US throws out millions of doses of Covid vaccine as world goes wanting

Figures surged over summer as doses expired and vaccinations flagged amid widespread hesitancy

One study based on CDC data found 15m vaccine doses were wasted in the US between March and September. 

Photograph: Nathan Posner/Rex/Shutterstock


Melody Schreiber
Sat 16 Oct 2021 

The United States is wasting millions of Covid-19 vaccine doses even as shortages plague many parts of the world.

At least 15m doses were scrapped in the US between March and September, according to one analysis of CDC data. A separate investigation found 1m doses were discarded in 10 states between December and July.


Covid vaccines for US children are coming but challenge will be persuading parents

States continue tossing unused shots. Louisiana has thrown out 224,000 unused doses of the Covid vaccines – a rate that has almost tripled since the end of July, even as a deadly fourth wave of the virus gripped the state. Some of the lost doses came from opening and not finishing vials, but more than 20,000 shots simply expired.

Thousands of doses are reportedly wasted each day in Wisconsin. In Alabama, more than 65,000 doses have been tossed; in Tennessee, it’s almost 200,000.

The wasted doses represent a small fraction of the number of shots administered in these states – in Louisiana, for instance, 4.4m doses have been given out successfully.

But the news comes as millions of people around the world wait for their first doses. Only 1% of the populations of low-income countries had received first shots as of July, compared with more than half of those living in a handful of high-income countries.

Many of the discarded doses came from pharmacies. In May, two pharmacy chains had wasted more doses than US states, territories and federal agencies combined, for almost three-quarters of tossed doses. Now, at least 7.6m discarded doses come from four major pharmacies: Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Rite Aid.

There are multiple reasons why doses have been wasted: sometimes a vial is cracked or doesn’t contain as many doses as promised; sometimes needles malfunction; freezers break down or the power goes out. Frequently, people don’t show up for appointments, and the dose set aside for them in a vial isn’t used.

But as vaccinations across the country have stalled after peaking in mid-April, a growing issue is simply that the vaccines are expiring amid vaccine hesitancy in the US that is more widespread than first imagined.

Before June, a little over 2m doses had gone to waste, NBC News reported. But over the summer, those figures surged – alongside the virus itself – sixfold as doses expired and vaccinations flagged.

The Biden administration has pushed to use the US vaccine stockpile for boosters, sometimes clashing with scientific agencies on who needs the added protection of an additional shot.

Officials are also working with vaccine manufacturers to reduce the number of doses in each vial.

In the face of global inequities, it’s not as simple as states donating unused vaccines. The doses already distributed to states can’t be repurposed internationally because of bureaucratic and safety concerns around storing the vaccines correctly.

Joe Biden has vowed to vaccinate 70% of the world in the next year, and has committed to donate several million doses for use abroad. But in the meantime, many countries are struggling to provide shots to the most vulnerable and those working on the frontlines of the pandemic, while Americans refuse the immunizations.

Manufacturers should also scale up production to address global shortages, the administration has said. Moderna, for instance, needs to “step up as a company” when it comes to global production of vaccines, David Kessler, the Biden administration’s chief science officer of the Covid-19 response, said on Wednesday.

GLOW IN THE DARK GREEN ENERGY

UK poised to confirm funding for mini nuclear reactors for carbon-free energy


Rolls-Royce-led consortium already has £210m in private backing for plans to build 16 reactors across the country

Artist’s impression of a Rolls-Royce small modular reactor. 

Photograph: Rolls-Royce/Studio Archetype


Rob Davies
@ByRobDavies
Fri 15 Oct 2021 

The government is poised to approve funding for a fleet of Rolls-Royce mini nuclear reactors that the prime minister hopes will help the UK reach his target of zero-carbon electricity by 2035.

A consortium led by the British engineering firm had already secured £210m in backing from private investors for the small modular reactor (SMR) project, a sum that the government is expected to match or better. Confirmation is expected before the spending review on 27 October, according to well-placed sources.

