Eco-friendly, lab-grown coffee is on the way, but it comes with a catch

Beanless brews can cut deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions dramatically – but what will happen to workers in traditional coffee-growing regions?

Coffee cell cultures, right, and roasted coffee, left, produced in a lab by VTT, a Finnish research institution. 

Photograph: VTT

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Nadra Nittle
Sat 16 Oct 2021

Heiko Rischer isn’t quite sure how to describe the taste of lab-grown coffee. This summer he sampled one of the first batches in the world produced from cell cultures rather than coffee beans.

“To describe it is difficult but, for me, it was in between a coffee and a black tea,” said Rischer, head of plant biotechnology at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which developed the coffee. “It depends really on the roasting grade, and this was a bit of a lighter roast, so it had a little bit more of a tea-like sensation.”

Rischer couldn’t swallow the coffee, as this cellular agriculture innovation is not yet approved for public consumption. Instead, he swirled the liquid around in his mouth and spit it out. He predicts that VTT’s lab-grown coffee could get regulatory approval in Europe and the US in about four years’ time, paving the way for a commercialized product that could have a much lower climate impact than conventional coffee.

The coffee industry is both a contributor to the climate crisis and very vulnerable to its effects. Rising demand for coffee has been linked to deforestation in developing nations, damaging biodiversity and releasing carbon emissions. At the same time, coffee producers are struggling with the impacts of more extreme weather, from frosts to droughts. It’s estimated that half of the land used to grow coffee could be unproductive by 2050 due to the climate crisis.

In response to the industry’s challenges, companies and scientists are trying to develop and commercialize coffee made without coffee beans.

VTT’s coffee is grown by floating cell cultures in bioreactors filled with a nutrient. The process requires no pesticides and has a much lower water footprint, said Rischer, and because the coffee can be produced in local markets, it cuts transport emissions. The company is working on a life cycle analysis of the process. “Once we have those figures, we will be able to show that the environmental impact will be much lower than what we have with conventional cultivation,” Rischer said.

American startups are also working on beanless coffee. In September, Seattle-based Atomo Coffee released what it called the world’s first “molecular coffee” in a one-day online pop-up, charging $5.99 a can.

The startup, which has raised $11.5m, makes its coffee by converting the compounds from plant waste into the same compounds contained in green coffee. Ingredients, including date seed extracts, chicory root, grape skin as well as caffeine, are roasted, ground and brewed. This method results in 93% lower carbon emissions and 94% less water use than conventional coffee production, as well as no deforestation, according to Atomo.

Tanks in Atomo’s factory. The food tech startup is making beanless coffee from plant waste. Photograph: Atomo

“The industry has known about the deleterious effects of coffee farming for a long time, whether we’re talking deforestation or major water usage,” said Atomo’s co-founder Jarret Stopforth. “[Before starting Atomo] I was thinking to myself, ‘There’s got to be a better way to do this.’”

Atomo’s facility can produce about 1,000 servings of coffee a day. The goal is to increase that to 10,000 servings a day over the next 12 months, said Stopforth, and in two years to move into a facility that can produce 30m servings of coffee a year. Stopforth says that Atomo will start the initial phase of the new factory build within the next three months.

Alternative coffee companies like Atomo not only have the potential to help tackle the climate crisis but to benefit the industry generally, said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Take arabica beans, said Charlebois. “You need specific climatic patterns, and it’s much better if you’re more in control in a laboratory environment than just trying to rely on Mother Nature.” Technology can help stabilize production and make it more predictable, he said.

But it’s unclear how many people would be willing to give up conventional coffee for one of its beanless counterparts. A 2019 survey by Dalhousie University found that 72% of Canadians say they would not drink lab-grown coffee.

Maricel Saenz, founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Compound Foods said she was working to “reinvent” coffee and to show people why doing so matters. Compound Foods, which has secured $4.5m in seed funding, says it recreates coffee farm production in the lab. The startup uses microbes and fermentation technology to grow a variety of flavors and aromas, Saenz said.

Maricel Saenz, founder of Compound Foods, which makes beanless coffee. 

Photograph: Compound Foods

Preliminary results from a carbon life cycle analysis indicate that the company’s coffee produces a tenth of the greenhouse gas emissions and water use of traditional coffee, Saenz said. She plans to introduce her product by late 2022 and expects pricing to be similar to specialty coffees. “As we improve our processes, we aim to decrease our prices,” she said.

As the population grows and pressure increases on natural resources, Saenz said, “we need to be producing food in more efficient ways, using a lot of the biotechnology and fermentation tools that are now at our disposal.”

But Daniele Giovannucci, president and co-founder of the Committee on Sustainability Assessment, a consortium that focuses on agricultural sustainability, is concerned that scaling up lab-grown coffee could affect the livelihoods of the millions of workers in the traditional coffee industry, especially in countries such as Ethiopia where coffee is central to the economy. “What’s going to happen to all these people?” Giovannucci asked. “What are they going to do, because this is a key cash crop?”

There’s a risk, he said, that lab-grown coffee could create significant socio-economic problems that could drive even greater climate change effects. “It is not clear if, in the end, its net effect may worsen global sustainability, along with many millions of lives.”

Saenz, who is from Costa Rica, a coffee-exporting country, said, “I know many coffee producers, so it’s something that I definitely worry about.” But, she added, “the number one threat that coffee farmers have today is climate change” – whether that’s heat that disrupts ripening times, or unexpected frosts as Brazil experienced in the summer, which severely damaged crops.

