EU lawmakers vote to prolong fossil fuel gas subsidies until 2027

Campaigners voice dismay after rule permitting gas pipelines where energy is mixed with hydrogen

The committee also voted to allow natural gas projects, such as pipelines and storage facilities, to be eligible for special status that will speed up their approval.

 Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
Tue 28 Sep 2021 

European lawmakers have voted to prolong subsidies for fossil fuel gas until 2027, opening a potential backdoor for pollution that campaigners said would be a disaster for the climate if it becomes law.

Members of the European parliament’s industry committee voted on Tuesday to allow the EU to continue subsidising natural gas pipelines until the end of 2027, as long as the energy is mixed with an unspecified amount of hydrogen.

Hydrogen, which can be made from fossil gas or renewable sources, is seen by policymakers as a vital stepping stone to net zero emissions by 2050.

The committee also voted to allow natural gas projects, such as pipelines and storage facilities, to be eligible for special status that will speed up their approval, although they ruled out access to EU grants for such projects. Campaigners estimate between 50 and 70 natural gas projects could obtain “project of common interest” status, an EU seal of approval that helps plans get off the drawing board, gain access to finance and exemptions from EU competition rules.

The campaign group Global Witness estimates that about 70 gas projects could be eligible, producing 213m tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, equivalent to Germany’s coal burning in 2018.

The two controversial amendments to the EU’s trans-European energy infrastructure regulation were approved by MEPs, barely three months after the European Commission said the world was entering “a make or break decade” to tackle the climate crisis. The commission’s original “Ten-E” text proposed sweeping away special status for all natural gas projects as part of the union’s effort to hit net zero emissions by 2050.


EU’s green deal plans launched with ‘make-or-break decade’ warning

In May the International Energy Agency said rich countries should decarbonise electricity generation by 2035, while calling for an immediate stop to the approval of new oil and gas fields.

The European parliament, which elected a record number of green MEPs in 2019, is usually the most ambitious player on the climate emergency in the world of EU law making. On this occasion, however, campaigners were surprised and disappointed when MEPs watered down the original plans, by allowing natural gas companies to continue competing for special status, and opened the door to subsidies for any gas company that claims to be “hydrogen-ready”.

Under the parliament’s compromise on blending, energy companies blending an unspecified mix of fossil gas and hydrogen are eligible for EU subsidies until 2027, as long as they have a plan to drop gas by the end of the decade. Even once EU subsidies are stripped away, the same gas/hydrogen pipelines will be eligible for fast-track approval until the end of 2029.

The MEP position was drafted by Zdzisław Krasnodębski, a member of Poland’s ultra-conservative Law and Justice party, who is vice-chair of the parliament’s industry committee.

He said: “The objective of this revision is to align the Ten-E regulation with the objectives of the European Green Deal. We should also bear in mind, however, that energy union priorities remain valid and should still be reflected in the rules governing the support for important energy infrastructure projects.” In addition to sustainability, he said projects would be evaluated based on their contribution to energy security, market integration and affordability for consumers.

His final compromise was supported by most MEPs in the largest political groups, including the centre-right European People’s party, the centre-left Socialists and Democrats and the centrist Renew group. Green MEPs abstained.

The parliament will now enter negotiations with EU energy ministers, who left much less room for gas projects when they agreed their negotiating red lines earlier this year.

“Today’s vote would be a disaster for the climate if it ends up being reflected in the final law,” said Tara Connolly, a senior campaigner at Global Witness. “The science is clear: we need to urgently phase out fossil gas to prevent the worst effects of climate breakdown. EU member states must not fall for this giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, and close the loopholes which would allow fossil gas subsidies when negotiations start.”

Erik Bergkvist, a Swedish Social Democrat MEP, involved in the compromise, said it was the best possible agreement. “What would the alternative have been? Of course we could have stepped off negotiations, but then we know we would have had a result that would have been much worse. The main thing that we have been asking for … is an end date for fossil fuel investment. It’s better to have an end date, otherwise there wouldn’t be a phase out.”

He voiced optimism that EU-subsidised fossil fuel gas would only exist in small quantities, when blended with low-CO2 hydrogen. “We have to remember that blending is low-carbon. The main proportion will be renewable hydrogen gas.”

While he acknowledged that the fossil gas/hydrogen mix had yet to be defined – a task for another EU negotiation – he insisted it would be “quite narrow and quite tough on fossil fuels”. The hydrogen/fossil gas blend “cannot be 95% carbon [dioxide]”.

Green campaigners do not share this optimism. They would reserve scarce and expensive renewable hydrogen for industries that are difficult to decarbonise, such as fertilisers. Mixing hydrogen with natural gas was like “mixing champagne with table wine,” said Connolly. “You want to use [hydrogen] where it is most valuable, otherwise you put a huge amount of costs on everyone”.

Energy crunch is 'revenge of old economy': Goldman Sachs

The prices of commodities need to be "much higher to get returns sufficient to start attracting capital," says Goldman Sach's Jeff Currie

Author of the article:

Bloomberg News
Todd Gillespie
Publishing date: Sep 28, 2021 • 

The energy crisis that’s sent natural gas and power prices to record highs is a sign of “revenge” from “under-invested” legacy energy sources like fossil fuels, according to Jeff Currie, global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

“Poor return saw capital redirected away from the old economy to the new economy,” Currie said in a discussion with Francine Lacqua and Snam Chief Executive Officer Marco Alvera on Bloomberg TV. “It’s not unique to Europe, it’s not unique to energy, it’s a broad-based old-economy problem.”

