It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, October 16, 2021
Biden White House Nominates its First Maritime Administrator
On Thursday, the Biden administration announced the long-awaited nomination of its first Maritime Administrator, the director of the U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration.
The post is currently held in an acting capacity by Lucinda Lessley, a former House staffmember who served on the Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transport and the Committee on Homeland Security. The previous Maritime Administrator, Adm. Mark "Buzz" Buzby, resigned in protest after January 6 insurrection at the capital. Lessley has served as acting administrator for nine months while the White House discussed options for a permanent appointment.
Biden's nominee is Rear Adm. Ann Phillips, a 31-year veteran of the U.S. Navy. In the early years of her career, she served aboard the dry stores auxiliary USS San Jose and the destroyer tender USS Cape Cod during operation Desert Storm. She served as the first commanding officer of the destroyer USS Mustin, then went on to command Destroyer Squadron 28 and (most recently) Expeditionary Strike Group Two, which includes all amphibious warfare vessels on the U.S. East Coast.
On shore, she served on the Chief of Naval Operations’ Climate Change Task Force, advising on ways to make the Navy's bases and forces more resilient to climate change. She later became Director of the Surface Warfare Division (OPNAV N86), part of the Navy's planning, programming and budgeting office.
Phillips retired from the Navy in 2014 and pursued an MBA at the College of William and Mary. In her current role, she serves as Special Assistant to the Governor of Virginia for Coastal Adaptation and Protection, working to address the impact of sea level rise and coastal flooding across the state. This portfolio includes the development of Virginia’s first Coastal Resilience Master Plan.
If confirmed by the Senate, Rear Adm. Phillips will have an active roster of projects to address upon taking office as Maritime Administrator. First, MARAD is working hard to address a long-running pattern of alleged sexual misconduct in its Sea Year program, the onboard training program run by MARAD's U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. Her office will also have to work to boost the real-world readiness of the Ready Reserve Force, MARAD's component of the government-owned sealift fleet. And like her predecessor, Rear Adm. Phillips will have to address the slow decline of the U.S. maritime workforce, which is essential to crewing American sealift ships in time of war.
[Video] Fire Damages Russian Coal Export Terminal Supplying China
Vanino Bulk Terminal supplies coal to China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan (SUEK file photo)
A fire at one of Russia’s leading coal terminals has forced the suspension of the loading of coal while the terminal operator works to assess the full extent of the damage. The terminal located along Russia’s southeastern coast is a large source of coal for China, which was already reporting shortages, as well as supplying Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
According to reports from the Administration of the Vaninsky district in eastern Russia, a fire broke out on the coal conveyors on October 11 at the terminal located in Vannino. Several of the loading belts were reportedly heavily damaged, although they were able to contain the fire to the belts, not damaging the coal terminal, or spreading to the storage. The Administration posted video of the fire on social media.
The terminal, which is one of the largest in Russia, has a capacity to handle 24 million mt of coal annually loading Capesize bulkers. Media reports indicate that the terminal operator, the Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK) notified customers that it was declaring a force majeure due to the fire. No timeline was provided for when the terminal might resume loading operations.
The terminal, which opened in 2008, has shipped more than 150 million tons of coal since it began operations. SUEK reports that it is one of the most technologically advanced terminals employing a broad range of technologies to automate the operations while reducing the environmental impact. Dust suppression equipment is deployed around the coal depot, systems to wash the transshipped coal, and industrial vacuum machines to clean the coal port. Coal dust is highly explosive when suspended in air and notoriously flammable.
SUEK announced plans in 2019 to undertake a four-year project to double the size of the terminal’s operations. Built to handle 12 million tons, after a previous upgrade it can handle 24 million tons and according to SUEK under certain conditions can operate up to rates of 30 million tons. The current expansion, which was due to be completed by 2023, will increase the annual capacity to approximately 40 million tons. They are adding a second pier to have the capacity to load up to four ships at one time as well as the construction of a triple car dumper, and additional coal storage. They are also introducing advanced re-loaders.