Saenz said her company will collaborate with non-profits to support small coffee farmers transitioning to more sustainable agricultural practices, including providing training and crop insurance.

While lab-grown coffee shows real promise, said Charlebois, the politics should not be underestimated, especially as so many farmers depend on conventional methods of producing crops and many of them live in developing economies. “Scalability is not an issue for lab-grown coffee,” he said, “but regulations and general acceptance of the technology will be greater challenges.”

Climate study linking early Māori fires to Antarctic changes sparks controversy

Research tying Māori activity 700 years ago to Antarctic changes sparks debate in New Zealand over Indigenous inclusion in science

A study published in Nature linked high concentrations of black carbon, dating back 700 years, to activity by early Māori people in New Zealand. Photograph: Krys Bailey/Alamy Stock Photo

Tess McClure in Christchurch and Eva Corlett in Wellington
Thu 14 Oct 2021 00.27 BST

Deep in the ice of a remote Antarctic peninsula, a group of researchers found evidence that fires started by early Māori wreaked changes in the atmosphere detectable 7,000km away. In New Zealand, the research sparked a heated controversy of its own – over Indigenous inclusion in scientific enterprise, and what scientists owe the people whose history becomes a subject of their research.

The research, published this month, examined ice cores from the Antarctic peninsula. Scientists found high concentrations of black carbon, dating back 700 years. Atmospheric modelling narrowed the possible sources to New Zealand, Patagonia or Tasmania – but only in New Zealand did charcoal records match the timeframe. The deposits coincided with Māori arrival in New Zealand, and showed downstream effects of Māori using fire to clear the land.

The finding was unexpected, says Prof Joe McConnell of the Desert Research Institute, who led the study. “What really surprised us about this was that it appeared to be human activities that made such a big impact,” McConnell says. “It really emphasises how interconnected the planet is – that even early people arriving in New Zealand could have a noticeable effect on atmospheric chemistry 7,000km away is really quite a surprising finding.”


Pygmy pipehorse discovered in New Zealand given Māori name in ‘world first’

New Zealand doesn’t have a natural cycle of burning, and its plants are less fire adapted, McConnell said. “So when humans brought fire to the landscape, it had a pretty dramatic change.”
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While the emissions were small compared with many current-day fires, he said, they were notable coming from a small island. “If you compare it to what’s coming out of the Amazon [burning] now, for instance, it’s small by comparison,” McConnell said. “What was surprising to us was that New Zealand’s got a relatively small land area, and the emissions for such a small land area were pretty large.”

Also surprising was how emissions from Māori arrivals compared with subsequent European ones. “The burning emissions from New Zealand were comparable in the 16th century to what they were soon after European arrival in New Zealand,” McConnell says. “So we were surprised – we expected to see more of an impact from European arrival. And we did not.”

The team published the article in Nature, one of the world’s most prominent scientific journals. But the reception in New Zealand was mixed, with several Māori academics raising concerns that it did not have Māori members of its research team.

Dr Priscilla Wehi, director of Te Pūnaha Matatini research centre, said via Science Media Centre the finding was “scientifically spectacular” but raised concerns about “helicopter science, where research is led and conducted by those who live and work far from the subject of their work”.

“How much better could this have been, were it more inclusive in its approach?” she asked.

Associate prof Sandy Morrison of the University of Waikato called the paper “devoid of context, devoid of cultural understandings”. “It reeks of scientific arrogance with its implicit assumption that somehow Māori have a lot to account for in terms of contributing to carbon emissions.”

Morrison told the Guardian she had been shocked by the paper, which did not collaborate with Māori researchers. “Surely you want to check and just examine the context before you go writing around people,” she said.

“You come so far in terms of working alongside scientists in New Zealand and then you get [this] from the international ones.”

Over the past two years, there has been increased discussion and controversy over mātauranga Māori – Indigenous knowledge systems – and their role within the sciences in New Zealand. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which funds much of the country’s scientific research, unveiled Vision Mātauranga about 10 years ago. Its principles would be embedded across all the ministry’s priority investment areas. In practice, that meant crown-funded research had to include partnerships and consultation with Māori, as well as a broader re-orientation to integrate Māori knowledge into research and learning. More recently, changes were proposed to New Zealand’s curriculum to give parity to mātauranga Māori with other bodies of knowledge.

“For a long time Māori had been talking about [the fact] that we will do our own research – and at minimum, that a relationship with us … should be cultivated way before anybody wants to write about us,” Morrison said. “That seems to have caught on in the New Zealand research scene, but not so much internationally.”

The paper’s authors, none of whom were from New Zealand, were taken by surprise at the backlash.

“I was definitely surprised,” McConnell says. “We didn’t start out in any way, shape, or form, to investigate the impact of Māori-related burning and we’re not trying to criticise or in any way, shape, or form Māori stewardship of the land.” No one had disputed the paper’s findings on the black carbon, he said.

“This idea of helicopter science – our research is not based in New Zealand … it’s based in Antarctica, and there are no indigenous inhabitants in Antarctica. So, I don’t think we would have done that any differently,” he said.

“In the scientific world [and] the scientific method, the response would be: if someone disagrees with our findings, they should write a paper and get it through peer review, or comment, and tell us what we did that was wrong … Whoever has the most solid arguments is who moves forward. That’s what the scientific method is all about. But this is not a science debate, I don’t think.”