Gas shortages have exposed vulnerabilities in global energy supply chains in recent months, leaving small U.K. energy companies collapsing in their wake. European energy markets from natural gas to carbon permits reached records on Tuesday, signaling the supply shortage will worsen just as winter starts.

Investment in gas in particular needs to be increased to fend off more volatility during the energy transition, Currie said, dating the origins of the problem to when long-cycle capital expenditure was “shunned” after the 2008 financial crisis.

“In many parts of the world, you’ve overbuilt wind, you’ve overbuilt solar,” he added, pointing to a lack of investment in coal, metals and mining. “The new economy is over-invested and the old economy is starved.”

The prices of commodities need to be “much higher to get returns sufficient to start attracting capital,” Currie said. “People wanted a quick return, and now you’re paying the price for it.”

According to Alvera, Europe needs to increase strategic gas storage capacity to stabilize the global market and to overcome the intermittency of renewable energy sources. He said he expects gas prices to fall quickly during the summer.

“We have a lot of oil storage, a lot of oil inventory, but in the U.K. there’s hardly any gas storage, and in Europe the storage that we have is half-empty,” said the gas-infrastructure CEO.

Alvera, who recently published a book on hydrogen, said the fuel can act as a stabilizing force in energy markets.

“What’s been exposed is that you can have as many wind farms as you want, but if you have no wind then you have an issue,” he added. Hydrogen can be added to the energy mix, he said, because it means you can “absorb electricity when it’s cheap and you can turn it back into electricity when it’s expensive.”

A more orderly transition could come as the cost of renewable resources declines, said Alvera. But the pressures on global commodity prices aren’t going to evaporate anytime soon, according to Currie.

“This is the first inning of a multi-year, potentially decade-long commodity supercycle,” Currie said. “It’s driven by the war on climate change, the war on income inequality. All of these dynamics lead to a structural rise in commodity demand against this whole idea of the revenge of the old economy.”

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Texas Restricts Fracking Practice Because It Causes So Many Earthquakes

Texas is halting new permits for wastewater injection wells in a swath of the state after a wave of earthquakes were linked to the fracking practice.

By Audrey Carleton
28.9.21

The Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) is halting new permits for the injection of wastewater from fracking in a swath of the state after a wave of earthquakes were connected to the practice.

In a release to fossil fuel producers published Friday, the state’s oil and gas regulator said it would no longer be permitting disposal wells around Midland, in the northwest region of Texas, because of earthquakes until further notice. The agency requested that an existing 76 wells reduce their daily injection volumes and ordered that permitted wells that aren’t yet in service refrain from starting injection. The announcement came the same day a 3.3 magnitude quake happened just 36 miles north, E&E News reported Monday.

“​​The Railroad Commission of Texas’ most critical mission is protection of public safety and the environment,” Andrew Keese, spokesperson for the agency, told Motherboard. “The RRC’s Seismologist and staff have been investigating recent earthquakes close to populated areas near Midland and Odessa, and assessed steps that could be taken by oil and gas operators to help mitigate the events.”

Wastewater injection is a common practice for the disposal of brine, which is produced in the fracking process. It involves shooting polluted liquid deep underground into containment zones in porous geological formations, where it is intended to stay indefinitely. That water typically includes a cocktail of chemicals used in the fracking process, which are at risk of leaching into nearby waterways, contaminating groundwater and ecosystems.

The practice is commonplace in the Permian Basin in Texas, the largest oil field in the country (an estimated five trillion liters were disposed of in the region between 1978 and 2016). It’s also well-understood to cause seismic activity. When fluid is injected at such a high pressure so deep (sometimes miles) into the ground, it runs the risk of hitting a fault line, counteracting existing friction between tectonic plates and spurring on a quake. In Oklahoma, also home to ample oil and gas drilling, the state geological survey tied a 900-fold increase in earthquakes between 2008 and 2019 to wastewater injection, a pattern that state seismologist Jake Walter told Scientific American is “unprecedented in human history.”

Known to some as “frackquakes,” the seismic disturbances are a common consequence of wastewater injection that have alarmed residents near the state’s petroleum-producing zones for over a decade.

In 2009 and 2010, researchers at Southern Methodist University linked a string of earthquakes in Cleburne, Texas to the injection of fracking wastewater underground after installing sensors near fault lines and pinpointing injection wells near the epicenter of a number of quakes. The same authors reported the same trend around a wave of earthquakes a few years later, between 2013 and 2014, in Azle, Texas, 50 miles north.

The practice, and the resulting quakes, have long disturbed nearby residents.

“They haven’t had earthquakes around here for 100 years, and to have this happen now — 32 within just the last couple of months — is crazy,” Darla Hobbs, a resident of Azle, Texas told NBC news about the string of earthquakes in her town in 2014. “And it’s not our fault for living here. It’s the gas well industry for drilling, and fracking, and the injection wells.”

As recently as March of 2020, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake in west Texas, near the New Mexico border was tied to nearby wastewater injection. Located in an area of “known human-caused seismicity,” the United States Geological Survey reported at the time, it was the largest event recorded in the region in two decades, spanning 5.3 miles and triggering more than 1,000 reports from residents, despite its location in a sparsely-populated area.

