only cruel, it's not something we will ever accept," Mamdani said. "The Supreme Court just sparked one of the largest attacks on immigrants in modern American history. In one fell swoop, thousands of Haitians and Syrians now risk losing the right to live and work in the country they call home."

He went on to reassure migrants that New York City would not comply with the ruling.

"To the tens of thousands of New Yorkers with TPS who are watching the news, frightened about what comes next, hear me clearly: New York City is your home. You belong here. We will not turn our backs on you," Mamdani said. "You will not face this cruelty alone. This administration will stand alongside immigrant New Yorkers today, tomorrow, and every day that follows."

These are not ambiguous rulings with room for creative local interpretation. The Supreme Court made its ruling, and Mamdani's position is that he can ignore it just because he doesn't like it.

On Fox News's Saturday in America on June 28, Sen. Fetterman sat down with host Kayleigh McEnany and walked through a glaring inconsistency, one his own party seems unwilling to acknowledge. He has spent years pushing back on Democrats who insisted Donald Trump was dragging the country toward a constitutional crisis. His response at the time was straightforward: the Trump administration had not defied a court order. The standard, as Fetterman understood it, was simple. You follow the courts, or you create a crisis.

Now the mayor of New York City is publicly refusing to follow the courts' rulings, and the party that ran years of constitutional-crisis programming has gone quiet.

"I haven't seen the freak-out now that the mayor of New York is now saying I'm going to defy the Supreme Court ruling," Fetterman told McEnany.

He then called out his fellow Democrats, who are either silent or actively defending Mamdani.

"Many of the members in my party are not calling him out... [or they are] defend[ing] him, or just say[ing] we really actually have to follow the court rulings because... that's a constitutional crisis, when you have the leader of the country's largest city [saying] we're not going to follow or honor what the Supreme Court says," Fetterman said.

Democrat Senator John Fetterman says he has not seen Donald Trump cause a Constitution crisis, but Fetterman says that when he heard Zohran Mamdani say he would defy the Supreme Court on the temporary protected status of Haitians, “That’s a Constitutional crisis”

“That's a… pic.twitter.com/Zq8nfW9SW9

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) June 29, 2026

Fetterman has become a consistent, if lonely, Democratic voice against his party's leftward slide. He has cited progressive figures like Maine Senate candidate Graham Planter, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, Washington, D.C., mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George, and a wave of progressive candidates running across New York City as evidence that the party has lost touch with most Americans.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 20:30

Alaska Judge Overrules Election Officials, Lets 'Fake' Dan Sullivan Stay On Ballot

A retired elementary school teacher from Petersburg just punched his ticket back onto Alaska's Republican U.S. Senate primary ballot after he was accused of being a deliberate spoiler and struck from the ballot.

Dan Sullivan of Petersburg announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate on May 29 to challenge incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan. (Photo courtesy of Dan Sullivan)

Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews ruled late Friday that the Alaska Division of Elections had no legal right to disqualify Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. The Division had yanked him on June 15, calling his filing a sham designed to confuse voters and tilt the race toward Democrat Mary Peltola in November. Matthews said the state basically invented a "good faith" test that doesn't exist in the U.S. Constitution, Alaska statutes, or the Division's own rules - and that's a problem when you're talking about a federal office.

In the Friday night ruling, the judge determined Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher from Petersburg, is an eligible candidate for U.S. Senate and that the division shall include his name on the August 18 primary ballot. 

The division’s decision to disqualify Sullivan because it determined his candidacy was not filed in “good faith” was unconstitutional, Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews ruled. “The director’s assertion that Mr. Sullivan seeks to confuse or misguide voters is not supported by a preponderance of evidence,” he wrote. -Alaska Beacon

The U.S. Constitution sets only three qualifications for senator: age, citizenship length, and state residency. States can't tack on extra hurdles, especially subjective ones about someone's motives. The judge noted the Division accepted Republican complaints at face value while brushing aside Sullivan's explanations, and he pointed out that practical fixes like printing middle initials (Dan J. versus Dan S.) exist if name similarity is the real worry.

