WAIT A MINUTE THAT'S US

Trans Mountain pipeline owner asks regulator to hide identity of its insurers

CALGARY — Federal government-owned Trans Mountain is asking the Canada Energy Regulator to keep secret the identities of the companies that provide insurance coverage for its pipeline system because of fears environmental activists will target them.

  

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In a submission dated Monday, the company that operates the Trans Mountain pipeline and its expansion project says there is evidence that "certain parties" are using filings in the regulator's database to identify insurers and pressure them to drop their policies for the pipeline.

The filings come days after Indigenous youth in Vancouver blocked the entrances of buildings housing insurance companies to demand they stop insuring the pipeline, resulting in four arrests.

Trans Mountain says it saw a significant reduction in available insurance capacity in 2020 and, when it found partial replacement policies, it had to pay a significantly higher cost.

In 2019, a coalition of 32 environmental and Indigenous groups said they had sent letters to 27 insurance companies demanding they drop coverage of the Trans Mountain pipeline or refuse to provide policies for the expansion project, including lead liability insurer Zurich Insurance Group, based in Switzerland.

The coalition said Zurich had intended to continue its coverage of Trans Mountain, but the pipeline confirmed last July that Zurich had decided not to renew the policies.

"If the name of Trans Mountain’s insurers is disclosed publicly, ongoing targeting and pressure on those insurers to stop insuring the pipeline are likely to result in material loss to Trans Mountain and its shippers in the form of higher insurance premiums (due to a smaller pool of insurers available to Trans Mountain) and challenges in maintaining adequate insurance coverage," said Trans Mountain in its letter to CER.

It asked the regulator for a decision by March 15 so it has time to complete its annual financial resources plan update, including its certificate of insurance, before April 30.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Biden signs executive order to investigate semiconductor shortage affecting electronic goods

Thomas Wilde GEEK WIRE

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday that will start an investigation into critical shortages of various necessary goods in the U.S. This includes the global semiconductor shortage, which has dramatically affected the manufacturing for electronic goods such as smartphones, video cards, laptops, and new cars.

© Provided by Geekwire (Photo by Adam Schultz / Biden for President)


The Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains directs the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Defense, and Health to conduct a 100-day review of supply chain risks, and for the secretary of each department to present policy recommendations that will address those risks.

“The American people should never face shortages in the goods and services they rely on,” Biden said.

The low global supply of semiconductors is also one of the reasons why next-generation video game consoles, such as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, have been so hard to find for the last three months. (This is probably not what’s motivating Biden’s executive order. Dude’s a Mario Kart fan.)

The shortage, which has caused manufacturing bottlenecks throughout the world, has several root causes. One of the side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic was a heightened worldwide demand for consumer electronics, first due to work-from-home orders, and then to quarantine-induced boredom. People needed new computers for their home offices, and then they needed something to do instead of going out.

That put additional stress on chip manufacturers in places such as Taiwan and South Korea, which were already working as hard as they could. There was no way for factories to increase supply to meet demand, particularly once lockdown measures forced some of them to temporarily shut down. Add that to other issues, such as effects from Donald Trump’s 2019 tariffs on China, and it’s proven to be a recipe for disaster.

Wednesday’s executive order follows up on news from Feb. 11, where White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the Biden administration planned to take steps to address the semiconductor shortage, including today’s mandated probe into governmental supply chains.

On the same day, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) sent an open letter to President Biden, noting that the U.S. share of global semiconductor manufacturing has steadily declined over the last 30 years from 37% to 12%, with relatively flat U.S. investment in R&D.

The letter, co-signed by CEOs from AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, Qualcomm, and 17 other American technology companies, urges the president to address the issue by authorizing federal incentives for domestic semiconductor manufacture, research, and development.

JUST DON'T TAX US
Business groups rally around green infrastructure plans

The Business Roundtable, which represents corporate CEOs, recently warned against increasing corporate taxes to fund investments in infrastructure.

Alex Gangitano  2/22/2021
  

© iStock Solar panel outfitting

Business groups are ramping up pressure on the Biden administration to move forward on infrastructure and arguing that a climate change component is critical to their members.

The growing consensus among business leaders is that an infrastructure package should tackle green initiatives, but executives say they're leaving it to Congress and the White House to determine the provisions and overall price tag.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said infrastructure, along with technology-focused legislation, will be the next priorities for congressional Democrats following the passage of COVID-19 relief. He indicated that climate change proposals will play a key role in the package, making it a harder sell with Republicans.

Democrats are hoping that momentum and support from major corporations will help put pressure on Republicans in Congress.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with more than a hundred local chambers and the Bipartisan Policy Center, urged Congress last week to "enact a fiscally and environmentally responsible infrastructure package."