The months since have seen another six earthquakes, including Friday’s, hit the area around Midland and Odessa. The RRC said in its release to operators that wastewater injection “likely contributes” to this activity.

 

Beyond Petroleum: The First Supermajor To Turn Its Back On Oil

By Haley Zaremba - Sep 28, 2021, 3:00 PM CDT

• It’s going to take time, investment, infrastructure, and enormous effort to complete the clean energy transition.
• The world still needs hundreds of billions of barrels of oil.
• BP’s bold new Chief Executive Bernard Looney is trying to make sure that BP can beat its peers in a race toward clean energy dominance.

While international policymakers and regulatory bodies have already been applying some degree of pressure on the energy industry to decarbonize for years now, the push for cleaning up the global energy sector’s act has been supercharged by the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  (IPCC) and the United Nations (UN). 

The landmark 6th Assessment Report announced in no uncertain terms that we have reached a point of no return for the climate, having irreversibly altered weather patterns and unequivocally warmed the Earth due to human activity. However, there is still a small window of time to mitigate further damage and change the planet’s trajectory toward catastrophic climate change. This will require decarbonization at a massive scale and on an incredibly short timeline. The UN, not mincing words, has called it a “code red for humanity.”

That being said, it’s simply not feasible for the global economy to quit fossil fuels cold turkey. It’s going to take time, investment, infrastructure, and enormous effort to complete the clean energy transition, and in the meantime, the world still needs hundreds of billions of barrels of oil. This dynamic has made it hard to convince oil supermajors to set aside fossil fuels -- their stalwart cash cow -- when there is still so much money to be made before oil goes quietly into that goodnight, especially when brand new mass-scale clean energy enterprises probably won’t turn a profit for years.

 Despite the bumps in the road, however, it’s clear which way the tide is turning. Fossil fuels aren’t irrelevant yet, but they have no place in the future if this planet is to have one. Already, some oil execs and fossil fuel industry defectors have decided to abandon ship and are positioning themselves at the helm of the clean energy revolution, bringing their oilfield know-how and innovative expertise with them.

And now, at long last, some oil companies are reading the writing on the wall and deciding to bet big on renewables in order to establish a place at the front of the pack for the new energy era. One of the most notable cases is that of BP, which is changing course and liquidating huge portions of its fossil fuel holdings in a historic shift in strategy. 

BP’s bold new Chief Executive Bernard Looney is trying to make sure that BP can beat its peers in a race toward clean energy dominance. “He aims to slash BP's output by 40%, or about 1 million barrels per day, an amount equal to the UK's entire daily output in 2019,” Reuters recently reported. This makes BP the very first major oil company CEO to announce intentional cuts in future oil production. “At the same time,” the report continued, “BP would boost its capacity to generate electricity from renewable sources to 50 gigawatts, a 20-fold increase and equivalent to the power produced by 50 U.S. nuclear plants.” 

This plan will entail the selling off of $25 billion in fossil fuel assets over the next few years, representing about 13% of the company’s total fixed assets. 

While BP is proving to be a trailblazer in the fossil fuel sector’s adaptation to the clean energy revolution, the rest of European Big Oil isn’t too far behind. For the last few years, European supermajors have been pivoting away from total dependence on fossil fuel markets, trying to make the transition from Big Oil to Big Energy. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, it’s a different story. Big Oil in the U.S. has been much slower to accept the inevitable and start to prepare for the coming sea change. 

While the Biden administration has been making a concerted effort to catch up to the rest of the global clean energy industry through the likes of legislation including the historic Infrastructure Bill, it will be hard for companies that have not already started to pivot toward renewables to stay competitive, and could even imperil the energy security of nations that fail to curb their dependence on oil, gas, and coal. 

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

 

Portuguese Floating Wind Farm Shows Better-Than-Expected Results

Courtesy EDP Renewables

PUBLISHED SEP 27, 2021 10:38 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Portuguese utility EDP Renewables has good news about its WindFloat Atlantic floating offshore wind farm, the first project of its kind with semi-submersible platform bases. In its first full year of operation, WndFloat Atlantic's three turbines produced 75 GWh of electricity, exceeding expectations for the pre-commercial scale development. 

"The project has performed well above expectations. It has registered high levels of availability and a production that has exceeded expectations for many months," said EDPR project director said José Pinheiro. "We wanted to share these positive results of a project that has marked a 'before and after' in the offshore wind energy industry because of the technology used and because it has become the first floating and semi-submersible wind farm in the world." 

EDPR is already exploring options for commercial-scale developments in Portugal and abroad, and it is working through a JV partnership with Engie to bring the system to market. 
WindFloat Atlantic draws on platform technology developed by Principle Power, an engineering startup based in California. Repsol also contributed to the pilot-scale installation. 

Floating offshore wind has a much larger global potential than near-shore, bottom-fixed sites, but also comes at a significant lifetime cost premium. Its proponents hope to bring down the cost of moorings, float structures, and long-term maintenance as the technology matures. 

Principle Power is seeing early success in the budding floating-wind market. Its platforms are also in use at Statkraft's Kincardine wind farm off Scotland, which is the world's largest at a capacity of 50 MW. Kincardine just started operations this month, becoming the second large-scale installation of turbines based on semi-submersible platform. Cobra and Flotation Energy, the firms behind Kincardine, are also among the bidders in Scotland's giant ScotWind lease round. 

