GREEN CAPITALI$M

Carbon capture innovator completes 

£8m funding round
February 26, 2021

Tom White, C-Capture CEO


Carbon capture technology company C-Capture has announced that it has completed an £8 million ($11.13 million) funding round supported by existing shareholders IP Group, Drax, and bp Ventures, with additional funding from the British Business Bank’s Future Fund.

The investment reflects the confidence of the C-Capture board in C-Capture’s carbon capture technology and the Government’s support for companies who have the potential to help solve the climate crisis.

C-Capture has patented a unique, solvent-based technology that offers a safe, low-cost way to remove carbon dioxide from emissions using a post-combustion capture approach. It provides a means to make the removal of carbon dioxide significantly more economic from a range of large-scale processes, such as power generation from coal, gas and biomass, and the production of cement, steel, and aluminium.

C-Capture is one of the technologies being evaluated as part of a pilot programme at Drax, to demonstrate carbon-negative power production. C-Capture was recently recognised by bp’s advancing low carbon programme and was highlighted in a recent UK government report as an important emerging carbon capture technology.



C-Capture was founded in 2009 as a spin-out from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Leeds with backing from IP Group.

Tom White, C-Capture CEO, said: “Additional investment from our shareholders supports C-Capture in further optimising its carbon capture technology, improving performance whilst driving down costs. The benefits our technology can offer over current state-of-the-art carbon capture technologies may help deployment across a range of sectors to be accelerated. Securing this round of investment allows our technical team to really focus on developing a product that will change the way the world thinks about carbon capture.”

Ben Murphy, investment director at IP Group and C-Capture Director, said: “C-Capture is a testament to the potential for new science to shape the world for the better. C-Capture has the potential to be one of the most impactful startups in the world’s future energy system. At IP Group we are proud to have been there from the beginning, helping to build the company up from its foundations.”

Jason Shipstone, chief innovation officer at Drax Group and C-Capture Director, said: “Carbon removal technologies are essential in addressing the climate crisis. Drax and C-Capture will continue to work together to develop the vital negative emissions technology, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, expected to make a significant contribution towards the UK reaching its legally binding net zero by 2050 target.”

Martin Sellers, low carbon digital technology principal at bp and C-Capture Director, said: “Carbon capture is an essential technology for the energy transition, as according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) Sustainable Development Scenario, it will account for 7% of the cumulative emissions reductions needed globally by 2040. bp ventures recognises C-Capture’s progress in developing the technology, and in helping to meet that important target.”

THAT YOU WERE WARNED ABOUT

Unforeseen circumstances to blame

 for Texas electricity fiasco

February 27, 2021

During an emergency board meeting of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), Bill Magness, ERCOT CEO, outlined the events that took place between February 14 and 18 that ultimately led to the humanitarian crisis that many Texas residents are still in the midst of now.

An oversimplified view of the Texas electricity market

First of all, it’s necessary to understand how the electricity market works in Texas. It’s a free market. The players in the market are the electricity generators and the utilities who control the poles and wires and serve the customers. Then there is the system operator that works between the two. That system operator is ERCOT. (The customers buy their electricity from retail electricity providers who buy it from the generators themselves but that’s beside the point for this article.)

Think of ERCOT as an orchestra conductor, directing instruments to turn up or turn down as needed to keep the grid in balance. (Remember that with electricity, you have to keep supply and demand perfectly balanced at all times.)

Because it’s a free market with little regulation, the conductor (ERCOT) does not have the authority to impose fees or set rules for the generators. For example, ERCOT is not allowed to tell a particular generator that they won’t be able to play in the orchestra if they don’t do XYZ. Instead, ERCOT relies on market prices to serve as motivation to keep those generator plants humming along as much as they can. That way, if and when some generators can’t provide energy (there is less supply), the price for electricity goes up so those that CAN provide, do and reap the rewards of being online at the right time. In fact, it is these “scarcity events” that help drive the development of new generation, so in general, they are not a bad thing.

Overall, the market works very well in normal conditions. Most Texans will tell you they have very low electricity prices as a result of being deregulated.