"As a nation we must be able to build big things quickly to accelerate the economic recovery and build the resilient low-carbon economy of the future," the groups wrote.

The Chamber is calling for the legislation before July 4, saying that in addition to climate provisions the measure needs to create middle-class jobs, improve federal project approvals and address the digital divide.

More recently, manufacturing company Siemens USA called on Congress this week to go big on infrastructure.

"Promoting U.S. leadership in emerging technologies and unlocking private capital will accelerate progress on infrastructure and help us move the country forward: rebuilding our economy, creating jobs, tackling climate change, raising U.S. competitiveness and answering the call for racial justice," CEO Barbara Humpton wrote in an open letter.

Humpton said achieving those goals includes steps toward a decarbonized power grid that's more resilient to severe weather, a key concern following massive power outages during this month's winter storm in Texas.

"Consider New York's Javits Center, which installed rooftop solar panels offsetting 1.3 million pounds of carbon. Seventy percent of U.S. businesses will generate energy savings by investing in similar projects," she wrote, adding that only a small fraction of commercial buildings doing this would generate enough renewable capacity to power over half of America's homes.

Biden's Build Back Better plan includes building 1.5 million new sustainable homes, as well as zero-emissions public transportation in major U.S. cities and a power sector that is carbon pollution free by 2035.

The White House has eyed prioritizing an infrastructure package after COVID-19 relief, as well as hot-button issues like immigration and gun control legislation. The most likely area for bipartisan agreement, though, is on infrastructure, where lawmakers from both sides of the aisle want to see action.

But infrastructure isn't without its divisive issues, namely the high cost and inclusion of climate change initiatives.

Infrastructure was considered a priority for the Trump administration, but no deal ever materialized over four years, leading in many ways to pent up demand on both sides of the aisle to move forward on the issue in 2021.

Biden met with lawmakers earlier this month to gauge GOP support, though it's largely understood that it will be difficult to garner broad bipartisan backing given Republican concerns about the rising deficit, which will increase further if Biden's $1.9 trillion relief package is signed into law.

For that reason, infrastructure could be the second bill, following the COVID-19 relief package, that Democrats try to pass through the budget reconciliation process that lets them sidestep a legislative filibuster.

While business groups are largely in agreement that Biden's plan to modernize infrastructure will help promote renewable energy, the president is getting pressure from trade groups to not raise taxes as a funding mechanism for infrastructure.

Biden campaigned on increasing the corporate tax rate, but administration officials have signaled there are no immediate plans to take that step.

The Business Roundtable, which represents corporate CEOs, recently warned against increasing corporate taxes to fund investments in infrastructure.

"We may think well, for stimulus purposes, we don't want to pay for everything; we just want to inject some money into the economy. That's not an unreasonable position in the short term coming out of a recession as we are right now, but it would not be a way to set us up for long-term success. And it would be a really terrible shame if Congress fails to address the long-term funding and financing issues for our nation's infrastructure when they do this package," said Matt Sonnesyn, the trade group's vice president of infrastructure, energy and environment.

CDC must encourage better ventilation to stop coronavirus spread in schools, experts say

By Maggie Fox, CNN 

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should be doing more to guide and encourage improved air circulation in buildings -- especially in schools -- to help prevent the spread of coronavirus, ventilation experts say   

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - SEPTEMBER 24: Jackie Sato, a teacher

 at Yung Wing School P.S. 124 wears a mask and teaches remotely

 from her classroom. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

They say the CDC has not paid anywhere near enough attention to the role ventilation can play in helping the spread of coronavirus -- or reducing it.

Schools will need to spend time and money improving airflow using HVAC systems, stand-alone HEPA air filtering systems or even just by opening windows if students, teachers and staff are to return safely to in-school learning in the fall, the experts say.


"The state of ventilation in schools in the United States right now is woefully inadequate," Richard Corsi, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University, told a forum hosted by The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health this week.

"Right now, schools are looking to CDC and they are not getting the answers to the kinds of things we are talking about," Corsi added. "All of them look to CDC." Corsi said he has advised schools they need to improve ventilation, and their response has been that there is no specific guidance on the CDC website.

The CDC does suggest that schools think about ventilation improvements.

"Consider ventilation system upgrades or improvements and other steps to increase the delivery of clean air and dilute potential contaminants in the school. Obtain consultation from experienced Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) professionals when considering changes to HVAC systems and equipment," it says in its guidance.

It also points to the guidance posted by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers.

But that's not enough, the experts agreed.

Why ventilation matters

With poor ventilation, viral particles can build up in the air in a classroom, cafeteria or hallway.