Principle Power says that it is learning from each of these projects, finding "important innovations in modularization and manufacturability to further increase deliverability and competitiveness." A third generation of its design will be deployed for the Les Éoliennes Flottantes du Golfe de Lion (EFGL) project off Leucate, France. 

Climate activist Nakate seeks immediate action in Glasgow

By CHARLENE PELE

1 of 9

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate, right, speaks at the start of a three-day Youth for Climate summit in Milan, Italy, Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021. Sitting at left is Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)


MILAN (AP) — Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said Wednesday that youth delegates meeting in Milan want to see immediate action from leaders at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland — not cheap, last-ditch grasps at supporting polluting fuels before getting down to business.

Nakate is among 400 activists invited to Italy’s financial capital for a three-day Youth4Climate meeting that will draft a document for the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, which opens on Oct. 31.

“If leaders and governments are going to talk about net zeroes or cutting emissions, halving emissions by 2030 or 2040 or 2050, that means it has to start now,″ Nakate told The Associated Press.

”It doesn’t mean, if we are going to do it by 2030, between now and 2030 let’s open a coal power plant, you know, let’s frack some gas, or let us construct an oil pipeline. That is not the real climate action that we want,″ she said. “”If you are to go net zero by 2030, it has to start now.″

Although the activists have traveled to Milan from 180 countries, Nakate said many have the feeling that their suggestions for the closing document that will be published Thursday are not welcome. She said the dynamic was “concerning.”

“It really feels like everything has been decided for us,″ Nakate, a 24-year-old with a degree in business administration. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg similarly accused the organizers on Tuesday of bringing in “cherry-picked” delegates and pretending to listen.

But she said young people were speaking up, and had created their own working group on fossil fuels.

“Hopefully it’s something they can accept,″ she said.

Nakate gave an emotional opening speech to the gathering on Tuesday, calling out leaders for failing to meet financial pledges and describing the devastating impact of climate change at home in Uganda. While she said she was overwhelmed by the support she has received after her speech, she rejected the media’s tendency to dub leaders of the movement.

“It’s how people portray the climate movement,″ Nakate said. “It is not just one face or two faces. It’s communities. It is people who are organizing in different countries. I think that is the true face of the climate movement. The people who are standing up for the planet and a better future.”

In 2020, Nakate was cropped out of an Associated Press photo at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The AP apologized and acknowledged mistakes in how it initially responded.

Pope Francis on Wednesday praised young environmental activists for challenging global leaders to make good on promises to curb emissions and insisted that political leaders make wise decisions to promote “a culture of responsible sharing.”

Francis thanked the activists for their “dreams and good projects” and encouraged them to form an educational alliance to help “rebuild the fabric” of humanity through care for the planet.

“This vision is capable of challenging the adult world, for it reveals that you are prepared not only for action, but also for patient listening, constructive dialogue and mutual understanding,” he said.

Francis has made care for “our common home” of the Earth a hallmark of his papacy and devoted an entire encyclical to the issue in 2015. The Scottish bishops conference has said it expects Francis to attend the Glasgow climate summit, though the Vatican hasn’t yet confirmed his presence.

“It is time to take wise decisions so that we can make use of the many experiences gained in recent years, in order to make possible a culture of care, a culture of responsible sharing,” Francis said in the message.

___

Follow all AP stories on climate change at https://apnews.com/hub/Climate-change

Ancient cities can offer lessons on how to build climate resilience: study

Tom Yun

CTVNews.ca writer
Tuesday, September 28, 2021 

The 12th century Khmer temple of Preah Khan is seen in this photo. Researchers at the University of Sydney and the University of Texas at Austin studied the collapse of ancient Khmer cities in Southeast Asia and Maya cities in Mesoamerica. (Daniel Penny/University of Sydney)

TORONTO -- A new study suggests that looking at ancient cities can offer lessons as to how we can adapt to climate change.

Researchers at the University of Sydney and the University of Texas at Austin studied the collapse of ancient Khmer cities in Southeast Asia and Maya cities in Mesoamerica. They published their findings this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When these civilizations "collapsed," much of the core urban centres of these areas were abandoned, but settlements in the surrounding areas continued to persist thanks to the infrastructure investments that these civilizations made.

The authors write that the two civilizations had "clear parallels" when it came to land use, settlement types and water management infrastructure. These civilizations featured large-scale conversion of tropical forests into agricultural land, surrounded by reservoirs and canals.

“They created extensive landscapes of terraced and bunded (embanked to control water flow) agricultural fields that acted as massive sinks for water, sediment and nutrients,” said lead author Daniel Penny and associate professor at the University of Sydney, in a news release.

The Khmer Empire encompassed much of modern-day Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam between the ninth and 15th centuries. The Maya civilization had existed for thousands of years in present-day Mexico and Central America up until its collapse in the ninth century.

These areas also had a high degree of climate variability. The authors point to archeological evidence of severe episodes of flooding and drought in the areas surrounding both the Maya and Khmer cities. Yet, the ancient infrastructure allowed for "resilient communities that were able to tolerate large climatic shifts."

The settlements that the Maya and the Khmer left behind demonstrate the importance of building climate-resilient infrastructure, with more extreme weather events expected in the future as climate change continues to intensify.

