On environmental protection, Biden's election will mean a 180-degree turn from Trump policies

by Janet McCabe, The Conversation
  

President-elect Joe Biden opposes proposals to allow uranium mining around the Grand Canyon, which the Trump administration supports. 

Credit: Michael Quinn, NPS/Flickr, CC BY

The Trump administration has waged what I and many other legal experts view as an all-out assault on the nation's environmental laws for the past four years. Decisions at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department and other agencies have weakened the guardrails that protect our nation's air, water and public lands, and have sided with industry rather than advocating for public health and the environment.


Senior officials such as EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler assert that the Trump administration has balanced environmental regulation with economic growth and made the regulatory process less bureaucratic. But former EPA leaders from both Democratic and Republican administrations have called this administration's actions disastrous for the environment.

Rolling back laws and hollowing out agencies

The Trump administration has used many tools to weaken environmental protection. For example, Trump issued an executive order in June 2020 to waive environmental review for infrastructure projects like pipelines and highways.

The EPA has revised regulations that implement the Clean Water Act to drastically scale back protection for wetlands, streams and marshes. And the administration has revoked California's authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own standards for air pollution emissions from cars, although California is pressing ahead.

The Trump administration has also changed agency procedures to limit the use of science and upended a longstanding approach to valuing the costs and benefits of environmental rules. It has cut funding for key agency functions such as research and overseen an exodus of experienced career staff.
In their final campaign debate, President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden offered sharply contrasting views of how environmental protection affects the economy.

A quick about-face


I expect that the Biden administration will quickly signal to the nation that effectively applying the nation's environmental laws matters to everyone—especially to communities that bear an unfair share of the public health burden of pollution.

With a closely divided Senate, Biden will need to rely primarily on executive actions and must-pass legislative measures like the federal budget and the Farm Bill to further his environmental agenda. Policies that require big investments, such as Biden's pledge to invest US$400 billion over 10 years in clean energy research and innovation, can make a big difference, but may be challenging to advance. Coupling clean technology with infrastructure and jobs programs to build back better is likely to have broad appeal.

I expect that officials will move quickly to restore the role of science in agency decision-making and withdraw Trump-era policies that make it harder to adopt protective regulations. A Biden EPA will end efforts to impede states like California that are moving ahead under their own authority to protect their residents, and will make clear to career staff that their expertise is valued.

The agency is likely to withdraw or closely scrutinize pending Trump proposals, such as the ongoing review of the current standard for fine-particle air pollution. Officials also will review pending litigation, much of which involves challenges to Trump administration rule revisions and policies, and decide whether to defend any of them. There likely won't be many.

One area where EPA can quickly change course is enforcement. Biden's climate and energy plan pledges to hold polluters accountable, and his administration reportedly plans to create a new division at the Justice Department focused on environmental and climate justice. Biden has promised greater attention to environmental justice communities, where neighborhoods are heavily affected by concentrations of highly polluting sources such as refineries and hazardous waste sites.

Many of these actions can be done quickly through new executive orders or policy changes. Regulatory changes will take longer. In my view, Biden's biggest challenge will be deciding what to prioritize. His administration will not be able to do (or undo) everything. Even with a revitalized career workforce and political staff all rowing in the same direction, there won't be enough bandwidth to address all the bad policies enacted in the past four years, let alone move forward with a proactive agenda focused on public health protection and environmental justice.


Explore further  5 things Joe Biden can do to fight climate change—without Congress' help
Provided by The Conversation

Biden's climate plan could reduce global warming by about 0.1°C

by Marco Tedesco, Earth Institute at Columbia University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

"From words to deeds" could and should be Joe Biden's slogan for climate. Now that the United States, and the world with them, have (at least temporarily) averted the danger of a presidency that would have brought our planet to its knees, it is time to look forward and take action. In that regard, Biden's election could reduce global warming by about 0.1°C, making the goals of the Paris Agreement more attainable.

The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 by 195 countries, including the United States, and aims to contain the increase in the average global temperature within 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. The United States' exit from the agreement, which officially took place on November 5, was one of the Trump administration's strategies to undermine the work of its predecessor and, at the same time, favor the economic interests of fossil fuel corporations and lobbies.

Biden can—and hopefully will soon—bring the United States back into the agreement, although this can happen no earlier than February 19, at least a month after his inauguration, as the agreement provides that the request remains filed and under observation for a month.

