El Salvador's plan to power Bitcoin by volcano 'will end in environmental disaster'


Simeon Tegel

THE TELEGRAPH
Sun, December 5, 2021

Aerial view of energy extraction at the La Geo Geothermal Power Plant - Alex Pena/Getty Images

The grandiose plans of El Salvador’s millennial president Nayib Bukele to power the world’s first “Bitcoin city” by volcano have been ridiculed by the country’s leading environmentalist.

Mr Bukele unveiled the project last month, proposing to issue bonds worth 300,000 Bitcoins, equivalent to £12 billion, to fund the building of a city at the base of Conchagua, a volcano beside the Pacific Ocean.

The idea is that tapping into the mountain’s geothermal power will solve one of the biggest challenges facing cryptocurrencies - the vast, unsustainable levels of energy required to power the computers that encrypt transactions.

But the troubled Central American nation, which often suffers power cuts, should first focus on meeting the existing electricity needs of its population of six million, Ricardo Navarro, a winner of the Goldman Prize - the green movement’s equivalent of the Nobel - told The Telegraph.

“Geothermal still costs more than oil, otherwise we would already be using more of it. What will end up happening is that we will just be buying more oil,” warned Mr Navarro, who heads the El Salvadoran Center of Appropriate Technology, a local think tank.

He would usually support climate-friendly geothermal energy, but said the policy was misguided.

“Talking about building this city beside a volcano is like thinking you are rich because you live next to a bank. Geothermal energy doesn’t need volcanoes. It needs groundwater, steam. But we already have problems with not enough water in El Salvador.”

Currently, El Salvador imports roughly one quarter of its energy, with the rest coming from hydroelectric dams, geothermal and oil plants.

The city will be in the shape of the round Bitcoin logo and, according to the president, feature everything from museums to an airport. Other than VAT, residents will pay no taxes.

The ambitious plans have excited cryptocurrency advocates. Samson Mow, of tech company Blockstream, went so far as to claim that it would make the troubled Central American nation, plagued by poverty and one of the world’s highest murder rates, “the financial centre of the world.”

El Salvador became the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal tender this year. But some have accused Mr Bukele, 40, of using cryptocurrencies as a smokescreen to deflect attention from his failings as a president.

The move came shortly after the United States put several of Bukele’s closest allies on a corruption blacklist. Meanwhile, his promises of badly needed jobs, including Amazon opening a regional headquarters in El Salvador and Lufthansa launching a new airport, have failed to materialise.

Nevertheless, depending on the time frame - something the president has not made clear - his Bitcoin city plans could work, says Marit Brommer, executive director of the Germany-based International Geothermal Association.

“El Salvador is known for its geothermal potential. But if he is promising anything in the next six months, that would not be feasible,” she said. “Geothermal has a long lead time. We need to identify the resources, do modelling, drill wells. It would likely take at least two or three years, and probably longer before you could generate any electricity.”

It has been calculated that global cryptocurrency transactions already consume more electricity each year than the Netherlands.

Democrats eye massive shift in war on wildfires: Prevention

Jennifer Haberkorn
Mon, December 6, 2021

The Dixie fire destroys trees Aug. 21 in Gensee, Calif. (Ethan Swope / Associated Press)

Democrats are proposing a potentially seismic shift in how the nation battles wildfires by dramatically increasing funding for efforts that aim to prevent blazes, rather than focusing on the tools to put them out.

Under the social safety-net and climate bill passed by the House and now being negotiated in the Senate, Democrats would funnel $27 billion into the nation’s forests, including a sizable $14 billion over a decade for clearing vegetation and other dry debris that can fuel a fire.

Known as "hazardous fuels reduction," such proactive measures have been "underfunded for so long,” said Ann M. Bartuska, a senior advisor at environmental nonprofit Resources for the Future and former Forest Service official. “This really cries out and says, ‘All right, we get it, we need to reduce wildfire risk.’”

The growing effects of climate change as well as the intensity of wildfires in the past two years — more than 7 million acres of California went up in flames, sending its smoke across the United States to Congress’ doorsteps in Washington — have forced lawmakers to reconsider how they spend wildfire dollars.

But the funding is not yet secured. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), a key moderate who has not committed to the bill, has long expressed concern about the overall cost and scope of the $1.85-trillion plan. He has specifically indicated he doesn’t want to see overlap between the recently approved bipartisan infrastructure plan and the social spending bill. That could put a bull's-eye on the wildfire prevention efforts, which got $3.3 billion in the bipartisan plan.