“We often think of these historic events as disasters, but they also have much to teach us about persistence, resilience and continuity in the face of climate variability,” said Penny.

UK’s home gas boilers emit twice as much CO2 as all power stations – study

Data highlights urgent need for government action to introduce low-carbon heat pumps, researchers say

High gas prices mean the energy bills of people living in poorly insulated homes will rise by up to £246 a year, research shows. 

Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Damian Carrington

Environment editor
Wed 29 Sep 2021

The millions of gas boilers in the UK’s homes produce twice as much climate-heating carbon emissions as all the nation’s gas-fired power stations combined, according to an analysis.

The finding highlighted the urgent need for a strong government policy to rapidly introduce low-carbon heating such as heat pumps, the researchers said.

The data also shows that home gas boilers collectively produce eight times as much nitrogen dioxide as the power plants. NO2 is an air pollutant linked to tens of thousands of early deaths a year in the UK.

Ministers have promised to publish their heat and buildings strategy before the UN Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow in November. The government is also contending with soaring gas prices, which have been driven up by rapid growth in post-pandemic demand around the world.

Heat pumps run on electricity and are efficient but they cost much more to install than gas boilers. The CBI has said the installation of new gas boilers must be banned from 2025 or the UK’s net zero climate target will be “doomed”.

A second analysis has found that high gas prices mean the energy bills of people living in poorly insulated homes will rise by up to £246 a year. The UK has the oldest housing stock in western Europe but the rates of home insulation installation plunged by 95% between 2012 and 2019. A recent government energy efficiency scheme collapsed after six months, with the National Audit Office blaming ministers for the “botched” policy.

Neil Jones, at the climate charity Possible, which produced the analysis of gas boilers with the social enterprise Scene, said: “Amid a frightening gas price crisis, and a decade of opportunity wasted by the government to insulate our homes, supporting households to begin switching to clean heat pumps has come suddenly into focus.

“It’s high time the government finally gave us all the tools we need to modernise our homes, and ensure a safer, cleaner future.”

The UK is lagging behind most European countries in terms of heat pump installations.

The Possible analysis used government data to estimate the CO2 emissions and air pollution produced by the UK’s home gas boilers and power plants. It found the boilers used in a city the size of Leeds pump out the same amount of CO2 as one gas power station. Home energy use contributes about 15% of all the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Jess Ralston, at the non-profit thinktank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said: “This analysis hammers another nail into the coffin for fossil fuel heating. The dangers gas boilers pose are becoming increasingly clear. The upcoming heat and buildings strategy provides the perfect opportunity to go big and bold and cement a healthier, more affordable and greener future for Brits.”

The second analysis, by the ECIU, found that homes with energy performance certificates (EPC) in band D, the average rating for England and Wales, would pay £107 more per year for their gas at current high prices, compared with those living in a home rated in band C. For those in homes with an EPC rating of F, the increase is £246 a year.

However, the situation would be far worse without the energy efficiency measures that have been installed in recent years, with the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group estimating that bills would have been up to £500 a year higher.

Insulate Britain, a protest group demanding that the government produces a legally binding national plan to fully fund low-carbon retrofits of all homes in Britain by 2030, has repeatedly blocked motorways, A-roads and the port of Dover in recent weeks.

‘False choice’: is deep-sea mining required for an electric vehicle revolution?

Activists from Fiji protest before the Maersk Launcher, a ship chartered by TMC for deep-sea mining. 

Photograph: Marten van Dijl/Greenpeace

Deep sea mining firms claim their rare metals are necessary to power clean tech – but with even major electric car firms now backing a moratorium, critics say there is an alternative

More from this series: Race to the bottom – the rush to mine the deep sea

Seascape: the state of our oceans is supported by

Karen McVeigh
@karenmcveigh1
Tue 28 Sep 2021 07.00 BST

At the Goodwood festival of speed near Chichester, the crowds gathered at the hill-climb circuit to watch the world’s fastest cars roar past, as they do every year. But not far from the high-octane action, there was a new, and quieter, attraction: a display of the latest electric vehicles, from the £28,000 Mini Electric to the £2m Lotus Evija hypercar. Even here, at one of the biggest events in Britain’s petrolhead calendar, it’s clear the days of the internal combustion engine are numbered.

As countries strive to meet stringent carbon-emission targets, and vehicle-makers phase out combustion engines, 145m electric vehicles are predicted to be on the roads within a decade, up from 11m last year. The car batteries they require, along with storage batteries for solar and wind power, have sent demand for metals soaring, taking mining firms to the bottom of the sea in the hunt for those metals.

Thousands of metres below the ocean’s surface lie millions of potato-sized rocks known as nodules: a rich source of nickel, copper, manganese and cobalt. In June, an application was filed to start mining these deposits in two years’ time. As well as the demand for minerals for smartphones and other electronic devices, and the difficulty of extracting them from the land in a sustainable way, the companies behind deep-sea mining say we have no choice: if we want to make the transition to renewable energy, we must plumb the ocean depths.

Q&A
What is deep sea mining?

“We now have the technology available to us to explore more of the ocean in the next 10 years than we have had in the last 10,000,” says Oliver Steeds, founder and chief executive of Nekton, a deep-sea research foundation and a participant at Goodwood’s Future Lab. His team uses technology such as autonomous underwater vehicles, or robots, to map the deep sea – not for mining, but to promote ocean conservation. Nekton led a deep-sea mission to the Indian Ocean in 2019, which broadcast live from a submersible 200 metres below the waves.

