Sunday, October 03, 2021

Low health-care capacity cost Canada economically amid pandemic: report

By Eric Stober Global News
Posted October 2, 2021 

Quebec health-care workers say they feel overlooked by government 

Canada’s health-care capacity ranks among the worst of its peers and is a factor in economic losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a CIBC report.

The report, titled “Low hospital capacity in Canada: A continued economic risk as Covid becomes endemic,” highlights that Canada has one of the worst health-care capacities among developed countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

According to the Global Health Security Index, Canada ranks 41st out of 137 when it comes to capacity.

Canada’s capacity was already being strained prior to the pandemic in 2019 — and has caused Canada to implement more and stricter restrictions than other countries, resulting in less economic activity, according to the report.

COVID-19-related hospitalization per one million of the population in the U.S. and U.K. were four and five times higher than in Canada, respectively, but our system was still pushed to its limits during the second wave of COVID-19 in the fall of 2020, the report said.

“Simply put, we reached capacity at levels that many other countries consider to be acceptable,” the report states.

“If we reach capacity faster than any other countries, that means that the trigger or the threshold to ignite [COVID-19] policies is much lower,” said Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist at CIBC and a co-author of the report. “This has major economic implications.”

Tal sees the pandemic as a “wake-up call” for Canada to invest in its health-care capacity to better handle COVID-19 as an endemic.

“We have to increase capacity, we have to make it a priority,” he said.

Canadian premiers have requested at least $28 billion in extra funding from the federal government, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he wouldn’t comment on extra funding until after the pandemic has ended.

Ontario, though, plans to spend almost all of its increases to health-care funding on new hospitals over the next 10 years, according to the report.

‘Thoughtful’ changes needed

Justin Hall, deputy chief of Sunnybrook Hospital’s Emergency Department in Toronto, agreed that capacity was definitely stretched to its limits even before the pandemic and that the worst may still be ahead given the great backlog of surgeries that hospitals will soon have to contend with, as well as a shortage of staff.

He said there has been an exodus of nurses during the pandemic due to the demands of the job.

“Our system right now is strained from a capacity perspective of humans,” Hall said.

However, Hall doesn’t think that money should just be thrown at the system, but that improvements have to be “thoughtful.”

“Money is a short-term solution to this, but I actually don’t think it’s the only thing that’s needed,” he said. “We really need a longer-term plan for how we’re going to address capacity on a long-term basis, not simply for the next year or two.”

That means taking a close look at hospitals’ needs a decade down the line and a significant investment in talent.

Hall also believes that there can be better coordination among provinces and different levels of government to “share lessons” instead of reinventing the wheel.

“We really have 14 different health systems that are operating in this country at various levels,” he said.

One challenge, though, is how geographically spread out the country is, which makes sharing resources or reaching northern communities difficult, but Hall said one silver lining of the pandemic is the rise of virtual care.

“Virtual care without a doubt is here to stay,” he said. “It’s very much an important part of how we’re going to address some of the capacity concerns as well.”
Economy Rebounds in Canada Amid Wider Business Reopening
Shelly Hagan and Erik Hertzberg
Fri., October 1, 2021, 




(Bloomberg) -- Canada’s economy returned to growth as consumers headed back to restaurants and entertainment venues, propelling spending on services.

Gross domestic product rose 0.7% in August, Statistics Canada said in a flash estimate from Ottawa. That’s a reversal from July, which showed a 0.1% contraction, according to the report.

Economists were predicting a 0.2% drop in output for July, after early guidance indicating a weak start to the second half of the year. The agriculture and manufacturing sectors were among the contributors to the decline.

“Today’s GDP report provides a small tonic to the troubling results from a month ago,” Doug Porter, chief economist at Bank of Montreal, said in a report to investors. “The slightly smaller-than-expected setback in July and nice pop in August suggest that the economy managed to grind out some moderate growth in the summer quarter as a whole.”

Bonds rallied at first, then dropped, with the 10-year benchmark trading at 1.474% as of 9:39 a.m. in Toronto. The Canadian dollar was little changed at C$1.2674 per U.S. dollar.