Still, proponents of the wildfire plan are holding out hope the forestry provisions will survive. A group of Democratic senators from the West took their concerns directly to Manchin earlier this year.

“Six of us from fire-prone states had a chance to sit and describe all the challenges we're facing,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said.

Negotiations over the bill are expected to continue before a vote in the Senate planned for late December. As the entire package was scaled down from the original $3.5-trillion price tag, the scope of the forestry provision has also been halved from $60 billion.

Still, the $27 billion would represent the largest investment the federal government has made in its forests, according to Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who introduced a similar forestry bill this year. Funding for the preventative hazardous fuels reduction — to be spread over a decade — is more than double what Congress spent on such efforts annually between 2011 and 2020, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Traditionally, the federal government has focused its wildfire spending on suppression at the expense of prevention. The Interior Department and Forest Service are even allowed to unilaterally move money from any of its programs, including fire prevention, to fund more urgent suppression efforts.

“When you combine the effects of climate change with the profound negligence of the federal government in terms of managing its national forests, these places are profound dangers to our communities and to our economy,” Bennet said.

Local fire officials in California and elsewhere in the West have viewed the federal government as a poor partner in combating wildfires, largely because it has left the Forest Service underfunded.

“It’s very frustrating considering they own over half of the forest land in the state and they’re just not putting up the effort to provide the resources needed,” said Ken Pimlott, a retired chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "The investments, the money they’re getting and the commitments from the federal government have been woefully inadequate.”

While prevention requires more upfront spending, advocates say it is a better economic deal. According to Bennet, fighting fire costs an average of $50,000 per acre. But fire mitigation is a bargain at $1,500 per acre.

And the need is dire: 1 in 8 acres in California burned over the last decade, Pimlott said, citing Cal Fire statistics.

According to estimates by Resources for the Future, the $14 billion could address about 25 million acres, or about half of the nation's wildfire treatment backlog on federal and non-federal land.

The bill puts an emphasis on the transition areas between wildlands and concentrated human populations, which are particularly susceptible to deadly fire, as seen in the 2018 Camp fire.

In addition to the mitigation money, there is $2 billion to support local governments’ forest restoration and resilience projects on non-federal lands and another $1 billion for their wildfire protection plans, such as purchasing firefighting equipment and conducting training. Another $1.8 billion would go toward vegetation management, such as prescribed burns or restoring the habitat.

If the wildfire efforts are ultimately included in the bill, the government agencies responsible for implementing them will be asked to quickly scale up on the manpower and tools needed to complete the work.

Advocates like Bartuska are eager to see the agencies strategically use the funding for large projects where they can have a meaningful impact instead of dropping small amounts in many different places.

“There may be some areas that need greater intensity,” Bartuska said. The highest priority, she said, should be areas of forests that threaten human populations, followed by watersheds that supply water to other communities.

The projects are likely to face scrutiny from environmental groups worried that hazardous fuels reduction will open the door to more commercial logging.

“The other side of this is we’re really going to have to see oversight of how the money is spent, and I think it’s in the interest of every California congressional representative to be on this,” said Michael Wara, a senior research scholar at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford.

The social spending and climate bill represents Congress’ largest effort on wildfire prevention, but there are others.

The bipartisan infrastructure plan, which was approved by Congress and signed by President Biden, includes $600 million to improve the federal firefighter workforce by increasing salaries and converting 1,000 seasonal positions to permanent positions.

The annual defense reauthorization bill, which has been approved by Congress each year for six decades, is expected to require the Defense Department to analyze whether civilian agencies can replicate an existing classified program that uses military satellites to track wildfires, according to an amendment authored by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

A civilian model would circumvent the Defense Department’s resistance to making the program permanent.

The House is also expected to take up a bill, authored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose), that would fund new research into the science of fires and smoke, such as creating better prediction models and improving building codes for fire-prone areas.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

From Siberia to the U.S, wildfires broke emissions records this year


Specialists put out a forest fire in Omsk Region

Mon, December 6, 2021, 
By Kate Abnett

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Wildfires produced a record amount of carbon emissions in parts of Siberia, the United States and Turkey this year, as climate change fanned unusually intense blazes, the European Union's Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said on Monday.

Wildfires emitted 1.76 billion tonnes of carbon globally in 2021, Copernicus said. That's equivalent to more than double Germany's annual CO2 emissions.

Some of the worst-hit hotspots recorded their highest wildfire emissions for any January-November period since Copernicus' dataset began in 2003, including parts of Siberia's Yakutia region, Turkey, Tunisia and the western United States.