The consortium, known as UK SMR, will rebrand as Rolls-Royce SMR to coincide with Westminster’s blessing.

Tom Greatrex, the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), said: “Match-funding for Rolls-Royce would be a huge signal to private investors that the government wants SMRs alongside new large-scale stations to hit net zero. It would also show investors that the government believes in nuclear as a green technology.”

Backing from the government will pave the way for the consortium’s multibillion-pound plan to build 16 SMRs around the country, the first of which could be plugged into the grid by 2031.

Each reactor, designed to be easy to build and install, will have a capacity of 470 megawatts (MW), enough to power nearly 1.3m homes, based on average household usage.

Boris Johnson visited Rolls-Royce’s Bristol factory on Friday, where he was shown round the facility by the engineering firm’s chief executive, Warren East. Neither Rolls-Royce nor No 10 would comment on whether the future of SMRs was discussed during the visit but the firm this week touted the technology as a means of providing carbon-free power for producing sustainable aviation fuel.

SMRs are understood to be a key component of the prime minister’s pledge to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity generation by 2035, a landmark promise he made last month in the run-up to the UK’s hosting of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Rolls-Royce is being advised by HSBC, which has helped it secure £210m from private investors, a condition of the government stumping up the same amount.

Confirmed support for SMRs could signal a concerted effort within government to reverse the scheduled decline in the UK’s nuclear power capacity. About 20% of the nation’s electricity comes from 13 nuclear reactors capable of producing 7.8GW of power. But more than half of that capacity comes from reactors due to retire by 2025, and plans to replace them have stalled.

Toshiba pulled out of a plant at Moorside in Cumbria in 2020, and Hitachi withdrew planning consent for a project at Wylfa Newydd, on Anglesey, this year. While Hinkley Point C is due to start generating electricity from 2026, only one new project, Sizewell C, is now in the works, with no final investment decision yet made.

Britain’s ability to build new nuclear reactors has been further complicated by the government’s unwillingness to allow any further involvement from the state-backed China General Nuclear. CGN has a 20% stake in Sizewell C but ministers have been looking into ways to remove it from the project before it moves to the construction phase. The Chinese company was due to take a lead role in the Bradwell reactor in Suffolk, which is now highly unlikely to go ahead.

The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said last week that weaning the nation off fossil fuels would involved building at least one new nuclear project, alongside renewables such as wind and solar.

The prediction is likely to hinge on whether the Treasury, which has clashed Kwarteng’s department over household support for energy suppliers, backs a new funding model for the industry.

Industry players are keen to see the government legislate to approve the regulated asset base (RAB) model, which allows private investors a more reliable stream of revenues from nuclear power plants – which typically require tens of billions of pounds to build – by piling costs on to household energy bills.

Greatrex said RAB funding “could at last mobilise the funding for nuclear large and small to restore a backbone of clean, reliable British power to our energy system”.

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Rolls-Royce has said it could create 6,000 UK jobs within five years if the government backs its SMR plans. It has also reportedly held discussions with customers overseas, including companies such as Amazon that operate energy-hungry datacentres.

The nine-strong consortium also includes the National Nuclear Laboratory and Laing O’Rourke, the construction firm, alongside Assystem, SNC Lavalin/Atkins, Wood, BAM Nuttall, the Welding Institute and Nuclear AMRC.

Small modular reactors were first developed in the 1950s for use in nuclear-powered submarines. Since then Rolls-Royce has designed reactors for seven classes of submarine and two separate land-based prototype reactors.

Rolls-Royce did not return a request for comment.

AUKUS
Nuclear agencies say it’s too early to know what infrastructure is needed to support submarine program

Rex Patrick says it’s ‘beyond comprehension’ Australia could build a nuclear-powered fleet without a domestic industry to support it

The nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney, which is used for research and nuclear medicine. Nuclear agencies will appear at a Senate inquiry on Friday to face questions over whether Australia needs a domestic nuclear power industry.

 Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Tory Shepherd
Fri 15 Oct 2021 

Nuclear agencies say it is too early to speculate what legislative and infrastructure changes need to be made to support a nuclear-submarine project.

A senate economics committee inquiry into naval shipbuilding has been running for two years, but a public hearing on Friday was the first since the federal government announced its intention to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines.

Independent senator Rex Patrick called the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation to appear. The agencies were quizzed over what nuclear infrastructure and industry would be needed to support the project, and what laws would need to be changed – however, they took most of those questions on notice.

Ansto did confirm it was consulted in March about the plan to buy nuclear-powered submarines, about six months ahead of September’s surprise announcement.

“Initial conversations started in March and we had a number of consultations between then and the announcement,” chief executive officer Shaun Jenkinson said.

Arpansa chief executive officer Carl-Magnus Larsson said his agency was briefed on the plan at the end of June or beginning of July.


Aukus pact to deepen Australia, US collaboration on space technology

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said there are no plans to develop a civil nuclear industry to support building submarines. He and defence say the nuclear reactors – which will be procured from the United States or the United Kingdom as part of the Aukus agreement – will not need refuelling, and therefore a domestic industry is not necessary.

Ahead of the inquiry, Patrick said: “It’s just unimaginable, it’s beyond comprehension that someone could suggest we’d be operating a nuclear operator in a submarine in a hands-off manner.
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“I also want to understand what safety regime they understand to be necessary for this to be carried out,” he added.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said having nuclear submarines without an industry to support them would be “more plug and pray” than “plug and play”.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute defence analyst Marcus Hellyer said Australia may not need nuclear power plants or facilities to enrich uranium, “but we’ll still need to perform maintenance and repair on the submarine, including the reactor”.

“You can’t have an effective military capability if you need to return it to the US any time there is a defect,” he said.

Patrick has pointed out that there are no countries with nuclear submarines that do not have a domestic nuclear industry.

“Either way there would be nuclear reactors sitting on hard-stands at Osborne and moored in the Port River,” he said.

“Acquiring, operating and maintaining a nuclear submarine fleet without a domestic nuclear power industry is a challenge that must not be underestimated.”

Labor senator Kim Carr said there would have to be “extensive onshore facilities” to train people in case there’s an emergency, or a malfunction.

“I’d be interested to know how this can be done without the development of the various sustainment industries.”

“We’d need to have intensive training of all personnel to understand the linkages between the reactor and all the other bits of the boat,” he said.

“You can’t just drop it in. It’s not like a battery in a mobile phone, everything’s connected to everything else.”

Australia has a nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney for research and nuclear medicine. Australia also has about a third of the world’s uranium resources, and is working to establish a national radioactive waste management facility. Federal legislation bans the production of nuclear power, as do various state laws.

Ansto has said it will work with the US and the UK “to intensively examine the requirements that underpin nuclear stewardship”, and Morrison has said their nuclear science capabilities will be needed.

A Defence spokesperson said Australia, through Aukus, had “committed to working … over the next 18 months to determine the optimal pathway to deliver a nuclear-powered submarine capability for Australia”.

“Australia will leverage technology, capability and design expertise from the UK and US and will also evaluate a variety of considerations, including but not limited to: submarine design, construction, safety, operation, maintenance, disposal, regulation, training, environmental protection, installations and infrastructure, industrial base capacity, workforce, and force structure,” they said.

Shortly after announcing that plans to buy 12 diesel-electric submarines from France would be ditched in favour of the Aukus deal, Morrison was asked to respond to Turnbull’s comments, and those of other nuclear experts, that a supporting industry would be needed.

“We may be speaking about different things here and there’s terms that are thrown about here,” he said.