Load Shed Ordered by Transmission Owner

At certain times, however, there just isn’t enough supply, no matter how high the price goes, and that’s when ERCOT’s only tool is to shed demand. To do that, it orders the utilities to turn off power to certain customers based on the number of megawatts their customers use (see chart). Utilities have plans for this and understand how they will do that fairly and in the most equitable way possible. For example, they don’t want to shut down hospitals or other critical care facilities. In a normal emergency, this load shed can be distributed across a service territory, so a certain subset of customers only lose power for a couple of hours, then they are turned back on and another neighborhood goes dark for a couple of hours.

But what happened in Texas on February 14-18, 2021 was an event that was not foreseen and could not have been predicted mostly because of the sheer numbers involved. Because the temps were so cold and so many generators couldn’t generate electricity (another article for another time) ERCOT turned to rolling blackouts. But, the rolling blackouts that should normally only last a couple of hours turned into multiple days and that led to all kinds of disastrous consequences.

February 2011 compared to February 2021

While many stakeholders are crying foul because the event was precedented by a similar cold snap in February 2011 that led to rolling blackouts — and there are some similarities to the events of February 1-5, 2011 — the numbers are staggeringly different. Let’s look:

	2011	2021
Maximum generation capacity forced out at any given time (MW)	14,702	52,277
Generation forced out one hour before the start of EEA3 (MW)	1,182	2,489
Cumulative generation capacity forced out through the event	29,729	46,249
Cumulative number of generators unable to perform throughout the event	193	356
Cumulative gas generation de-rated due to supply issues	1,282	9,323
Lowest frequency	59.58	59.30
Maximum load shed requested (MW)	4,000	20,000
Duration of load shed requested (hours)	7.5	70.5
Estimated peak load without load shed	59,000	76,818

The numbers that are most striking are load shed and duration. This time around, ERCOT requested 5X the amount of load be shed and for almost 10X longer. And that doesn’t correlate with the temperature. It was not 10X colder. It wasn’t even 5X colder. And the cold didn’t last 10X as long, it didn’t even last 5X as long.

Look at the numbers:

Number of Consecutive Hours Below Freezing 2011 VS 2021

Location	2011	2021
DFW	101	140
Austin	69	162
Houston	34	44

Finally, in his report, Magness outlined what recommendations were implemented after the 2011 event. He said the entity made the following modifications:

• Implemented the Seasonal Assessment of Resource Adequacy report that includes an analysis for extreme winter weather.
• Began a resource weatherization process that includes an annual workshop, review of resource weatherization plans and spot checks of facilities.
• Added additional staff (Shift Engineer and Resource Reliability Desk) in the control room.
• Modified the Ancillary Services procurement to allow additional procurement in anticipation of severe weather.
• Established the Gas Electric Working Group and created a notification procedure for QSEs to notify ERCOT if there are anticipated fuel restrictions.
• Modified the survey sent to natural gas generators that collects fuel switching capability for some resources in preparation for each winter season.
• Changed the rules and processes for withdrawing approval of resource outages in anticipation of severe weather.

It’s also important to understand what would happen if they didn’t shed that load and the grid completely failed. In this case, all power to all facilities would be off – no cell phones, no hospitals, no banks, nothing. And to get the grid back up and running after an event like that would take weeks.

No doubt, experts will be studying the events that took place February 14-18, 2021 for a very long time. ERCOT is still awaiting generator reports that will help it begin to dissect why so many electricity generators were unable to perform. They know that lack of weatherization played a role, but they would like a full report. And, there’s the market aspect to contend with. When those electricity prices shot up to $9000 per MWh (the market cap), those who still were receiving electricity were hit with massive bills, which could ultimately affect every single customer in Texas.

Originally published on power-eng.com

Electric firm Griddy loses access to Texas grid, customers shifted to rivals


By Gary McWilliams


HOUSTON (Reuters) - Texas’s grid operator on Friday shut Griddy Energy LLC’s access to the state’s power network for unpaid bills and shifted its 10,000 customers to other utilities, as new signs of a financial crisis rose after a state-wide blackout.