"If you look at all the high profile outbreaks -- same underlying factors -- no masks, low ventilation. It doesn't matter if it's spin class, ice hockey, camps, classrooms, choir practice or restaurants, (it's) the same underlying factors," Joseph Allen, who directs the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told CNN earlier this month.

The pandemic has revealed the role that our buildings, including schools, can play in infectious disease transmission," William Bahnfleth, a professor of architectural engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, told the forum.

It's a simple enough concept. People cough, sneeze or simply breathe out particles constantly. If a person is infected with a virus, including coronavirus, viral particles can be carried out on droplets that can become suspended in the air. In a closed room, those particles will build up and others will breathe them in.

The solution can also be simple -- air exchange. Swap the particle-laden air for fresh, clean air, and the risk of transmission falls.

The problem comes when sealed buildings also have poor ventilation systems, and the problem is worse in colder months, when any windows or doors there might be are firmly closed against the chill.

Three full exchanges of air in a room can remove the infectious particles, Bahnfleth said. A high-performance air cleaning or ventilation system can do this in 20 minutes, he said.

A portable HEPA system with a clean air delivery rate of 300 cubic feet a minute in a typical classroom gives you the equivalent of three to four air changes per hour. That, in many classrooms, is up to a 50%, 60%, 70% reduction in inhalation doses," Corsi added.

But principals, school boards and teachers often know little about this concept.

"There is not a lot of awareness about indoor air," said Claire Barnett, founder of the Healthy Schools Network. She said the problem has worsened since the US Environmental Protection Agency stopped funding its indoor air program for schools 10 years ago. Neither CDC or EPA has expertise on indoor air in schools now, she said.

And it's a problem that, like so many others, affects poorer communities more.

"It's been well documented for decades that the poorest communities often have the poorest school facilities. That means no clean air, no ventilation, nonworking plumbing, difficulties with sanitation leaks and molds," Barnett said.

ahnfleth pointed to a 2020 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study that found 54% of school districts needed multiple system updates. "About half of districts needed to update or replace multiple systems like heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) or plumbing," the report reads. "An estimated one-third of schools needed HVAC system updates."

It costs money upfront, but it's worth it, Bahnfleth said. "Yes, there may be significant costs involved in some cases, but not as high as some might think, and the cost of not making that investment is much higher," he said.

So who should pay?

"There's a need for investment, if only in filtering air cleaning systems for classrooms. This should be provided by the federal government," Dr. Donald Milton, a professor of environmental health at the University of Maryland, told CNN.

There's money for schools in President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion rescue plan, but none is earmarked for school ventilation systems.

And the CDC, he said, needs to do more to help people think about where the virus is -- and that's in the air.

"If it is in small particles floating in the air and you inhale them -- it doesn't matter how far it traveled in the air -- the problem is the same. The solution is the same too: you need ventilation, filtration, and source control, and you need tight fitting masks with good filters and breathability," he said.


What not to do

The experts advised against using unproven technology to "clean" the air, saying some approaches could result in contaminated air. The important thing is to exchange all the air in a room with fresh air several times an hour, they said.

"I want to implore everyone not to venture into unproven technologies that have slick marketing," Corsi said during the Johns Hopkins forum.

That includes fogging or misting systems, disinfecting "robots" or on-the-spot ultraviolet light systems.

"Foggers and misters work ideally in certain settings," Barnett said. They include laboratories or hospitals -- not schools or office buildings where untrained workers have no idea how to use the dangerous chemicals involved.

Ultraviolet light systems that are installed high up in ceilings, with air circulation to take any breathed-out air up to them, work well, Bahnfleth said. But they can be expensive and are more appropriate for large, shared spaces such as gyms or cafeterias than small classrooms.

Some low-tech approaches can do more harm than good, also, said Barnett. Plastic shields, for instance, can concentrate contaminated air and may stop large droplets for a short period -- think a grocery checkout -- but are useless in settings such as classrooms where the air can circulate around them over time.

"If you can smell cigarette smoke from other side of the Plexiglass, you are also inhaling virus," Barnett said.

All the experts were critical of the CDC's emphasis on cleaning desks and others surfaces at the expense of the concept of clean air. "Surface cleaning isn't very useful in terms of bang for the buck in Covid-19," said Delphine Farmer, an aerosol expert at Colorado State University. If nothing else, cleaning solutions can fill the air with a complex cocktail of toxic chemicals, she said.

"There are very real consequences of overcleaning," Farmer told the Johns Hopkins symposium.

The same applied to systems that use oxidative chemical processes to break down virus-laden particles.

"But in doing so they produce a series of organic compounds," she said -- including toxins such as formaldehyde.

"What we know works is ventilation and filtration," Farmer said.

