Scientists researching strange appearance of Arctic salmon asking fishers to send in their catches

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Salmon in the Arctic have increased a lot since 2016, says researcher

CBC News · Posted: Aug 02, 2021 5:00 AM CT | Last Updated: August 2

Atlantic salmon found in the North. The Arctic Salmon Project has been documenting unusual fish caught by community-based harvesters. (Derwin Parr)

Scientists looking at salmon found in Arctic waters are still asking northern harvesters and fishers to submit any unusual catches in exchange for compensation.

It's part of the Arctic Salmon Project, which is a collaborative effort involving Fisheries and Oceans Canada, scientists from the South and local hunters and trappers organizations. 

The idea of the project, said Darcy McNicholl, a biologist with the fisheries and oceans department, is to document the unusual fish being caught by community-based harvesters.

• Study says pink salmon could prosper in warmer Arctic waters

"We encourage fishermen who catch something that they've never seen before to turn it in for a gift cards so that we can dissect it and answer questions that the communities might have," McNicholl said.

That could include questions about what they're eating, where they're coming from and whether they carry diseases. 

Salmon can be a good indicator of change in the Canadian Arctic, McNicholl said.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been studying salmon populations in the Arctic since 2000, and collects samples every year as part of the Arctic Salmon Project. In 2019, 2,400 salmon were submitted to the department. The year before, less than 100 salmon were collected.

Darcy McNicholl is a biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada. (Submitted by Darcy McNicholl)

McNicholl said prior to 2016, on average there would be maybe a couple 100 each year.

But the work of a masters student doing traditional knowledge work in the N.W.T. suggests there were large numbers of salmon around the 1960s, she said. 

"So, salmon harvest has been occurring in the Northwest Territories before."

Warmer waters

Salmon have been around the Arctic for a number of years but the number has increased a lot since 2016, and 2019 was a busy year, said McNicholl. She said it could be partly because of the rising temperature of water in the South.

"It's pushing salmon into cooler waters, where their eggs can rear, and they can tolerate the cooler temperatures," she explained. "Or they could be following their food, or both."

In any case, McNicholl said the increase in salmon in the last several years is new and scientists are still working out what exactly is driving salmon up North.

• Salmon frenzy in western Arctic reaches historic high

As part of the project, locals in various communities — like Ooloosie Aningmiuk and her husband in Kinngait, Nunavut — were trained to collect and receive salmon in various communities. The pair has been helping the department for the past two years.

Aningmiuk said they help monitor the fish that are caught, and the temperature and salt level of the water.

"Being Inuit, we would like to know what we eat, what the water condition is, what the food is like," she said.

"We would like to know how the food is, if they are evolving, or if there are new species."

'Unusual' fish appearances

McNicholl said salmon might not be the only creatures making their way North.

Once, one of the project's conservationists reported this sighting of a salmon shark — normally only found in Alaska — in Kuglutuk, Nunavut.

"That was very unusual," McNicholl said. "Somehow this one made it all the way into western Nunavut." 

She added that pink salmon are expanding in all directions across the Canadian North.

McNicholl said the work to learn more about fish species in the Arctic is important because sometimes they aren't new — they just haven't often been spotted.

"We're still learning all the different species that occur, and some of them are really rare," she said.

"It's important for us to work with the communities to find out, you know, is this brand new to the Arctic? Or is this just a rare species that isn't often found? Because it's an important distinction to make."

Indigenous Australians

Rio Tinto’s alleged underpayment of traditional owners of WA mine area sparks calls for widespread review


Pat Dodson says power imbalance between mining companies and Indigenous communities in Australia should be addressed

The alleged underpayment by Rio Tinto concerns a 1997 agreement over the Yandicoogina iron ore mine in Western Australia. 

Photograph: Christian Sprogoe/AFP/Getty Images


Calla Wahlquist
@callapilla
Mon 2 Aug 2021

Senator Pat Dodson has called for a widespread audit of Indigenous land use agreements after traditional owners in the Pilbara found they may have been underpaid by as much as $400m by the mining giant Rio Tinto.

The alleged underpayment concerns a 1997 agreement over the Yandicoogina mine near Newman in Western Australia. Rio Tinto wrote to traditional owners, the Gumala Aboriginal Corporation (GAC), last July informing them it had identified an underpayment issue dating back several years, enclosing a $40m cheque.

The GAC requested a forensic audit, which was delivered last week. According to The Australian, it identified that Rio may have underpaid GAC by as much as $400m over the life of the agreement.

The agreement provided compensation for ground disturbance at the iron ore mine, not a simple royalty payment. The disagreement reportedly centres on Rio’s historically narrow interpretation of what is meant by ground disturbance.


No more welcome to country for Rio Tinto, Indigenous owners say

Rio confirmed it received the audit report last week and said it was in “ongoing talks with Gumala Aboriginal Corporation in an effort to resolve this issue, related to historical payment for infrastructure ground disturbance”.

Dodson said the federal government should properly resource traditional owners and Aboriginal corporations to allow them to detect underpayments.

“It is disconcerting that this incredible underpayment was only discovered as a result of an audit that was prompted by the traditional owners,” he said.