Griddy was the power marketer that sold consumers electricity at wholesale rates, which rose to $9,000 per megawatt hour as cold weather struck the state last week. Unable to cope with demand, utilities cut power to 4.3 million residents as temperatures fell below freezing.

Grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) “effectively shut down Griddy,” the electricity marketer said in a statement on its website. Requests for further comment were not returned.

ERCOT separately said $2.1 billion of its service bills went unpaid from utility and other grid users on Friday, another sign of the devastation from high electricity rates during the cold snap.

Griddy’s statement said it accounted for “a tiny fraction” of ERCOT’s unpaid bills.

ERCOT was transferring about 10,100 Griddy customers to others on Friday. Retail power providers that do not pay invoices within 72 hours can have all their customers reassigned.

The grid operator’s handling of the severe weather fueled a firestorm of criticism from residents and state officials who blamed ERCOT for lack of preparation for the severe cold. ERCOT called on utilities to cut power to protect the grid, which left 4.3 million people without heat or light and led to billions of dollars in damages.

ERCOT will likely face more shortfalls in coming days, said Patrick Woodson, chief executive of power marketer Green Energy Exchange. His firm is among nine companies protesting multimillion dollar blackout fees levied by ERCOT.

“The price of surviving the first wave of these high bills is you get hit with additional costs in the second wave,” said Woodson. ERCOT spreads unpaid fees among remaining grid users.

The grid operator said it will cover $800 million of the shortfall by borrowing from internal accounts, and will draw an undisclosed amount from grid users with credit balances. An ERCOT spokeswoman did not reply to requests for comment.

Vistra Corp., the largest retail electric provider in the United States, said its TXU unit in Texas “volunteered to take on significantly more customers” expecting a wave of transfers after the outages.

“There often are opportunities to acquire retailers after events of volatility. As always, we will continue to be opportunistic when looking to purchase smaller customer books,” spokeswoman Meranda Cohn said in an email.

Seven of ERCOT’s 15 directors resigned this week and a nominee withdrew. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has said public anger was justified and blamed ERCOT for not acting faster to keep generators from going offline.


Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien, Grant McCool, Daniel Wallis and William Mallard

CLASS ACTION SEEKS $1 BILLION —
Texas woman sues Griddy after being charged $9,546 for 19 days of power

Griddy blames state agency as variable-rate plans produce outrageous power bills.

JON BRODKIN - 2/26/2021

Enlarge / The US and Texas flags fly in front of high-voltage transmission towers on February 21, 2021 in Houston, Texas. Getty Images | Justin Sullivan

A Texas woman who was charged $9,546 for power this month has filed a class-action lawsuit against Griddy, alleging that the variable-rate electricity provider violated a state law against price gouging during disasters.

Lisa Khoury, a retiree in Mont Belvieu, signed up with Griddy in June 2019 and typically received monthly bills of $200 to $250 until this month's power disaster sent rates soaring. Griddy charged Khoury and her husband $9,546 from February 1 to 19, 2021, the lawsuit said, noting that "some customers received bills as high as $17,000."


FURTHER READING Deep in the heart of Texas’ collapsing power grid

Khoury's lawsuit, filed Monday in Harris County District Court, seeks certification of a class of thousands of Texas residents who bought power from Griddy, claiming they're entitled to damages of over $1 billion.

"Griddy's charging of excessive prices for electricity with their variable-rate plan is unconscionable," the lawsuit said. "An unconscionable act [as defined by Texas law] 'takes advantage of the lack of knowledge, ability, experience, or capacity of the consumer to a grossly unfair degree.' Khoury and Class Members are unsophisticated consumers. They chose Griddy, a wholesale electricity provider, to pay less. Variable-rate plans, however, are a gamble and unpredictable. Consumers rarely understand the risks. Griddy took advantage of this lack of knowledge to a grossly unfair degree when selling these plans."