In the election campaign, Biden pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, with an investment of $1.7 trillion to reduce U.S. emissions over the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. According to the Climate Action Tracker (which evaluates governments' activities regarding greenhouse gas emissions, and how these activities can influence the achievement of the Paris Agreement), this reduction would be sufficient to avoid a temperature increase of about 0.1°C by 2100. The undertaking is obviously not easy, as the United States is the largest economy in the world and the second largest producer of greenhouse gasses. Its status as a major polluter, together with Trump's international stance, has increasingly isolated the United States, leaving room for countries such as China, which recently announced a zero-emissions target by 2060, to become world leaders on tackling climate change.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, China's initiatives would prevent global temperatures from rising between 0.2°C and 0.3°C. China is joined by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. The "return" of the United States in international climate-related efforts would have enormous consequences on our planet, as the "coalition" of countries committed to achieving zero emissions around 2050 is responsible for more than half of global emissions. Of course, goodwill is not enough, especially since Biden will likely face stiff opposition from Republicans, both regionally and nationally, as he tries to "clean up" the chaos Trump has created over the past four years.

It is also good to remember, in this regard, that part of the battle is fought through legal appeals and judicial challenges which, in the end, will be resolved by a strongly conservative Supreme Court built ad hoc by Trump.

Unfortunately, even at best, the commitments of the United States and China would be sufficient to reduce global warming to only about 2.3°C above pre-industrial levels—well above the 1.5°C limit imposed by the Paris Agreement. Thus, an even greater effort is needed. The image that these countries evoke, especially the United States, is that of a newborn learning to take its first steps in an environmentalist world that, given the situation, requires running faster and faster even before learning to walk. There aren't many alternatives anymore.


Explore further US formally exits Paris pact aiming to curb climate change

Provided by Earth Institute at Columbia University

This story is republished courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu.

Meeting a 100-year-old challenge could lead the way to digital aromas

by Weizmann Institute of Science

Smells may be measured by their distance from one another. 

Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science

Fragrances—promising mystery and intrigue—are blended by master perfumers, their recipes kept secret. In a new study on the sense of smell, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have managed to strip much of the mystery from even complex blends of odorants, not by uncovering their secret ingredients, but by recording and mapping how they are perceived. The scientists can now predict how any complex odorant will smell from its molecular structure alone. This study may not only revolutionize the world of perfumery, but eventually lead to the ability to digitize and reproduce smells on command. A proposed framework for odors, created by neurobiologists, computer scientists, and a master perfumer and funded by a European Commission initiative called Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Open, was published in Nature.


"The challenge of plotting smells in an organized and logical manner was first proposed by Alexander Graham Bell over 100 years ago," says Prof. Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Neurobiology. Bell threw down the gauntlet, saying: "We have very many different kinds of smells, all the way from the odor of violets and roses up to asafoetida. But until you can measure their likenesses and differences you can have no science of odor." His challenge remained unmet—until now.

This century-old challenge highlighted the difficulty in fitting odors into a logical system, as there are millions of odor receptors in our noses, with hundreds of subtypes, each shaped to detect particular molecular features. Our brains potentially perceive millions of smells in which these single molecules are mixed and blended at varying intensities; thus, mapping this information has been a challenge. But the study by Prof. Sobel and his team, led by graduate student Aharon Ravia and Dr. Kobi Snitz, found that there is an underlying order to odors. They reached this conclusion by adopting Bell's concept—namely, to describe not the smells themselves, but rather the relationships between smells as they are perceived.

In the initial experiment, the researchers created 14 aromatic blends, each comprising about 10 molecular components, and presented them two at a time to nearly 200 volunteers. The participants rated the pairs of smells on how similar they seemed, ranking them on a scale ranging from 'identical' to 'extremely different.' By the end of the experiment, each volunteer had evaluated 95 pairs.

To translate the resulting database of thousands of perceptual similarity ratings into a useful layout, the team refined a physicochemical measure they had previously developed. In this calculation, each odorant was represented by a single vector that combines 21 physical measures (polarity, molecular weight, etc.). To compare two odorants, each represented by a vector, the scientists measured the angle between the vectors to reflect the perceptual similarity between them. Pairs of odorants with a short angle distance between them were predicted to be similar, and those with high angle distance were predicted to be different.