The August figure suggests Canada’s economic recovery is back on track, with consumers leading the way as businesses reopened amid a strong vaccine rollout in the early summer months. While a cool-down in the housing market and supply chain disruptions drove a shock 1.1% annualized contraction in the second quarter, Friday’s report supports analysts’ views that consumption, particularly in service sectors, will offset other weaknesses. The food and accommodation sector and a rebound in manufacturing contributed to the August gain, even as the agriculture sector suffered from continued drought conditions.

Fidelity’s Wolf Sees Bank of Canada Forced Into Early Hike

While high-contact sectors still have room to recover, there’s near-term risk that the delta variant and a return to schools could prompt a slowdown in consumption if Covid cases tick up again. The expansion in August, though positive, isn’t strong enough to propel quarterly growth near the Bank of Canada’s 7.3% annualized forecast for the third quarter.

Based on the figures released Friday, quarterly GDP is now tracking around 3% annualized, according to Bloomberg calculations. The July and August readings are the last before the central bank updates its forecasts at its Oct. 27 policy decision, where it’s expected to taper its asset purchases to C$1 billion ($789 million) a week from the existing pace of C$2 billion.

“The Bank of Canada will probably be OK with this release,” Nathan Janzen, an economist at Royal Bank of Canada, said by email. “We will still get another labor market report next week, but for now we think this is probably enough to keep an October taper on the table.”

(Updates with details throughout.)
Russian expedition finds evidence of northernmost Stone Age hunters above the Arctic Circle


By Tom Metcalfe 2 days ago

They would have hunted woolly mammoths.


The excavations of the mammoth skeleton on Kotelny Island this summer show it was deliberately butchered by Stone Age humans around 26,000 years ago. (Image credit: Courtesy of Innokenty Pavlov and Alexander Kandyba)


Ancient cut marks on mammoth bones unearthed on a remote island in the frozen extremes of Siberia are the northernmost evidence of Paleolithic humans ever found, according to archaeologists.

The bones from the woolly mammoth skeleton, dated to about 26,000 years ago, were excavated this summer by a Russian expedition to Kotelny Island, in the far northeast of Siberia — 615 miles (990 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle.

The team pieced together more than two-thirds of the skeleton — and they found cut marks and notches, made by stone or bone tools, on almost every bone. That indicates the animal was deliberately butchered, probably after it was hunted down by a nomadic band of Stone Age hunters, the archaeologists said.

Related: Back to the Stone Age: 17 key milestones in Paleolithic life

It's the northernmost evidence of Paleolithic humans ever found, said expedition leader Alexander Kandyba, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Siberian branch.

"This suggests that the northern border of human existence in the Pleistocene was much to the north of the generally accepted ideas," Kandyba told Live Science in an email, referring to the Pleistocene epoch between 2.6 million and 11,700 years ago — the time of the last ice age.

Until now, the northernmost traces of Stone Age humans came from the valley of the Yana River in the Yakutia region of Siberia, and dated to between 27,000 and 29,000 years ago, he said.

"The discovery of this site makes it possible to move the northern border of the existence of ancient man and the development of the territory by him in the Pleistocene by almost 600 kilometers [370 miles] to the north," he said.

Images 



The archaeological team were able to piece together more than two-thirds of the mammoth skeleton from their excavations. (Image credit: Courtesy of Innokenty Pavlov and Alexander Kandyba)




The archaeologists say almost every bone had cut marks and notches made by stone or bone tools, indicating it was deliberately butchered. (Image credit: Courtesy of Innokenty Pavlov and Alexander Kandyba)




The discovery of the butchered mammoth skeleton on Kotelny Island is the northernmost evidence of Paleolithic humans. (Image credit: Courtesy of Innokenty Pavlov and Alexander Kandyba)




The excavations of the mammoth skeleton on Kotelny Island this summer show it was deliberately butchered by Stone Age humans around 26,000 years ago. (Image credit: Courtesy of Innokenty Pavlov and Alexander Kandyba)



The expeditions to Kotelny Island were led by a team from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. (Image credit: Courtesy of Innokenty Pavlov and Alexander Kandyba)




The mammoth skeleton was discovered on Kotelny Island in 2019 but it wasn't fully excavated until this summer. (Image credit: Courtesy of Innokenty Pavlov and Alexander Kandyba)




Kotelny Island was connected to the Siberian mainland at the time the mammoth was killed about 26,000 years ago, and was warmer than it is today. (Image credit: Courtesy of Innokenty Pavlov and Alexander Kandyba)

Mammoth bones


Kotelny Island is the largest of the New Siberian Islands, which are located between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea, about 150 miles (250 km) off the northern coast of East Siberia.