The lawsuit further says that Griddy should have "had a system in place to prevent its customers from being charged excessive prices and taken aggressive steps to prevent it." The lawsuit alleged that Griddy violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which outlaws "taking advantage of a disaster" by charging excessive prices for necessities, and that it is guilty of negligence and unjust enrichment.

Griddy: It’s not our fault

In a statement to The Dallas Morning News, Griddy said it is not at fault because "Griddy passes through the wholesale electricity price to customers without mark-up. The prices charged are the direct result of the non-market prices ordered by the PUCT [Public Utility Commission of Texas] last week. The lawsuit is meritless and we plan to vigorously defend it."

Griddy further defended its pricing in a statement on its website on February 18. Griddy said that PUCT "cited its 'complete authority over ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)' to direct that ERCOT set pricing at $9/kWh until the grid could manage the outage situation after being ravaged by the freezing winter storm."

The statement continued:

Under ERCOT's market rules, such a pricing scenario is only enforced when available generation is about to run out (they usually leave a cushion of around 1,000 MW). This is the energy market that Griddy was designed for—one that allows consumers the ability to plan their usage based on the highs and lows of wholesale energy and shift their usage to the cheapest time periods.

However, the PUCT changed the rules on Monday.

As of today (Thursday, February 18), 99 percent of homes have their power restored and available generation was well above the 1,000 MW cushion. Yet, the PUCT left the directive in place and continued to force prices to $9/kWh, approximately 300x higher than the normal wholesale price. For a home that uses 2,000 kWh per month, prices at $9/kWh work out to over $640 per day in energy charges. By comparison, that same household would typically pay $2 per day.

A subsequent statement from Griddy said the company is "engaging with ERCOT and the PUCT seeking customer relief... and is committed to crediting customers for any relief received, dollar-for-dollar." Customers who contact Griddy are getting an auto-reply email that says, "We will fight for, and alongside, our customers for accountability into why prices were allowed to remain so high for so long." Griddy is also directing customers toward an application for its deferred payment plan.

We asked Griddy if it has any further response to the lawsuit and will update this article if we get an answer.

Griddy withdrew $1,200 from bank account

Khoury's lawsuit noted that Griddy customers pay a $10 monthly fee plus "the cost of spot power trades on Texas's power grid based on the time of day they use power." Khoury generally kept a $150 balance in her Griddy account to pay bills. After the storm hit, "Griddy automatically withdrew from Khoury's bank account each time her electricity bill hit the recharge amount of $150. From February 13 to 18, 2021, Griddy withdrew eight times from Khoury's bank account, $150 each time. By Friday, February 19, 2021, Griddy withdrew a total of $1,200 from Khoury's bank account."A

Khoury placed a stop payment on her bank account to prevent further withdrawals but "still owed Griddy an additional $8,235," the lawsuit said.

"Griddy charged Khoury in the middle of a disaster," the complaint said. "She and her husband mostly were without power in their home from Wednesday, February 17, 2021 to Thursday, February 18, 2021. At the same time, Khoury hosted her parents and in-laws, who are in their 80s, during the storm. Even then, she continued to minimize any power usage because of the high prices."

The lawsuit said that Griddy can be "held accountable and liable for price gouging" during a disaster under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, even though "Griddy attempted to justify the price increases as being a result of the wholesale power market and places the burden on customers to track market prices."

Griddy failed to take steps that could have prevented the large bills, the lawsuit said: "Griddy had the ability, capacity, and contractual right to prevent charging customers excessive prices during the disaster. Griddy controlled its services and platform and oversaw pricing and contracting."

Griddy emailed 29,000 customers on February 14, suggesting they switch to a different power company with a fixed rate, the lawsuit said. However, the lawsuit said, "Customers could not switch providers because other providers were not accepting new customers due to the storm. Khoury attempted to change providers on Tuesday, February 16, 2021 and was initially told service could only start in a week. Persistent under pressure, Khoury was able to change providers on Friday, February 19, 2021."

Lt. Gov: “Read the fine print”

Khoury's lawsuit quoted government officials who spoke out against the high power bills, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who said, "No power company should get a windfall because of a natural disaster, and Texans shouldn't get hammered by ridiculous rate increases for last week's energy debacle."