“In light of this, and due to the power imbalance between mining companies and traditional owners, doubt is cast over similar such royalties arrangements, and it’s time for us to consider the need for audits of arrangements across the board.

“The Commonwealth should work with Traditional Owners and their representative corporate bodies to support them to scrutinise such arrangements and detect underpayments.”

Labor senator Pat Dodson says there is a power imbalance between mining companies and traditional owners. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The power imbalance between traditional owners and the mining companies with which they have signed partnership agreements is one of the issues being examined by the parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of Juukan Gorge.

Nationals senator Matt Canavan, who sits on that inquiry, also called for the prescribed body corporates that represent native title holders in agreements with industry to be better resourced.

“It’s one thing to pass native title laws but it’s another to make sure that they empower Aboriginal groups to take advantage of a new property right,” Canavan told Guardian Australia.


WA must toughen laws after revelation Rio Tinto dumped priceless Indigenous artefacts, heritage expert says

“A lack of resources to help native title groups, traditional owners, establish native title and and then, as claimants, use their native title for their best interest is something that’s handicapped the full promise of native title rights for decades.”

Canavan said there was “probably a case to look at further resourcing” from the Commonwealth government.

Traditional owners groups are required under the Native Title Act to establish a prescribed body corporate (PBC) to manage and protect the rights and interests of native title holders.

The federal government provides some funding, including a grant program intended to help build the capacity of PBCs, but the bulk of funding comes from compensation agreements struck with the mining industry or other industries that want to use native title land.

Jamie Lowe, a Gundjitmara Djabwurrung man and chief executive of the National Native Title Council, said federal and state governments have heaped regulatory burdens on PBCs without providing adequate resources.

“There’s a huge cultural responsibility, let alone a statutory responsibility under the act,” Lowe said. “So you put those two together, and then you give them zero money, there’s going to be issues bound to happen.

“If that’s not a recipe for disaster I don’t know what it is.”

The regulatory obligations are particularly onerous in the Pilbara, where new developments continually trigger new statutory responsibilities. Lowe said they would become even more difficult if the Western Australian government passes proposed new cultural heritage laws which will rely on the PBCs to take on more work.

“When someone wants to do some activity up the road there, the PBC is not even resourced to employ a person to take a phone call,” Lowe said.

“They say, ‘oh these mob, they don’t know how to govern’ – we put it all on the mob and it’s not on the mob at all. It’s on the operating environment and the legislation that they’re trying to deal with.”

Survey finds Ontario and Quebec residents agree: Revive Energy East if Line 5 is shut down

Many Line 5 supporters in Michigan say they will be significantly impacted personally if pipeline shuts down: Survey

Author of the article: Yadullah Hussain
Publishing date:Jul 27, 2021 • 

A signpost marks the presence of Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline, which Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer ordered shut down by May 12. 

PHOTO BY REUTERS/CARLOS OSORIO/FILE PHOTO

Residents of the state of Michigan and the province of Ontario believe Enbridge Inc.’s Line 5 pipeline should remain open, but Quebec residents are evenly split on the issue, according to a new survey.

The controversial pipeline which ships oil mostly from Alberta to markets in Ontario, Quebec and U.S. MidWest has been in the crosshairs of the Michigan government.

Gretchen Whitmer, the state’s governor, issued a shutdown order for the pipeline in May over concerns of a potential spill into the Straits of Mackinac, where the pipeline runs underwater. The two parties are currently in mediation, which is expected to wrap up in August.

New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds nearly half of respondents in Michigan (48 per cent) and Ontario (49 per cent) want the pipeline to remain open, while a quarter in Michigan and nearly three-in-10 in Ontario want it shut down.

In Quebec, the 72 per cent who have an opinion are evenly split on what the pipeline’s fate should be.

Angus Reid surveyed more than 2,200 people across Michigan, Ontario and Quebec in mid-June, although the sample size for Michigan of 427 was relatively small compared to the two provinces.

While two-thirds of those in Michigan are concerned about a leak from Line 5, half believe a tunnel proposed by Enbridge will address the concerns.

Of the state’s residents who are engaged with the issue, more than a quarter (27 per cent) said they had read or seen stories about the issue or discussed it with family and friends, while another 25 per cent had briefly discussed it or read a story or two.

A majority of Ontarians are also following the issue, with 52 per cent claiming that they had read, if briefly, about Line 5. Only 34 per cent of Quebecers claimed to have been that engaged on the subject.

While Michigan residents largely approve of Governor Whitmer’s leadership, they don’t necessarily agree with one of her signature campaign promises: shutting down Line 5. Nearly half of Michiganders want to keep it open, while even those who approve of Whitmer are split on the pipeline’s fate, the survey noted.

“The potential economic impacts, both regionally and personally, are a key concern for those who want the pipeline to stay open. A majority of the pipeline’s supporters in Michigan (65 per cent), Ontario (65 per cent), and Quebec (55 per cent) believe they will be personally impacted either ‘significantly’ or ‘massively’ if Line 5 shuts down,” according to the Angus Reid survey released this morning.

Remarkably, the dispute over Line 5 also appears to have revived support for a west-to-east Canadian pipeline that was scrapped in 2017.

Three quarters of Ontarians (76 per cent), and three-in-five Quebecers (58 per cent), believe TC Energy Corp.’s (then known as TransCanada Corp.) long-since-cancelled Energy East project should be reconsidered if Michigan turns off the tap on Line 5.