At the time the mammoth was killed, the sea level was lower, and so Kotelny Island was joined to the mainland. The climate was also milder, although temperatures were still near or below freezing for most of the year.

Related: Mammoth resurrection: 11 hurdles to bringing back an ice age beast

Archaeologists previously found the fossilized remains of trees on the island, but it's too cold for them to grow there today. Kandyba’s team discovered the mammoth bones on Kotelny Island in 2019, but it was only during the expedition in July of this year that they could be fully excavated, he said.

Stone Age hunters


The team didn't find any of the tools that caused the marks, but they did find a large number of ivory shavings and chips that indicated that ancient people had carved into the mammoth tusks. They also found two ivory tools made from the tusks: a small spatula and a strange object that looks somewhat like a squeegee; archaeologists are still trying to determine what it was used for, Kandyba said.

From the bones, the archaeologists gleaned other clues about the lifestyle of the Stone Age hunters. For a start, it seems clear that they hunted mammoths, although other archaeologists have suggested Paleolithic hunters may have avoided such large and dangerous prey in favor of smaller animals, such as reindeer. "I think people hunted all kinds of animals at that time," Kandyba said.

There was no sign that the mammoth had been trapped before it was killed — a method some archaeologists suggest such hunters may have used.

"The fact that the skeleton of the mammoth was located on the slope of an ancient terrace suggests that the animal was definitely killed in the open air, and not in a mud trap," he said.

The findings from the latest research on the mammoth skeleton and the evidence that it was butchered by Stone Age humans are now being prepared for publication in a scientific journal, Kandyba said.

Originally published on Live Science
















Crisis? What crisis? Alberta premier massages the message with his fast and loose use of facts, figures

Apart from unvaccinated citizens, Alberta's big problem is

 Jason Kenney, says Graham Thomson

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney on Thursday announced a COVID-19 vaccination policy for provincial public servants. Columnist Graham Thomson wonders if he'll set a similar policy for UCP MLAs. (Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta

This column is an opinion from Graham Thomson, an award-winning journalist who has covered Alberta politics for more than 30 years. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.


After months of feeding carrots to vaccine-hesitant Albertans, Premier Jason Kenney is breaking out the stick.

Sort of.

He is telling Alberta's 25,000 civil servants who work directly for the government they must be vaccinated by Nov. 30 or produce a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours of every scheduled workday. 

Those that refuse won't be fired but will be placed on unpaid leave.

"Our aim is to encourage and educate all the members of the public service to get vaccinated," said public service commissioner Tim Grant. 

In a previous incarnation a decade ago, Grant was a general leading Canadian troops in Afghanistan against the Taliban, an experience that might come in handy when dealing with another bellicose opponent: Alberta's anti-vaxxers. At least,  any anti-vaxxers who happened to work for the government.

The government doesn't know how many of its 25,000 workers are unvaccinated but based on statistics for the general population, Grant figures it's about 4,000 people.

Alberta's major problem continues to be members of the general population who are driving the fourth wave of the pandemic by refusing to get vaccinated, contracting COVID-19, then subsequently clogging up hospital beds and forcing the cancellation of all elective surgeries.

Another major problem is how Kenney has been dealing with the crisis.

247 in ICU is good news?

Time and again, he's had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to take action. And even then, as he did Thursday, he makes it sound like everything is under control.

"As of this morning, we had 247 COVID patients in intensive care, down from 257 the previous day, and roughly flat from where we were a week ago," Kenney said on Thursday, making it sound like having 247 people stricken with COVID-19 in intensive care was good news.

And keep in mind that also on Thursday, Alberta Health Services reported another 20 people had died from COVID-19. One of them was a 24-year-old man from northern Alberta who had no known pre-existing conditions.

In an eye-opening comment last week, Dr. Verna Yiu, head of Alberta Health Services, said one of the reasons ICU wards have not faced even more pressure is because COVID-19 patients are dying and thus freeing up beds.