To test this model, the team first applied it to data collected by other researchers, primarily a large study in odor discrimination by Caroline Bushdid and colleagues in the lab of Prof. Leslie Vosshall at the Rockefeller University in New York. The Weizmann team found that their model and measurements accurately predicted the Bushdid results: Odorants with low angle distance between them were difficult to discriminate; those with high angle distance were simple. Encouraged by the model's accuracy in predicting data collected by others, the Sobel group continued to test for themselves.

The team concocted new scents and invited a fresh group of volunteers to smell them, again using their method to predict how this set of participants would rate the pairs—at first 14 new blends and then, in the next experiment, 100 blends. The model performed exceptionally well. In fact, the results were in the same ballpark as those for color perception—sensory information that is grounded in well-defined parameters. This was particularly surprising considering that every person likely has a unique complement of smell receptor subtypes, which can vary by as much as 30% across individuals.

Because the 'smell map,' or metric, predicts the similarity of any two odorants, it can also be used to predict how an odorant will ultimately smell. For example, any novel odorant that is within 0.05 radians (a unit of measurement for angles) or less from the odor of banana will smell exactly like banana. As the novel odorant gains distance from banana, it will smell banana-ish, and beyond a certain distance, it will stop resembling banana.

The Sobel lab is now developing a web-based tool. These techniques not only predict how a novel odorant will smell, but can also synthesize odorants by design. For example, one can take any perfume with a known set of ingredients and, using the map and metric, generate a new perfume with no components in common with the original perfume, but with exactly the same smell. Such creations in color vision—namely, non-overlapping spectral compositions that generate the same perceived color—are called color metamers, and the Sobel team has produced olfactory metamers.

The findings are a significant step toward realizing a vision of study coauthor Prof. David Harel of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, who also serves as Vice President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities: Enabling computers to digitize and reproduce smells. In addition to being able to add realistic flower or sea aromas to vacation pictures on social media, giving computers the ability to interpret odors in the way that humans do could have an impact on environmental monitoring and the biomedical and food industries, to name a few. Still, master perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, who is also a co-author of the study, remarks that he is not concerned for his profession just yet.

Prof. Sobel says, "One-hundred years ago, Alexander Graham Bell posed a challenge. We have now answered it: The distance between rose and violet is 0.202 radians (they are remotely similar), the distance between violet and asafoetida is 0.5 radians (they are very different), and the difference between rose and asafoetida is 0.565 radians (they are even more different). We have converted odor percepts into numbers, and this should indeed advance the science of odor."


Explore further Using artificial intelligence to smell the roses
More information: Aharon Ravia et al. A measure of smell enables the creation of olfactory metamers, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2891-7
Journal information: Nature


Provided by Weizmann Institute of Science

Russian scientists developed sensor for detecting toxic substances in water bodies

by South Ural State University

Credit: pixabay

SUSU scientists, with their colleagues from Belgium and Egypt, have developed and tested a sensor for environmental monitoring. The device reveals insecticides in water. The research results have been published in Scientific Reports.

Accumulation of insecticides in the environment

Insecticides are important for agriculture. These are toxic substances that decompose in water and soil for a long time and have a negative effect on animals, birds and people when they accumulate in large quantities. Neonicotinoids dominate the market because of their selective toxicity. The most popular of these substances is imidacloprid.

Over nearly two decades, the presence of imidacloprid in the environment has increased, and monitoring it has become especially relevant. Current methods such as chromatography are effective. However, they require lengthy preparation of samples, a large amount of solvent and expensive equipment.

Researchers at South Ural State University, jointly with their foreign colleagues, proposed using the electrochemical method for this purpose. They were the first who introduced a capacitive sensor based on molecular imprinted polymers that can detect imidocloprid in water.

"Capacitive sensors belong to the category of impedametric sensors. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first molecularly imprinted, polymer-based capacitive sensor for detecting imidocloprid in water. Moreover, a two-step approach with a regeneration step between each analysis was first introduced to determine intermodulation distortions. This added the possibility of sequential use of each electrode 32 times," said Nataliia Beloglazova, senior researcher at the Nanotechnology Research and Education Center.

Credit: SUSU

The sensor was developed at SUSU, and their colleagues from the Ghent University, Belgium (Center of Excellence in Mycotoxicology and Public Health, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences) also participated in its development.

Molecularly imprinted polymers were synthesized and then immobilized on an electrode surface. The two-step procedure prevented damage to the electrodes and ensured that no template molecules were present in the resulting particles. In addition, nonimprinted polymers were produced.