What set this off

Sullivan, a former U.S. Forest Service employee who taught fifth grade in Petersburg, filed May 29 as a Republican. He shares the incumbent senator's first and last name - a coincidence he's called a "matter of fate." Election officials and GOP groups zeroed in on several red flags: he'd recently switched his registration to Republican, having spent decades with the now-defunct Alaskan Independence Party until it dissolved late last year; his campaign materials and website looked similar to the incumbent's; and he'd worked with a political consultant, Amber Lee, whom Republicans flagged as a longtime supporter of Democratic candidates. Officials also seized on the fact that he first emailed the Division asking to appear on the ballot as "Dan S. Sullivan" - the senator's exact name, down to the middle initial - before switching the request to "Dan J." They argued the whole package was meant to siphon votes in a primary that could decide whether Sen. Dan Sullivan faces a tougher general election.

The opposition came from the top: Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom opened an investigation, the Alaska Republican Party filed formal complaints, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee referred Sullivan to the Federal Election Commission, claiming his candidacy broke federal law.

Sullivan's response was straightforward: he's unhappy with the incumbent's record after 12 years and wants to give voters another choice. He says he followed every rule, paid the fees, and met the qualifications - and he flatly rejects the idea that he's a Democratic plant. Asked by the Associated Press whether he'd had any contact with Peltola's campaign, he said "zero, none, zilch." Peltola's camp and state Democrats have denied the spoiler accusation too, and when the Division actually pulled him, it didn't point to any proof of coordination - it rested the call on his supposed lack of "good faith." His small Southeast Alaska hometown has largely rallied behind him.

Matthews didn't buy the Division's claim that it had broad power to police "ballot fairness" by removing candidates it disliked. He ordered Sullivan's name on the August 18 primary ballot. The state immediately moved to appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court, which has until Tuesday to settle the matter - right up against the deadline for printing ballots.

For now, the "other" Dan Sullivan stays in. Alaskan voters might have to do a little extra homework to tell the two apart, but the judge made clear that's not grounds to disqualify someone who otherwise qualifies.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, NOT the retired teacher, at the Alaska State Capitol in February. Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 19:40

Builders Vs. Gatekeepers

Authored by Monty Donohew via American Thinker,

A viral X post by @r0ck3t23 featuring Marc Andreessen hopes to ignite fresh debate in tech and political circles. In the clip, Andreessen articulates a blunt frustration familiar to anyone who has tried to build anything substantial in modern America: "Right now, in many cases in many places, no you can't." The target is regulatory gridlock preventing factories, data centers, and, specifically the colocated nuclear microreactors many believe are needed to power the AI boom.

The post's thesis is provocative. The old left-right divide is "obsolete." The real conflict pits "builders" and "accelerators," those engineering abundance through atoms and computing power, against "gatekeepers" who would freeze progress. The gatekeepers are comprised of environmentalists on one side, armed with environmental regulation that has strangled nuclear power for decades. On the other are the populist skeptics of rapid AI rollout exemplified by Bernie Sanders and Tucker Carlson. They meet, the argument goes, in a horseshoe of fear opposing the physical infrastructure the future demands.

This framing deserves consideration. America's permitting regime is a national liability. Decades of NEPA reviews, endless environmental litigation, and bureaucratic risk aversion have delayed or killed projects that should be straightforward. Nuclear power offers a stark case study. France derives most of its electricity from nuclear, with a far cleaner grid and lower costs in key metrics. America, despite superior resources and early ambition (recall Nixon-era Project Independence targeting a thousand reactors), effectively built zero new plants for forty years after creating the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Recent executive actions under President Trump aim to reform NRC licensing with deadlines and streamlined processes, reform that is both welcome and overdue.

Andreessen is right that colocated microreactors could elegantly solve the power demands of AI data centers, bypassing strained grids and delivering reliable, high-density energy. Tech leaders' interest in advanced nuclear aligns with broader national security goals: reducing dependence on adversarial supply chains, bolstering baseload power, and maintaining a technological edge against China. Regulatory gridlock has real costs in lost opportunity, higher energy prices, and strategic vulnerability.