With her dreadlocks and nose piercing, Shanna Reis doesn't exactly look the part of the camouflage-clad hunter tracking game in the forest

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© Daniel ROLAND Shanna Reis, 28, represents a new German generation of enthusiasts concerned about where they get their meat

But the 28-year-old represents a new German generation of enthusiasts concerned about where they get their meat, especially as home cooking sees a resurgence during the pandemic.

© Daniel ROLAND Hunting licences have grown increasingly popular in Germany

Reis was a practising vegetarian for a decade before returning meat to her plate once she got her hunting licence five years ago.

But the only kind that passes her lips these days is fresh game, preferably specimens she's killed and prepared herself.

"It's important to me to know where the meat I eat comes from," she said on the outskirts of her western village Aspisheim near the River Rhine, rifle slung over a shoulder and accompanied by one of her three dogs

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© Daniel ROLAND Reis climbs up to a hunting lookout in Aspisheim, western Germany

Hunting licences have grown increasingly popular in Germany, where meat makes up a large part of the average diet.

The National Hunting Federation said there were about 390,000 practitioners at the end of 2020, a quarter more than 30 years ago, its spokeswoman Anna Martinsohn told AFP.

That's far below the number in neighbouring France, estimated at around one million in 2019. But there the figure has fallen by half in the last 40 years.

In Germany, 19,000 people went for their hunting permit last year and four in five of them were successful -- "twice as many as 10 years ago", Martinsohn said.

- 'Don't want that meat' -

Europe's top economy is the biggest consumer of pork in the EU and its large slaughterhouse industry prepares the meat of more than 55 million pigs and 3.5 million cows for consumption.

However mass meat production has suffered a serious blow to its image after a series of Covid-19 outbreaks at German slaughterhouses, particularly at plants run by market leader Toennies.

Media coverage of the spread of infections zeroed in on scandalous working conditions among subcontractors, many brought in from eastern Europe to toil for low wages on precarious contracts to ensure a supply of discount meat.

"People are saying that in the long run they don't want to eat that kind of meat," said Nicole Romig, 47, a high school teacher in Offenbach outside Frankfurt who has taken up hunting.

With the help of a butcher who is a friend of her family, she makes a range of meat dishes using game she has killed including grilled steaks, sausages and liver patties.

Another hunting enthusiast, 55-year-old Ulf Grether, makes his own wild boar sausages and says demand is so strong he manages to sell out "even before I've made them".

- 'Respecting animal life' -

Those new to hunting are interested in "understanding the relationship between the forest, the fields and animals", said Alexander Polfers, the director of a hunting school in Emsland in the northern state of Lower Saxony, which grants 600 licences a year.

Reis said she is interested in cleaning up hunters' cruel image, also with the help of social media.

"It's about conserving biotopes, talking to farmers and preserving the forest economy," said Reis, who has more than 20,000 followers on her Instagram account dedicated to the hunting lifestyle.

The brothers Paul and Gerold Reilmann, aged 25 and 22 and avid hunters, have over 30,000 subscribers on Facebook. 

TROPHY KILLERS

But the snapshots of their trophies don't only draw admirers, in a country where animal welfare groups are a powerful lobby.

"Killing an animal has nothing to do with respecting its life," said Sandra Franz, spokeswoman of NGO Animal Rights Watch.

"There is no rational argument for hunting apart from the desire to kill and collect trophies to be displayed."

Hunters must also abide by regulations on wild animals' habitats backed by foresters and farmers, who tend to support massive culls to prevent deer eating the shoots of young trees and hordes of wild boar trampling cornfields.

"We are always at war with the forest rangers," said Grether, because "hunters are happy when there's a strong animal population".

jpl-dlc/hmn/jz

Canada, U.S. working toward North American vehicle emissions standards: Wilkinson

Hannah Jackson GLOBAL NEWS

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mike Sudoma A lawyer at the centre of a lobbying effort to stop a coal mine from expanding in Alberta says the federal government's refusal to do its own environmental review of the project is the ultimate in "climate hypocrisy." Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson speaks to media during the Liberal cabinet retreat at the Fairmont Hotel in Winnipeg, Sunday, Jan. 19, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mike Sudoma

Canada and the United States are working toward a joint vehicle emissions standard, Canada's environment and climate change minister said.


Jonathan Wilkinson's remarks came a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden shared their first bilateral meeting, during which their shared goals to address climate change took centre stage.

Video: New U.S. presidency means new climate change policies

Shortly after the meeting, the two leaders announced that a "high-level ministerial" to tackle climate change would be formed between the countries.


The ministerial will “coordinate cooperation” between the countries to “increase ambition aligned to the Paris Agreement and net-zero objectives," according to a joint document released after the meeting.

It will also “explore opportunities to align policies and approaches to create jobs, while tackling climate change and inequality, and enhancing adaptation and resilience to climate impacts.”