"It's tragic that we are only able to keep pace with these sort of numbers because, in part, some of our ICU patients have passed away," she said.

Even as Kenney talked on Thursday about the "severe" pressure on our hospitals, he continued to downplay the numbers.

"It is important to note that we are not the only province to have gone through such a challenging period during COVID," said Kenney, making it sound like Alberta's "challenging period" was in the past. "Our per capita COVID ICU admissions are pretty much exactly where Ontario was during their spring wave and are well below where Manitoba was when they had to transfer ICU patients out of province.

Irrelevant comparisons

But Kenney is comparing COVID apples and oranges. Ontario and Manitoba hit their "challenging times" back in the spring when vaccines were initially being rolled out. Alberta is experiencing its crisis at a time when vaccines have been widely available for months.

This irritating play with facts and figures might help explain why Kenney is the least popular premier in the country when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. Not only has he repeatedly tried to downplay the severity of COVID-19 by, among other things, likening it to the flu, he routinely toys with semantics to avoid taking responsibility for mistakes.

In July, for example, he dismissed the possibility of a fourth wave and rejected vaccine passports. We are now dealing with a catastrophic fourth wave and Kenney recently introduced a vaccine passport system but stubbornly refused to call it that, instead naming it a "restrictions exemption program." 

And he refuses to heed the advice of both the Canadian Medical Association and the Alberta Medical Association for a "firebreak" or lockdown to help put a dent in COVID-19 numbers.

How about a vaccination policy for UCP politicians?

You have to wonder if that's because Kenney sincerely doesn't believe a firebreak will help or because he simply is a hostage to his own past anti-lockdown rhetoric.

Reporters asked him Thursday if he would demand all his MLAs and their staff get vaccinated, to keep in step with the new rule for civil servants. According to Kenney, there are provisions in the Constitution to ensure elected officials aren't barred from entering the legislature.

He could, though, demand that any UCP MLA who isn't vaccinated be removed from the UCP caucus.

(This is not an issue for the New Democrats who say all their MLAs and staff are fully vaccinated).

If Kenney wants to show he's willing to get tough with the unvaccinated who are paid by the public and who should set an example during a devastating pandemic, he might want to start with the elected people who actually run the government.

COVID-19 news in Canada

A new poll suggests Canadians overwhelmingly support the idea of requiring vaccine passports to gain admittance to public places such as restaurants, bars and gyms.

Fully 78 per cent of respondents to the Leger poll said they strongly supported (56 per cent) or somewhat supported (22 per cent) requiring proof of vaccination against COVID-19 to visit non-essential public places.


Just 13 per cent said they strongly opposed, while another nine per cent said they were somewhat opposed.

Support ranged from a low of 70 per cent in the Atlantic provinces to a high of 86 per cent in British Columbia. 

Eighty-one per cent of Alberta respondents also supported the move, although their province has been the most reluctant to adopt a vaccine passport system.

The poll of 1,537 Canadians was conducted Sept. 24-26 as health-care systems in Alberta and Saskatchewan were being overwhelmed by soaring cases of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

The online poll cannot be assigned a margin of error as internet-based surveys are not considered random samples.

Seventy-four per cent of respondents said governments should not lift all public health restrictions now.


Opposition to relaxing public health orders included 76 per cent of respondents in Alberta, where Premier Jason Kenney lifted most restrictions over the summer, only to have to reimpose some recently as the fourth wave of the pandemic swept the province.

Unsurprisingly given their provinces’ struggles with the fourth wave of the pandemic, Kenney and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe ranked the lowest among provincial first ministers for their handling of the health crisis.


Fully 80 per cent of Alberta respondents said they were very or somewhat dissatisfied with Kenney’s performance, and 74 per cent of Saskatchewan respondents felt the same about Moe.


By contrast, 74 per cent of Quebec respondents expressed satisfaction with Premier François Legault’s handling of the pandemic, while 52 per cent of Ontarians were satisfied with Premier Doug Ford’s performance.

Fifty-seven per cent nationally said they were satisfied with the federal government’s handling of the pandemic, while 61 per cent expressed satisfaction with their municipal governments.