Dr Dan Hikuroa, senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, said “It’s not that the science is wrong. It’s just that the findings could have been richer.”

“The science looks to be repeatable, rigorous and pretty standup,” he said. “I think it’s the broader context – which much of the science community is now recognising. That although one of the hallmarks and pillars or the strength of science is that it does operate to produce knowledge, it actually operates within a social system.” That awareness, Hikuroa says “is really missed here”.


‘A neat trick’: critics aim to shift Aotearoa debate, but historical fidelity no longer matters

The integration of mātauranga Māori, he says, can make scientific findings stronger – and increase the diversity of scientific teams. He points to other research, also profiled in Nature, which used mātauranga Māori documentation of groundwater and plant life to document historic groundwater flows to assess the risk of future contamination.

“There’s more than one way of knowing and being and making sense of the world that we could draw from and use when we’re trying to make important decisions – including the way we conduct our research, the kind of teams we build, the kinds of the questions we ask, and the ways we seek to answer those questions,” he says.

“The argument that says, ‘I’m a certain scientist that does things a certain way, so therefore I don’t have to consider these things’ is not holding up as well as it used to.”

Nurses union finalizes collective agreement with Manitoba government after over 4 years without a contract

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Deal will help recruit, retain staff, protect nurses from

 'inordinately' long shifts: Manitoba Nurses Union

CBC News · Posted: Oct 14, 2021 

Nurses are pictured in the medical intensive care unit at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre. The union that represents Manitoba nurses and the Manitoba government reached a collective agreement Thursday. (Mikaela Mackenzie/Winnipeg Free Press/The Canadian Press)

Thousands of nurses in Manitoba can breathe a sigh of relief after their union helped seal the deal on a long-term collective agreement with the province after more than four years without a contract.

The Manitoba Nurses Union, which represents more than 12,000 nurses in the province, finalized a vote to ratify a tentative deal with the provincial government Thursday.

"It truly was a long four-and-a-half years without a collective agreement," MNU president Darlene Jackson said in a statement. "There is still work to be done to address the significant weaknesses in our health-care system, but the improvements in this contract are a necessary and positive first step in addressing nurses' serious concerns."

The union said the focus of its bargaining committee was to reach a fair agreement that emphasizes the importance of staff recruitment and retention, wage increases, other financial incentives and a commitment to a "better work/life balance."

Manitoba continues to experience a critical nursing shortage that preceded the pandemic but was exacerbated by the crush of COVID-19 patients in hospital, MNU said. That caused mandatory overtime for nursing staff at some facilities and redeployment in other cases.

The union says the new deal includes protections against "inordinately long consecutive hours of work and durations of standby."

It addresses shift premiums, overtime, meal and isolation allowance, academic allowance entitlement, the union said, as well as earmarking $4 million annually devoted to recruiting and retaining staff.

The Manitoba government congratulated nurses and their union on the agreement.

"This mutual agreement is a testament to the hard work and commitment of the leadership and negotiating teams of both sides," Premier Kelvin Goertzen and Health Minister Audrey Gordon said in a joint statement.

"Throughout this unprecedented pandemic, our dedicated nurses have heroically delivered the care that all Manitobans depend upon. Once again, we salute them for their abilities, their compassion and their unwavering sense of commitment when their special skills have been needed most."

Edmonton doctors mark Opioid Memorial Weekend by speaking out against stigma, calling for more access to services

Author of the article:Lisa Johnson
Publishing date:Oct 15, 2021 •

Participants in International Overdose Awareness Day march through Edmonton on Aug. 31, 2021. PHOTO BY DAVID BLOOM /Postmedia
Article content

Edmonton-area doctors are commemorating the lives lost in a spike of drug poisonings in Alberta by speaking out against the stigma related to drug use and calling for more access to services that address it.

On Friday, volunteers placed purple ribbons in neighbourhoods where an opioid death has occurred for Opioid Awareness Weekend, including in Edmonton, Wetaskiwin, and Ponoka.

Dr. Ginetta Salvalaggio, co-chairwoman of the Edmonton Zone Medical Staff Association’s opioid poisoning committee, said at a virtual availability that doctors are seeing an ongoing escalation of overdose deaths in the Edmonton Zone.

“Every poisoning death is a preventable tragedy. We want that acknowledged by decision-makers,” said Salvalaggio, who said the people who do not survive tend to be those who are most isolated and alone.

“The stigma around this needs to end,” she said.

The latest data from the Alberta government shows that between January and July of this year, 898 Albertans have died of an accidental drug poisoning. Of those, 821 deaths have been from an opioid poisoning.

This marks a 22 per cent increase over the same time period in 2020, which saw 735 accidental drug poisonings.

Dr. Cayla Gilbert, a rural family physician, echoed the need to address and break down the stigma around drug use, saying the problem is “ubiquitous” across both rural and urban areas.

“This is something that is happening in everyone’s backyard,” she said.

She said Albertans need access to timely data so health-care professionals can respond to the crisis, an expansion of access to safe consumption services, and better access to safe supply.

“We want more data … we want more understanding and more willingness to address that in our province,” said Gilbert.

The province stopped reporting neighbourhood-level overdose data in its quarterly drug poisoning reports in 2020, when the number of overdose deaths in the city core far surpassed every other area of the city. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has been critical of harm reduction services , and his government has been largely focused on building up addictions treatment and recovery spaces.