Yet the post's sweeping narrative, that skeptics of unchecked acceleration are primarily "fighting physics" or the future, itself invites scrutiny. It risks collapsing into a Solvency Trap: a dynamic where solvable governance challenges are recast as permanent existential blockades, sustaining urgency and aligned interests while sidelining trade-offs, evidence of costs, and pragmatic safeguards. Real problems with hyperscale AI data centers exist beyond knee-jerk Luddism. They include grid reliability, massive water consumption (billions of gallons annually), localized electricity price spikes for residents and small businesses, community impacts, and job displacement in traditional sectors. These are not imaginary.

Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act proposes abandoning reason, planning, and problem-solving in favor of a potentially perpetual and unyielding pause on all new construction until broader safeguards address worker effects, privacy, civil rights, and environmental strain. One can reject the hysterical blanket moratorium as overreach while acknowledging that underlying concerns nonetheless merit consideration and debate. Sanders' equity-focused critique of Big Tech concentration, nonetheless, differs in motivation from Carlson's populist emphasis on taxpayer subsidies, rural community burdens, and skepticism of elite-driven disruption benefiting hyperscalers at ordinary Americans' expense. Their convergence on caution is emergent, not a secret "alliance." Presenting it as such adds conspiratorial flair but flattens distinct worldviews. It also unnecessarily sows division and invites dismissal of valid concerns by improperly linking them to those with invalid or meritless ideological axes to grind.

Populist wariness of taxpayer-backed incentives for private data centers, projects that can span tens of thousands of acres and consume city-scale power while delivering limited direct local jobs, echoes longstanding conservative skepticism of corporate welfare. Carlson's clashes with advocates like Kevin O'Leary highlight legitimate questions: Why should working families subsidize infrastructure primarily enriching coastal tech giants? Accelerationists rightly decry regulatory capture by legacy environmental interests. But dismissing all distributional and prudential concerns as mere "fear" risks its own form of capture by venture incentives and hype cycles.

Civilization is indeed atoms arranged by those who show up. But prudent stewardship demands more than velocity. The history of nuclear energy proves regulation can become abolition in disguise, yet safety, waste management, proliferation risks, and public confidence cannot simply be waved away with rhetoric about "deleting limits." Successful deployment requires reformed but serious oversight that is evidence-based, time-bound, and focused on outcomes rather than process theater. Trump's return to regulatory realism is the right step. The same applies to AI governance: rapid progress toward abundance is desirable, but experiments with alignment, security, and societal integration benefit from evidence- based and targeted guardrails rather than pure velocity.

The builders' energy is vital. America must reclaim its capacity to execute at scale, permitting reform, nuclear revival, and domestic manufacturing resurgence. Trump administration moves on NRC and energy dominance point the way. Yet the path forward is not a binary purge of gatekeepers but disciplined solvency: measurable progress on energy abundance, worker transitions, community buy-in, and risk mitigation that delivers broad-based flourishing, not concentrated gains amid diffuse costs.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 18:25

Rate On China's New Overnight Liquidity Tool Comes Below Estimates, Hints At Imminent Easing

Last week we showed four China-linked charts which made it very clear that, laughable flatlined 5% GDP notwithstanding, China's economy appears to be on the verge of yet another collapse (explaining the unprecedented drop in both Chinese oil imports and refining output): between autos, real estate, banks and overall consumption, the economy - as seen by the market - was in freefall.

China is fine pic.twitter.com/PFJzVCz9Ba

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 26, 2026

With sentiment collapsing, and amid growing speculation that Beijing will have no choice but to unleash another firehose of fiscal and monetary stimulus, it came as little surprise overnight when China’s central bank set the interest rate on its new overnight liquidity tool at a level that was below expectations, in what some economists see as a de facto rate cut that could push down market borrowing costs.

As Bloomberg reports, the People’s Bank of China said it conducted 300 billion yuan ($44 billion) of overnight reverse repo agreements in open market operations on Monday, according to a statement that didn’t disclose the rate of interest it charged on its new instrument. To avoid confusion, readers should always remember that a reverse repo in China is a repo in the US. And vice versa. The central bank uses the operation to funnel short-term funds to the market to influence borrowing costs, and it accepts eligible bonds as collateral.