Elusive tiger salamanders live in Edmonton-area wetlands — and environmental DNA proves it

'There could be 1,000 of them right in front of you and

 you'd never hear them'

A rare photo of a tiger salamander in Alberta. (Suppled by Alyssa Metro)

Crime-fighting C.S.I.-type technology is being applied to wetlands in the Edmonton area, and turning up some surprising results.

In September, scientists with the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) and InnoTech Alberta identified evidence of tiger salamanders in two wetlands.

Sydney Toni, a knowledge translations specialist with ABMI, says scientists know that boreal chorus frogs, wood frogs and tiger salamanders have been visiting wetlands in the Edmonton area.

The proof? Environmental DNA — or eDNA — in water samples.

"All organisms shed DNA, be it hairs or tissue, and you can collect that in that environmental sample and analyze it to see what's there," Toni says.

ABMI knowledge translations specialist Sydney Toni tagging along on a recent demonstration of eDNA wetland sample gathering. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)

Native to North America, tiger salamanders spend most of their time living in underground burrows.

They don't have a call, like a frog, that would register on audio monitoring equipment.

That makes them particularly difficult to detect, says Brian Eaton, manager of the environmental impacts at InnoTech Alberta.

"There could be 1,000 of them right in front of you and you'd never hear them, they don't really make noises," Eaton says.

He says eDNA technology has been around for a couple of decades but is only now starting to be used in large-scale monitoring programs like this year-long study in the Edmonton area.

"I love amphibians, I love this kind of work, so the whole eDNA thing and the ability it gives us to detect and understand how these populations are changing is a wonderful innovation," says Eaton.

A wood frog in the Garner Orchid Fen Natural Area of Lac La Biche County. (Supplied by Flavia Papini)
 

The technology has also been used in Alberta fish and small mammal populations, like otters and minks. 

Eaton says practical applications include the detection of rare or endangered, as well as invasive species.

Amphibians around the world are on the decline due to habitat loss, contaminants, disease, and climate change. 

There are 10 species of amphibians in Alberta and about half of them can be found in the Edmonton area. 

'Tiger salamanders are cool'

2 days ago
1:59
Tag along with scientists from the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) and InnoTech Alberta as they demonstrate the eDNA gathering technique they're using to find evidence of amphibians, like tiger salamanders, in Edmonton-area wetlands. 1:59

Amanda Schmidt, an aquatic field coordinator with ABMI, sucks up water samples using a hose attached to a long pole and a pump. The water passes through two sets of filters.

"You don't actually see any of the things that you're looking for at that time," Schmidt says.

It's only after the filters are sent back to the lab and are run through molecular analysis that eDNA traces of elusive creatures like the tiger salamander can be detected. 

"This work is really important because it helps us to learn what is out in our environment and to get a good catalog of the species that are there, especially with species that you can't catch easily."

ABMI aquatic field coordinator Amanda Schmidt demonstrates the technique of collecting an eDNA sample. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)
'Bad year for the glaciers': Climate change threatens glacier behind Edmonton's water source
Author of the article: Hamdi Issawi
Publishing date: Oct 02, 2021 
An aerial view of elevation change of the Columbia Icefields revealed by laser altimetry. The deep red grooves on the right indicate the thinning termini of the Athabasca, top, and Saskatchewan, bottom, glaciers

The province is long past the oppressive “heat dome” that caused cities to swelter last summer, but warmer temperatures this year had a lasting effect on the glacier that feeds Edmonton’s water supply.

The Saskatchewan Glacier terminus saw 10 metres of thinning this year, said Brian Menounos, an earth sciences professor at the University of Northern British Columbia and Canada Research Chair in glacier change. It’s also the glacier that feeds the North Saskatchewan River, Edmonton’s sole source of drinking water.

“We’ve known for a number of years that — largely due to greenhouse gas emissions — we have accelerated the melt of the cryosphere,” he said, referring to the part of the planet covered in ice or snow. “It’s a symptom of a larger problem in that it was an exceptionally bad year for the glaciers by and large.”

In a social media post, Menounos shared an image of the Columbia Icefield that shows a change in elevation over the past year measured by laser altimetry. The technology uses an aircraft to bounce laser light off the surface of the ice field about once a year. The time it takes for light to reflect back to the aircraft and trip a sensor allows scientists to measure the change in surface elevation.