In April, the Boyle Street Community Services supervised consumption services were closed permanently, redirecting users to other facilities.

“We know that when we closed that central site … we saw a spike in overdose deaths, in poisoning deaths,” Salvalaggio said.

Last Friday, the provincial government announced it is looking at opening a new safe consumption site in the Strathcona area, although it is still in the early stages of planning. Salvalaggio said she applauded the decision to look at the new site, but called for reinstating and expanding existing services north of the river because people cannot travel far distances to access services.

When asked what neighbourhood-level data the provincial government has to suggest that Strathcona is in more urgent need of a new supervised consumption site than the downtown core, Eric Engler, press secretary to mental health and addictions associate minister Mike Ellis, said Friday in a statement that he “rejected the premise” of the question.

“Nobody is stating that anywhere in Edmonton is more in need of services than Downtown where the shelters are centralized. Downtown currently has two community supervised consumption sites that are not at capacity. It is clear there is an unmet need south of the river and so that is the first location being considered for expansion to meet the geographic need,” said Engler, adding that anyone using substances at home alone is encouraged to download the Digital Overdose Response System (DORS).

The app became available in Edmonton last week and aims to curb overdoses by alerting emergency medical services if a user is unresponsive.

How an investigation into Beirut's port explosion is rattling Lebanon's elite, stirring memories of civil war


Analysis by Tamara Qiblawi, CNN

Updated  Sat October 16, 2021

Lebanon in crisis after worst violence in years 

(CNN)For many in Lebanon, Thursday's scenes from central Beirut brought a sense of deja vu.
Snipers shot people from rooftops. Masked gunmen fired back with rocket-propelled grenades and B7 rockets. Terrified schoolchildren took cover in corridors. And to top it all off, the violence was all playing out along the capital's former "Green Line," a major battle front that divided Beirut's Christian east from the predominantly Muslim west during the 15-year civil war that ended in 1990.

It was enough to send shivers down the spine of a people still reeling from collective traumas both fresh -- such as last summer's Beirut port blast -- and old. The wounds of the civil war continue to fester, and to watch smoke billowing from buildings covered in pockmarks from battles long past was almost too much for ordinary people to bear.

Yet for all the harrowingly familiar optics of Thursday's fighting, the political environment is new. The violence did not pit Muslim against Christian. Nor are the motivations sectarian. Instead, the violence has emerged from a fault-line that is divorced from those terrible realities.

Men help evacuate an elderly woman after gunfire erupted, in Beirut, Lebanon October 14, 2021.

The probe into the port explosion that killed more than 200 people is at the heart of Thursday's tumult. The investigation -- the biggest ever legal challenge to Lebanon's ruling elite, who are also a holdover from the civil war -- is widely seen as a potential milestone, a tool through which the country can begin to shed its blood-drenched past.

Neither the masked gunmen who emerged from a Hezbollah-organized protest against the port probe, nor the unknown snipers who appeared to be posturing as defenders of the investigation, have a vested interest in Lebanon moving forward or finding answers from the devastation of August 2020. Hezbollah and its ally Amal have accused the Christian right-wing party and former militia, the Lebanese Forces (LF), of being behind the sniping -- an allegation the LF has rejected.

Thursday's fighters appear keen to keep the tiny Mediterranean country stuck in the past, just when the population has overwhelmingly voiced support for a better future. The judge leading the investigation into the probe, Tarek Bitar, has emerged as a champion of those people. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has positioned itself as Bitar's most vociferous opponent.

People of all religious stripes were casualties of the August 2020 explosion. Across Lebanon's religious spectrum, people want justice. In that same vein, Hezbollah — which has not been prosecuted in the probe so far — has led a political offensive on behalf of a multi-religious elite.

Bitar has sought to question top officials across the board, and has recently issued arrest warrants against three former ministers — a Sunni Muslim, a Shia Muslim and a Maronite Christian.

The divisions therefore do not play out along Lebanon's age-old confessional lines. Instead some say observers ought to be looking at the implications of the probe itself. The investigation into the Beirut blast has rattled the political elite in a way that the blast itself, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, could not.


Photos: Gunfire erupts during protest in Beirut
A man runs for cover as gunfire breaks out at a protest in Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday, October 14.

The ruling class appears to be shaking in its boots, after having unsuccessfully petitioned to remove Bitar from his position. This is the same elite that survived a civil war, thanks to an amnesty law that marked the end of the conflict, and was largely unfazed by the October 2019 nationwide popular uprising and the devastating economic catastrophe that followed.

The ramifications of the probe could extend beyond Lebanon and to the Arab world at large. This is a region well-known for brazenly undermining its judiciary, even as the appetite for accountability among an increasingly frustrated Arab youth continues to grow.

If, against all odds, Bitar can see his investigation through, then he could be setting a precedent for the entire region. Arab leaders should take note.

 

Not Science Fiction: German Scientists Harness the Power of Photosynthesis for New Way To “Breathe”

By CELL PRESS OCTOBER 14, 2021

The injected green algae (green) sit inside the blood vessels (magenta) like a string of pearls. Credit: Özugur et al./iScience

Photosynthesizing algae injected into the blood vessels of tadpoles supply oxygen to their brains.