The official rate of the facility - the first such overnight facility unlike the bank's traditional 7-day operations - came in at 1.25%, Reuters reported. Unlike other liquidity instruments, the PBOC did not announce the borrowing cost for the overnight reverse repos. That compared with the median forecast of 1.35% in a Bloomberg survey. 

The PBOC’s benchmark remained at 1.4%, 15bps higher than the facility rate, as it provided 157.5 billion yuan of seven-day reverse repo. 

The decision, which intentionally came in below well telegraphed estimates, now sets the stage for looser monetary policy including a possible cut in loan prime rates — China’s lending benchmarks — as early as next month, according to Citigroup and Standard Chartered.

"Today’s move is not an outright easing, in our view — but it likely opens the door to one,” Citigroup economists led by Xiangrong Yu said in a note. “The asymmetric move likely signals an easing bias, without a formal cut.”

That will come next.

The operation marked the first time that the PBOC deployed the tool to manage liquidity, and many traders said the move is a first step in a gradual shift toward a benchmark overnight rate. Such a transition is likely to bring China closer to the practice of its global peers such as the Federal Reserve, which relies heavily on its overnight target rate to manage the US economy.

“The People’s Bank of China appeared to signal that it wants borrowing costs to fall by setting the rate on its new overnight reverse repo 10 basis points lower than markets had expected. This backs our view that the PBOC will trim its policy rate to reduce financial burdens on businesses and households and support demand”, said Bloomberg's David Qu.

The new facility is expected to give the PBOC better control over short-end borrowing costs and allow it to smooth out any big swings in market liquidity. The cost of overnight borrowing in the interbank market has become more volatile since May, as the central bank sought to ease a glut of money in the financial system, with demand for cash typically rising at the end of each quarter.

The yield on China’s 10-year government bonds slipped one basis point to 1.71% after the announcement, extending its drop into a third session. Both the overnight and seven-day repo rates eased.

Still, despite the strong hint of easing policy, some analysts still believe the PBOC will be looking to maintain the policy status quo, for now, by keeping the seven-day benchmark steady while publicly omitting details about the new overnight rate.

“The overnight reverse repo is primarily a liquidity tool aimed at smoothing seasonal funding stress, rather than a tool to signal a particular policy stance,” said Frances Cheung, head of foreign exchange and rates strategy at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. “The timing of the operations today and tomorrow ahead of the half-year end — and the amount bigger than the seven-day reverse repo — both support this notion.”

Talk of a rate cut in China gained substantial traction as the Chinese economy slowed dramatically in the second quarter, with retail sales and investment falling at a pace unseen since the pandemic.

Still, most economists expect the PBOC to keep its policy rate unchanged throughout 2026, although Huang Yiping, an adviser to the central bank, said a rate cut still remains a possibility.

“The next step is to lower de facto lending rates, including a possible reduction of LPR rates” across both one- and five-year durations “to support a stabilization of credit growth,” said Becky Liu, head of Greater China macro strategy at Standard Chartered.

“We had long argued that China is firmly staying on an easing path, and will likely to take advantage of the interest rate framework reform to lower de facto rates,” she said.

Lynn Song, China economist at ING, said it’s possible the new rate may have been kept undisclosed to avoid “diluting” the significance of the seven-day benchmark.

“Given the overnight rate is still the most liquid and important rate for trading activity, it makes sense this will eventually be the level that policymakers seek to control,” Song said. “However, it probably will take some time. We probably need some track record and maturity for the overnight repo facility and how it affects market overnight rates before this shift is made.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 18:00

The Party Of 'Our Democracy' Has Nothing Left But Chaos

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“. . . there is no saving the Left. Whatever happens to them, it will have to happen without people like you or me trying to get them to return to any place of sanity.”

- Sasha Stone on Substack

A punishing heat-dome creeps over the eastern half of the country just in time for the gala Fourth of July week.

The days are brutal, but anything and everything crawls out of the woodwork when that blazing sun goes down and the moon comes out.

Everyone’s on edge, but the edge of what?

I will tell you.

First, could there be a richer (or more obvious) target for bloody mischief than this year’s national holiday, the 250th birthday of a nation that millions lucky enough to live here have been trained-up to hate on?

Even the sons and daughters (including pretend “daughters”) of millionaires have gone mad-dog on America, the poster-boy being Marxist-jihadi New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Left’s new avatar-general.

Since no one is more hated than the, ahem, Celebrator-in-Chief, you might want to steer clear of conspicuous public celebrations this week. Antifa and even worse gangs are out there right now, making plans and laying traps. Maybe not so much in places like Texas, where eight Antifas were just sentenced collectively to 450 years in the slammer for shooting up the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado. . . but here in the Empire State and other Blue-ish jurisdictions, all bets are off. Be careful ‘out there’ among the smokin’ ribs, the fireworks shows, and big music venues.

You can see how this summer, and the nauseating slide down to the midterm elections, are shaping up. The party of “Our Democracy” is desperate to an extreme now, all disfigured by a communist leprosy eating away at its public face (and a cancer of fraud metastasizing through its innards). It has become such an obvious monster, raging with its hair lit-up, that anyone with half a functioning brain is shying away, stealing off into the gloaming. The party has nothing left but chaos and, in the weeks ahead, anything that might be disrupted probably will be.

The objective is to create so much havoc and distress throughout the country - especially the big cities - that Mr. Trump will have to invoke the Insurrection Act, and by doing so, the Lefty-left hope to create conditions so adverse that an orderly Election Day cannot happen.

The Insurrection Act would be the Left’s cue to declare Mr. Trump the very “king” whose coronation they have busily rehearsed all year, and then, voila, you get a new French-style American Revolution 2.0, complete with guillotine and transgender Jacobins turning the country upside-down.

You might consider the theory that the nation actually needs to suffer a genuine nightmare to wake up from.

The Revolution 1.0 we celebrate this week was, after all, a nightmarish struggle rife with hardship and loss. Nine signers of the Declaration of Independence died from war-related tribulations. Five were imprisoned and tortured. Twelve had homes ransacked and burned. And then, of course, the military action itself, including travails such as the winter at Valley Forge, the disastrous New York Campaign, and the never-ending logistics crisis, no food, no clothing, no munitions.

In the present summer of travail we face, you can expect at least some major wake-up calls issued by the bloc in the country that has not gone insane — which happens to include many in Mr. Trump’s executive branch. I’m serenely confident that real evidence of 2020 election fraud will finally emerge, coincidental with indictments. Do you think that the Fulton County, GA, election records were seized last winter for no reason? Say goodbye to that old “baseless” talking point.

There are, of course, a whole lot of other seditious and treasonous Beltway villains nervously awaiting administration of the law. You know their names. It appears that the new supervising US Attorney in the Southern District of Florida, Joseph DiGenova, is reorganizing the so-called “grand conspiracy” case against this large cadre of coupsters into a folio of discrete cases — RussiaGate, Fake Impeachment #1, the Mar-a-Lago raid, etc. — to make them more manageable and move them more speedily forward. Don’t be surprised if one or more of these cases happens to drop before the midterms. (Democratic Party true-blue loyalists could be surprised, even shocked to their socks, since these indictments will refute everything that has become essential to their identities as the good and righteous people of this land.)

Just one more item for now in the wake-up folder, coming a little out of left-field: things are looking eerie in the region of the San Andreas fault that runs through California, and perhaps the Seattle fault as well.

The earth’s geology even seems to be manifesting a degree of chaos.

It’s been shaky along the Pacific Rim “Ring of Fire” for many months.

Significant earthquakes have struck Japan (7.4 offshore Honshu/Miyako area), Indonesia (7.4 near Bitung), the Philippines, Tonga, Vanuatu, Chile, Papua New Guinea.

The Venezuela “doublet” (June 24, Mag 7.2) occurred in a separate tectonic zone, but all zones are essentially connected by the movements of magma deep in the earth, solar activity (flares, etc), gravitational tidal forces, and so on.

On June 24, a Mag 5.6 shook Redwood Valley, in Mendocino California, a Mag 5.8 near Pistol River, Oregon, and a Mag 5.1 struck 40 miles west of Petrolia in Humboldt County, CA.

The east side of the Pacific rim (America’s West Coast) has been unusually quiet for some years now. Be alert. Things seem to be livening-up. Just sayin’.

Tyler Durden Mon, 06/29/2026 - 17:40