 

CanAlaska Uranium Stakes Historical Uranium Showings

•  Project Acquisition
 
•  Uranium
 
•  Athabasca Basin

TSX.V: CVV
www.canalaska.com

Mr. Peter Dasler reports:

• Near 92 Energy and Baselode Energy Uranium Drillhole Intersections
• Six High-Priority Target Areas Identified Along Major Structures

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - October 14, 2021) - CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: CVV) (OTCQB: CVVUF) (FSE: DH7N) ("CanAlaska" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that compilation work on the Company's newly acquired Geikie project totalling 33,897 hectares in the eastern Athabasca Basin has identified six new uranium targets along 35 kilometres of major structures (figures 1 and 2). The targets are outlined by coincident magnetic breaks and prospective geology offsets just 10 kilometres from 92 Energy's Gemini mineralization (GM) and Baselode Energy's ACKIO and Beckett mineralization, and only 10 kilometres from a major highway.

Figure 1

CanAlaska's Geikie property straddles the extension of a fertile corridor of biotite gneisses hosting the Agip S high-grade uranium showing with up to 49% U and the recent Baselode Energy radioactive intersections near Beckett Lake on the Hook Lake property (Figure 2). The latter appears similar to 92 Energy's GM uranium zone near where Baselode has also intersected elevated radioactivity.

The presence of biotite gneiss, graphitic gneiss and calcsilicate (mafic gneiss) lithologies provides the contrast in rock strength and chemistry to create the pathway for structural disturbance together with the reducing conditions necessary to precipitate uranium. At least two large north-south trending Tabbernor faults interact with and displace these fertile uranium corridors creating ideal conditions for uranium deposits to form.

Figure 2

Several historical uranium showings occur on the property with grades as high as 0.225% U identified (Figure 2). The presence of Athabasca Group sandstone boulders in the project area demonstrates that the Athabasca Basin once covered this area indicating good potential for high-grade basement-hosted unconformity-related uranium deposits to form similar to NexGen's Arrow and Cameco's Eagle Point and Millennium uranium deposits.

CanAlaska CEO, Cory Belyk, comments, "CanAlaska continues to deploy its project generator model in the world's most prolific uranium district. Our team recognized the underexplored opportunity in this region of the eastern Athabasca Basin in conjunction with recent exploration success indicators, and acquired this very large contiguous land position just prior to the recent uranium staking rush. We look forward to working with a new joint venture partner to move this project forward."

Other News

The Company is currently drilling on its West McArthur Joint Venture Project in the 42 Zone discovery area, a joint venture with Cameco Corporation. The Company's other joint venture partner, Denison Mines, is currently drilling on the Moon Lake South project.

About CanAlaska Uranium

CanAlaska Uranium Ltd. (TSXV: CVV) (OTCQB: CVVUF) (FSE: DH7N) holds interests in approximately 300,000 hectares (750,000 acres), in Canada's Athabasca Basin - the "Saudi Arabia of Uranium." CanAlaska's strategic holdings have attracted major international mining companies. CanAlaska is currently working with Cameco and Denison at two of the Company's properties in the Eastern Athabasca Basin. CanAlaska is a project generator positioned for discovery success in the world's richest uranium district. The Company also holds properties prospective for nickel, copper, gold and diamonds. For further information visit www.canalaska.com.

The qualified technical person for this news release is Nathan Bridge, MSc., P.Geo., CanAlaska's Vice President, Exploration.

Knowledge theft in organizations ‘is not only happening; it’s happening a lot,’ University of Toronto research suggests


VIRGINIA GALT
SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 15, 2021

Taking a serious academic look at what has long been grist for office gossip – the workplace idea thief – a team of University of Toronto researchers has found that knowledge theft in organizations “is not only happening; it’s happening a lot.”

Their high-profile paper on the issue, recently presented to the Academy of Management annual meeting, noted: “We have all worked with … [those] colleagues who get ahead by taking credit for another person’s work or who take our ideas and present them as their own.”