Industry analysts noted that other terminals in the region are continuing to function although total output is expected to be reduced until the Vanino Bulk Terminal can return to service.
Ethiopia's Mega-Dam is About to Reshape the Water Politics of the Nile
A US Geological Survey image shows green farmland marking a distinct boundary between the Nile floodplain and the surrounding harsh desert (USGS)
Amid an increasingly bitter war and an impending famine in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, there is still, perhaps, one issue that unites Ethiopians, no matter their political views: that their country has the absolute right to develop and use its hydroelectric potential on the Blue Nile (or as the river is named in Ethiopia, the Abay). And that potential is on the cusp of being realized.
For the past decade, the second most populous country in Africa has been building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), about 25 miles from the border with Sudan. The dam is a strand of continuity between Ethiopia’s ousted political regime, which started the construction and now finds itself fighting the federal government over Tigray, and the post-2018 government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who recently won a commanding majority and his first five year term in office. Once complete, the GERD will be capable of producing as many as 6,450 megawatts (MW) of electricity, ranking it as one of the world’s largest dams and by far Africa’s largest dam by electricity production. To put the GERD in perspective, only five dams outside of China have greater installed production capacity.
Sudan and Uganda have both built large Nile dams in recent years, and there are numerous older dams on the Sudanese portion of the Blue Nile. Until now, the Nile’s largest dam was at Aswan, Egypt (installed capacity of 2,100 MW). Completed in 1970, it transformed Egypt by ending the Nile’s seasonal floods, creating hundreds of thousands of acres of newly arable, irrigated land, and bringing electricity to millions of Egyptians. It was also built without consulting upstream countries, drawing on antiquated colonial treaties to which Ethiopia, which escaped colonialization, was never a party.
The GERD, in a sense, offers Ethiopia an Aswan moment. It promises to provide power to millions of poor Ethiopians; only 47 per cent of the country’s 115 million people are currently connected to the grid. The dam could make Ethiopia a clean energy hub, providing cheap power to growing economies across the region. But much has changed since 1970. Then, Egypt had just 27 million people, Ethiopia 22 million, and Sudan 8 million. In 2020, Egypt’s population had reached 102 million, Ethiopia’s 115 million, and Sudan’s 44 million. But Ethiopia’s future population growth promises to be the most explosive, doubling by 2050 to more than 200 million; Egypt is projected to grow to 160 million, and Sudan to 80 million. Even if population growth slows significantly, the amount of available water will clearly not increase on a per capita basis.
In effect, Egypt’s concerns about the GERD are a preview of the downstream country’s present and future econo-hydrological challenges. More than 80 per cent of the Nile water that reaches Egypt comes from the Blue Nile and the Ethiopian highlands. In its objections to the GERD, Egypt has cast the issue as a national existential crisis. In the GERD dispute, questions of emotion and identity have been ignored in favour of material and technical arguments about water security. Competing conceptions of state identity and entitlement make technical compromises over the dam’s operation much harder to reach. Still, more than 80 per cent of Egypt’s water is consumed by agriculture, an increasing amount of which is destined for export rather than local needs. What the GERD risks for Egypt is upsetting the national expectation that the country will be ever fertile, defying the desert.
In September, Ethiopia announced that the GERD would begin to produce power in the coming months. Dam construction continues despite an impasse in the trilateral negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan. For now, heavy rainfall and high seasonal flows on the river have averted a crisis, allowing the dam to fill without significant downstream consequences. But for several years, the characterisation of the dispute has changed little; wrangling over the dam has proceeded as if the day of completion would never come. The GERD is almost a fait accompli; now, more water flows into the reservoir each day than can physically exit the dam wall. Negotiations, therefore, are no longer about a hypothetical change on the river; change is already here.
Due to its scale, the case of the GERD could be an important example of how to approach, or not approach, future transboundary water management in an increasingly water scarce world. More than 260 watersheds cross the borders of two or more countries, and approximately 40 per cent of the world's population lives in transboundary river and lake basins. While not all transboundary watersheds are shared by countries at loggerheads, imperatives for regional cooperation may still not trump national interests. In Ethiopia, despite a war, a worsening economy, and growing international pressure, the GERD is an indisputable priority and a point of national pride; for some, it is even a cause to support the Abiy government. Given its present difficulties, the rhetoric of an Ethiopian renaissance may be overstated, but despite the challenges, Ethiopia’s development ambitions remain very real.