On Wednesday, Jonathan Wilkinson met with U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry to begin that work.

Wilkinson told Global News it was a "working meeting" during which the pair discussed how the countries can "collaborate to accelerate progress on climate change and to enhance the level of ambition on both sides of the border, but also how we can learn from each other as well as we do different things."

 

Video: Biden continues push for international cooperation as U.S. rejoins Paris Climate agreement

He said they established a number of "near-term" and "longer-term" priorities.

"That certainly includes things like working on vehicle emission standards for Canada and the U.S., again, looking to see how we can accelerate work to both enhance the energy efficiency of the existing types of vehicles that are being sold, but also to look at how we can accelerate the deployment of zero-emission technologies," he said.

 "‘Opportunity’ to align with U.S. on vehicle emissions standards: Wilkinson"

Read more: Trudeau says net-zero bill ‘cements’ climate targets — but it can be repealed

Wilkinson said the two countries' auto manufacturing sectors are "completely integrated."

"It makes way more sense for us to actually have integrated standards with respect to efficiency, with respect to how we want to deploy zero-emissions technologies, then us working at odds," he said.

How Canada’s net-zero emissions plan compares globally

While vehicle emissions standards had been watered-down by the former Trump administration, the Canadian government committed to aligning with the highest possible standard, which had been imposed in California.

Read more: Trudeau, Biden likely to talk Buy American, China in 1st bilateral meeting today

"But now I think there's an opportunity to do this on a continental basis, yes," Wilkinson said. "And that is kind of where we're headed."

According to Wilkinson, he and Kerry also discussed methane regulations, and how to deal with large emitters during Wednesday's meeting.

"We have the same kinds of large emitters in both countries, whether those are steel or cement or oil and gas facilities," he said. "Canada has started to do work -- we had a $3-billion fund to work with those emitters in our recent climate plan -- but there's definitely more we can do."

Read more: Experts say cancelled Keystone XL pipeline expansion won’t lessen oil dependency

Lastly, Wilkinson said he and Kerry spoke about how Canada and the U.S. could "work together to help other countries raise the level of ambition," and how they can collaborate to help facilitate the move away from coal-fired power.

Video: Trudeau and Biden hold first bilateral meeting virtually

Asked whether there are any parts of the Biden administration's climate plan that could potentially have a negative impact on Canada, Wilkinson pointed to the "Buy American" policy.

Just days after taking office, Biden signed an executive order to impose stringent protectionist rules for government spending.

The order's main goal is to ensure government spending benefits American manufacturers, workers and suppliers first.

Read more: ‘Human beings are not bartering chips’: Biden calls for China to release 2 Michaels

Wilkinson said this policy is something Canada is "going to have to work our way through," but that it's "not a new policy."

"But certainly Canada is going to have to be thoughtful, and engage in a way that looks to ensure that our economic interests are taken into account by the Americans because our economic interests actually can further their economic interests," he said.

Video: Canada charting path to net-zero emissions by 2050

Wilkinson used clean technology as an example, saying the ability for Canadian firms to sell and deploy their technology for use in the U.S. would be beneficial for both countries.

"So, you know, we need to make that case on an ongoing basis," he said.

Read more: Biden signs ‘Buy American’ executive order, limiting exceptions for Canada

He also said Canada needs to ensure that "we're talking about energy and the future of energy broadly."

"And and certainly the Americans understand that," he said. "I mean, they have the same kinds of energy issues in their country that we do in ours."

He said America has a large oil and gas sector and faces more challenges with respect to coal-fired power than Canada.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden promised to shift the country from fossil fuels and towards green energy.

Video: Biden signs executive order mandating review of U.S. supply chains for vital goods

Hours after he was sworn-in, he signed an executive order to revoke a presidential permit signed by his predecessor which would have seen the expansion of the cross-border Keystone XL pipeline.

The move dealt an especially hard blow to Alberta and Saskatchewan whose energy sectors were counting on the completion of the US$8-billion project.

Read more: Biden revokes presidential permit for Keystone XL pipeline expansion on 1st day

Wilkinson said the countries need to find ways to move forward in a manner that "addresses the carbon issue, but does so in a way that is going to ensure that there's opportunity for all regions of Canada and all regions of the United States."

"I think (that) is something that they're very happy to engage on," he s

How this 'artificial blowhole' aims to make wave energy mainstream

Jesse Orrall  CNET

There's a large cement structure off the coast of King Island in Tasmania, Australia, that looks like some kind of futuristic sound-weapon. But have no fear, it's merely the latest in wave energy technology. Called the UniWave200 and made by Wave Swell Energy, this "artificial blowhole" is a fresh take on a classic wave energy converter known as an oscillating water column.