Quebecers’ approval of Energy East is a surprise given that the province was vehemently opposed to the project when it was proposed in 2013.

“Even if Line 5 survives Whitmer’s campaign against it, many in Ontario and Quebec want Energy East to be reconsidered regardless,” according to the survey.

“Two-thirds of those in Ontario (65 per cent) and half of those in Quebec think Energy East should be reconsidered even if the contested Michigan pipeline remains open,” the survey noted.

But Energy East advocates shouldn’t get too excited. Even in 2016, just a year before opposition to the project in the province reached a crescendo, 48 per cent of Quebecers were in favour of the Energy East pipeline — but the development was still cancelled due to staunch opposition from the Quebec government and local groups.

It’s also unclear whether TC Energy has the risk appetite to pursue a cross-country project that has already been cancelled once.

RIGHT TO ARM BEARS

Polar bears sometimes bludgeon walruses to death with stones or ice

It’s long been said that a piece of ice is the perfect murder weapon

In this illustration, which appears in an 1865 book by adventurer Charles Francis Hall, a polar bear uses a rock as a tool to kill a walrus. Some have thought that Inuit reports of this behavior were just stories, but new research suggests not.
CHARLES FRANCIS HALL, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS


By Gloria Dickie
JULY 29, 2021

Walruses, weighing as much as 1,300 kilograms with huge tusks and nearly impenetrable skulls, are almost impossible for a hungry polar bear to kill. But new research suggests that some polar bears have invented a work-around — bashing walruses on the head with a block of stone or ice.

For more than 200 years, Inuit in Greenland and the eastern Canadian Arctic have told stories of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) using such tools to aid in killing walruses. Yet explorers, naturalists and writers often dismissed such accounts, relegating them to myth along with tales about shape-shifting bears.

The persistence of these reports, including one report from an Inuk hunter in the late 1990s, coupled with photos of a male polar bear named GoGo at a Japanese zoo using tools to obtain suspended meat compelled Ian Stirling and colleagues to investigate further.

“It’s been my general observation that if an experienced Inuit hunter tells you that he’s seen something, it’s worth listening to and very likely to be correct,” says Stirling, one of the world’s leading polar bear biologists

The researchers reviewed historical, secondhand observations of tool use in polar bears reported by Inuit hunters to explorers and naturalists as well as recent observations by Inuit hunters and non-Inuit researchers and documented observations of GoGo and brown bears — polar bears’ closest relatives — using tools in captivity to access food. This review suggests that tool use in wild polar bears, though infrequent, does occur in the case of hunting walruses because of their large size, the researchers report in the June Arctic.

“Really, the only species you would want to bonk on the head with a piece of ice would be a walrus,” says Andrew Derocher, director of the Polar Bear Science Lab at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who wasn’t involved with the new study. He suspects that it might just be a few polar bears that do this behavior. For example, if a mother bear figured out how to use ice or stone in this way, “it’s something her offspring would pick up on,” but not necessarily a skill polar bears across the Arctic would acquire, he says.

Among animals, using tools to solve problems has long been regarded as a marker of a higher level of what humans consider intelligence. Notoriously smart chimpanzees, for example, craft spears to hunt smaller mammals (SN: 2/28/07). Dolphins carry marine sponges in their mouths to stir sand and uncover prey (SN: 6/8/05). And elephants have been known to drop logs or large rocks onto electric fences to cut off the power supply.

Studies on the cognitive abilities of polar bears are lacking. “We don’t know anything experimental or objective at all,” Stirling says. “However, we have a great deal of observational information that tends to suggest polar bears are really smart.”

Members of the bear family, Ursidae, are typically assumed to have strong cognitive skills as a result of their large brains and evidenced by their sophisticated hunting strategies. Studies on captive American black bears have even revealed some mental capabilities that appear to exceed those of primates.

This sculpture in the Itsanitaq Museum in Churchill, Canada shows a polar bear lifting a block of ice above the head of a sleeping walrus.

GLORIA DICKIE

Gabriel Nirlungayuk, an Inuk hunter of Rankin Inlet in Nunavut, Canada, says he has heard such stories of polar bears using tools to hunt walruses. “I’ve seen polar bears since I was probably 7 years old. I’ve been around them, I’ve hunted alongside them, and I have seen their behaviors. The smartest hunters are usually the female bears.” Sometimes, he says, polar bears will trick young seals to come closer by pretending to be asleep in open water. Other times he’s observed that a polar bear can sniff out a seal’s breathing hole in ice, even if it’s obscured by snow.

“I have worked with the Inuit on traditional knowledge for a very long time and one of my favorite subjects is polar bears, because science often suggests one thing and the Inuit say another thing,” he notes.

There are around 26,000 wild polar bears living in 19 subpopulations across the Arctic and sub-Arctic. The bears primarily eat seals, hunting the marine mammals by staking out above their breathing holes. Because of climate change, Arctic sea ice is fast disappearing, and scientists predict that many polar bear populations will be extinct by the century’s end. Desperate polar bears may increasingly attack walruses, but “there are limitations to how many walruses an adult bear can take down,” says coauthor Kristin Laidre, an Arctic ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. It takes a lot of energy.