Aly Verjee is a political analyst. A fellow of the Rift Valley Institute, he was a visiting expert and then senior advisor to the Africa Center at the US Institute of Peace in Washington, DC. Previously, he was deputy and then acting chief of staff to the former president of Botswana, Festus Mogae, the chair of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission overseeing the 2015 peace agreement in South Sudan.
This article appears courtesy of The Lowy Interpreter and may be found in its original form here.
Can Indonesia Become a Fisheries Leader Again?
With the former fisheries minister jailed for corruption, Indonesia has the chance to resume a hard line on illegal fishing
Fishing boats on the shore, Java, Indonesia (Adam Cohn / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
This July, Indonesia’s former fisheries minister Edhy Prabowo was sentenced to five years in prison after a court found him guilty of accepting bribes to lift a ban on the export of lobster larvae.
The decision by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) was widely praised by environmentalists and fisheries organisations. But the case remains a sign that Indonesia has fallen away from its position as an exemplar of sustainable oceans policy.
Edhy’s sentencing came a little more than two years after President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo unexpectedly appointed him instead of sticking with incumbent fisheries minister Susi Pudjiastuti. Susi had become popular in Indonesia thanks to her hard line on illegal fishing, which included blowing up culpable vessels. Entering at the beginning of Jokowi’s second term, Edhy undid several of Susi’s policies as the president pushed for a greater focus on GDP growth over long-term sustainable practices.
“It’s the same president, but a different direction,” said Arifsyah Nasution, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia, on the changes since Jokowi’s 2019 re-election. “We’ve had several major setbacks, and still we don’t have any progressive direction from the current government.”
Edhy was replaced by Sakti Wahyu Trenggono in December 2020, shortly after the KPK announced its case against him. The new fisheries minister has made some positive moves, but it remains to be seen if he’ll return to the more dramatic, effective and popular policies of Susi.
From sustainable management to prioritizing the economy
Indonesia has more than 17,500 islands and the ocean makes up more than three-quarters of its territory. The fisheries sector is central to the economy, providing $27 billion in gross domestic product, supporting seven million jobs, and supplying more than half of the country’s animal-based protein intake.
Despite being the world’s largest archipelago nation, Indonesia had played a relatively small role in global fisheries and ocean policymaking. That changed when Jokowi picked Susi to be his first fisheries minister in 2014. Relatively unknown but with extensive experience of fisheries, she soon made waves globally with her decisive action on behalf of Indonesian fishers.
During her five years at the head of the ministry, Susi took a hard-handed approach, most visibly through her policy of seizing and sinking foreign vessels fishing illegally in Indonesian waters. She also made public the country’s boat-tracking data, and pushed to reduce environmentally dangerous fishing practices by small-scale fishers.
“She was willing to take on the power elite when it came to the large-scale commercial fishing industry that was detrimental to both the fishing communities and fisheries resources,” said Sally Yozell, director of the Environmental Security programme at the Stimson Center in Washington DC.
Susi proposed the lobster larvae export ban in 2016. Lobster aquaculture in countries like Vietnam and China depends on imports of larvae and juveniles. They are first caught in Indonesian waters before being transported and grown in submerged cages abroad, and then sold as adults often at a large profit.
Indonesia is one of a few countries able to export large numbers of lobster larvae, and their stocks had been depleted by exploitation prior to the ban. It was also hoped that limiting exports would encourage lobster farming domestically, providing income for coastal communities.
Along with her boat-scuttling policies, she introduced policies to stem the use of environmentally harmful fishing methods such as bottom trawl nets, which scrape the ocean floor and damage coral reef ecosystems and bottom-dwelling species. The health of fisheries duly improved, with studies showing an increase in biomass in Indonesian waters and a reduction in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
Under Edhy, the boat destruction stopped, bottom trawl nets returned and data-sharing with the non-profit Global Fishing Watch (GFW) ended.