© Provided by CNET The first UniWave200 off the coast of King Island in Tasmania, Australia Wave Swell Energy

As incoming waves flow into the chamber, air is compressed, which spins a turbine. But while most OWCs are bidirectional, meaning the turbine spins as air is pushed out by the rising waves and when air is sucked back in by the receding waves, the UniWave200 is a little different.

VIDEO New 'artificial blowhole' turns waves into energy and fights erosion

According to Wave Swell Energy Co-Founder and Executive Chair Tom Denniss, scale model tests actually showed a unidirectional turbine was more efficient than previous bidirectional turbines. The increased efficiency of a unidirectional turbine might help the UniWave200 achieve its goal of making wave energy into a mainstream renewable like wind and solar.

Denniss said the UniWave200 also has advantages over previous wave technologies in terms of accessibility and durability. Because the UniWave200 has no moving parts below the surface of the water, damage from the pounding of the waves is less likely and repair teams will have an easier time making fixes.

The UniWave200's potential usefulness extends beyond the realm of green energy. Desalination and hydrogen production could conceivably be built into future UniWave200s, since the basic materials needed for each process -- water and electricity -- are readily available.

But Denniss believes the most urgent use for this technology is as a form of protection from coastal erosion. For low-lying island nations threatened by more severe storms and rising sea levels due to climate change, investment in seawalls could prove to be necessary. With the incorporation of wave energy technology, these potential future seawalls could not only pay for themselves but also generate revenue and green energy for communities on the front lines of the climate crisis.

But first, the UniWave200 at King Island will have to lead the way. The first of its kind anywhere in the world, it's expected to be hooked up to the King Island grid in late February and be generating electricity by the end of March.

Denniss tells me the UniWave200's starting cost is below the starting cost of wind and solar at the same point in its development, and he predicts the cost will decrease at a similar rate as the technology scales up.

Biden revokes Trump orders on 'anarchist' cities and more




President Joe Biden on Wednesday formally revoked a series of presidential orders and memorandum signed by Donald Trump, including one that sought to cut funding from several cities the 45th president deemed “anarchist” havens and another mandating that federal buildings should be designed in a classical esthetic.

Since taking office last month, Biden has revoked dozens of Trump orders and issued dozens more of his own as he’s sought to target foundational aspects of Trump's legacy and promote aspect of his own agenda without going through Congress.

The latest slate of revocations targeted a grab-bag of issues, including a few that Trump signed in his last months in office.

Trump issued a memorandum in September that sought to identify municipal governments that permit “anarchy, violence and destruction in American cities.” The memorandum followed riots during anti-police and anti-racism protests over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. The Justice Department identified New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle as three cities that could have federal funding slashed.

Those cities in turn filed a lawsuit to invalidate the designation and fight off the Trump administration’s efforts to withhold federal dollars.

Seattle city attorney Pete Holmes welcomed the Biden revocation, saying he was “glad to have this nonsense cleared from the decks."

Trump in his “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” intoned that America’s forefathers “wanted public buildings to inspire the American people and encourage civic virtue." The memorandum added that architects should look to “America’s beloved landmark buildings” such as the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Department of the Treasury and the Lincoln Memorial for inspiration.

Another order halted was one Trump issued in the final days of his presidency dubbed the “Ensuring Democratic Accountability in Agency Rulemaking." It called for limiting the ability of federal agency employees in making regulatory decisions.

Biden also revoked a 2018 order that called for agency heads across the government to review welfare programs — such as food stamps, Medicaid and housing aid — and strengthening work requirements for certain recipients.

___

Associated Press writer Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.

Aamer Madhani, The Associated Press

SIM EARTH

Scientists begin building highly accurate digital twin of our planet

ETH ZURICH

Research News

 

To become climate neutral by 2050, the European Union launched two ambitious programmes: "Green Deal" and "DigitalStrategy". As a key component of their successful implementation, climate scientists and computer scientists launched the "Destination Earth" initiative, which will start in mid-?2021 and is expected to run for up to ten years. During this period, a highly accurate digital model of the Earth is to be created, a digital twin of the Earth, to map climate development and extreme events as accurately as possible in space and time.

Observational data will be continuously incorporated into the digital twin in order to make the digital Earth model more accurate for monitoring the evolution and predict possible future trajectories. But in addition to the observation data conventionally used for weather and climate simulations, the researchers also want to integrate new data on relevant human activities into the model. The new "Earth system model" will represent virtually all processes on the Earth's surface as realistically as possible, including the influence of humans on water, food and energy management, and the processes in the physical Earth system.