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Fox News that "people who are getting those big bills are people who gambled on a very, very low rate, and it would go up with the power [costs]."

Patrick said the government will take some kind of action, potentially including ending variable-rate plans. "Going forward, people need to read the fine print in those kinds of bills, and we may even end that type of variable plan because people were surprised," he said.


JON BRODKIN is Ars Technica's senior IT reporter, covering the FCC and broadband, telecommunications, tech policy, and more.

Bots hyped up GameStop on major social media platforms, analysis finds

By Michelle Price

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bots on major social media platforms have been hyping up GameStop Corp and other “meme” stocks, according to an analysis by Massachusetts-based cyber security company PiiQ Media, suggesting organized economic or foreign actors may have played a role in the Reddit-driven trading frenzy.

Shares of GameStop soared last month after Reddit users banded together to squeeze hedge funds that had bet against the video game retailer and other companies. Reddit Chief Executive Steve Huffman told Congress this month that bots, artificial or fake accounts with automated content, had not played a “significant role” in GameStop Reddit message traffic.

PiiQ Media’s analysis of Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc, Instagram and YouTube posts, however, found that bots used the platforms to push GameStop and other “meme” stocks, although it is unclear how influential they were in the overall saga.

A startup that focuses on social media risks, PiiQ said it examined patterns of keywords such as “Hold the Line” and GameStop’s stock symbol, “GME,” across conversations and profiles prior to the Jan. 28 frenzy, through Feb. 18. For comparison, it also assessed posts on an unrelated set of stocks.

PiiQ said it identified very similar daily “start and stop patterns” in the GameStop-related posts, with activity starting at the beginning of the trading day, followed by a large spike at the end of the trading day. Such patterns are indicative of bots, said Aaron Barr, co-founder and chief technology officer of PiiQ.

“We saw clear patterns of artificial behavior across the other four social media platforms. When you think of organic content, it’s variable in the day, variable day-to-day. It doesn’t have the exact same pattern every day for a month,” he said.

Based on its authenticity scoring system, PiiQ estimates there are tens of thousands of bot accounts hyping GameStop, the meme stocks, and Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency swept up in the frenzy. Thousands of fake accounts can be purchased for as little as $200, it said.

The company did not analyze Reddit data, but Barr said he would expect to see a similar pattern of activity on Reddit, indicating bot-like or coordinated management of conversations.

A representative for Reddit did not comment beyond Huffman’s testimony. Representatives for YouTube, Facebook and its Instagram subsidiary did not respond to requests for comment. The social media platforms generally try to weed out harmful bots, said Barr.


A representative of Twitter said “bots” had become a catch-all term that can often mischaracterize the nature of the account. The company notes bots can be used on its platform for creative or innovative purposes.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is probing the GameStop saga and on Friday suspended trading in 15 companies due to unusual trading activity and apparent attempts on social media to artificially inflate their stock prices. That is in addition to six stocks it recently suspended due to suspicious social media activity.

“We proactively monitor for suspicious trading activity tied to stock promotions on social media, and act quickly to stop that trading,” the SEC’s acting enforcement director, Melissa Hodgman, said in a statement on Friday.

In addition to traders, organized criminals may use social media to stoke asset prices, and undermining the integrity of U.S. markets is a known goal of hostile state actors, said Barr. But it is unclear how successful, if at all, these types of influence efforts are, he said.

“Measuring the effect of those campaigns is often illusive.”


Reporting by Michelle Price in Washington; Editing by Dan Grebler and Matthew Lewis

MAKE THE SAUDI'S PAY

Yemen's children starve as U.N. seeks billions to avoid vast 'man-made' famine


By Abdulrahman al-Ansi, Michelle Nichols


SANAA/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ahmadiya Juaidi’s eyes are wide as she drinks a nutrition shake from a large orange mug, her thin fingers grasping the handle. Her hair is pulled back and around her neck hangs a silver necklace with a heart and the letter A.