Since the departure of Susi in 2019, there have been several leadership and staff changes in the fisheries ministry, said Ko-Jung Lo, GFW’s regional manager for Asia. “The renewal of our agreement with the ministry was delayed because of these changes and, as a result, Indonesia suspended its Vessel Monitoring System data feed to our map.”
Uncertain future
Not everyone was happy about Susi’s policies. She had opponents in the capital, Jakarta, and among business interests. This, along with a shift towards more economy-minded decision-making, is believed to have led to her replacement.
“Globally, almost everyone was disappointed to see someone who was working to manage the fisheries sustainably, in a country that is the world’s second largest producer of seafood, be replaced,” said Yozell. “She was really trying to balance sustainably managing fisheries with the economic needs of the fishing industry.”
Since taking over, the current fisheries minister, Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, has shown more willingness to engage with civil society, and has been in contact with Susi, according to Arifsyah. In June, he brought back the ban on exporting lobster larvae, and the following month, he reimposed bans on destructive purse seine and bottom trawl fishing. There are concerns, though, about the ministry potentially giving licences to foreign fishing boats to operate in Indonesia.
Bustar Maitar, CEO of Indonesian NGO EcoNusa, said that reducing the number of permits given to foreign fishing boats “will surely provide larger space to small fishers”. He added: “The Indonesian native fishers therefore could catch fish in Indonesian waters.”
Also of concern is Indonesia’s Omnibus Law on Job Creation, a 1,028-page bill that became law late last year. The broadest amending of Indonesia’s legal code in decades, it modified or annulled 79 different laws that govern land use, environmental impacts, infrastructure and much more. It has the potential to speed up the implementation of environmentally harmful development projects such as ports, coal plants and land reclamation – without proper local consultation or environmental impact analysis.
“We’re concerned that the omnibus law will result in more conflicts on the ground, because the environment and coastal communities will be deprioritised,” said Arifsyah.
Despite the uncertainty at the fisheries ministry, GFW is focusing on working with local governments and organisations, especially on a challenge that Susi wasn’t able to address during her first term – managing small-scale vessels.
“Small-scale fisheries are a vital source of nutrition and income for many communities in Indonesia. Yet nearly all small-scale fishing, which makes up almost 90 percent of Indonesia’s fishing sector, is unmonitored and unreported,” said Lo. “With more affordable tracking technology and better monitoring data, we would like to support Indonesia’s small-scale fisheries sector [in] efforts to promote legal, reported and regulated fishing activity.”
Arifsyah hopes that Sakti, and President Jokowi, turn back to the model implemented under Susi, which also means playing an active role in global conferences and negotiations.
“Let’s bring back Indonesia’s leadership in the international forum,” said Arifsyah. “Share the challenges, and be proactive in commitments around saving the ocean and ending human trafficking. That is something that we hope the current minister takes forward.”
Nithin Coca is a Southeast Asia based freelance journalist who covers development, environment, and sustainability. His feature and news pieces have appeared in global media outlets including Al Jazeera, Quartz, Engadget, Foreign Policy, The Diplomat, Vice, and several regional publications in Asia and the United States.
The opinions expressed herein are the author's and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.
STATE CAPITALI$M IS STILL CAPITALI$M
Chinese Shipyard Closes Due to Lack of Profitability
Hospital ship Global Mercy in 2020 at the Tianjin shipyard (Mercy Ships)
One of China’s mid-sized shipbuilders, Tianjin Xingang Ship Heavy Industry, announced that it will stop all operations as of the end of October. The disbanding of the company comes despite the recent resurgence in shipbuilding orders and China’s overall leadership in the industry.
The Shanghai International Maritime Information Research Center reported that the shipyard is shutting down for the second time in its history due to heavy financial debts. They reported that insufficient profits from shipyard operations in recent years led to the decision to cease operations. The shipyard announced that it has discharged its labor contracts with employees and will stop all of its operations and production by the end of the month.