Manganese nodules on the seabed off the Cook Islands. Proponents of deep-sea mining argue that we have no choice but to exploit these minerals as we move towards a zero-carbon future. Photograph: USGS

The advances in mining and exploration technology represent “an extraordinary opportunity for progress”, Steeds says. “But also it represents a threat, whether through deep-sea mining or further industrialisation and overfishing.

“Too often, the ocean is out of sight, out of mind. But we need to discover what’s there before we destroy it.”

More than 90% of the estimated 2.2 million species in the ocean remain undescribed. And the two-year countdown to deep-sea mining has prompted warnings from scientists that we have not sufficiently understood its potential impact on biodiversity and ecosystems.

Douglas McCauley, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and director of the Benioff Ocean Initiative, says the potential impact of deep-sea mining keeps him up at night.

Electrification of vehicle fleets is a “positive pathway” to reduce carbon emissions, says McCauley. But he accuses deep-sea mining companies of a “false narrative” that we must mine the ocean to meet renewable energy’s demand for metals.
Too often, the ocean is out of sight, out of mind. But we need to discover what’s there before we destroy itOliver Steeds, Nekton

“There are some very significant questions being raised by scientists about the impacts of ocean mining,” he says. “How much extinction could be generated? How long will it take these extremely low-resilience systems to recover? What impact will it have on the ocean’s capacity to capture carbon?”

Campaigners highlight the uncertainty in assumptions behind often wildly different projected metal demand. In July, Greenpeace researchers showed many projections for metal demand by 2050 assumed ongoing use of cobalt and nickel-dependent lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and storage, despite alternatives being developed, including Tesla’s use of lithium iron phosphate batteries, which require neither metal.

Kevin Bridgen, senior scientist for Greenpeace Research Laboratories, says: “People are saying ‘we are not going to have enough metals if we carry on doing as we’ve always done’, but changes are already taking place.”

Increasingly, car companies are joining in the revolt. In March, BMW and Volvo, with Google and Samsung, became the first global companies to sign up to the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) call for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. In backing the call, WWF says, the companies committed to not sourcing any metals from the seabed, to exclude them from their supply chains and not to finance deep-sea mining, until the risks are better understood and the alternatives exhausted.

In calling for a ban, Claudia Becker, BMW’s expert in sustainable supply-chain management, says she fears mining the deep sea could have “irreversible consequences”.

“We came to the conclusion we are missing an understanding of the biodiversity impacts of deep-sea mining. We wanted to send a clear signal to the industry that until these issues are resolved, minerals from the deep seabed are not an option for us.”

The safety car for a Formula E motorsport race. It is estimated that there will be 145m electric cars on the roads within a decade.

 Photograph: CJM Photography/Alamy

Alternatives

One of several alternatives being explored is to build batteries using widely available metals, instead of the rare and expensive minerals used today.

Becker believes mining the seabed could be avoided by turning to alternative, less damaging metals, or by designing batteries that require fewer minerals. She cites China-based BYD (Build Your Dreams), the world’s second-largest electric vehicle manufacturer, which announced this year it would no longer use cobalt in batteries.

Claes Eliasson, senior vice-president of media relations at Volvo, says that its AB Volvo division – which makes lorries, buses and construction equipment – is betting on three vehicle types: electric, hydrogen and biofuels. It is collaborating with Daimler Trucks to produce hydrogen fuel cells for long-haul vehicles.

There are also growing calls for better recycling – including taking old batteries from rubbish dumps. “We are accumulating metal-rich lithium-iron batteries,” McCauley says of these waste sites. He is optimistic about recycling, seeing “exciting developments” in recovering minerals from batteries, and because he believes there is a “huge amount of money to be made” from pioneering a cheaper, energy-dense battery.

Researchers are tackling how to recycle the millions of electric vehicle batteries manufacturers expect to produce over the coming decades. Electric vehicle (EV) batteries are not designed for recycling, says Andy Abbott, professor of physical chemistry at Leicester University. “Most EV batteries have very small cells, which are put into modules and the modules put into packs. To give an idea, the Tesla Model S has got 4,600 cells in it,” he points out.

The difficulty, he says, is to find a cost-effective way to separate the cells, which are held together with tough and highly toxic glue, to access the metals inside.

“Some people are suggesting glue-less cells and making disassembly easier,” says Abbott. “We’re looking at using robots that can pull apart batteries. We’ve shown that, economically, it’s better if you can disassemble it.”
Deep-sea mining in a sensitive environment is not a good idea until science has a good way to do it. We’re not there yetClaes Eliasson, Volvo

Product design and “planned obsolescence” is another major hurdle for metal recycling. In 2019, 53.6m tonnes of electronic waste was generated globally, only 17.4%, or 9.3m, of which was recycled. But this too is set to change, with the International Telecommunication Union setting a target of 30% recycling by 2030.)

In 2018, China began to hold vehicle manufacturers responsible for ensuring that batteries are recycled and the country now recycles more lithium-ion batteries than the rest of the world combined. Last year, BYD launched the blade battery, which stores flat cells directly inside, allowing them to be removed by hand.

Abbott predicts lithium-iron batteries will be recycled more efficiently in the next “10 to 15 years”. But he adds that they almost certainly will not be the main technology in 20 to 30 years’ time. “It’s an evolving market,” he says.