Following publication of the new study, Stirling received a video from U.S. Geological Survey scientist Anthony Pagano, based in Anchorage, Alaska, who had previously attached a GoPro camera to a wild polar bear for a separate project. That footage, Stirling says, shows a female polar bear sliding a large block of ice around before throwing it into the water at a seal.

A hammerhead shark baby boom near Florida hints at a historic nursery

The nursery of endangered sharks would be the first known in U.S. Atlantic waters

A researcher releases a tagged baby great hammerhead shark into the water just off the coast of Miami. At least nine baby hammerhead sharks have been found in the area, hinting at a possible nursery. JULIA WESTER/FIELD SCHOOL

By Lesley Evans Ogden
17 HOURS AGO

It seems like an unlikely place for a nursery of endangered hammerhead sharks, but a recreational hot spot just off the coast of Miami may host a school of these precious babies. If confirmed, the nursery would be the first ever identified in U.S. Atlantic waters for this iconic shark species.

Finding an endangered shark nursery in a vast ocean is like finding a needle in a haystack. While scientists have used satellites to track migrations of adult great hammerheads (Sphyrna mokarran), where the sharks breed and give birth and where babies grow up is still “a bit of a mystery,” says shark scientist Catherine Macdonald of the University of Miami.

Macdonald investigates where and how sharks can thrive in areas that are heavily impacted by humans. One of those areas is Florida’s Biscayne Bay, a popular spot for fishing and boating that is polluted by urban runoff. There, she and colleagues regularly survey shark abundance and diversity using a catch-and-release system: Sharks that get hooked on baited lines are reeled in, documented, tagged and put back into the water.

Discovering a potential hammerhead shark nursery was an accident. The team got its first inkling of something special in June 2018, when researchers caught a juvenile great hammerhead — an interesting anomaly. In a decade of surveying, the team had never captured a hammerhead in these waters, says David Shiffman, a marine biologist at Arizona State University who is based in Washington, D.C. Several months later, the team caught another young hammerhead.

Over the next year and a half, “we kept catching them … every few months,” Macdonald says. So far, the team has documented nine baby great hammerheads, Macdonald, Shiffman and colleagues report July 11 in Conservation Science and Practice. Based on the sharks’ sizes — all under 200 centimeters long — they were less than 5 years old. The area where the young sharks have been found is fairly shallow and carpeted with seagrass, which probably provides protection and is rife with small fish to eat, the researchers suspect.

Researchers on a boat in Florida’s Biscayne Bay measure a live juvenile great hammerhead shark before releasing it back into the water. FIELD SCHOOL

Though the Biscayne Bay site seems to be experiencing a hammerhead shark baby boom, officially designating the area as a nursery will require more monitoring. Juvenile sharks are more common at the site than other areas surveyed and the sharks come back to it for multiple years, the team says. But it’s unknown whether the sharks reside at the site for extended periods of weeks or months — the third and final criteria for the site to qualify as a nursery.

Great hammerhead sharks breed infrequently, about once every two years. And the rate at which people catch and kill the sharks — both accidentally and intentionally (SN: 12/1/09) — contributed to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature listing the species as critically endangered in 2019. So when nursery areas are discovered, “it’s important they remain safe,” says marine biologist Jasmin Graham, President and CEO of Minorities in Shark Sciences, an organization that promotes diversity and inclusion in marine science. And while adult sharks have few predators other than people, “there’s a super high mortality rate for juveniles.” With an already unstable population, as many juveniles as possible that can survive to reproductive age is crucial, Graham says.

The possibility of an endangered shark nursery in Biscayne Bay fills Macdonald with hope, and she is working with conservation partners to get legal protections for this important site (SN: 9/17/15). “Even in such a heavily impacted place, it is possible for nature to be thriving,” she says.

Greece’s Santorini volcano erupts more often when sea level drops

Lower sea levels over the last 360,000 years are linked with more eruptions

Sea level seems to influence eruptions from the partially-submerged volcano of Santorini in Greece (pictured). Lower sea levels are historically linked to more eruptions.
NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY


By Maria Temming
14 HOURS AGO


When sea level drops far below the present-day level, the island volcano Santorini in Greece gets ready to rumble.

A comparison of the activity of the volcano, which is now partially collapsed, with sea levels over the last 360,000 years reveals that when the sea level dips more than 40 meters below the present-day level, it triggers a fit of eruptions. During times of higher sea level, the volcano is quiet, researchers report online August 2 in Nature Geoscience.

Other volcanoes around the globe are probably similarly influenced by sea levels, the researchers say. Most of the world’s volcanic systems are in or near oceans.

“It’s hard to see why a coastal or island volcano would not be affected by sea level,” says Iain Stewart, a geoscientist at the Royal Scientific Society of Jordan in Amman, who was not involved in the work. Accounting for these effects could make volcano hazard forecasting more accurate.

Santorini consists of a ring of islands surrounding the central tip of a volcano poking out of the Aegean Sea. The entire volcano used to be above water, but a violent eruption around 1600 B.C. caused the volcano to cave in partially, forming a lagoon. That particular eruption is famous for potentially dooming the Minoan civilization and inspiring the legend of the lost city of Atlantis (SN: 2/1/12).