"The binding properties of the synthesized molecularly imprinted and nonimprinted polymers were tested using solution chromatography of tandem mass spectrometry. The proposed sensor showed a linear range of 5–100 µM with a detection limit of 4.61 µM," Nataliia Beloglazova said.

The sensor with a detection element was developed on the basis of another sensor proposed for testing by an international team. Testing was carried out using water samples from the Nile in Egypt. Therefore, research assistance was also provided by the staff of the Reference Materials Laboratory, National Institute of Standards (NIS), Giza, Egypt, and Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt.


Explore further Rapid detection of toxic compounds
More information: Suzan El-Akaad et al. Capacitive sensor based on molecularly imprinted polymers for detection of the insecticide imidacloprid in water, Scientific Reports (2020).

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-71325-y

Journal information: Scientific Reports

Central Florida lands hub for Jetsons-like 'flying cars'




The nation's first regional hub for "flying cars" is being built in central Florida and once completed in five years, the vehicles will be able to take passengers from Orlando to Tampa in a half hour, officials said Wednesday.


The Tavistock Development Corp. said it was constructing a Jetsons-like aviation facility in Orlando's Lake Nona area, the mixed-use planned community it built. Lake Nona already is home to several medical and research facilities.

The aircraft will be supplied by Lilium, a Germany-based aviation company that manufacturers the industry's only five-passenger "electric vertical takeoff and landing" aircraft. At the moment, the Lilium Jets can travel up to 185 miles (nearly 300 kilometers) on a one-hour charge.

Passengers wanting a ride on the aircraft will be able to book reservations via their phones in a way similar to ride-share companies Uber and Lyft, officials said.

The vehicles flying and landing out of the Lake Nona Vertiport will accommodate four passengers and a pilot. The cost will be similar to a first-class fare, though the price will likely go down as the service becomes more popular, officials said.

Unlike airplanes and helicopters, the vehicles offer quick point-to-point personal travel, at least in principle. They could do away with the hassle of airports and traffic jams.

Battery sizes, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercializing them, according to experts. Experts compare the buzz over flying cars to the days when the aviation industry got started with the Wright brothers and the auto industry with the Ford Model T.

The Lake Nona Vertiport has applied for approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation.


Explore further Japan's 'flying car' gets off ground, with a person aboard (Video)

US nuclear lab partnering with utility to produce hydrogen

by Keith Ridler

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded just under $14 million for an attempt to build a hydrogen-energy production facility at a nuclear power plant in Minnesota with the help of a nuclear research lab in Idaho.

Idaho National Laboratory and Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy will work on devising and building the facility, most likely at Xcel Energy's Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station in Red Wing, Minnesota.

The project announced this week is part of the Energy Department's strategy to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions using nuclear power to generate carbon-free energy. Vehicles using hydrogen fuel cells, for example, produce only water vapor and warm air as exhaust. Hydrogen could also be used in industry, such as in the production of steel.

Xcel Energy officials said they have a large amount of wind-generated energy they supply to customers. Officials said the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station could make hydrogen when wind energy meets customer demand for electricity. Officials said the hydrogen would initially be used at the power plant but could ultimately be sold to other industries.

According to its website, Xcel Energy provides energy to millions of homes and businesses across eight Western and Midwestern states, and has a goal of being 100% carbon-free by 2050.

"Now we'll be the first company to produce carbon-free hydrogen at a nuclear plant using this technology," Tim O'Connor, Xcel Energy chief generation officer, said in a statement.

The effort planned at the Minnesota plant will use a process called high-temperature steam electrolysis. Water is made out of three atoms: one oxygen and two hydrogen. The proposed project would use Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station's steam and electricity to split water and separate the hydrogen. Idaho National Laboratory will help with technical aspects of the project.

The Energy Department said it hopes the result will be a functioning hydrogen plant capable of operating as a hybrid system that can also test electrolysis technologies.

"This is a game-changer for both nuclear energy and carbon-free hydrogen production for numerous industries," said the Energy Department's Richard Boardman in a statement. "It offers a view of the energy structures of the future, which will integrate systems to maximize energy use, generator profitability and grid reliability all while minimizing carbon emissions."

Hydrogen is abundant in the environment and is stored in water, methane and organic matter. The primary challenge is economically extracting it and being competitive in the marketplace. Most of the hydrogen currently produced in the nation comes from combining high-temperature steam with natural gas.