Tianjin Xinjiang had relocated its operations in 2017 focusing both on new ship construction up to 500,000 tons and ship repair for ships up to 300,000 tons. It had a capacity to build ships up to about 1,000 feet in length.
In operation since 1940, the shipyard had previously been reorganized about twenty years ago. It filed for bankruptcy in 2000 but completed a restructuring of the operations the following year.
Tianjin completed construction to the 39,000 gross ton Global Mercy for Stena RoRo in June 2021. The vessel, which is the world’s largest civilian hospital ship, will begin operations in 2022 for Mercy Ships. First steel for the vessel was cut in 2015 with the floating out taking place at the beginning of 2020. Especially design for Mercy Ships, it is being billed as the most technologically advanced ship of its kind. It has six operating rooms, 200 beds, a laboratory, general outpatient clinics, and eye and dental clinics. The total area of the hospital department is more than 75,000 square feet.
The shipyard also completed the construction of two 210,000 dwt bulk carriers built for COSCO Shipping Bulk Transportation Co. The vessels, each of which measures 984 feet in length, were delivered in May and June 2021, promoted as a new generation of a large bulk carrier. The shipyard said the vessels’ design incorporated “intelligence, green, environmental protection, energy-saving, and reliable” technology.
The reports indicate that Tiajin’s operations will likely be divided up going to other parts of the Chinese state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation, which has also been undergoing a reorganization to improve results. Tianjin's shipbuilding business is expected to be taken over by Dalian Shipbuilding Industry while the ship repair business will become part of Shanhaiguan Shipbuilding. The reports did not include any details on the size of the shipyard’s orderbook.
U.S. Coast Guard Locates Wreck of Famed Cutter USRC Bear
As a steamship, commissioned warship, Revenue Cutter and Coast Guard Cutter, Bear served for nearly nine decades in icy waters
The former USRC / USS / USCGC / SS Bear going down off Nova Scotia, 1963 (USCG)
The U.S. Coast Guard and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have identified the location of the lost Coast Guard cutter Bear, one of the most significant vessels in the history of U.S. Arctic exploration.
The seal hunting steamship Bear was built at Dundee Shipyard in Scotland in 1874, and she served the first ten years of her life in the Newfoundland sealing fleet. Her wooden hull was stout and heavy, with three layers of six-inch planking and an iron-plated bow for service in ice. In 1884, the U.S. Navy purchased her and put her immediately into service in the search for the lost Greely Expedition, an ill-fated U.S. Army mission to Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. Bear and three other vessels retrieved the seven survivors of the mission at Cape Sabine.
After this mission, the U.S. Navy transferred USS Bear to the U.S. Treasury for service in the Alaskan Arctic. She would serve the U.S. Coast Guard (and its predecessors) for the next 41 years. In the Alaskan Patrol, she was the sole federal presence in a far-flung frontier, ferrying government officials; holding trials; enforcing the law; conducting search and rescue; providing medical care; and taking soundings to improve safety of navigation.
Revenue Cutter Bear, center, assisting SS Corwin in ice at Nome, Alaska (USCG)
Under the command of her most famous C/O, Capt. "Hell Roaring" Mike Healy, the ship and her crew also helped introduce reindeer to Alaska, providing a new source of food for native tribes. The Bear also played a high-profile role in the famous Overland Rescue of 1897, when Bear's crew rescued the crews of eight icebound whaling ships near Point Barrow - driving a herd of the same reindeer with them to provide the survivors with food and transport.
She continued her work in the Arctic until 1926, when she retired to Oakland and became a museum ship. Not one to sit idle for long, she was purchased and put back into service for the Byrd Expedition to Antarctica in 1931, then recommissioned into the Navy in 1939 - just in time to get ready for WWII. In the Second World War, she served in the Greenland Patrol in the northeast Atlantic until 1944, when she was replaced by a more modern vessel.