"We have seen extensive regions experience intense and prolonged wildfire activity. Drier and hotter regional conditions under a changing climate have increased the risk of flammability and fire risk of vegetation," said senior Copernicus scientist Mark Parrington.

Globally, the wildfire emissions total wasn't the highest since 2003, but Copernicus said such emissions were likely to increase as the impacts of climate change unfold.

Yakutia in northeastern Siberia produced its highest CO2 emissions from wildfires for any summer since 2003, while in western Siberia, a "huge number" of blazes churned out daily CO2 emissions far above the 2003-2021 average.

In North America, fires in Canada, California and the U.S. Pacific Northwest emitted around 83 million tonnes of CO2, emitting huge smoke plumes that drifted across the Atlantic to reach Europe, Copernicus said.

California's "Dixie fire", which ravaged nearly a million acres, was the largest recorded fire in the state's history.

In the Mediterranean, a hot and dry summer fanned intense blazes in countries including Greece and Turkey. Thousands of people in those countries were evacuated from their homes, and Copernicus said the region's air quality deteriorated as the fires caused high levels of health-damaging particular matter.

(Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Nick Macfie)

WW3.0
Ukraine shows off U.S. military hardware, vows to fight off Russia




Ukraine celebrates Army Day

Mon, December 6, 2021, 
By Natalia Zinets and Matthias Williams

KYIV (Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday said his armed forces were capable of fighting off any Russian attack, as the country marked its national army day with a display of U.S. armoured vehicles and patrol boats.

U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged his "unwavering support" to Ukraine in its standoff with Moscow and will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to try to defuse the crisis. Zelenskiy is set to speak to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday.

Ukraine has accused Russia of massing tens of thousands of troops near its border in preparation for a possible large-scale military offensive, raising the prospect of open war between the two neighbours.

"The servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to fulfil their most important mission - to defend the freedom and sovereignty of the state from the Russian aggressor," Zelenskiy said in a statement.

"The Ukrainian army ... is confident in its strength and able to thwart any conquest plans of the enemy," he said.

Russia has dismissed talk of a new assault on Ukraine as false and inflammatory but told the West not to cross its "red lines" and to halt the eastward expansion of the NATO alliance.

NATO MEMBERSHIP

Decked out in khaki armour and helmet, Zelenskiy flew east to shake hands with soldiers at the frontline in the Donetsk region, where Ukraine's army has fought Russian-backed forces in a conflict that Kyiv says has killed 14,000 people since 2014.

He then flew to Kharkiv, a city near Ukraine's northeastern border with Russia and a traditional centre for weapons manufacturing, to mark a delivery of tanks, armoured personal carriers and armoured vehicles made in the city's factories.

Standing in front of rows of soldiers, tanks and planes on the city's main square on Monday evening, Zelenskiy trumpeted the ways in which Ukraine's military had equipped itself with the help of NATO allies.

Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that now aspires to join the European Union and NATO, has received Javelin anti-tank missiles from the United States, sophisticated drones from Turkey and signed a deal with Britain to build ships and new naval bases on Ukraine's southern coast.

Several cities across Ukraine are marking the 30th anniversary of the creation of an independent military after winning independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

"Today, together with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, I am here in Kharkiv on Freedom Square," Zelenskiy said in an address.

"This is significant, because freedom for us is the greatest value," he said, adding: "it is a symbol of our state, all of Ukraine, which was defended from Russia's aggression in 2014 by our soldiers and continues to be defended by them today."

Kyiv, Lviv and the southern port city of Odessa displayed U.S.-made Humvees. In Odessa, there was also a ceremony to hand over two recently delivered U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats intended to bolster Ukraine's navy.

Ukraine has urged NATO to accelerate its entry into the military alliance and said Moscow had no right to veto such a move. NATO's leadership has been supportive but said Ukraine must carry out defence reforms and tackle corruption first.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Paul Simao)

Exxon Employees Won't See Big Pay Raise Despite Jump In Profits

Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, December 6, 2021,

Despite the company's good year so far, Exxon's coming pay raises for employees will come in below inflation, new reports suggest.

Salaries are going to rise about 3.6% for employees who deserve the merit-based raises, reporting from the Seattle Times and Bloomberg says. The largest increases are going to be going to those working in the company's upstream division that drills for oil and natural gas, the report says.

Exxon spokesperson Casey Norton said: “Total compensation is highly competitive relative to other companies with whom we compete, both in the marketplace and for talent. Inflation is one of many variables we assess.”

The increases will apply to Exxon’s U.S. office employees and not union contract workers, many of whom already have earned promotions and will get a 5% boost on top of their regular raises.