Officials say nuclear-produced hydrogen has the advantage of being carbon-free. That's opposed to fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal and oil that produce greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

The Energy Department says that nearly all hydrogen produced in the U.S. is used for refining petroleum, processing food, producing fertilizer or treating metals.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States at the end of 2019 had 96 operating commercial nuclear reactors at 58 nuclear power plants in 29 states. They produce about 20% of the nation's electricity. Most of the reactors are decades old, and some are having a tough time competing economically with other forms of energy production.


Explore further US restarts nuclear testing facility in Idaho after 23 years

Satellites to track trains and promote rail safety

by European Space Agency
  

Credit: European Space Agency

Trains in Italy will be tracked and controlled via space to ensure they run in a safe, punctual and environmentally friendly way.

The project could see satellite technology become a standard way to run trains across the whole of Europe.

The Italian national railway company, Gruppo FS Italiane, is installing systems that will use satellites to monitor the speed of trains on its lines and automatically control the signals ahead to slow any engine that is going too fast. The satellites will add capacity to the existing trackside radio systems.

The satellites will also monitor the distances between trains to avoid any collisions. The system will be more energy efficient than existing measures and therefore better for the environment.

Trains making the 40-kilometer journey between the Italian cities of Novara in the Piedmont region and Rho in the Lombardy region will be the first to use the system, which was originally conceived in 2012 and has since undergone an extensive test campaign.

The project, called ERSAT, is part of the European Rail Traffic Management System, an EU initiative to integrate the separate national rail networks into a coherent Europe-wide system. Once it has demonstrated its success, it will allow satellite technologies to be certified for use under the scheme. This would increase the efficiency of the system, cutting costs and electricity use, and thereby reducing carbon emissions.

The ERSAT project is being implemented in coordination with the Italian Space Agency, with the support of ESA, and with the contribution of the EU's European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency.


Explore further Satellites helping to modernise railways

Provided by European Space Agency

CROC DRONES

Cutting-edge computer vision technologies help detect threats

by University of Technology, Sydney

Credit: University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

It's been called "the future of warfare." Off-the-shelf unmanned aerial systems (UAS), carrying a payload of explosives or biological material, flown by terrorists or enemy armed forces into a crowded building or military base.

Now the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Sydney ASX-listed defense tech company DroneShield have produced next-generation drone technology to better identify threats from these aggressive UAS.

In a partnership funded by the NSW and Australian Governments, UTS and DroneShield—an Australian developer of counter-UAS solutions—have produced an optical system for detection, identification and tracking of fast-moving threats such as nefarious UAS, comprised of a camera and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN).

UTS and DroneShield began working together in October 2019—just a month after one of the most recent examples of aggressive use of drones when the oil facilities at Abqaiq–Khurais in Saudi Arabia were attacked by a swarm of UAS.

The new technology was recently demonstrated at Sydney Science Park.

The NSW Minister for Jobs and Western Sydney, Stuart Ayres, said the State Government was committed to helping small businesses grow through programs such as the NSW Government-funded Defense Innovation Network (DIN).

"The collaboration between DroneShield and UTS is exactly the type of industry/university partnership the NSW Government is committed to expanding," he said. "This is a key part of how the Government is supporting growth in jobs in NSW in areas such as defense tech. And seeing the technology here in Western Sydney, just outside of the future Aerotropolis, gives us a glimpse into the type of R&D and industry activity that will take place out here in the future."

UTS Vice-Chancellor Attila Brungs said this project is a great example of the types of partnerships UTS is committed to.

"For UTS to do what we do best—develop and translate world-leading research for practical application by industry—government support is critical. Having both the NSW and Australian Governments invest in this partnership, which has produced defense technology that can be used around the world, shows what can happen when universities, government and industry work together. UTS is committed to developing more industry co-working spaces, both on our home campus in the Sydney CBD, and here in Western Sydney at the Sydney Science Park with Celestino," Professor Brungs said.

Project lead and Co-Director of UTS Intelligent Drone Lab (IDL) Dr. Nabin Sharma said UTS has both expertise and experience in collaborating with industry partners to develop and deliver innovative vision systems for UAVs. This is seen in the multi-award-winning SpotterAI suite of drones (SharkSpotter, CrocSpotter) which identify particular threats to humans and are used to safeguard swimmers, fishers and other marine species.