Three weeks ago the 13-year-old weighed just nine kilograms (20 pounds) when she was admitted to al-Sabeen hospital in Yemen’s capital Sanaa with malnutrition that sickened her for at least the past four years. Now she weighs 15 kilograms.

“I am afraid when we go back to the countryside her condition will deteriorate again due to lack of nutritional food. We have no income,” her older brother, Muhammad Abdo Taher Shami, told Reuters.

They are among some 16 million Yemenis - more than half the population of the Arabian Peninsula country - that the United Nations says are going hungry. Of those, five million are on the brink of famine, U.N. aid chief Mark Lowcock warns.

On Monday the United Nations hopes to raise some $3.85 billion at a virtual pledging event to avert what Lowcock says would be a large-scale “man-made” famine, the worst the world will have seen for decades.

More than six years of war in Yemen - widely seen as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran - have sent the impoverished country spiraling into what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Some 80% of Yemenis need help, with 400,000 children under the age of five severely malnourished, according to U.N. data. For much of its food, the country relies on imports that have been badly disrupted over the years by all warring parties.

“Before the war Yemen was a poor country with a malnutrition problem, but it was one which had a functioning economy, a government that provided services to quite a lot of its people, a national infrastructure and an export base,” Lowcock told reporters. “The war has largely destroyed all of that.”

“In the modern world famines are basically about people having no income and then other people blocking efforts to help them. That’s basically what we’ve got in Yemen,” he added.

HUNGER VS PANDEMIC

A Saudi Arabia-led military coalition intervened in Yemen in 2015 after the Iran-allied Houthi group ousted the country’s government from Sanaa. The Houthis say they are fighting a corrupt system. The people’s suffering has been worsened by an economic and currency collapse, and by the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.N. officials are trying to revive peace talks, and new U.S. President Joe Biden has said Yemen is a priority, declaring a halt to U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign and demanding the war “has to end.”

Twelve aid groups, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Care International, have warned that 2.3 million children under the age of five in Yemen will go hungry this year if governments do not step up their funding on Monday.

Muhsin Siddiquey, Oxfam’s country director in Yemen, recounted a conversation with an 18-year-old woman, displaced by the conflict and living in a camp in northern Yemen.

“She said that the coronavirus pandemic gives us two cruel choices: either we stay home and we die from hunger, or we go out and then die from the disease,” Siddiquey told Reuters.

Official figures vastly underestimate the spread of COVID-19 in Yemen, according to the United Nations and aid agencies.

In 2018 and 2019, the United Nations prevented famine due to a well-funded aid appeal, which included large donations from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

In 2020 the United Nations only received just over half the $3.4 billion it needed, which Lowcock said was largely due to smaller contributions from Gulf countries. He urged them to pledge generously for 2021 and pay quickly.

The United Arab Emirates said on Friday it would pledge $230 million for 2021.

Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in Dubai; Writing by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Mary Milliken and Daniel Wallis

WHO COMPLAIN ABOUT $15 MINIMUM WAGE

AMC Entertainment approves millions in bonuses to top executives


(Reuters) - AMC Entertainment Holdings has approved millions in bonuses to its top executives and eligible employees as a means to preserve stockholder value during the COVID-19 pandemic, the theater operator said.

In a regulatory filing on Friday, the company said Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron would receive $3.75 million as bonus, while other top executives are entitled to bonuses of $173,000 to $507,000.

The move comes at a time when cinema chains like AMC have taken a blow due to coronavirus-led restrictions that caused delays in film releases. The company staved off bankruptcy through a debt restructuring deal last year.

Shares of the Leawood, Kansas-based company were also one of the “stonks” whose wild ride captivated investors several weeks ago and during which its share price surged more than 860% compared with the beginning of the year, at its highest.

AMC’s shares closed down 3.4% at $8.01 on Friday.


Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel

White House restores key climate measure calculating carbon's harm

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Friday announced a major change in how the federal government will calculate and weigh the cost of climate change in its permitting, investment and regulatory decisions with a move to restore the “social cost of greenhouse gases,” which had been slashed under the Trump administration.