Bloomberg writes that the below-inflation increases are a sign of how many white-collar Americans aren’t in line for the kind of salary raises seen for other cohorts such as truck drivers and factory workers amid labor shortages and a spike in inflation". '

Recall, just two days ago, we reported that Exxon said it was on track to meet its 2025 emissions goals four years early.

In Exxon's full new corporate plan, which can be found on its website here, the company said it "plans to increase spending to $15 billion on greenhouse gas emission-reduction projects over the next six years while maintaining disciplined capital investments."

The oil supermajor also said it plans on maintaining capital investments between $20 to $25 billion, per year, through 2027. The company said it has repaid $11 billion in debt, to date, in 2021. Exxon says it'll be "comfortably" in its range of targeted debt-to-capital ratio by year end.

These plans, of course, follow our reporting in October that the company was considering abandoning some of its oil and gas projects to appease environmental advocates.

The company's board, we noted in October, which includes three directors nominated by activist investors, had "expressed concerns about certain projects, including a $30 billion liquefied natural gas development in Mozambique and another multibillion-dollar gas project in Vietnam."

The change in strategic direction comes as Exxon's board is facing growing pressure from investors to restrain its fossil fuel investments and limit its carbon footprint. The board is also considering the carbon footprint of the new projects, and how they would affect the company's ability to meet environmental promises it has made.

Back in September we reported that as part of appeasement of the ESG lobby, the oil giant planned on implementing disclosures of shale emissions. The company announced it would start measuring its methane emissions from production of natural gas at a facility it owns in New Mexico. Exxon joins other shale gas producers, like EQT, who already provide similar data.

By Zerohedge.com

GMO IS OMG! BACKWARDS
Beijing biotech firm banks on GM corn in race to be China's Monsanto




Workers on the fields in a village on the outskirts of Wuwei

Sun, December 5, 2021
By Dominique Patton

BEIJING (Reuters) - As China prepares to open its $120 billion corn market to genetically modified (GM) seed, little-known Dabeinong Biotechnology hopes to reap the benefits of early biotech investments and a law keeping foreign firms on the sidelines.

The long-anticipated commercialization of GM corn in the world's No. 2 producer is set to significantly boost yields, reducing the need for imports. It may also spur hoped-for reform of a chaotic and oversupplied seed sector, industry experts say, creating a new multibillion dollar market that may eventually open up to global seed giants.


New regulations drafted last month lay out for the first time the steps needed in China for approval of corn varieties that integrate GM traits, paving the way for the market to open as early as next year.

Beijing has made clear it will champion home-grown leaders in seed technology, and Dabeinong is the larger of two local companies with an insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant corn already approved as safe by the agriculture ministry.

"For the first two years, because we're the first mover in the market, and we believe our technology is better, we'll have two thirds of the share," general manager Liu Shi told Reuters.

By the third year, even with more competition, it could generate around 1 billion yuan ($155 million) in royalties, he estimated. The company will rely on seed breeders using its traits to generate revenues.

ME-TOO PRODUCTS

Dabeinong Biotechnology was founded in 2011 as a unit of large animal feed producer, Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group Co. Ltd.

The parent firm made headlines in the United States after a senior executive was among several people charged with stealing corn seed from fields in Iowa and Illinois. The executive, the brother-in-law of group founder Shao Genhuo, was jailed for three years in 2016.

Dabeinong strictly abides by the law and is trying to rebuild its image, said Liu, who joined the company earlier this year. He previously worked at Monsanto, now part of Germany's Bayer, in the 1990s when the GM pioneer was trying to get its first products accepted.

Dabeinong, with a staff of 160, hopes to emulate the success of the U.S. seed giant, but above all wants to help farmers, Liu said.

For now, Dabeinong's corn traits use genes that were discovered and commercialised by other firms but are off-patent. The biotech firm is working on its own genes, although these are yet to be approved.

It may need to move quickly before its "me-too" products lose their value, said an executive at a multinational seed company who declined to be named.

To ensure its first-mover advantage, Dabeinong is hiring more commercial staff and in September invited seed companies to visit trial plots in Inner Mongolia and Henan province planted with corn containing its Fengmai brand traits.

It has licensing deals with almost 200 seed firms.

COMPETITION COMING

Early demand is likely to be strong.

China harvested 261 million tonnes of corn in 2020/21 from some 41 million hectares, largely to feed its huge herds of pigs and chickens. Each hectare, however, yielded only about 60% as much corn on average as in No. 1 producer, the United States.