Robots assemble electric cars in the BYD factory in Xi’an, Shaanxi. China now holds carmakers responsible for recycling batteries and the country now recycles more lithium-ion batteries than the rest of the world combined. 

Photograph: Alex Plavevski/EPA

The Metals Company, formerly DeepGreen, one of several companies planning to mine nodules in the Pacific, has accused BMW, Volvo and the other companies of “irresponsible” claims. In a statement in March it asked: “Where exactly will BMW get the battery metals it needs to fully electrify its products, and with what impact to our climate?”

But its claim that mining metals from the ocean had the “least planetary impact” has been called into question.

In July, the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, Greenpeace USA and Global Witness sent a letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, questioning DeepGreen’s environmental impact and feasibility statement.

“DeepGreen is offering a false or dystopian choice” between destroying the rainforest or the ocean environment, says Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition. “We don’t need to do either. We, as a society – whether consumers, private companies and/or, in particular, governments investing in renewable energy technologies – can and should use substitute materials and metals in the construction of electric batteries for vehicles and other energy storage technologies.”

TMC declined to comment for this article.

It is not just activists who are concerned. BMW’s Becker says that at least mines on land, although often beset by allegations of child labour, deforestation and pollution, can at least be inspected and held to account.


Race to the bottom: the disastrous, blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea

“I’m not saying that every mine in the world is perfect,” says Becker. “But we have tools, like due diligence standards, that we can apply to mines operating under these standards and we can improve them.”

“Looking at the machinery involved in deep-sea mining, it has hardly been tested at all, smaller versions maybe. But without testing, how do we trust these methods?”

Eliasson, at Volvo, says: “If all the specialists were telling us deep-sea mining is a simple easy option with no impacts on biodiversity, we would have no problem with it. But to date, the research is not there.

“Deep-sea mining in a very sensitive environment is not a good idea until science has come up with a good way to do it. We’re not there yet.”

McCauley agrees. “We have an exciting opportunity, and obligation, to harness the full power of science and human ingenuity to accelerate the mass production of electric vehicles in a way that doesn’t create a new environmental disaster in our ocean, and that minimises the impacts of mining on land.”

TMC were approached for comment but did not respond.

Study: Delay on graphic warning labels on cigarettes may have cost lives

By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News


Researchers say that graphic labels on cigarette packaging could have prevented tens of thousands of deaths in the last decade. File Photo by underworld/Shutterstock

A specimen cup full of bloody urine.

Decaying feet that sport blackened, rotting toes -- some already amputated.

A pale boy with dark circles under his eyes, drawing breath through an oxygen mask.

Around 179,000 deaths in the United States might have been prevented over the past decade if smokers had been forced to confront such images every time they reached for a pack of cigarettes, a new study suggests.

RELATED Study: Graphic warnings on cigarettes boost desire to quit, but only for short time

Labels with graphic health warnings had been set to appear on cigarette packs in 2012, but tobacco industry legal action derailed that effort.

The warning labels are now scheduled to appear on packs starting next year, but the decade-long delay has cost tens of thousands of American lives, said senior author Rafael Meza, a professor of epidemiology and global public health at the University of Michigan.

"The evidence is out there from multiple countries that suggests these graphic health warnings do work as intended," Meza said. "If we had been able to implement this regulation back in 2012, many more lives could have been saved. This work shows the cost of industry litigation and procedures to delay implementation of tobacco regulations."

Meza and his colleagues project that more than a half million lives -- about 539,000 -- still could be saved by the turn of the century if no further delays occur.

About 120 countries around the world already have such graphic health warnings on cigarette packs, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Canada became the first in 2001 graphic images now cover three-quarters of the space on their tobacco packaging, researchers said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a set of 13 graphic warning labels that would cover half of a cigarette pack's front and back. The warnings "stand to represent the most significant change to cigarette labels in 35 years," the agency says.

The labels contain disturbing images and short messages about lesser-known risks of cigarette smoking, including stunted fetal growth, age-related macular degeneration, bladder cancer, cataracts, COPD, heart disease, strokes, head and neck cancer, type 2 diabetes and erectile dysfunction.

"These graphic cigarette warning labels have been proven to be very effective, especially at prompting current smokers to end their addiction because they're staring at that pack," said Erika Sward, national assistant vice president of advocacy for the American Lung Association in Washington, D.C.

Rather than lung cancer, the warnings focus on "other diseases that are perhaps not as top-of-mind for smokers when they are thinking about the health consequences of their addiction," Sward added.

For this study, the researchers created a simulation model of how graphic warning labels might affect smoking trends.

They took estimates from previous studies regarding the effectiveness of explicit warning labels, and applied those estimates to federal data about the number of smokers and smoking deaths in the United States.

If the labels do go into effect next year, the model projects that the percentage of people smoking in the United States will drop from an estimated 13.6% in 2022 to 4.2% by 2100.

Only about 12.3% of Americans would now be smoking had the warning labels gone into effect in 2012, the model's results showed.

In 2019, about 14% of U.S. adults smoked, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"When you think about a large country like the U.S., even if you can reduce prevalence by 1%, you're talking about millions of smokers," Meza said. "Just preventing a few smokers from engaging in the habit or helping them quit will result in considerable health gains."