Leading a double life in water and on land, frogs have many breathing techniques – through the gills, lungs, and skin – over the course of their lifetime. Now German scientists have developed another method that allows tadpoles to “breathe” by introducing algae into their bloodstream to supply oxygen. The method developed, presented October 13 in the journal iScience, provided enough oxygen to effectively rescue neurons in the brains of oxygen-deprived tadpoles.

“The algae actually produced so much oxygen that they could bring the nerve cells back to life, if you will,” says senior author Hans Straka of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. “For many people, it sounds like science fiction, but after all, it’s just the right combination of biological schemes and biological principles.”

Straka was studying oxygen consumption in tadpole brains of African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) when a lunch conversation with a botanist sparked an idea to combine plant physiology with neuroscience: harnessing the power of photosynthesis to supply nerve cells with oxygen. The idea didn’t seem far-fetched. In nature, algae live harmoniously in sponges, corals, and anemones, providing them with oxygen and even nutrients. Why not in vertebrates like frogs?

As German researchers inject green algae into a beating tadpole heart, the translucent animal’s veins gradually turn green. Upon illumination, the algae can produce oxygen. Credit: Özugur et al./iScience

To explore the possibility, the team injected green algae (Chlamydomonas renhardtii) or cyanobacteria (Synechocystis) into tadpoles’ hearts. With each heartbeat, the algae inched through blood vessels and eventually reached the brain, turning the translucent tadpole bright green. Shining light on these tadpoles prompted both algae species to pump out oxygen to nearby cells.

After distributing algae to the brain, the researchers isolated the tadpole’s head and placed it in an oxygen bubble bath with essential nutrients that would preserve the functioning of the cells, allowing the team to monitor neural activity and oxygen levels. As the researchers depleted oxygen from the bath, the nerves ceased firing and fell silent. However, illuminating the tadpole head restarted the neural activity within 15 to 20 minutes, which is about two times faster than replenishing the bath with oxygen without the algae. The revived nerves also performed as well or even better than before oxygen depletion, showing that the researchers’ method was quick and efficient.

“We succeeded in showing the proof of principle experiment with this method. It was amazingly reliable and robust, and in my eyes, a beautiful approach,” says Straka. “Working in principle doesn’t really mean that you could apply it at the end, but it’s the first step in order to initiate other studies.”

While the researchers think their findings may someday lead to new therapies for conditions induced by stroke or oxygen-scarce environments, such as underwater and high altitudes, algae are far from ready to enter our blood circulation. The team’s next step is to see whether the injected algae can survive inside living tadpoles and continue oxygen production without causing an immune response that wreaks havoc on the animals.

Straka also envisions his research benefiting other laboratories that work with isolated tissues or organoids. Introducing oxygen-producing algae could help these tissues thrive and raise their survival rates, potentially reducing the need for live animals for experiments.

“You have to have new ideas and new concepts to explore; this is one of the ways science is driven,” says Straka. “If you are open-minded and think it through, all of a sudden, you can see all the possibilities from one idea.”

Reference: “Green oxygen power plants in the brain rescue neuronal activity” by Suzan Özugur, Myra N. Chávez, Rosario Sanchez-Gonzalez, Lars Kunz, Jörg Nickelsen and Hans Straka, 13 October 2021, iScience.
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103158

This work was supported by German Science Foundation, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, and the Munich Center for Neuroscience.

Shaunavon, Saskatchewan — The town the internet forgot

Spotty internet connections and crappy-to-non-existent cell service mean that everything is more complicated, maddening and productivity sapping

Author of the article :Joe O'Connor
Publishing date: Oct 15, 2021

Infrastructure put Shaunavon on the map. 

PHOTO BY TOWN OF SHAUNAVON

Internet connectivity, robust cellphone signals, download and upload speeds, megabits and wireless what-zits were not things that Lauren Johnson ever thought much about, if it all, growing up in northwest Calgary. Having high-speed internet around the Johnson home and Calgary at large was as normal as having food in the fridge.

Then, a few years back, love entered the picture. Johnson met Kobie Guenther, a nice young fella from a farm near Shaunavon, a small town in southwest Saskatchewan, population 1,700, best known for its annual rodeo and for being the hometown of hockey great Hayley Wickenheiser.

Johnson, now 28, was hooked. She moved to Shaunavon three years ago and today is the town’s economic development officer, a job title deserving of a second title, something along the lines of: Person in Charge of Getting Shaunavon Better Internet.

“It would blow your mind,” she said, referring to the poor state of local connectivity. For example, she recently had to upload a photo of a local park to a Google drive. The estimated upload time was 38 minutes for one measly photo. Worse, her internet connection kept conking out.

“Honestly, everything else about Shaunavon is awesome,” she said. “The people, the sense of community, the parks, the amenities, I mean everything is awesome, but …”

Don’t try uploading a photo to a Google drive, or anything else. Spotty internet connections and, in more rural locales, particularly low-lying areas, crappy-to-non-existent cell service mean that everything — from filing legal documents and taxes and getting software updates and oil well data, to troubleshooting farm machinery and automobiles and even learning online — is more complicated, maddening and productivity sapping

.

Shaunavon sprang up in 1913 when the Canadian Pacific Railway laid track nearby and built a station there.