Graphic: Average corn yields over the last five years in the world's top producers - https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-GMO/DABEINONG/zdpxonlgrvx/chart.png

About 70% of corn seed sold in China's northeast breadbasket is already illegally bred GM seed, said an October article in the state-backed China Seed Industry journal, highlighting its popularity with farmers.

But Dabeinong won't be alone for long.

Though global seed giants like U.S.-based Corteva Inc and Bayer cannot enter China's GM market, Syngenta, the world's No. 3 seed producer owned by China's Sinochem Holdings, expects to become market leader, according to the prospectus for its upcoming IPO.

Syngenta is a major player in GM grains, but as it was only bought in 2017 is still playing catchup in China in the drawn-out process to win biosafety certificates for its GM traits from regulators.

Hangzhou Ruifeng Biotechnology, a tiny firm founded by university professor Shen Zhicheng, has an insect-resistant, herbicide-tolerant trait approved as safe by Beijing. The company also uses some new genes.

Yuan Longping High-tech Agriculture Co Ltd, backed by state-owned conglomerate CITIC, is also developing GM traits.

Meanwhile, the exact timing of GM corn is still uncertain.

Under the new rules, seed varieties that integrate GM traits must undergo a one-year production trial, and it is not clear if Beijing will accept data already gathered by Dabeinong.

"We have two plans, a more aggressive one for commercial seed production in 2022, and another for 2023," said Liu. "We're waiting for the government's message."

($1 = 6.3733 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Dominique Patton; editing by Richard Pullin)

Opinion: Clean energy focus in Build Back Better would create jobs, invest in everybody


Mike Draper and Andrew Fisher

The Des Moines Register
Sun, December 5, 2021

The Build Back Better Act makes our country better. More specifically, it continues the transition towards renewable energies and away from fossil fuels. That transition makes a special kind of sense for us in Iowa. We don’t have access to coal. We have no natural gas production. The nearest oil field is almost a thousand miles away. If we want to be efficient, if we want to be energy independent, if we want to save money, then we should use the resources at our disposal. And, what natural resources does Iowa have in abundance? Sunshine, wind, and water.

Many have recognized the potential of clean energy and the electric vehicles it can power. GM expects its entire fleet to be electric by 2035. Nationwide, jobs in solar energy fields have almost doubled since 2010, and, anecdotally, 1 Source Solar in Ankeny has basically tripled its number of employees in the last three years. Almost 60% of Iowa’s electricity generation came from wind last year, and that percentage will only increase.

Our federal legislators have recognized the need to build on this success. Clean energy infrastructure was a key part of the bipartisan infrastructure package voted for by Rep. Cindy Axne and Sen. Chuck Grassley that was recently signed into law, and it’s an even bigger part of the Build Back Better Act that recently passed the House with Axne’s vote.

$555 billion. That’s the amount of money in the Build Back Better Act going to climate priorities. If the bill becomes law, residential solar will become more affordable by about 30%. Investments in renewables in our electric grid will reduce consumer prices and make our electricity more reliable. Electric vehicles made in America with American materials and union labor will become cheaper by $12,500. Because of the investments into EV charging infrastructure and road maintenance in the bipartisan infrastructure package, those same electric vehicles will be easier to drive long distances.

Mike Draper

Together, both packages are a historic investment — not only in clean energy, but for our country as a whole. One of us owns a unionized T-shirt store, gets all his products from the US, and prints them here in Des Moines. From experience, we know how important these packages’ investments in the American supply chain are. The more we manufacture and produce in Iowa and in the US more broadly, the less beholden we are to outside forces. Paying fair wages and buying locally and nationally reinvests money into our communities, making it easier for our friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens to find employment, security, and fulfilment.

These packages help businesses support their employees and our planet. They provide the structure we need to grow our economy, reduce inflationary pressures, and protect our environment for the next generation. We appreciate the work our members of Congress have done to pass them and look forward to seeing the benefits they’ll bring to our communities.

Andrew Fisher

Mike Draper is the owner and founder of Raygun, a regional printing, design, and clothing company based out of Des Moines. Andrew Fisher is a solar energy & electric vehicle consultant with 1 Source Solar, a solar energy installer serving agricultural, commercial, and residential clients across Iowa.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Build Back Better supports and invests in everybody

A fraught and rocky energy transition pathway


Ben Geman
Mon, December 6, 2021

Two wide-angle new essays explore how the global movement away from fossil fuels could be wrenching and geopolitically messy.