1/3 Gigaton of mass loss from Columbia Icefield revealed by our 2021 ACO survey. Saskatchewan Glacier (SW) terminus thinned by 10 m! Combined effect of #heatdome, #bcwildfire s and ongoing #ClimateCrisis
Image
Sparse blue spots on the image show areas of increased elevation — where the ice field gained mass — while the overwhelming red area indicates a decrease in elevation due to melting. The greatest decreases can be seen at the termini of the Athabasca and Saskatchewan glaciers, both of which bear the resemblance of deep red tongues lapping out north and east.

“We find pretty much wholesale thinning throughout all elevation bands on the ice field, and that is something that we’ve not seen to date,” he added, noting that while scientists have been monitoring the glaciers for years, they only started using laser altimetry in the ice field since 2017.

Glaciers are an important source of fresh water, particularly in Western Canada. A paper co-authored by Menounos found that the world’s glaciers are now losing 267 billion tonnes of ice every year (one billion tonnes of ice is equal in mass to 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers). It also cited research suggesting that more than one billion people worldwide could face water shortages by 2050.

“Anytime you’re talking about a freshwater resource that Canadians rely on — snow and ice collectively — it is a cause for concern,” Menounos said.

Matthew Chernos, a Calgary-based hydrologist and consultant, said the high alpine glaciers feeding Alberta’s river systems act as natural reservoirs. While the North Saskatchewan River is mostly made up of rainwater and snow melt by the time it reaches Edmonton, he said, glacier melt is a big part of the river flow in July and August, when the glacier’s winter snow pack has melted away.

And as Alberta gets warmer, Chernos added, more of that snow pack will melt earlier, increasing the length of the low flow season and the amount of melting glacier ice, a non-renewable resource.

“The only way to offset that would be more rainfall, and that’s also not something that’s predicted to happen in the future,” he said. “In fact, most of Alberta is expected to be even drier in the summers.”

The scientists were quick to note that fading glaciers also threaten sensitive aquatic ecosystems that rely on cooler water to stay healthy, and the irrigation demands of the agriculture industry.

Menounos isn’t optimistic about better weather conditions correcting the problem either.

“Over the last 30 to 50 years of monitoring these glaciers, the odd-ball positive year, where the snow was plenty, is not compensating for the continued melt that we’re getting each year,” he said.

“It’s kind of a losing battle.”

– With files from The Canadian Press









Could China’s power crisis help or harm its green energy push?

China’s energy crisis may just be getting started, and no less than its economic growth and its green energy future hang in the balance.

There is little immediate relief in sight for China's power woes, given the global surge in coal and natural gas prices and rising energy demand, not to mention potentially extreme weather [File: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg]

By Michael Standaert
1 Oct 2021

China’s energy crisis may just be getting started, and no less than its economic growth and its green energy future hang in the balance.

The problems started in late August when power curbs and outages began to affect at least 20 provinces in the country. Last week, residential blackouts started happening in China’s northeast.

And there is little immediate relief in sight for China’s power woes, given the global surge in coal and natural gas prices and rising energy demand, not to mention potentially extreme weather.

China is the world’s biggest producer and consumer of coal, and right now its inventories are at record lows. To ensure adequate energy supplies as winter sets in, China has loosened restrictions on coal mining operators in its coal belt region stretching from Shaanxi to Inner Mongolia and prioritised shipments to regions in need.

As factories are idled to comply with power restrictions, analysts are trimming their estimates for China’s economic growth.

Goldman Sachs this week slashed its forecast for China’s full-year economic growth to 7.8 percent from its earlier call of 8.2 percent.

Others, like Nomura and Fitch, have also lowered forecasts, while some are still crunching numbers but expecting lower targets.

But some analysts see a potential silver lining in China’s current dependence on the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel.

Though coal currently accounts for nearly 57 percent of China’s energy mix – and its reliance on fossil fuel is likely to increase in the coming months, the problems being worked out in China’s power markets and energy supplies may end up accelerating the country’s pivot to greener more sustainable energy.

“I think in the short term China must ensure a sufficient supply of coal, to avoid power shortages, especially in the winter,” Dimitri De Boer, chief representative in China for environmental organisation ClientEarth, told Al Jazeera.