To investigate how sea level might influence the volcano, researchers created a computer simulation of Santorini’s magma chamber, which sits about four kilometers beneath the surface of the volcano. In the simulation, when the sea level dropped at least 40 meters below the present-day level, the crust above the magma chamber splintered. “That gives an opportunity for the magma that’s stored under the volcano to move up through these fractures and make its way to the surface,” says study coauthor Christopher Satow, a physical geographer at Oxford Brookes University in England.

According to the simulation, it should take about 13,000 years for those cracks to reach the surface and awaken the volcano. After the water rises again, it should take about 11,000 years for the cracks to close and eruptions to stop.

When the sea drops at least 40 meters below the present-day level, the crust beneath the Santorini volcano (illustrated) starts to crack. As the sea level drops even further over thousands of years, those cracks spread to the surface, bringing up magma that feeds volcanic eruptions.

OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY

It may seem counterintuitive that lowering the amount of water atop the magma chamber would cause the crust to splinter. Satow compares the scenario to wrapping your hands around an inflated balloon, where the rubber is Earth’s crust and your hands’ inward pressure is the weight of the ocean. As someone else pumps air into the balloon — like magma building up under Earth’s crust — the pressure of your hands helps prevent the balloon from popping. “As soon as you start to release the pressure with your hands, [like] taking the sea level down, the balloon starts to expand,” Satow says, and ultimately the balloon breaks.

Satow’s team tested the predictions of the simulation by comparing the Santorini Volcano’s eruption history — preserved in the rock layers of the islands surrounding the central volcano tip — with evidence of past sea levels from marine sediments. All but three of the volcano’s 211 well-dated eruptions in the last 360,000 years happened during periods of low sea level, as the simulation predicted. Such periods of low sea level occurred when more of Earth’s water was locked up in glaciers during ice ages.

“It’s really intriguing and interesting, and perhaps not surprising, given that other studies have shown that volcanoes are sensitive to changes in their stress state,” says Emilie Hooft, a geophysicist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, who wasn’t involved in the work. Volcanoes in Iceland, for instance, have shown an uptick in eruptions after overlying glaciers have melted, relieving the volcanic systems of the weight of the ice.

Volcanoes around the world are likely subject to the effects of sea level, Satow says, though how much probably varies. “Some will be very sensitive to sea level changes, and for others there will be almost no impact at all.” These effects will depend on the depth of the magma chambers feeding into each volcano and the properties of the surrounding crust.

But if sea level controls the activity of any volcano in or near the ocean, at least to an extent, “you’d expect all these volcanoes to be in sync with one another,” Satow says, “which would be incredible.”

As for Santorini, given that the last time sea level was 40 meters below the present-day level was about 11,000 years ago — and sea level is continuing to rise due to climate change — Satow’s team expects the volcano to enter a period of relative quiet right about now (SN: 3/14/12). But two major eruptions in the volcano’s history did happen amid high sea levels, the researchers say, so future violent eruptions aren’t completely off the table.

 

The Hydrogen Hype Is Real, But Is It Justified?

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Aug 01, 2021, 

Amid all the hype hydrogen is getting lately as an energy source, the reality is that this fuel faces significant challenges in scaling up in the global energy system.  That’s the lead conclusion of the Innovation Insights Briefing prepared by the London-based World Energy Council (WEC) in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and PwC.  

Hydrogen, especially green hydrogen made of water electrolysis using electricity from solar or wind, has been gaining momentum in recent years. 

Hydrogen now features in nearly every strategy of Big Oil and can be seen in many government plans for industry decarbonization. Hydrogen is expected to play a prominent role in lowering the carbon emissions from energy-intensive industries.   

Currently, countries view hydrogen’s role in the energy transition in very different ways. According to the WEC’s report, existing hydrogen demand scenarios show estimates for future use of the fuel vary between 6 and 25 percent of final worldwide energy consumption by 2050, or between 150 and 600 megatons by 2050, depending on how hydrogen will compete with other clean solutions such as battery storage.  

Despite the fact that many countries are looking at how to develop a ‘hydrogen economy’—by becoming suppliers or charting pathways for hydrogen use in domestic industries—scaling up hydrogen “faces significant challenges,” the report found. 

First and foremost, it’s the cost. 

“Low-carbon hydrogen is currently not cost-competitive with other energy supplies in most applications and locations and is likely to remain so without significant support to bridge the price gap - which raises the question of who should fund this support,” the WEC notes. 

But countries are sending encouraging signals that they are currently willing to help low-carbon hydrogen scale up with direct investments in projects, the report says.

The question is how much and how long of taxpayer support it could take to make low-carbon hydrogen competitive enough to be a viable cost-efficient solution to industry decarbonization. 

Then, the WEC report says, the hydrogen economy is at such an early stage that it faces the “chicken and egg problem” between supply and demand, both lacking secure volumes from the other to help establish the value chain.

Next, the “color debate” about hydrogen, with colors used to denote how hydrogen is being produced, is stifling innovation, according to the report. This “color differentiation” could unnecessarily exclude a viable cost-efficient technology just because one type of hydrogen is currently color-coded as ‘blue’, for example. Blue hydrogen refers to hydrogen made from fossil fuels with carbon capture. 