FROM THE RIGHT

Driving the news: 

Adam Tooze's piece in Foreign Policy covers a lot of ground. One key takeaway: He warns that it's not clear if the red-blue U.S. political and policy divide will ever be successfully bridged, despite clean energy's growth in conservative states, its growing economic importance and Wall Street's increasing buy-in.

"To imagine that economics leads to political de-escalation would be, to say the least, historically naive," the Columbia University historian writes.

Threat level: Tooze warns that one potential future is fossil fuel producing regions locked in a struggle with the left — one that leaves the U.S hobbled in the low-carbon economy and lacking a clear strategy.

"The possibility of a deepening sociopolitical divide around the climate issue and inconsistent and incoherent policy cannot be denied," Tooze writes.

"The most gothic visions see the United States plunged into something akin to a civil war between fossil fuels and anti-fossil fuel factions," he warns, adding that while this may be "fanciful," the U.S. record of navigating deep economic changes isn't great.


FROM THE NEOLIBERAL VIEW

A separate piece in Foreign Affairs explores how the clean energy transition will "produce new forms of competition and confrontation long before a new, more copacetic geopolitics takes shape."

Some of the many takeaways:

Some petro-states "may enjoy feasts before they suffer famines," write Columbia's Jason Bordoff and Harvard's Meghan O'Sullivan, who both served in government before academia. "[D]ependence on the dominant suppliers of fossil fuels, such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, will most likely rise before it falls," they note.

Higher-cost oil producers will see a diminished market as demand falls. In addition, countries with more aggressive climate policies in Europe, as well as the U.S., may constrain their output.

Europe's dependence on Russian gas is set to increase, with Moscow gaining influence before it recedes. But as western consumers eventually curb fossil fuel use, "Russia will increasingly turn to the Chinese market to offload its supplies, fostering the geopolitical alignment of Moscow and Beijing."

But despite petro-states' persistent influence, the clean energy transition will also reorient geopolitical and economic influence (indeed they ultimately see Russia as among the likely losers).

One source of "dominance" will be control of supply chains for clean energy materials like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel and rare earth minerals.

China is ready to flex its muscle here. They note its 2010 embargo of critical minerals to Japan amid tensions over the East China Sea "could be a sign of things to come."

One key stat: Critical minerals will represent half of all energy-related trade by 2050, up from 10% today.

The intrigue: This reorientation will also occur in less obvious ways. For instance, countries that help set equipment specs and norms of engagement on emerging fuels like hydrogen will benefit.

What's next: The piece offers ideas for cutting risks and smoothing the transition.

Go deeper ... IEA report: A stronger renewables forecast still falls short

The race to secure clean energy materials



Ben Geman
Mon, December 6, 2021,
Reproduced from IEA; Chart: Axios Visuals

One persistent theme in analyses of the transition to cleaner energy is the scramble to obtain supplies needed for renewables projects, electric vehicle batteries and other low-carbon tech.

The big picture: "A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant," the International Energy Agency noted in a report this year on critical minerals.

Zoom in: In recent days the New York Times published a deeply reported series on the race to secure supplies of cobalt — a key battery input — from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Chinese companies have been major dealmakers.

"The American government failed to safeguard decades of diplomatic and financial investments it had made in Congo, even as China was positioning itself to dominate the new electric vehicle era," it reports.

Go deeper: The supply crunch that could slow the climate fight

'MAYBE TECH'

Former oil wells could be turned into CO2 burial test sites

Tim Wyatt
Mon, December 6, 2021

The long-term ambition is to reuse North Sea oil and gas wells to store harmful carbon emissions out of the atmosphere (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A project to test if abandoned oil and gas wells could be used to bury carbon dioxide underground will begin next year.

A group of universities and fossil fuel companies have announced they have identified 20 potential sites across Britain which could be used to research carbon capture and storage (CCS), The Guardian has reported.

The Net Zero RISE (Research Infrastructure for Subsurface Energy) scheme is a collaboration between the Universities of Newcastle, Oxford and Durham, as well as the energy firms IGas and Third Energy.

CCS involves compressing carbon dioxide emissions into a liquid before pumping them underground where they cannot cause any more global warming.

Although it is intensely controversial as it would permit continued burning of fossil fuels into the future, many scientists and experts believe CCS will play a part in mitigating against climate change.

Many hope exhausted fuel reservoirs under the North Sea are the UK’s best bet for large-scale CCS, but the Net Zero RISE team argue the technology can be easily tested in empty onshore oil and gas wells first.

“CO2 storage in the North Sea is probably going to be very important, but we need an onshore capability, a national asset, so we can do testing and look at what monitoring is adequate to understand where the CO2 has gone,” Professor Richard Davies from University of Newcastle, the head of the project, told The Guardian.