"We are using CNNs and deep learning to provide a solution for DroneShield to identify drones which could be of potential threat," Dr. Sharma said. "The algorithm enables the vision system to see what's happening, to collate data and process it for ultra-fast image recognition and analysis. This delivers a speedy and efficient assessment of a threat and the decision-making in response to it. The system is able to detect different types of drones and check if there is a payload," he said.

Oleg Vornik, DroneShield's CEO, said "We are pleased to add this ground-breaking technology to our systems, enabling our customers a unique camera-based detection, ID and tracking of improvised threats such as UAS. This project has been a great example of collaboration between an Australian defense SME and an educational institution, promoting development of world leading, cutting-edge defense technologies right here in Sydney."


Explore further CrocSpotter app uses AI for detection

Provided by University of Technology, Sydney

Apple expands renewable energy footprint in Europe

World’s largest onshore wind turbines in Denmark and new clean energy efforts in Germany advance Apple’s new 2030 carbon neutral goal

Apple is investing in the construction of two of the world’s largest onshore wind turbines near the Danish town of Esbjerg.

 Apple announced it will invest in the construction of two of the world’s largest onshore wind turbines, a source of clean, renewable energy that will bring its supply chain and products one step closer to carbon neutrality. Located near the Danish town of Esbjerg, the 200-meter-tall turbines are expected to produce 62 gigawatt hours each year — enough to power almost 20,000 homes — and will act as a test site for powerful offshore wind turbines. The power produced at Esbjerg will support Apple’s data center in Viborg, with all surplus energy going into the Danish grid.

“Combatting climate change demands urgent action and global partnership — and the Viborg data center is powerful proof that we can rise to this generational challenge,” said Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. “Investments in clean energy deliver breakthrough innovations that bring clean energy and good jobs to businesses and local communities. This is an area where we have to lead — for the sake of our planet and future generations.”

Last month, Apple announced its plans to become carbon neutral across its entire business, manufacturing supply chain, and product life cycle by 2030. While Apple’s operations are already powered by 100 percent renewable energy and carbon neutral, this new commitment will mean that by 2030, every Apple device sold will have net zero climate impact. This includes transitioning all of its European-based suppliers to renewable power.


One of Scandinavia’s largest solar arrays was completed earlier this summer to power Apple’s Viborg data center, and is the first Danish solar project built without the use of public subsidies.

Supplier Clean Energy Progress

Germany-based supplier Varta committed this week to running its Apple production with 100 percent renewable power. Across Europe, Apple’s suppliers are working toward clean energy solutions for their Apple productions — including Henkel and tesa SE, also based in Germany, DSM Engineering Materials based in the Netherlands, STMicroelectronics based in Switzerland, and Solvay based in Belgium. These solutions include DSM’s wind power purchase agreement in the Netherlands and STMicroelectronics’s solar carport in Morocco. Companies like Solvay are now expanding their use of renewable energy to their broader operations after joining Apple’s Supplier Clean Energy Program five years ago.

Apple launched the program in October 2015 to help suppliers reduce their energy use and transition to 100 percent renewable electricity. Since its launch, 72 manufacturing partners in 17 different countries have committed to 100 percent renewable energy for Apple production. Once all of Apple’s supplier projects are completed, these commitments will avoid over 14.3 million metric tons of CO2e annually — the equivalent of taking more than 3 million cars off the road each year.

Viborg Data Center

Apple’s data center in Viborg, a 45,000-square-meter facility offering network support and data storage to its users across the region, is now operational. The data center helps power Apple’s App Store, Apple Music, iMessage, Siri, and other services in Europe that are run entirely on renewable energy from local projects.

Like all of Apple’s data centers, the company’s Viborg data center is running on 100 percent renewable energy.

The Esbjerg wind project follows the recent completion of one of Scandinavia’s largest solar arrays, located in Thisted, Northern Jutland, the first Danish solar project built without the use of public subsidies. The wind and solar projects both support Apple’s newly completed data center in Viborg, which is powered by 100 percent renewable energy. Apple is developing both projects in partnership with European Energy.

The Viborg data center had over 600 specialist workers on site each day during construction and included many Danish businesses supporting its development. It is now run by a team of data specialists, technicians, maintenance, and security staff, many of whom were recruited from the local area.

The data center in Viborg features advanced green building designs, with a unique cooling system based on natural air flows that significantly decrease water and energy consumption.