Information system for decision-?making

The digital twin of the Earth is intended to be an information system that develops and tests scenarios that show more sustainable development and thus better inform policies. "If you are planning a two-?metre high dike in The Netherlands, for example, I can run through the data in my digital twin and check whether the dike will in all likelihood still protect against expected extreme events in 2050," says Peter Bauer, deputy director for Research at the European Centre for Medium-?Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and co-?initiator of Destination Earth. The digital twin will also be used for strategic planning of fresh water and food supplies or wind farms and solar plants.

The driving forces behind Destination Earth are the ECMWF, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). Together with other scientists, Bauer is driving the climate science and meteorological aspects of the Earth's digital twin, but they also rely on the know-?how of computer scientists from ETH Zurich and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), namely ETH professors Torsten Hoefler, from the Institute for High Performance Computing Systems, and Thomas Schulthess, Director of CSCS.

In order to take this big step in the digital revolution, Bauer emphasises the need for earth sciences to be married to the computer sciences. In a recent publication in Nature Computational Science, the team of researchers from the earth and computer sciences discusses which concrete measures they would like to use to advance this "digital revolution of earth-?system sciences", where they see the challenges and what possible solutions can be found.

Weather and climate models as a basis

In their paper, the researchers look back on the steady development of weather models since the 1940s, a success story that took place quietly. Meteorologists pioneered, so to speak, simulations of physical processes on the world's largest computers. As a physicist and computer scientist, CSCS's Schulthess is therefore convinced that today's weather and climate models are ideally suited to identify completely new ways for many more scientific disciplines how to use supercomputers efficiently.

In the past, weather and climate modelling used different approaches to simulate the Earth system. Whereas climate models represent a very broad set of physical processes, they typically neglect small-?scale processes, which, however, are essential for the more precise weather forecasts that in turn, focus on a smaller number of processes. The digital twin will bring both areas together and enable high-?resolution simulations that depict the complex processes of the entire Earth system. But in order to achieve this, the codes of the simulation programmes must be adapted to new technologies promising much enhanced computing power.

With the computers and algorithms available today, the highly complex simulations can hardly be carried out at the planned extremely high resolution of one kilometre because for decades, code development stagnated from a computer science perspective. Climate research benefited from being able to gain higher performance by ways of new generations of processors without having to fundamentally change their programme. This free performance gain with each new processor generation stopped about 10 years ago. As a result, today's programmes can often only utilise 5 per cent of the peak performance of conventional processors (CPU).

For achieving the necessary improvements, the authors emphasize the need of co-?design, i.e. developing hardware and algorithms together and simultaneously, as CSCS successfully demonstrated during the last ten years. They suggest to pay particular attention to generic data structures, optimised spatial discretisation of the grid to be calculated and optimisation of the time step lengths. The scientists further propose to separate the codes for solving the scientific problem from the codes that optimally perform the computation on the respective system architecture. This more flexible programme structure would allow a faster and more efficient switch to future architectures.

Profiting from artificial intelligence

The authors also see great potential in artificial intelligence (AI). It can be used, for example, for data assimilation or the processing of observation data, the representation of uncertain physical processes in the models and data compression. AI thus makes it possible to speed up the simulations and filter out the most important information from large amounts of data. Additionally, the researchers assume that the use of machine learning not only makes the calculations more efficient, but also can help describing the physical processes more accurately.

The scientists see their strategy paper as a starting point on the path to a digital twin of the Earth. Among the computer architectures available today and those expected in the near future, supercomputers based on graphics processing units (GPU) appear to be the most promising option. The researchers estimate that operating a digital twin at full scale would require a system with about 20,000 GPUs, consuming an estimated 20MW of power. For both economic and ecological reasons, such a computer should be operated at a location where CO2-?neutral generated electricity is available in sufficient quantities.

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Cellular seafood

Researchers detail the long chain of events required for cultured seafood to deliver environmental benefits

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA BARBARA

Research News

 Meat alternatives are officially mainstream. To wit, Burger King added the plant-based Impossible Burger to its menu nationwide in 2019, and McDonald's plans to unveil its own McPlant in 2021. Alongside these vegetarian options, many companies are also working to culture meat outside of animals grown from cell lines. Proponents highlight a range of potential environmental and health benefits offered by this emerging industry, and several companies believe that these benefits could also play out with seafood.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers has taken a good, hard look at what it would take for cell-based seafood to deliver conservation benefits. They have compiled their findings into a paper in the journal Fish & Fisheries(link is external) in which they lay out the road map to change, comprising nine distinct steps. The authors contend that cell-based seafood faces a long, narrow path toward recovering fish stocks in the ocean, with success ultimately determined by the complex interplay of behavioral, economic and ecological factors.

"The core question of our work was, can this new technology -- cell-based seafood -- have a conservation benefit in the ocean?" said lead author Ben Halpern(link is external), a professor at UC Santa Barbara's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management and executive director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS).