 PHOTO BY TOWN OF SHAUNAVON

Shaunavon’s internet woes are not about residents accessing Netflix, they’re about the continued survival of a Prairie burgh that sprang up in 1913 when the Canadian Pacific Railway laid track nearby and built a station there. The population jumped to 800 from zero within a year. Trains meant connectivity, which bred a measure of prosperity, and the town grew as a hub for grain farmers, ranchers and, lately, oilfield workers.

Infrastructure put Shaunavon on the map. Keeping it and other rural places like it on there for the next 100 years requires a massive infrastructure investment — measured in megabits, instead of track miles — as well as the conviction of outsiders, such as Lauren Johnson, that life in a small town is a life that can’t be beat.

“We’ve seen more people looking to leave major cities, like Toronto and Calgary, and move to rural areas and small towns during the pandemic,” she said. “We want to be able to promote ourselves as a great place to live and to work remotely from.”

Shaunavon can’t do that alone. Saskatchewan is atypical when it comes to telecom providers. There is no Rogers Communications Inc., Bell Canada or Telus Corp. lording their dominance over the little guys, talking about expanded 5G-service, shareholder returns and such, while dividing the spoils into more or less three parts.

Saskatchewan’s internet alpha is Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corp. (SaskTel), a Regina-based Crown corporation with 4,000 employees and a monumental task in front of it. About 40 per cent of Saskatchewanians live on farms or in rural communities of less than 5,000 people. There is an abundance of land — 40 per cent of the arable land in Canada — and not a lot of people.

That is a serious pickle for a government-owned service provider, particularly when the federal government keeps uttering lofty promises, such as: 98 per cent of Canadians are to be connected to high-speed internet by 2026.

Shaunavon’s population jumped from zero to 800 within a year. 

PHOTO BY TOWN OF SHAUNAVON

“Good reliable internet isn’t a luxury, it’s a basic service,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in November 2020.

He’s right: it is a basic service, or at least it should be. But saying the words and throwing a ton of money at the problem nationally, with the $2.4-billion Universal Broadband Fund, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s $750-million Broadband Fund and $2 billion in funding from the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, plus a wide range of provincial development programs, are a lot easier to do than actually reaching targeted service levels.

“It is not as simple as changing a few wires, here and there, and you are good to go,” SaskTel spokesperson, Greg Jacobs, said.

Jacobs isn’t making excuses; he is stating a fact.

Shaunavon is already on a list with 44 other rural communities that have been promised high-speed fibre-optic broadband internet by the end of 2023.

But here’s the challenge: upgrading to fibre-optic broadband often involves digging, lots of digging. On the Prairies, the ground is frozen, or near to it for six months a year, making for a short construction season. Case in point: the daily low in Shaunavon on Oct. 14 was -3 C.

In other words, change is coming, but change takes time. In the meantime, the locals and farmers, such as Devin Harlick, have to keep their fingers crossed.

Farmer Devin Harlick, left, and partner Tavis Schroeder. 

PHOTO BY MICHAEL BELL

Harlick grew up on a ranch near Shaunavon, but was parked on a hill near Central Butte in his white Dodge pickup at 9 a.m. on a recent Thursday morning.

“I parked on top of a hill because there’s dismal cell service down there,” he said.

Like many farmers, Harlick also has a day job. His involves working as a client success manager for a precision agriculture company. Farming has gone high tech since the Little House on the Prairie days of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

There are drones, global positioning systems, micro-weather stations, data tracking, yield mapping, crop genetics and high-priced combines packed with state-of-the-art software. Stir them all together and the modern agricultural operation is more plugged into technology — and more in need of speedy connectivity — than your average city slicker with a smartphone and a company-issued laptop.

And how is that connectivity actually going? Not great, according to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), which manages the country’s .ca domain.

CIRA has clocked the median download speed in rural Saskatchewan at 7.83 megabits per second, and median upload speed at 1.39 Mbps. Those numbers fall acres short of the national 50/10 Mbps download/upload goal the CRTC has set for Canada.

Torontonians, by contrast, zip along at a 59/13 median clip and Calgarians get 61/14. In Saskatoon, which boasts the quickest rates in the province, speeds are 49/10.

“No matter how you slice it, the internet in most of Saskatchewan is pretty darn slow,” said Josh Tabish, CIRA’s public affairs manager.

What “pretty darn slow” means when Harlick’s John Deere S690 combine, a rig that is worth more than $300,000, conks out in a field that is an internet/cell dead zone is that a technician in Swift Current can’t remotely connect to diagnose the problem and potentially fix it from their desk.

Shaunavon is on a list with 44 other rural communities that have been promised high-speed fibre-optic broadband internet by the end of 2023. 

PHOTO BY TOWN OF SHAUNAVON

Having a technician drive out to the farm for a service call costs $400 or more. The combine sits idle, awaiting a fix. Productivity gets lost. Farmer Harlick fumes.

Another example: To optimize yields, farmers use crop yield mapping tools, where data can be accessed in real time. But data can’t be accessed in real time unless the farmer can connect to it.

“It is incredibly frustrating,” Harlick said.

It’s an opportunity lost. A better-connected rural Saskatchewan could contribute an additional $1.2 billion to the province’s gross domestic product, according to the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association.

It gets worse. Burbling away beneath the day-to-day connectivity headaches is a human resources crisis. The Canadian Agricultural Human Resources Council (CAHRC) reported that 1,600 agricultural jobs went unfilled in Saskatchewan in 2017, costing the sector $574 million in lost sales.