Heather Boushey, a member of the Council of Economic Advisers said that the Biden administration will restore price estimates made before 2017 of about $50 per ton of greenhouse gases emitted from $10 or less per ton used by the Trump administration.

“This interim step will enable federal agencies to immediately and more appropriately account for climate impacts in their decision-making while we continue the process of bringing the best, most up-to-date science and economics to the estimation of the social costs of greenhouse gases,” Boushey wrote in a White House blog.

The Bush administration first implemented the “social cost of greenhouse gases” and the practice was standardized under former President Barack Obama.

It has been used in rule-making processes and permitting decisions to estimate the economic damages associated with a rise in greenhouse gas emissions in areas ranging from agricultural productivity and property damage from increased flood risk.

The Obama administration had created an Interagency Working Group of technical experts across the government to develop uniform estimates, subject to public comment. The group will work to develop a new estimate in months.

Richard Revesz, a professor at New York University School of Law, said restoring the previous calculation should provide a blueprint to calculate a new one that incorporates the latest” developments in science and economics”.

Economists Nicholas Stern and Joseph Stiglitz this week said that the Working Group should not “settle on anything much below $100 per ton by 2030 for the social cost of carbon” when it replaces the interim number to be able to achieve the goals of the Paris agreement, limiting the rise of global temperatures to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Reporting by Valerie Volcovici

Attack of the Murder Hornets is a nature doc shot through horror/sci-fi lens | Ars Technica

Director Michael Paul Stephenson brings his unique sensibility to documentary genre.

JENNIFER OUELLETTE - 2/23/2021, 1:59 PM

Enlarge / "What are you looking at?" The Asian Giant Hornet, aka a "murder hornet," is not to be trifled with.

Gary Alpert

In November 2019, a beekeeper in Blaine, Washington, named Ted McFall was horrified to discover thousands of tiny mutilated bodies littering the ground—an entire colony of his honeybees had been brutally decapitated. The culprit: the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia), a species native to southeast Asia and parts of the Russian far East. Somehow, these so-called "murder hornets" had found their way to the Pacific Northwest, where they were posing a dire ecological threat to North American honeybee populations.

The story of the quest to track and eradicate the hornets before their numbers became overwhelming is the subject of a new documentary: Attack of the Murder Hornets, now streaming on Discovery+. Featuring genuine suspense, a colorful cast of characters crossing socioeconomic lines, and a tone that draws on classic horror and science fiction movies, it's one of the best nature documentaries you're likely to see this year.

Asian giant hornets are what's known as apex predators, sporting enormous mandibles that they use to rip the heads off their prey and remove the tasty thoraxes (which include muscles that power the bee's wings for flying and movement). A single hornet can decapitate 20 bees in one minute, and just a handful can wipe out 30,000 bees in 90 minutes. The hornet has a venomous, extremely painful sting—and its stinger is long enough to puncture traditional beekeeping suits. Conrad Berube, a beekeeper and entomologist who had the misfortune to be stung seven times while exterminating a murder hornet nest, told The New York Times, "It was like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh." And while Japanese honeybees, for example, have evolved defenses against the murder hornet, North American honeybees have not, as the slaughter of McFall's colony aptly demonstrated.

Director Michael Paul Stephenson's credits include two documentaries: Best Worst Movie—about his experience co-starring in the 1990 cult comedy/horror film Troll 2—and The American Scream. So when he pitched his idea for a documentary about the murder hornets to Discovery, some of that horror sensibility crept in, including B-movie-inspired artwork showing a gigantic hornet menacing beekeepers and scientists.

"I've watched a lot of documentaries, and a lot of them, it's interview, B-roll, interview, B-roll, political statement, theme," he told Ars. Stephenson wanted to do something different and shoot his murder hornet documentary through a horror/sci-fi lens.