“However, this episode also highlights the limitations of relying on imported coal. It is clear to the central government that the energy mix urgently needs to be diversified, and that the rollout of renewable energy must be as fast as possible,” he added.

Headwinds to power market reform


China’s power market has been in a state of slow-motion reform since 2015. The headwinds range from a variety of provincial-level roadblocks from coal interests to pricing that does not adequately reflect supply and demand, problems with transferring power between provinces, a lack of power storage options, and limited uptake of renewables like wind and solar.

“There are quite a few areas of policy that have exacerbated the situation,” Michael Davidson, assistant professor at the University of California San Diego and a China energy policy expert, told Al Jazeera. “First and foremost is the incomplete liberalisation of the power market.”

That partial stifling of free-market forces are reflected in a reluctance to allow energy prices to fluctuate and for higher energy costs to be passed on to end users.


It is clear to the central government that the energy mix urgently needs to be diversified
DIMITRI DE BOER, CLIENTEARTH

“I think a big part of the story is prices,” Michal Meidan, director of the China Energy Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, told Al Jazeera. “The missing link is price distortions with benchmark prices being capped and international prices being so high. Coal generators are reluctant to import coal and suffer the losses that ensue.”

The biggest effects of power rationing have been felt by higher polluting and energy-consuming facilities in provinces trying to reel in energy consumption – industries such as steel, aluminium, chemical fibre and cement, according to David Fishman, a Chinese power sector analyst at Lantau Group in Shenzhen.


But the pain felt by big polluting sectors could actually be beneficial in reducing emissions and coal demand, says De Boer.

“New energy-intensive projects will be rigorously controlled, which will contribute to both reducing the demand for coal, and also to meeting climate goals,” he said.


Coal generators are reluctant to import coal and suffer the losses that ensue
MICHAL MEIDAN, OXFORD INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY STUDIES

Those goals currently include an attempt to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

Davidson said the current power crunch could cut both ways when it comes to Beijing’s climate coals, with the appetite for renewables potentially taking a hit in the short term, but provinces formulating more robust long-term decarbonisation plans.

“Generally speaking, when you have energy reliability problems, people don’t flock toward renewables,” Davidson said. “Hopefully it has a muted impact balanced by this longer-term vision and there will be more careful, thoughtful deliberation about resource adequacy.”

One potential positive for power market reforms stemming from the current crisis have been efforts to address energy price distortions.

Guangdong province adjusted the upper limits of monthly power trading prices by 10 percent, meaning that end users of the energy would bear the cost instead of power generators, according to Fishman. But it remains to be seen to what degree other provinces will follow that lead, due to factory-level effects and inflationary fears.

“I think passing on power costs to end users is the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Fishman said. “End users do not think it is great to pay more for power, so there is going to be resistance there.”

While a 10 percent increase does not reflect the full power costs that would really need to be passed through to end users to encourage more energy efficiency, it does send important signals that consumers do need to bear some of the burden, said Meidan.

I think passing on power costs to end users is the greatest thing since sliced bread
DAVID FISHMAN, LANTAU GROUP

“It’s an important step, but it’s not going to solve the problem,” she said.

Reactions to previous, smaller power shortage crises, like ones that occurred in the provinces of Hunan, Jiangxi and Zhejiang late last year do give some hope that interest in renewables, particularly on-site sources, said could increase, Qin Yan, a lead analyst at Refinitiv, based in Norway.

“Last December, when there were shortages in Hunan, we already heard of immediate interest in rooftop solar power,” she said. “What’s happened in China is more of a coal logistics issue and overall domestic production [from renewables] is going up.”

Qin is less optimistic about whether government targets laid out in the current 14th Five-Year Plan would be boosted to increase renewable energy targets. And prospective caps on coal capacity and coal consumption, which have not been formally outlined yet, could be in limbo.

But that does not mean China will abandon its carbon peak and neutrality goals, she said.

“That’s long term, for in ten years, so that’s already been defined,” Qin said. “China has committed to this.”

As for the short-term, analysts expect China’s power challenges could stretch into the spring. While months of high temperatures in places in the south like Guangdong should ease soon, challenges could arise depending on how severe winter weather is in North China.

“I’d say pray for a mild winter,” Qin said. “If the weather gets extreme and there’s low wind and it’s very cold, I think there’s some blackout risk again.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA