Today: Sweden, U.K. and France among armed forces looking to diversify energy sources; U.S. Pays Total $1 billion to walk away from wind; the Chinese billionaire who says America's EV market is doomed without him.

Welcome back: European militaries are taking steps to boost their use of alternative fuels as supply shocks from the war in Iran accentuate the risks surrounding the continent’s reliance on importing fossil fuels, WSJ Pro Sustainable Business's Yusuf Khan reports.

• In the Netherlands, work is being ramped up to scale use of sustainable aviation fuel in all of its military’s helicopters and jets for use as soon as next year, with the crisis in Iran posing a threat to its fuel sources. 
• In the U.K., the Royal Air Force used hydrotreated vegetable oil to power its famed Red Arrows aircraft in a flypast over London. It has also run trials using the fuel to power operations on some of its military bases.
• Sweden’s military has been testing biofuels in some of the engines used in its fighter jets. France meanwhile has been testing a blend which uses 30% SAF combined with ordinary fossil fuel.

Alternative fuels sources such as biofuels or synthetic hydrocarbons have traditionally been seen as ways of greening hard-to-abate sectors, such as aviation. All these forms of alternative fuel are increasingly being seen by European militaries as a way of securing fuel for operations, as worries over both supply and cost rise for fossil-based kerosene and diesel.

Bowing to efforts by the Trump administration to curtail a sector the president opposes, TotalEnergies said this week that it would no longer develop any offshore wind-power projects in the U.S.

The Wall Street Journal's Joshua Kirby reports that the French energy major said it had reached agreements with the U.S. Department of the Interior to relinquish its leases at Carolina Long Bay and New York Bight. 

The Interior Department said it would pay the French energy company around $1 billion. TotalEnergies said it will invest an equal amount in the development of oil-and-gas production in the U.S.

President Trump has long opposed offshore wind developments and his administration last year ordered a halt to construction on all projects in the sector, many of which are operated by European energy firms. Denmark’s Orsted, a major developer, and Norwegian oil-and-gas giant Equinor have both been granted legal approval to continue construction after filing an injunction against the order at the start of the year.

Inside a headquarters shaped like a giant battery cell, the billionaire who runs the world’s largest battery company is confident the Americans will eventually come calling.

Yet CATL has grown to become the world’s largest electric-vehicle battery manufacturer thanks to its technology and low costs. It posted record profit of more than $10 billion last year, and an estimated one in three EVs sold around the world carries its batteries.

That is even without the U.S. market, where electric adoption lags behind that in China and Europe and where CATL’s presence is limited. Zeng sees that as temporary. The EV market in the U.S. will remain small “for several years. But after that, it’ll have to be booming, because it is the trend. It is the future,” said Zeng, who turned 58 on Friday, in an interview. And building that future without CATL, he said, “is difficult and the cost [is] too high.”

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• The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has led Asian refiners to pay $160 a barrel for Emirati oil, far above global benchmarks. (WSJ)
   
• Sony Honda Mobility is discontinuing the development and launch of its Afeela 1 electric vehicle and a second model. (WSJ)
   
• China’s deep-sea mining fleet spent much of its time tracking U.S. submarines operating in militarily strategic waters. (Mongabay)
   
• Danone is the top-ranked company on Ceres’ latest benchmark research on corporate water strategies. (Trellis)
   
• JPMorgan executive warned that developers of carbon-credit projects may struggle to find banks to finance deals. (Bloomberg)
   
• A pub in California is pulling CO2 from the air to carbonate pints. It could give the broader carbon-capture industry a boost. (NYT)

WSJ Pro Sustainable Business gives you an inside look at how companies are tackling sustainability. Send your comments to editor Perry Cleveland-Peck at perry.cleveland-peck@wsj.com and reporters Clara Hudson at clara.hudson@wsj.com and Yusuf Khan at yusuf.khan@wsj.com. Follow us on LinkedIn at perrycp, clara-hudson and yusuf_khan.