Enlarge / Attack of the Murder Hornets is a nature documentary viewed through the lens of science fiction and horror. Discovery Plus

Among those featured in Attack of the Murder Hornets: Chris Looney, an entomologist with the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA); McFall and fellow beekeeper Ruthie Danielson; a government scientist and insect expert named Sven-Erik Spichiger; and Berube, who was the first to find and destroy a murder hornet nest in Vancouver Island, Canada. Stephenson's team chronicled the race against the breeding clock to find and destroy a similar hornet nest in Washington state.

CLICK ON TITLE TO GO TO INTERVIEW WITH PAUL STEPHENSON

LONG READ.

Garden-variety germs may explode in COVID’s wake, study suggests

In coronavirus's wake, garden-variety germs may come roaring back.

BETH MOLE - 2/23/2021 ARS TECHNICA

Young children go back to kindergarten following COVID-19 lockdown.

In our cushy COVID bubbles, our immune systems may be getting soft.

Physical distancing, lockdowns, masking, and spirited sanitizing all mean we are coming into contact with fewer garden-variety germs than normal. This year’s flu season was basically cancelled.

While that may seem like a welcome reprieve from seasonal ailments and pesky sniffles, experts fear that our immune systems may be losing their defensive edge in the lull. And with the usual microscopic suspects lying in wait for our return to some sense of normalcy, it could mean that nasty bursts of common colds and flu-like illnesses are in our post-COVID futures—ones that may not be avoidable even if we carry on with some of our COVID precautions.

That seems to be what played out in Hong Kong. In an analysis published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers noted a dramatic burst of upper respiratory infections there shortly after children returned to schools and daycares in October 2020. The outbreaks erupted even though teachers and students were still following strict COVID precautions.

“Staff and students wore face masks at all times; lunch hours were cancelled, desks were spaced out, and group activities were limited,” the researchers noted.

Still, by the end of November, the researchers tallied 482 outbreaks of upper respiratory infections in schools. Of the outbreaks, 308 were in primary schools and 149 were in kindergartens, childcare centers, and nursery schools. The remaining 25 were in secondary schools. With the widespread outbreaks, officials began calling for territory-wide school closures in mid to late November.

When researchers looked at laboratory testing on the specific germs behind the snotty surge, they found no infections from the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, and no infections with influenza viruses. Instead, the testing pointed to rhinoviruses and enteroviruses—culprits of the common cold and other similarly mild infections.

Roaring back

The researchers hypothesize that the burst of bothersome bugs was born out of immune responses in the children waning while in-person learning was largely shut down between January and late September. A cross-sectional survey had earlier suggested that 75 percent of school children did not have contact with people outside their households while they were out of school.

As cases of colds and flu-like illnesses plummeted during that time, “population susceptibility to rhinoviruses and other respiratory viruses, including influenza viruses, might have been increasing over time because persons were likely less exposed to the viruses when intense social distancing measures, including school dismissals, were implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the researchers suggest. “This would have increased transmission potential when schools resumed.”

They note that a similar surge in common colds was seen in adults in England a few weeks after schools reopened there in September.
“Nonpharmaceutical interventions might differ”

As for how the viruses still managed to spread with the COVID-19 precautions in place in the reopened schools, the researchers have another hypothesis: basically, COVID precautions don’t work well against common cold germs. For example, face masks have been shown to successfully block coronaviruses and influenza viruses—but they’re less effective at blocking rhinoviruses. And rhinoviruses are hardier than coronaviruses and influenza viruses when it comes to withstanding disinfectants.

Generally, different respiratory viruses use the same set of transmission modes (surfaces, respiratory droplets, etc.), but “how much each mode contributes to transmission of a specific virus remains unclear; therefore, the effectiveness of certain nonpharmaceutical interventions might differ between viruses,” the researchers write. In other words, masks and disinfection may be highly effective against flu viruses and SARS-CoV-2, but they may not be as effective against your standard snotty-kid germs.

“Our findings highlight the increased risk posed by common cold viruses in locations where schools have been closed or dismissed for extended periods during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the researchers conclude.


BETH MOLE is Ars Technica’s health reporter. She’s interested in biomedical research, infectious disease, health policy and law, and has a Ph.D. in microbiology.