“If we don’t do this soon, we will lose an opportunity to use this infrastructure,” he said, noting empty wells are normally quickly filled with cement.

“These assets are already there, while drilling [new] boreholes is very expensive and adds a certain amount of risk. The range of boreholes we have will also give opportunities to test different rock types.”

The team also intend to explore using old oil and gas wells to store hydrogen, which could also play a part in a future net zero energy mix.

According to the government’s own net zero strategy, Britain will need to be capturing and safely storing about 50m tonnes of CO2 by the mid 2030s, while by 2050 CCS will have to ramp up to around 95m tonnes.

As well as successfully pumping emissions into storage facilities underground, scientists also need to test how to monitor CCS sites to ensure the carbon is not leaking out back into the atmosphere.

Although CCS has been successfully put into practice at around 20 large-scale projects around the world, it remains a new technology and for now fairly expensive also.

However, the International Energy Agency reports 30 more projects are currently in development and if CCS comes to fruition as policymakers hope it could reduce global emissions by a fifth.

Global oil CEOs stress need for fossil fuels despite push for cleaner energy


A view of a quiet registration desk for the World Petroleum Congress in Houston, Texas, U.S. on December 5, 2021 as organizers grappled with the fallout of new virus travel restrictions

Mon, December 6, 2021
By Liz Hampton and Sabrina Valle

HOUSTON (Reuters) -A global energy conference devoted to future technologies and low-carbon strategies kicked off in Houston on Monday with top executives from energy companies affirming the need for more oil for decades to come.

The World Petroleum Conference's four days of discussion started with chief executives from global giants Exxon Mobil Corp, Saudi Aramco, Chevron Corp and Halliburton Co all promoting the need to deliver oil and gas globally even as the world transitions to cleaner fuels.

World fossil fuel demand has rebounded sharply in 2021, with natural gas already at pre-pandemic levels and oil nearing levels reached in 2019. As demand has soared, economies in Europe and Asia have had to face power and heating supply shortages, forcing them to scramble for fuel or limit demand, and prices have surged. At the same time, numerous large oil-producing countries have not been able to keep up with output targets.

"The world is facing an even more chaotic energy transition," said Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser. "Energy security, economic development and affordability are clearly not receiving enough attention. Until they are, and we clear the gaps in the transition strategy, the chaos will only intensify."

Large global majors, especially those based in Europe, are limiting exploration and production in an attempt to shift to renewable power development and as governments promote efforts to cut carbon emissions to deal with rising worldwide temperatures.

Anders Opedal, CEO of Norway's Equinor, said energy companies have a responsibility to bring down emissions and provide energy. "We will need oil and gas for many years to come but with reduced emissions," he said.

Exxon is targeting net zero greenhouse gas emissions from its U.S. Permian assets by 2030, as part of a plan to reduce upstream emissions.

"The fact remains, under most credible scenarios, including net zero pathways, oil and natural gas will continue to play a significant role in meeting society's need," Exxon CEO Darren Woods said at the conference.

More than 80% of the world’s energy demand is supplied by oil and gas, said Stephen Green, Chevron's head of North America exploration and production. Chevron is committed to reducing carbon emissions until "game changing technologies" allow a lower carbon energy environment, Green said.

"The world will continue to need energy to get us through the transition," he said.

FIRST MOVERS

U.S. officials took the opportunity to talk about President Joe Biden's clean energy agenda while insisting on the need to address high fuel prices. The Biden administration has had a strained relationship with the fossil fuel industry in its first year in office.

Oil majors need to "step on to the plate" and be part of the climate solution, said David Turk, deputy U.S. Secretary of Energy. "First movers will have significant advantages."

Washington will not "stand in the way" of companies willing to increase domestic oil production as the industry tries to fully recover, he said.

"We need to make sure everyone has affordable, reliable and resilient energy," he said.

The conference was sapped of some of its star power at the outset due to COVID-19 travel restrictions that forced OPEC's secretary general and energy ministers from top oil producing nations like Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Qatar, to bow out, along with the CEOs of BP , Sonatrach and Qatar Energy.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba, Marianna Parraga, Sabrina Valle and Liz Hampton; editing by Jason Neely and Marguerita Choy)

BlackRock, Saudi asset manager Hassana sign deal for Aramco's gas pipelines


 General view of Aramco tanks and oil pipe at Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal

Mon, December 6, 2021
By Saeed Azhar

DUBAI (Reuters) -Saudi Aramco said on Monday it has signed a $15.5 billion lease-and-leaseback deal for its gas pipeline network with a consortium led by BlackRock Real Assets and state-backed Hassana Investment Co.