These graphic label warnings would have added to other policies that have effectively curbed U.S. smoking, including tobacco taxes, smoke-free area laws, and bans on cigarette advertising, Sward and Meza said.


"This study really underscores why the tobacco industry views delays as wins, and why it's so important to move forward promptly with these effective policies," Sward said.

One of the tobacco industry's strategies over the years has been "delay, delay, delay," she said.

"The industry has delayed graphic warning labels for a decade now because they're putting profits over people's lives," Sward added.

She hopes studies like these will spur the FDA toward quicker action in other areas of tobacco control.

For example, the FDA said last spring that it would propose a rule to remove menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars from the marketplace, but nothing has been seen since, Sward said.

"That's kind of in the announced-but-not-acted-upon-yet category," she said of the April announcement.

Other actions being considered by the FDA and federal and state lawmakers include removing all flavored tobacco products from the market, imposing larger tobacco taxes, and funding a wider array of smoking cessation programs, Sward said.

Her group plans to support the FDA against any legal threat that might cause the graphic warning labels to be delayed again.

"The American Lung Association and our public health partners brought the lawsuit against FDA to compel them to move forward with the graphic warning labels as they were required to do under the Tobacco Control Act," Sward said. "Now we are working to support them fighting back against the tobacco industry."

The new study was published Friday in JAMA Health Forum.More information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has more about the proposed warning labels, including interactive examples.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

'Belly of the beast': From 13, kids treated as adults online

Issued on: 30/09/2021 - 

Thirteen effectively serves as the age of majority online under a two-decade old US law, and is the minimum set by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat -- all of which are massively popular among children 

MARVIN RECINOS AFP


Washington (AFP)

Facebook drew outrage for its now paused plans for an Instagram app for kids aged 12 and under. But 13-year-olds are already welcome on social media with few protections and sometimes tragic effects, experts and parents said.

That's because 13 effectively serves as the age of majority online under a two-decade-old law, and is the minimum set by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat -- all of which are massively popular among children.

Josh Golin at advocacy Fairplay said the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) intended to protect the privacy of kids aged 12 or under, but was crafted well before social media and is now dangerously outdated.

"At age 13, essentially the internet treats you as an adult," Golin told AFP. "I doubt very many people now would say... 'That seems like a good time to throw them into the belly of the beast.'"

US senators have called a hearing Thursday about the "toxic effects of Facebook and Instagram" on young people, which will include the questioning of Facebook executive Antigone Davis.

Worries over the platforms' potential to harm youth have spiked after a scathing Wall Street Journal series revealing the social media giant's own research showed it knew of the damage Instagram can do to teenage girls' well-being.

In the wake of those reports, Facebook announced Monday it was suspending development of the kids' version of the photo-sharing app to consult with the parents and advocacy groups who fought against the plan.

Yet, Tristan Harris, president and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, noted: "That doesn't stop all the kids who are on there already, whose suicidal ideation, body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression are still there."

He was referring to some of the long list of harms attributed to steady social media use among young people.

The worries are only amplified for 13-year-olds, who are about a decade from having the fully developed parts of the brain key to making choices and controlling impulses.

Facebook and Instagram had argued that kids are getting phones steadily younger, lying about their ages, getting apps and need something designed for them.

However, Alex Stamos, a former chief security officer for the social media giant, said that the problems online go beyond software and apps.

"The business model is reaching deeper and deeper down the brainstem at a younger and younger age, much like the tobacco companies had to get kids addicted early," said Tristan Harris, president co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology 

WANG Zhao AFP/File

"Preteens probably shouldn't have phones, but parents give them anyway... Young teens shouldn't be on social media, but parents allow," Stamos tweeted.

Lawmakers have put forth bills -- including Senator Ed Markey, who helped craft COPPA -- but their glacial speed has failed to even come close to the frantic speed of technology's changes on human lives.

- 'Get kids addicted early' -

The Federal Trade Commission is reportedly now considering beefing up online privacy safeguards, including for children, but changes would likely be years away if the watchdog took up the problem.

"Raise the age to 16, for everybody involved that would be way smarter," James Steyer, founder and CEO of advocacy group Common Sense Media, told AFP.

The US Federal Trade Commission is reportedly now considering beefing up online privacy safeguards, including for children, but changes would likely be years away if the watchdog took up the problem Paul J. RICHARDS AFP

He added that the tech companies also need to put real resources -- on the scale of hundreds of millions of dollars -- into enforcing the age limits already in place.

Behind the fear and outrage directed at social media are horrific accounts of online bullying, self-harm and toxic body obsessions exacerbated by posts.

Joann Bogard's 15-year-old son Mason told her he loved her before running off to take a shower at their home in 2019, but a loud thump soon alerted the family something was wrong.

The boy had tied a belt around his neck and would eventually die from his injuries, which Bogard told AFP were inspired by a social media trend of kids choking themselves.

The family found a recording on his phone of an earlier attempted choking and the local coroner later ruled the death an accident.

Children "don't even understand what they are watching and what they are doing is dangerous," she said.

Experts noted that social can have powerful, beneficial effects in teens' lives, for example LGBTQ young people in isolated areas who find support and connection online.

But a lack of protection for children online means they will remain sought after targets for social media, especially the youngest users.

"The real problem is that the business model is reaching deeper and deeper down the brainstem at a younger and younger age, much like the tobacco companies had to get kids addicted early," said Harris.

© 2021 AFP