In 1948, Bear was resold into commercial sealing service once more, but the market for seal fur was not what it once was, and she lay idle at berth for many years. In 1962, she was resold and refitted for use as a floating restaurant. While under tow to Philadelphia, her new commercial home port, she went down in a storm about 100 nm off the coast of Nova Scotia. One of her masts collapsed in the gale and punched through the hull, sending her below.
Her location was lost to the world until 2019, when a new Coast Guard vessel of the same name - the medium-endurance cutter USCGC Bear - located two possible targets for the wreck site during a sonar survey. U.S. Coast Guard and NOAA researchers returned to the area earlier this year on the USCG buoy tender Sycamore, bringing a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipped with high-resolution underwater video cameras. Despite challenging conditions on site, the team managed to obtain footage that positively identified the wreck as the Bear.
“Several elements were fundamental considerations for the identification,” said NOAA maritime heritage coordinator Joe Hoyt at a news conference this week. "It was within a few miles of where we expected it to be. The consistency and general dimensions in the layout of the vessel, the lack of an engine, but evidence of engineering space consistent with the historic record. It had an engine that had been [removed] prior to its loss."
In addition, video of the wreck's forefoot - the very bottom of the bow - showed five iron bow staples matching the appearance of the Bear's construction, as documented by period photos of shipyard repairs. The ROV search also found a large iron casting believed to be Bear's propeller post.
Iron bow staples on USRC Bear in a period shipyard photograph (above) and on the wreck (below) (NOAA)
Testing to Begin on the Tallest, Most Powerful Wind Turbine Ever Built
When installed the new 15 MW wind turbine is expected to be the tallest and most powerful to date (Vestas)
Testing on what is expected to become once installed the tallest and most powerful offshore wind turbine in the world is due to begin in the fourth quarter of 2022. Developed by Vestas, the V236-15 MW will stand over 900 feet with a production output of 80 GWh/year. It is likely to become a stepping stone, as plans for 16 MW wind turbines have already been announced.
Vestas has decided to install the V236-15 MW offshore prototype wind turbine at the Østerild National test center for large wind turbines in Western Jutland, Denmark. The installation of the prototype turbine will take place in the second half of 2022 and its first kWh is planned for the fourth quarter of that year. The prototype will be installed onshore to facilitate easy access for testing before installation, and the main prototype components will have already undergone thorough testing and verification at Vestas' test facilities.
The prototype development work has already progressed across Vestas’ R&D and production sites in Denmark. The blade molds have been developed at Vestas’ blade factory in Lem and the 380-foot prototype blades will begin manufacturing later this year at Vestas’ offshore blade factory in Nakskov. The nacelle will be developed and assembled at the offshore nacelle factory in Odense. All large components will be preassembled and transported to Østerild, where the installation will take place.
With a swept area exceeding 43,000 m2, the V236-15.0 MW is on track to become the next step in the growth of offshore wind power generation. Producing around 80 GWh/year, it will generate enough power for around 20,000 households and displace more than 38,000 tons of CO2. According to Vestas, the V235-15.0 MW is designed to be part of larger installations reducing the number of turbines at the park level.
Launched in February 2021, Vestas reports that the new turbine has its first pre-selected tenderer status with the 900 MW He Dreiht project in Germany.
The turbine may be a stepping stone, as wind turbines continue to grow in size. Several manufacturers have discussed 16MW turbines or larger. Chinese wind turbine manufacturer MingYang Smart Energy in August 2021 announced plans for the first 16MW unit which they said would also be available as a prototype in 2022.
Big Six banks join Mark Carney-led Net-Zero Banking Alliance
Ian Bickis, The Canadian Press
We can drive 'an investment boom' if we deliver on climate goals: Mark Carney
Mark Carney, vice vhair of Brookfield Asset Management, also Former Governor at the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, joins BNN Bloomberg and Bloomberg TV to discuss the climate talks underway at the UN General Assembly this week and the investment opportunity that stems from pursuing global climate goals of moving towards lower carbon emissions.
TORONTO -- Canada's Big Six banks together announced Friday that they will join the global Net-Zero Banking Alliance championed by former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney.
The commitment by the banks, which include Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, National Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia and TD Bank, comes ahead of the UN climate summit set to start in Glasgow at the end of the month and where a major focus will be on finding the finances to fund the climate promises.