To help address the labour shortfall, the CAHRC recommends, among other things, that the province find better ways to communicate “the benefits of agricultural work to a younger demographic.”

Good luck communicating that message to younger people without better access to high-speed internet. Harlick said he can offer a prospective farm manager free housing and good pay, but they’re not interested in the job if they can’t connect, their spouse can’t work remotely and their kids can’t access school online.

“It is a big ask to have someone move from the city to the middle of nowhere and have limited cell reception and internet,” he said.

The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan (APAS) channelled the farmers’ frustrations into a rural connectivity task force. APAS president Todd Lewis farms 10,000 acres near Gray, a village about a half-hour south of Regina.

APAS president and fourth generation grain farmer Todd Lewis.

 PHOTO BY APAS AND MICHAEL BELL (PHOTOGRAPHY)

Until a new cell tower was planted nearby, he could look out over his land on a clear winter’s night and see the winking lights of SaskTel’s Regina offices in the distance, but he was unable to actually call them.

“This isn’t about getting Netflix,” he said. “There have been some improvements, but there is an ongoing problem and an ever-widening need, and we need to be doing a better job of catching up.”

Shaunavon residents tend to talk about the “centre” when they speak about local internet service. They’re referring to a beige, one-storey building on Centre Street occupied during business hours by two SaskTel technicians who are keeping the town’s internet service plodding along until the promised upgrades are complete. The further one gets from the centre, the worse the internet.

One business owner, who asked not to be named for fear their customers would be spooked if they learned they have slow internet, is not near the centre. “We get by. But there are days when the internet is so slow when it should be lightning speed. We live in a digital world. It is 2021.”

It was 1913 when the railroad made Shaunavon, drawing people, their dreams and ideas of a better life to a corner of the Prairies not far from the Montana border. Lauren Johnson, the town’s economic development officer, can see the magic of the place, even if she can’t upload a photo of it to her Google drive.

“I wouldn’t move back to Calgary, even if I had the option to,” she said. “There is hope here, lots of hope.”

Hope indeed, for better internet days ahead.

• Email: joconnor@nationalpost.com | Twitter: oconnorwrites

ITS IN GREENLAND WHICH JUST BANNED MINING

Anorthosite: The rare mineral geologists say is key to solving the climate crisis

Oct 15, 2021

Global News

Geologists say a rare rock called anorthosite could be key to solving some of the world's climate problems.

Other than on the moon, the purest form of the mineral can be found in Greenland. Deposits from the mineral could help make more sustainable aluminum and fiberglass.

'MAYBE'TECH BLUE H2

Louisiana governor ‘supremely confident’ 

Air Products’ $4.5B clean energy complex will pay off

William Patrick | The Center Square

Fri, October 15, 2021

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards announced a $4.5 billion clean energy commitment Thursday from industrial gas manufacturer Air Products.

The company pledged the investment to build “the world’s largest permanent carbon dioxide sequestration endeavor to date,” and will receive millions in taxpayer-funded business incentives in return.

Air Products’ plan involves producing massive amounts of blue hydrogen and sequestering the carbon dioxide generated through the manufacturing process.

“Carbon capture and sequestration are important to Louisiana’s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while maintaining jobs and growing our manufacturing base," Edwards said. "This project is a clear demonstration of our ability to grow the Louisiana economy while lowering the carbon footprint of industry.”

The clean energy development is slated for Ascension Parish, near Burnside, and purportedly will deliver 170 jobs with an average annual salary of $93,000 plus benefits. Louisiana Economic Development estimated the project also could lead to 413 new indirect jobs.

During a news conference at the Louisiana Capitol, Edwards said he was “supremely confident” the deal would deliver economic benefits while helping the environment. He also said "we don't really have a choice.”

“No matter how you slice it and dice it, this is a big deal,” Edwards said. “I think the risk, quite frankly, to all of us, is in not doing projects of this type. It’s a risk in terms of the economy because there’s an energy transition underway and we’re powerless to stop it. We’re either going to take advantage of the opportunities we’re given or we’re going to lose.”

Air Products President and CEO Seifi Ghasemi praised Edwards during his prepared remarks and claimed “hydrogen is the clean energy of the future.”

Ghasemi said the sequestration plant is scheduled for completion in 2026. Once operational, he said, the plant would produce 750 million standard cubic feet of blue hydrogen per day.

“That’s enough energy to drive 3 million cars,” he said.

The hydrogen also would flow through a 700-mile pipeline from New Orleans through Texas and help “decarbonize” energy production along the way.

A news release said Air Products was offered “a competitive incentive package," including a $5 million grant to offset plant and pipeline construction costs. The grant is said to be performance-based and payable over five years.

The package also includes perks from the Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP) and the Quality Jobs program.

ITEP will provide an 80% property tax abatement for five years, after which Air Products can receive an 80% property tax abatement for another five years on capital investments related to manufacturing.

The Quality Jobs program gives cash rebates for well-paying jobs.

“The program provides up to a 6% cash rebate of annual gross payroll for new direct jobs for up to 10 years,” Louisiana Economic Development said. Additional Quality Jobs giveaways include a state sales and use tax rebate on capital expenditures or a 1.5% project facility expense rebate.

Economists often criticize business tax incentives as “corporate welfare,” but Edwards said Thursday the partnership was “necessary” and “an obligation.”

“There is no state in the nation that is more affected by climate change than Louisiana,” he said.