Victims of knowledge theft are less inclined to share their thoughts. Once burned, twice shy. They have lost out on recognition, rewards and promotion in some cases, say authors David Zweig, an associate professor of organizational behaviour and human resources management, and Alycia Damp, a PhD candidate at the university’s Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources.

Organizations that rely on innovation and collaboration to stand out – but dismiss such appropriation as competitive zeal or “the way we do things around here” – will find that the flow of ideas and knowledge transfer dries up, they said in interviews. It is premature to try to quantify the financial costs of such lost potential, but an initial survey – “our first crack at it” – found that knowledge theft is rampant in workplaces across all sectors, Mr. Zweig said in an interview.

“We surveyed 150 people and just asked them ‘Has this happened to you, have you seen it?’”

“Amazingly, 91 per cent of our sample either reported it had happened to them, or they had seen it happen to others. We even had people say that they did it to other people. So it’s not a low-base-rate kind of thing; it’s happening with great frequency in organizations,” Mr. Zweig said.

The topic resonated. When acquaintances got wind of their work, “everyone had a story to tell,” Ms. Damp said. The Academy of Management, a global association of management and organizational scholars, recognized their work as a “best paper” at its annual meeting.

One of the goals of the U of T research is to raise awareness of knowledge theft and help organizations understand, measure and mitigate the occurrence, “given the importance of effective knowledge management to the success of organizations,” Mr. Zweig said.

While some victims will deliberately withhold knowledge – or, less commonly, call out the knowledge thieves – others retreat into “defensive silence,” Ms. Damp added. “They are actually afraid to share knowledge because they anticipate they will be exploited again.”

Future research will probe the motives of the perpetrators and the strategies victims employ to protect ownership of their ideas, they said.

If the corporate culture is conducive to civilized resolution of such issues, it’s easier to take the high road by saying something along the lines of “I am so glad you were able to work with my idea,” says Eileen Chadnick, a Toronto-based management adviser and career coach.

In a cutthroat environment, Ms. Chadnick would advise the aggrieved party to weigh the options and proceed with caution. It’s important to assess the magnitude of the damage and the benefits of making a fuss. If a person’s reputation has been damaged by a colleague’s appropriation of their work, do they have to courage to confront the individual and set the record straight? Are there still opportunities that make it worth sticking around, or is it time to move on?

“Organizations that tolerate bad behaviours and unethical actions will lose their [high-potential employees],” Ms. Chadnick said in an interview.

One outcome Ms. Damp hopes will arise from the research is that leaders will become “more mindful of who is doing what.” It’s particularly galling to the victims of knowledge theft when the people who stole their ideas are promoted, the U of T researchers said.

Even when they move to organizations that value their work and treat everyone fairly, people who had their ideas pirated in the past can find it difficult to engage in free-wheeling knowledge sharing, Ms. Damp said. “I’ve had some individuals who shared stories about their knowledge theft experience from 10 or 20 years ago, and they are still more protective than they used to be.”

Climate crimes Climate crisis

A US small-town mayor sued the oil industry. Then Exxon went after him

Serge Dedina: ‘The only conspiracy is [that] a bunch of suits and fossil-fuel companies decided to pollute the earth and make climate change worse, and then lie about it.’ 

Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

The mayor of Imperial Beach, California, says big oil wants him to drop the lawsuit demanding the industry pay for the climate crisis

Supported by


Chris McGreal in Imperial Beach
Sat 16 Oct 2021 11.00 BST



Serge Dedina is a surfer, environmentalist and mayor of Imperial Beach, a small working-class city on the California coast.

He is also, if the fossil fuel industry is to be believed, at the heart of a conspiracy to shake down big oil for hundreds of millions of dollars.

ExxonMobil and its allies have accused Dedina of colluding with other public officials across California to extort money from the fossil-fuel industry. Lawyers even searched his phone and computer for evidence he plotted with officials from Santa Cruz, a city located nearly 500 miles north of Imperial Beach.

The problem is, Dedina had never heard of a Santa Cruz conspiracy. Few people had.