The industry-led alliance commits signatory banks to aligning their lending and investment portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050, as well as to setting intermediate reduction targets for 2030 or sooner.
The alliance, part of the wider Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero that is chaired by Carney, also requires members to publish emissions data and take a “robust approach'' to carbon offsets.
Carney said in a statement that the financial systems needs to transform to ensure a “prosperous and just transition to net-zero'' and that by joining the alliance, Canadian banks are “bringing their deep expertise and strong balance sheets to drive solutions for the sustainable economy.''
The alliance has, however, come under criticism for not going far enough, including ads published last week by more than 90 environmental groups that urged Carney to be more ambitious with membership requirements.
The groups want to see more immediate targets laid out to phase out fossil fuel funding, a prohibition on financing any new fossil fuel projects, and a goal of halving financed emissions by 2030.
Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, said in an email Friday that Canadian banks have to do more than join the alliance.
“The world is accelerating toward a zero-carbon economy and Canadian banks are still playing catch up. Until they commit to a near-term phasing out of all financial support for fossil fuels and to fully respect Indigenous rights, they will still be part of the problem.''
Dave McKay, chief executive of RBC, said in a LinkedIn post that the bank would work with businesses, including fossil fuel companies, to establish and accelerate their climate plans.
“This includes working with clients in emitting sectors, whose reduction strategies and increased investment in renewables and clean tech projects are critical to reaching Canada's emissions targets.''
Canada's big banks have made various other climate commitments in the past, including in the past year individual pledges to achieve net-zero by 2050 by all the banks except Scotiabank, which had said it agreed in principal but had not until Friday specifically committed to the goal.
The six banks join Vancity and HSBC in the alliance, which were the only banks operating in Canada to sign on when it was first announced in April, as well more than 60 other banks that together represent more than US$40 trillion in assets.
Global Energy Crisis Hits Singapore as Power Provider Goes Bust
Stephen Stapczynski and Dan Murtaugh, Bloomberg News Boat Quay during lockdown in Singapore. Photographer: Lauryn Ishak/Bloomberg , Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) -- A record-breaking spike in electricity prices is short-circuiting Singapore’s efforts to liberalize its power sector, in the latest sign that the global crisis is delivering a blow to both energy suppliers and their customers.
Electricity supplier iSwitch Energy will cease power retail operations on Nov. 11 due to “current electricity market conditions,” the company said on its website Wednesday. Existing customers will be transitioned to SP Group, Singapore’s state-owned power provider.
The surge in wholesale electricity prices is erasing profits for many independent retailers in Singapore, according to James Whistler, the global head of energy derivatives at Simpson Spence Young, which brokers electricity futures. “There is clearly a gas shortage that is causing issues, pipeline capacity is low and LNG supplies might not have been coming through either.”
Singapore is the latest victim of a global fuel shortage that has sent power prices rallying in the U.K. and triggered widespread electricity curtailments in China. Suppliers that aren’t hedged against the volatile price moves can end up having to buy energy at a much higher cost than they have sold to customers.
The threat to the industry is similar to what has been happening in the U.K., where several smaller energy providers have gone out of business as they struggle to cope with a rally in gas and power prices. Despite a shortage of gas, there is still enough to provide electricity to consumers in Singapore. ISwitch said that service wouldn’t be interrupted.
Nonetheless, the development complicates Singapore’s effort to liberalize its power sector in a bid to boost competition. From November 2018, the government allowed all consumers across Singapore to pick power providers, resulting in a proliferation of independent retailers to rival the state-run utility. The departure of smaller players will give consumers fewer choices and potentially higher monthly bills.
Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry earlier this month advised households to conserve electricity as fuel prices have skyrocketed.
Grid operator SP Group and the Energy Market Authority, which oversees the power market, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Singapore generates nearly all of its electricity with imported natural gas, either via pipeline or liquefied carrier. While spot prices for liquefied natural gas are trading at a record high, Singapore has been largely insulated from the rally due to its dependence on long-term contracts, which are primarily linked to the price of oil.