Gulf oil producers are looking at sales of stakes in energy assets and raising cash through long-term leases, capitalising on a rebound in crude prices to attract foreign investors.

Earlier this year Aramco sold a 49% stake in its oil pipelines to a consortium led by U.S.-based EIG under a similar structure for $12.4 billion.

As part of the latest transaction, a newly formed subsidiary, Aramco Gas Pipelines Co, will lease usage rights in the state energy firm's gas pipelines network and lease them back to Aramco for a 20-year period, it said.

In return, Aramco Gas Pipelines Co will receive a tariff payable by Aramco for the gas products that will flow through the network, backed by minimum commitments on throughput.

Aramco will hold a 51% majority stake in Aramco Gas Pipeline Company and sell a 49% stake to investors led by BlackRock and Hassana, the asset management arm of the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI).

Other bidders in the race included EIG and Brookfield, sources told Reuters earlier.

"The deal unlocks additional value from Aramco's diverse asset base and has attracted interest from a wide range of worldwide investors, highlighting the compelling investment opportunity," it said in a statement.

Aramco will continue to retain full ownership and operational control of its gas pipeline network, and the transaction will not impose any restrictions on its production volumes, it said.

GREENWASHING BLUE HYDROGEN FROM NATURAL GAS

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in a statement Aramco and Saudi Arabia "are taking meaningful, forward-looking steps to transition the Saudi economy toward renewables, clean hydrogen, and a net zero future".

He added: "Responsibly-managed natural gas infrastructure has a meaningful role to play in this transition."

Saudi Aramco has increased its focus on hydrogen and renewables as it moves to net-zero carbon by 2050.

(Additional reporting by Davide Barbuscia and Hadeel Al Sayegh; Editing by Jan Harvey)

Amazon is making its own shipping containers — and waiting as little as 2 days outside ports

Grace Kay
Mon, December 6, 2021, 

Brendan McDermid TPX Images of the Day/Reuters

Amazon has been making its own shipping containers and chartering its own ships since 2018.


Today, Amazon uses its own transportation network for 72% of its shipments.


Amazon's strategy allows it to bypass port delays that can span up to two months.

Amazon has been making its own shipping containers and chartering private ships to avoid major bottlenecks in the supply chain.

While the majority of retailers have been forced to wait for months-on-end with goods trapped at sea, Amazon has been able to bring goods into ports in a matter of days. Ocean freight analyst Steve Ferreira told CNBC that last month an Amazon cargo ship only waited outside a port for two days. Meanwhile, ships at the nation's largest port have waited for up to two months.

Amazon has been building up its transportation network for years — inadvertently preparing for a supply-chain crisis. 

In 2018, the company began making its own 53-foot shipping containers in China. The navy blue containers are embossed with Amazon's signature arrow logo and travel primarily on ships that are chartered solely for the company.

In its first year, Amazon Logistics shipped over 5,300 containers from Beijing to ports in California and Washington state. Since, Amazon has progressed to the point that it is shipping over 10,000 of its own containers per month and ranks among the top five transportation companies in the Trans Pacific, according to Ferreira.

Since the pandemic started, shipping container prices have surged from under $2,000 to over $20,000. Containers are also in short supply, as port delays tie up millions of shipping containers at sea. The Amazon-made containers ensure the company can prioritize where the containers are needed most without having to send them back to Asia after each delivery.

The e-commerce giant has also chartered its own bulk freighters for several years, a strategy that has come in handy this year. With its own ships, Amazon can easily choose which ports to visit and avoid backlogged ones in favor of smaller ports like the Port of Houston or the Port of Everett in Washington state, CNBC reported.

When Amazon first began building its transportation ecosystem, the company used it to ship less than 47% of its goods. Since, the network has grown to engulf about 72% of Amazon shipments, according to SJ Consulting Group. An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on its transportation strategy.

Last month, Bloomberg reported that Amazon has thrown about $4 billion into side-stepping major shipping delays. The publication noted that Amazon had begun sending out shipments in half-empty trucks to allow for more timely deliveries and brought on about 150,000 more seasonal workers through boosting pay and offering $3,000 signing bonuses.

Other companies like Walmart and Home Depot have followed Amazon's lead this year. The retailers have pivoted to anything from chartering their own bulk freighters to flying in goods or using smaller ports, but Amazon has an advantage inasmuch as its transportation network has a longer history.