“The color debate needs clarity as it could risk prematurely excluding some technological routes that could be more cost and carbon-effective. There is an emerging sense that the discussion should perhaps think about moving beyond color and instead focus on carbon equivalence,” the authors of the report wrote. 

“This decade is crucial to develop hydrogen projects along with the infrastructure to produce, transport, import, distribute and use hydrogen at large scale. If we do this successfully over the next few years, it can pave the way for hydrogen demand to grow exponentially beyond 2030,” Jeroen van Hoof, Global Energy, Utilities and Resources Leader, PwC Netherlands, said, commenting on the report. 

The hydrogen economy may be in its very early stages, but companies-including major oil firms and governments are already working to develop projects and bring costs down. 

The biggest oil companies in Europe, including BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, Equinor, Eni, and Repsol, all have ongoing hydrogen projects and plan more for the future. 

Germany said in May that it would fund 62 large-scale hydrogen projects with as much as US$10 billion in federal and state funds as it aims to become the world’s leader in hydrogen technologies.

Even countries in the top oil-producing region in the world, the Middle East, are looking at ways to become hydrogen production and export hubs. Oman, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia are betting on hydrogen for leadership in another energy market apart from oil exports. 

In the United States, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm launched in June the U.S. Department of Energy’s first Energy Earthshots Initiative, Hydrogen Shot, which seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80 percent to $1 per kilogram in one decade. 

“Clean hydrogen is a game-changer. It will help decarbonize high-polluting heavy-duty and industrial sectors while delivering good-paying clean energy jobs and realizing a net-zero economy by 2050,” Secretary Granholm said.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Alberta solar projects raise tensions over agricultural land use



EMMA GRANEY

ENERGY REPORTER
TABER, ALBERTA
 AUGUST 2, 2021

Open this photo in gallery

Solar panels face toward the direction of the sun at the Prairie Sunlight II Solar Project (Hull Project) solar facility on July 30, 2021, near Vauxhall, Alberta.
IAN MARTENS/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Rumbling along the gravel of a southern Alberta range road, there are plenty of cows, pump jacks and fields that are typical in this part of the world. Then, next to a field of sugar beets, emerges a sight that is rapidly changing the landscape of the province’s energy industry: acres and acres of solar panels.

Welcome to Alberta’s sun belt, where long days of sunshine, relatively little snow and a power market unique in Canada have stoked a surge in solar investment as the province’s energy industry evolves rapidly.

A decade ago, Alberta’s list of major private and public projects valued at $5-million or more included no solar projects. Now, there are 23. Of the 87 major energy projects listed in the most recent data, 27 were oil and gas, but more than 40 were either solar, wind or biofuels.

Developers credit three main factors for the explosion of solar farms: An abundance of sun, a rapid and dramatic drop in the cost of solar technology, and Alberta’s power market structure, which makes it easy for companies to sign renewable power purchase agreements, thus helping them with their corporate emissions-reduction goals.

Construction begins on new Alberta solar farm, Amazon to purchase power

But as municipalities eye the tax revenue solar farms will generate, the projects – which can span hundreds or thousands of acres – have councils walking a delicate line between welcoming a lucrative new industry and preserving valuable agricultural land.

Stung by oil companies that have failed to pay the millions they owe in property taxes or clean up inactive wells, municipalities want the provincial government to ensure landowners don’t end up on the hook for cleaning up renewable power projects in future.

Many advocate for some kind of system of reclamation bonds. Come Sept. 1, the Alberta Utilities Commission will require companies to ensure sufficient funds are available at the end of a project’s life to cover the cost of cleanup, though the government was unable to provide The Globe with details of how that system will work.

Most forecasts say fossil fuels won’t disappear any time soon, but energy diversification shows no signs of slowing down. Wind turbines have been scattered across the province for years, now government data shows just how quickly large solar farms are taking root.

The first detailed solar proposal on the province’s major projects list popped up in 2015: the Brooks 1 project, a 17-megawatt facility slated for 74 acres of southeastern Alberta’s Newell County.

With 50,000 panels rising from the prairie by the Trans-Canada Highway, it was the first utility-scale solar project in Western Canada when it came online in 2017. Last year, Vancouver-based developer Elemental Energy Inc. got the okay to add another 28 MW of capacity.

Even with that expansion, Brooks will soon be dwarfed by a colossal new project under construction near the hamlet of Travers, about 80 kilometres southwest.

Spanning 3,330 acres in Vulcan County, the 465 MW facility will be the biggest solar photovoltaic project in Canada and one of the largest in the world, according to developer Greengate Power Corp. Amazon.com has already signed a deal to buy up to 400 MW of electricity from the site to help offset the online giant’s carbon footprint.

When the Travers project is complete, 1.3 million solar panels will generate enough electricity to power more than 100,000 homes.

It’s located on what Vulcan Reeve Jason Schneider describes as marginal, lower-producing land. But the municipality, like others, wrestles with how to preserve higher-class agricultural acres while also increasing tax revenue with new renewables projects.

West in the Municipal District of Willow Creek, Reeve Maryanne Sandberg calls the quandary a “double-edged sword.” On one hand, she says, is protecting land and farming culture. On the other is protecting the rights of property owners to use their land as they wish.