The message dovetailed with Edwards’ trip to Scotland later this month to attend a United Nations climate change conference known as COP26.

“I want to be there to meet as many of those people as possible and talk to them about opportunities that they have right here in Louisiana,” he said.

Referring to Air Products, Edwards boasted: “This won’t be the last one you hear about.”

Air Products reveals $4.5 billion hydrogen, CCS complex in Louisiana

US company says the project will be its largest investment ever in the US


Seifi Ghasemi: Air Products' chief executive

Photo: AIR PRODUCTS

RELATED NEWS
Falling short: IEA claims $1.2 trillion hydrogen investment needed by 2030 to hit net zero goals
Energy Transition

 15 October 2021 
By Naomi Klinge

in Houston

US industrial gases company Air Products said it is developing a $4.5 billion clean energy complex in Louisiana, set to be the world’s largest blue hydrogen schemes so far.

The company will construct a blue hydrogen manufacturing complex near Burnside in Ascension Parish, producing more than 750 million cubic feet per day of blue hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen products are produced using hydrocarbons as a feedstock, with the CO2 in the production process captured for permanent sequestration.

Louisiana's State Mineral and Energy Board has approved the permanent sequestration of the CO2. More than an estimated 5 million tonnes per year of CO2 will be permanently stored about a mile below ground at inland sites.

Air Products said about 95% of the CO2 generated will be captured.

“Air Products is excited to announce this investment in clean energy with the governor of Louisiana,” chief executive Seifi Ghasemi said. “This landmark megaproject will not only create jobs but make Louisiana and Ascension Parish leaders in the US clean energy transition.”

With operations expected in 2026, the project could create 170 new direct jobs and 413 new indirect jobs in the region, with possibly more than 2000 construction jobs over three years.


Scottish CCS project signs new agreements to store CO2 from Thames Estuary blue hydrogen plantRead more

“Carbon capture and sequestration are important to Louisiana’s efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while maintaining jobs and growing our manufacturing base,” Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said.

“This project is a clear demonstration of our ability to grow the Louisiana economy while lowering the carbon footprint of industry."

GREEN VS BLUE

Blue hydrogen is produced from natural gas feedstocks, with the carbon dioxide by-product from hydrogen production captured and stored. However, the process is not emissions free.

Green hydrogen is made using electrolysis powered by renewable energy to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen, creating an emissions-free fuel.

Air Products said a portion of the produced blue hydrogen will be compressed and supplied to customers via its own US Gulf Coast hydrogen pipeline network, which it said stretches more than 700 miles from Galveston Bay in Texas to New Orleans, Louisiana.

The network can supply more than 1.6 billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day from about 25 production facilities, including Air Products' own Port Arthur, Texas facility.

The balance of the blue hydrogen from the new Ascension Parish facility will be used to make blue ammonia that will be transported around the world and converted back to blue hydrogen for transportation and other markets.

As part of the agreement between Louisiana and Air Products, the state offered the company access to LED FastStart, a workforce development program through Louisiana Economic Development. Air Products also received a $5 million grant to offset construction costs for the plant and pipeline.(Copyright)

Read more
Gazprom Neft joins Sakhalin hydrogen pilot project
Australian state unveils 'world leading' green hydrogen strategy to drive $58.7bn investment
Eni and Progressive Energy aim to cast HyNet as CCUS vanguard project

 

Strong Currents Don’t Faze Salt Marsh Coastal Defenses

October 13, 2021• Physics 14, s126

A model captures the influence of plant flexibility, leaves, and current on wave dissipation by a meadow of marsh plants.

X. Zhang/Dalian University of Technology

Marsh grasses that carpet tidal flats provide vital habitats for diverse flora and fauna, and by dissipating wave energy, they also defend against coastal storms. Facilitating policies to restore and manage these fragile environments requires predictions of how plants interact with waves and currents to dissipate hydrodynamic energy. Xiaoxia Zhang at Dalian University of Technology in China and Heidi Nepf at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now provide those predictions with a model that captures the dynamics of plant components bending in response to fluid motion [1].

Many wave-dissipation models treat vegetation as rigid cylinders with empirically determined drag coefficients. Those models cannot be applied to all plants and environments because drag depends on plant morphology, mechanical properties, and local currents. To account for these parameters, Zhang and Nepf modeled the forces applied to individual plants by back-and-forth wave motion and sustained onshore or offshore currents. They found that, for all plant types, wave-energy dissipation was greatest when current velocity was several multiples of wave velocity. For realistic (flexible) plants, less wave energy was dissipated overall compared with rigid plants, and the degree of dissipation was less sensitive to the ratio of current velocity to wave velocity. That’s because the motion of flexible stems, and drag from leaves, reduced both wave and current velocities, mitigating the impact of currents on energy dissipation.

The researchers used their individual-plant model to determine the forces on a tidal marsh and predict its wave-energy dissipation. They then confirmed this prediction by measuring wave decay in a physical model of flexible plants. Such predictions could help researchers and policy makers to estimate the value of marsh coastal defense as climate change brings stronger and more frequent coastal storms.

–Rachel Berkowitz

Rachel Berkowitz is a Corresponding Editor for Physics based in Vancouver, Canada.

References

1. X. Zhang and H. Nepf, “Wave damping by flexible marsh plants influenced by current,” Phys. Rev. Fluids 6, 100502 (2021).