Why is the Australian government trying to make the cashless debit card permanent? Research shows it does not work

by Elise Klein, The Conversation

The card is supposed to quarantine welfare payment for essentials such as food and groceries. Credit: www.shutterstock.com

Dystopic policy in Australia is often hidden in plain sight.

As Curtin University Professor Suvendrini Perera has written, systematic failures are not necessarily "spectacular acts" but the "decisions and indecisions of bureaucratic oversights and misplaced assumptions." And these amount to a "slow violence" over time.

One such failure is the Cashless Debit Card, which has been trialed in Australia since 2016.

Yet, among all the measures in last month's budget was the news the Morrison government will make the trial scheme "ongoing".

What is the Cashless Debit Card?

The Cashless Debit Card scheme quarantines 80% of social security payments to a cashless card, which prevents spending on alcohol, illegal drugs and gambling products.

It is currently being trialed in Ceduna in South Australia, the East Kimberley in Western Australia, the Goldfields in WA and Hervey Bay region in Queensland, with about 12,000 people involved.

The card compulsorily includes a broad range of people receiving support for many reasons, including payments for disability, parenting, caring, unemployment and youth allowance. The Australian Human Rights Commission is among those who have pointed out the the card disproportionately impacts First Nations people.

Research shows it does not work

Peer-reviewed research has consistently shown the card, and income management more broadly, do not meet policy objectives. A 2020 academic study of multiple locations found compulsory income management "can do as much harm as good."


Survey respondents reported not having enough cash for essential items, while the research found the card "can also stigmatize and infantilise users."

My research examining the card in the East Kimberley shows it makes life more difficult for people subjected to it, including making it harder to manage money. People also reported the card made it more difficult to buy basic goods such as medicine and groceries.

Other research from the Life Course Center suggests compulsory income management has been linked to a reduction of birth weight and school attendance. The majority of these children are First Nations kids.

Bill before parliament

A bill to make the card permanent was introduced to parliament just a day after the budget was handed down.

If passed, it will also transfer about 25,000 people in the Northern Territory and Cape York who are on the Basics Card (an earlier version of income management) onto the Cashless Debit Card.

Introducing the bill to the House, Morrison government minister Trevor Evans said the card was delivering "significant benefits" in the trial communities. "The program has the objective of reducing immediate hardship and deprivation, helping welfare recipients with their budgeting strategies and reducing the likelihood that they will remain on welfare and out of the workforce for extended periods."

The government also says the card is used "just like an everyday bank card" and is seeing a reduction in drug and alcohol use and gambling.

Senate inquiry

But as highlighted above, the value of the scheme is heavily disputed by policy experts. People put on the card, community groups, lawyers and doctors also oppose any expansion of the card.

The card's expansion has been the subject of a brief Senate inquiry, which is due to report on November 17.

This is the sixth Senate inquiry into the Cashless Debit Card. Each one has seen submissions from across the community which overwhelmingly reject the card.

First Nations groups have led the charge, stating income management is not in the spirit of self-determination and the current bill would "directly contradict the recent National Agreement on Closing the Gap."

Smoke and mirrors

Trials of public policy programs require, by definition, research to examine their performance and to justify any continuation. Yet, the government continues to rely on anecdotes and the widely criticized 2017 evaluation by ORIMA Research as "proof" for the roll out of the Cashless Debit Card.

In 2018, the Australian National Audit Office found the ORIMA evaluation was methodologically flawed and unable to provide any credible conclusions regarding the real impact of the trial.

In the latest bill, the government also misrepresents the findings from a 2014 evaluation of compulsory income management into the Northern Territory, claiming the findings were supportive of income management. Yet this evaluation "[did] not find any consistent evidence of income management having a significant systematic positive impact."

Compelled by the Senate, the government has since commissioned the University of Adelaide to evaluate the scheme. This research was due to be released by the end of 2019 but is yet to be made public.

When asked about the report in Senate estimates last month, Social Services Minister Anne Ruston said it was not about deciding whether the card would continue, but to give advice on "what what was working particularly well."

Perversely, the current bill also removes any need to further evaluate the Cashless Debit Card, instead opting to rely on the department to undertake its own desk-based research.

Why is evidence being ignored?

The protracted life of the Cashless Debit Card in Australian public policy shows the ongoing disregard for evidence-based policy making.

It also shows the continued slow violence against thousands of Australians who deserve much better from elected officials and the structures set up to support them.

Whilst it is easy not to pay attention to the mundane details of policy, the Cashless Debit Card shows we must.


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