“Especially right now, when you look at what we’re going through as agricultural producers in a really rough year, it looks even more appealing to some people,” she says.

For now, the Travers site is an unremarkable stretch of farmland.

But it’s coming along. A handful of rectangular trailers squat behind a chain-link fence. PCL Construction pickup trucks drive along a gravel road that is now closed to traffic and lined with orange warning signs.

In the distance, the 166 wind turbines of the 300 MW Blackspring Ridge project are lifeless on this hot, still day.

One of the largest operating wind farms in Canada, it has already changed Vulcan’s fiscal picture, and Mr. Schneider thinks it’s a sign of things to come. He remembers when Blackspring Ridge came online in 2014. Back then, oil and gas was still going strong, so the additional tax revenue from the wind project “was just gravy.”

But as fossil fuel companies walked away, renewable energy developers started showing up – and the county has been receptive.

“Without these projects coming in, I’d hate to guess what our taxes would be. I’m pretty sure there would be pitchforks on our front step,” he says. “These renewable projects are really what’s going to keep us afloat.”

Blackspring Ridge constitutes around 20 per cent of the county’s tax base, and Mr. Schneider suspects the Travers solar project will rake in a similar amount. That means about 40 per cent of Vulcan’s taxes will flow from a wind farm and a solar farm.

“It’s not unrealistic to think that in the next five years, over half of our tax base will be renewable energy, and could almost dwarf what we made from oil and gas in our peak,” he says.

Two solar projects are currently under construction in the district, two are seeking provincial approval, and council is in discussions about three more.

It’s a similar story to the southeast, in the Municipal District of Taber, where two projects are in operation, and four are either approved, under construction or about to start building. There are rumours of more developers in the wings, too.

The municipality has also approved more than a dozen smaller projects for agricultural purposes such as powering irrigation pumps or buildings, and just okayed two applications for the RenuWell pilot project, which will transform old oil and gas well sites into 1 MW solar installations.

One of those is on the corner of Molnar’s Farm, which grows vegetables and holds an annual pumpkin festival. Purple-flowered alfalfa carpets an empty section of land, but it belies the fact the soil was never properly cleaned of hydrocarbons from an oil well that ceased operations decades ago.

Power lines that run alongside the field once brought electricity to a pump jack on the site. Under the RenuWell pilot, they will carry solar power back to the grid.

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A decade ago, Alberta’s list of major private and public projects valued at $5-million or more included no solar projects. Now, there are 23.
IAN MARTENS/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Rural Municipalities of Alberta president Paul McLauchlin says solar development has many councils writing bylaws to govern the projects. Taber is no different. It has also instituted a reclamation bond system for projects on municipality-owned land, so it doesn’t get stuck holding the bill for eventual cleanup.

But there’s no requirement for bonds on private land, which is why municipalities are pushing the province to learn its lesson from the growing problem of orphaned oil and gas wells, and institute rules now to avoid a similar problem with renewable power facilities.

Strolling through his company’s 20 MW Burdett Solar Project, about 45 km east of Taber, BluEarth Renewables Inc. president and CEO Grant Arnold says his company and others take reclamation seriously, writing it into contracts with landowners.

The eventual cleanup of renewable sites is also nothing like oil and gas, he says. Unlike fossil fuel wells that eventually deplete, eliminating any incentive to stick around, the solar resource isn’t going anywhere. Parts will be replaced and technology upgraded, but, in theory, a solar farm can remain in operation forever.

“I think we’re pretty blessed in Alberta to have another couple of resources,” he says. “There’s jobs, there’s construction and there’s support for local communities while oil and gas is going through a transition.”

GREENWASHING

Mining industry’s ‘green metals’ are a fallacy, experts say
AS IS SUSTAINABLE MINING


NIALL MCGEE

MINING REPORTER

UPDATED AUGUST 1, 2021
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The green theme is being driven by the rage for environmentally and socially responsible investments, which experts say has put pressure on miners to improve their environmental footprints.

CAROLINE THIRION/GETTY IMAGES

The mining industry is promoting a growing number of metals as green. The label is popping up everywhere: on the landing pages of company websites, in speeches from mining executives at conferences, and in pitch meetings with investors.

“Every nickel project is now green, every copper project is green,” said Doug Pollitt, analyst with Pollitt & Co. “The resource sector is making the most out of this.”

The green moniker, which implies the metals and mining methods are environmentally friendly, is generating fierce debate. Some call it appropriate, given the growing end use of minerals such as lithium, cobalt and graphite in alternative energy. Others, factoring in the full life cycle of metals from the ground to the customer, deem the framing deceptive and misleading.

“A lot of marketing fluff,” is what Mr. Pollitt calls it.

The green theme is being driven by the rage for environmentally and socially responsible investments, which experts say has put pressure on miners to improve their environmental footprints.

“Like every other industry, mining has to paint itself in an ESG cloth right now,” said Rick Rule, former CEO of Sprott U.S. Holdings, and a natural-resources investor. “ESG is part of the cost of capital.”

One of the earliest mentions of green metals came from mining executive Robert Friedland, founder of copper miner Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. In 2004, he referred to platinum, copper and nickel as green because of their growing use in hybrid cars.