However, record-high LNG spot rates appear to have started boosting Singapore’s power futures contracts through the next year, according to SSY’s Whistler.
“It seems clear that based on where spot prices are, where the futures prices are trading, LNG benchmarking has made its way into Singapore,” he said. “That’s a shift from where I think Singapore thought they were.”
Nearly 40 years after a majority of the member states of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) voted in 1982 to suspend commercial whaling indefinitely, whaling continues, albeit to a lesser extent—as does scientific research using the products of that whaling. And according to a new study, that research is not confined to scientists from whaling nations: researchers from countries whose governments boast staunch anti-whaling policies are also working with whaling companies to procure meat, tissue, and other whale products for research.
The study’s authors reviewed 35 peer-reviewed papers and conference abstracts describing research that relied on products from Icelandic whaling since 2003, when that country resumed whaling following an 11-year hiatus. They argue that their findings highlight “the need for improved ethical guidelines for whale research involving samples or data from controversial sources such as Icelandic whaling.”
Of 59 institutions involved in the research identified in the study, almost half were from four countries—Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries supported the 1982 vote and formally objected to the fact that when Iceland resumed whaling in 2003 it did so after rejoining the IWC. Of the papers the authors looked at, approximately half were partly funded by government grants from one or more of those countries.
The goal of the paper is not to name and shame the individual scientists who are using the products of whaling in their research. Instead, study coauthor Vassili Papastavrou of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, who wrote the paper with independent whale researcher Conor Ryan and Peter Sand at LMU Munich in Germany, argues that the thicket of ethical and legal issues surrounding whaling is too tangled to expect individual scientists to navigate it by themselves.
“There’s a whole load of international law around whales and the decisions that have been taken, and these are all beyond the skill set of the average academic,” Papastavrou insists. “We’re not saying what’s right or wrong. We’re not the arbiters. But there really is a need for a proper set of ethical guidelines to help everyone involved work out what to do.”
The issue is more than one of mere inconsistency, says Hal Whitehead, a biologist and whale expert at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who was not involved in the study. While some researchers may excuse using the products of whaling on the grounds that those whales were going to be killed anyway, their very involvement may make future whaling more likely, he says.
“It is a problem when the science that is being done on the products of whaling is being used to justify the whaling,” he says.
Two guidelines, Papastavrou argues, would prevent a situation in which governments with anti-whaling policies are funding research that relies on the whaling they oppose.
For one, says Papastavrou, “I think any government funding should have a requirement for a proper ethical examination of what the research is. And is what you’re proposing to do legal in your own country?” The latter would, he argues, bring such research into line with standards established in the past few decades by the medical research community, which now prohibits offshoring medical trials to countries with less strict regulations. Additionally, he and his coauthors quote an American Medical Association guideline that states, “If data from unethical experiments can be replaced by data from ethically sound research and achieve the same ends, then such must be done.”
One of the scientists whose work was included in the analysis, Alex Aguilar at the University of Barcelona in Spain, questions what he sees as Papastavrou and his colleagues’ assumption of a consensus that commercial whaling is unethical. Aguilar argues that commercial whaling “is a perfectly acceptable activity for many IWC member countries.”
Aguilar also points out that the Society for Marine Mammalogy’s guidelines for the treatment of marine mammals in field research state that, where possible, activities such as hunting “should be utilized as a source of material for scientific studies of marine mammals.”
In contrast, another researcher whose work was cited by Papastavrou and colleagues says that he does feel there should be “more ethical guidelines instituted by journals as well as professional societies.”
The researcher, who asked not to be named out of concern for unintentionally embarrassing or besmirching colleagues, previously was attracted by the idea that using meat and tissue samples to procure data about whale biology could potentially lead to better conservation efforts.
More recently, however, his stance has changed. “Aided not only by my own conscience and evolution as a scholar, but also from a sea change in scientific methods and perspective, I am now much less comfortable using such tissues of questionable provenance than ever before. Not only would I not use such tissues again, but I would be happiest if no one did.”