A team of 12 researchers from UC Santa Barbara converged to answer this question, including economists, ecologists and data scientists as well as experts on fisheries, aquaculture and cell-based meat technology. They brought their expertise and the scientific literature to bear in order to flesh out the key steps along this pathway. Eventually they distilled it to nine significant phases.

The journey begins by developing a viable product and introducing it to the market, where it must then drop to a price competitive with existing seafood. At this point, a significant proportion of consumers have to adopt the new product as a substitute for traditional seafood. This is a key step, the authors said, and particularly tricky to pull off.

The first four steps may be sufficient for the success of a new product, but achieving conservation outcomes is a much longer process. The new product must drive down demand for wild-caught seafood, and the decline in price must pass through a complicated supply chain to fishermen. The drop in price then needs to decrease fishing efforts, which may or may not enable fish stocks to recover. Finally, the ecological impacts of producing cellular seafood can't be greater than those of fishing, the researchers said.

Each of these steps brings with it a variety of hurdles, perhaps none harder than getting consumers to adopt the cultured seafood instead of buying wild-caught fish. Convincing people to take on something new and leave behind something old is a huge challenge, Halpern explained. It's also an understudied part of this process, he added.

Of course, millions of dollars have gone toward studying product adoption and diffusion, coauthor Jason Maier(link is external) pointed out. Researchers pore over the factors that influence a consumer's willingness to try, and ultimately take-up, a new product. The ability to sample the product, it's relative advantage over the item it intends to replace, and how well it suits consumer habits and values all affect the likelihood it will be adopted, he explained.

"So why do we say it is understudied?" Maier asks. "Well, because previous research has primarily focused on only the adoption process." But when it comes to environmental outcomes, substitution for the existing product is as important as adoption of the new one. For instance, many believed that farm-raised fish could release pressure on wild stocks. Instead, what researchers have seen are massive increases in seafood consumption with little direct evidence that aquaculture has reduced fishing pressure.

"The take home is that the pathway to get from creating this technology to more fish in the ocean is long and narrow," said Halpern. "There are a lot of steps that have to happen and the path gets narrower and narrower as you go along. So it's not impossible, but it is difficult for many reasons to get a conservation outcome, in terms of more fish in the ocean, from this cell-based seafood."

Most of these hurdles apply to any consumer-driven intervention in the ocean. It's challenging to harness people's preferences, their buying habits, to drive change. "Trying to use consumer behavior as a way to influence the ocean requires a lot more steps than top-down approaches like regulations," said coauthor Heather Lahr(link is external), the cell-based seafood project manager at UC Santa Barbara's Environmental Market Solutions Lab (emLab).

Society also needs to weigh the costs and impacts of other conservation measures against new technologies like cultured seafood, she added. Strategies like fishery management and marine reserves have already proven their worth.

And while the technologies for culturing beef and swordfish may be similar, the context could scarcely be less alike. Seafood comes from hundreds of species, with different life histories, habitats and diets, Lahr explained. What's more, consumers tend to group many species under a single culinary experience. "For instance, when consumers eat a fish taco they are expecting a white flaky fish which could be anything from farm raised tilapia to locally sourced halibut," Lahr said. Compare that with beef, which primarily comes from one species: Bos taurus, the European, or "taurine," cattle.

And, unlike terrestrial meats, seafood still comes primarily from the wild. Humans have less control over fish stocks than livestock, and fishing activity responds to consumer, economic and environmental changes differently than ranching. Fishermen also fall under different regulations than farmers.

There's also a mismatch between the fish that could benefit most from this technology and the species that the industry is focusing on. Financially important stocks and popular seafood items, like tuna and salmon, are typically already well managed, Lahr said.

"The stocks where the need is greatest are not actually where the clean seafood technology, the cell-based seafood companies, are focusing their efforts," Halpern added, "because there's not much money in those species." For instance, fish like anchovies and sardines used for feed and oil may be able to benefit more from cell-based technologies, but currently the price point for these species is too low to make the investment worthwhile.

This paper is one of several upcoming studies exploring the conservation benefits of cell-based seafood. The team will further investigate the possibilities of demand-driven conservation interventions and review the impacts that the rise of aquiculture has had on fisheries and wild stocks. They also plan to dive further into understanding how and why consumers change their behavior when confronted with new products. The initiative is part of a joint project(link is external) between NCEAS and emLab.

Halpern believes that, if society truly applies its resources toward developing technology to address a challenge, it will likely find one. "But whether the technology will actually achieve the intended outcome depends on so many other steps," he said. "So we need to think carefully through all those steps before counting on any particular solution to deliver the outcome we hope for."

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