He currently uses the term to promote his latest big-ticket venture, Ivanhoe’s newly constructed Kamoa-Kakula copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which he has said is one of the greenest in the industry, in part because Kamoa-Kakula’s electricity is sourced from clean hydro power.

Ivanhoe has also pledged to use an electric or hydrogen-powered mining fleet to further cut on-site emissions. Mr. Friedland declined to be interviewed for this story.

Teck Resources Ltd. , which gets the biggest percentage of its revenue from mining metallurgical coal, is also marketing itself more and more as a green miner. That’s partly because of Teck’s growing exposure to copper, which is increasingly used in alterative energy.


“This strategy is anchored by our QB2 copper project in Chile, which is expected to double our consolidated copper production by 2023,” Teck spokesperson Chris Stannell wrote in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail.

But once the copper industry’s emissions from mining, refining and transporting the metal are factored in, the green label becomes more tenuous.

Samuel Julio Friedmann, senior research scholar at the centre on global energy policy at Columbia University, who wrote energy briefs for former U.S. president Barack Obama, said that referring to an industrial metal such as copper as green is problematic. That’s not only because of the damaging environmental effects of mining, but also because only a small part of demand for copper ends up in alternative-energy uses.

According to a 2020 World Bank report, a mere 7 per cent of the overall demand for copper will go into renewable energy technologies and energy storage by 2050.

“Calling copper green, if it doesn’t have a net-zero carbon footprint, or a really reduced carbon footprint, it’s very hard to make the case,” Dr. Friedmann said.

In fact, many metals that are being characterized as green, such as nickel, could as easily be called “dirty,” he said.


The World Bank study said that many of the growing green-power technologies, such as wind, solar and battery-storage plants, require significantly more minerals than fossil-fuel-powered plants during their construction phases. That means much more CO2 is emitted at the beginning of a green-power plant’s life cycle. The good news is that once alternative-energy power plants are actually in operation, their drastically lower carbon emissions, compared with coal or gas, quickly turn the tide.

“Even if low-carbon technologies are more mineral intensive, they only account for a fraction (6 per cent) of emissions generated by fossil-fuel technologies,” the World Bank report said.

Electric cars, too, are not nearly as green as one might assume. For instance, according to a recent report from the investment bank Jefferies Group, the average electric car must be driven for 200,000 kilometres to deliver total “whole-of-life” emissions that are lower than internal-combustion-powered cars. That’s because EVs are typically heavier than gas-powered cars, requiring greater amounts of steel, aluminum and copper, and also vast amounts of lithium for their batteries.

Metals that have the most widespread green-energy applications include cobalt, lithium and graphite, with demand projected to rise by more than 460 per cent, 490 per cent and 495 per cent, respectively, by 2050. However, the countries that dominate the production of metals used in low-carbon energy also have some of the worst environmental records.

China produces nearly 70 per cent of the world’s natural graphite, while the DRC produces more than 60 per cent of the world’s cobalt. It wasn’t that long ago that parts of the DRC had no environmental standards on dust and diesel emissions at all, said Mr. Rule. The West African country also has hundreds of thousands of artisanal miners, many operating illegally with no environmental oversight.

While standards have improved considerably in recent years in the DRC – and Mr. Rule points in particular to Ivanhoe Mines, whose new copper mine in the country was built to Western standards – a lot more needs to be done.

“You will still have mining operations in frontier emerging and totalitarian countries which don’t meet anywhere close to acceptable standards,” he said.

Globally the mining industry is making considerable strides to improve its environmental footprint, often because investors are demanding it. Thermal-coal companies have for some people become no-go investments, and companies are worried that more minerals may join the black list.

“The pressure’s on them, and the pressure’s coming from the investment community,” Mr. Pollitt said.

Largely by dint of abundant hydroelectricity, Canada is ahead of many countries when it comes to a greener mining infrastructure. “The nickel and cobalt that we export to the world is in the top decile when it comes to lowest greenhouse-gas intensity,” said Pierre Gratton, CEO of the Mining Association of Canada.

“If you buy our nickel, it’s greener than 90 per cent of the rest of the world’s nickel from a carbon standpoint because it’s processed in facilities that are powered by non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power stations in Ontario and Quebec largely.” The same is true for Quebec’s aluminum industry and some of British Columbia’s copper mines.

Still, Canada has its black spots. A number of the country’s biggest base-metals mines, including Voisey’s Bay in Labrador and Raglan in northern Quebec, are largely dependent on diesel generators for power. Mr. Gratton is hopeful that industry and government can work together to build new hydro infrastructure that may eventually connect such mines to the grid.

Meantime, on mine sites, electric hauling trucks are expected to become more prevalent in the future, especially underground, said Mr. Gratton, which will further cut emissions.

No matter what progress is made, a degree of negative environmental impact is inevitable in mining. But for those who protest the loudest at the damage inflicted by the industry, Dr. Friedmann said they would do well to take a look in the mirror.

“It’s silly for companies to try to rebrand themselves as green when most of their products and operations are hard to classify that way,” he said.

“But I think it’s equally silly for some environmental groups to paint these people as demons, when [environmentalists] are driving in these electrical vehicles that are built on their products. There’s no shortage of hypocrisy and silliness in this discussion.”