“The only thing from Santa Cruz on my phone was videos of my kids surfing there,” Dedina said. “I love the fact that some lawyer in a really expensive suit, sitting in some horrible office trying to find evidence that we were in some kind of conspiracy with Santa Cruz, had to look at videos of my kids surfing.”

That’s where the laughter stopped.

The lawyers found no evidence to back up their claim. But that did not stop the industry from continuing to use its legal muscle to try to intimidate Dedina, who leads one of the poorest small cities in the region.

The mayor became a target after Imperial Beach filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and more than 30 other fossil-fuel companies demanding they pay the huge costs of defending the city from rising seas caused by the climate crisis.

Homes along the final stretch of Imperial Beach coast before reaching the border with Mexico. 

Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

Imperial Beach’s lawsuit alleges the oil giants committed fraud by covering up research showing that burning fossil fuels destroys the environment. The industry then lied about the evidence for climate change for decades, deliberately delaying efforts to curb carbon emissions.

The city’s lawsuit was among the first of a wave of litigation filed by two dozen municipalities and states across the US that could cost the fossil-fuel industry billions of dollars in compensation for the environmental devastation and the deception.

Dedina says his minority majority community of about 27,000 cannot begin to afford the tens of millions of dollars it will cost to keep at bay the waters bordering three sides of his financially strapped city. The worst of recent storms have turned Imperial Beach into an island.

One assessment calculated that, without expensive mitigation measures, rising sea levels will eventually swamp some of the city’s neighbourhoods, routinely flood its two schools and overwhelm its drainage system.

Imperial Beach’s annual budget is $20m. Exxon’s chief executive, Darren Woods, was paid more than $15m last year.

“We don’t have a pot to piss in in this city. So why not go after the oil companies?” he said. “The lawsuit is a pragmatic approach to making the people that caused sea level rise pay for the impacts it has on our city.”

That’s not how Exxon, the US’s largest oil company, saw it. Its lawyers noted that Imperial Beach filed its case in July 2017, at the same time as two California counties, Marin and San Mateo. The county and city of Santa Cruz followed six months later with similar suits seeking compensation to cope with increasing wildfires and drought caused by global heating.

Exxon alleged that the sudden burst of litigation, and the fact that the municipalities shared a law firm specialising in environmental cases, Sher Edling, was evidence of collusion.

Exxon filed lawsuits claiming the municipalities conspired to extort money from the company by following a strategy developed during an environmental conference at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, 25 miles north of Imperial Beach, nine years ago.

The meeting, organised by the Climate Accountability Institute and the Union of Concerned Scientists, produced a report outlining how legal strategies used by US states against the tobacco industry in the 1990s could be applied to cases against fossil fuel companies.

Dedina was also targeted by one of the US’s biggest business groups at the forefront of industry resistance to increased regulation to reduce greenhouse gases, the National Association of Manufacturers, and a rightwing thinktank, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute.

Mayor Dedina looks out to sea. 

Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

The manufacturing trade group was behind the efforts to obtain data from Dedina’s phone and documents in 2018. In its public disclosure request to the mayor’s office, NAM called Imperial Beach’s lawsuit “litigation based on political or ideological objections more appropriately addressed through the political process”.

Exxon is attempting to use a Texas law that allows corporations to go on a fishing expedition for incriminating evidence by questioning individuals under oath even before any legal action is filed against them. The company is trying to force Dedina, two other members of Imperial Beach’s government, and officials from other jurisdictions, to submit to questioning on the grounds they were joined in a conspiracy against the oil industry.

“A collection of special interests and opportunistic politicians are abusing law enforcement authority and legal process to impose their viewpoint on climate change,” the oil firm claimed. “ExxonMobil finds itself directly in that conspiracy’s crosshairs.”

How cities and states could finally hold fossil fuel companies accountable

A Texas district judge approved the request to depose Dedina, but then a court of appeals overturned the decision last year. The state supreme court is considering whether to take up the case.

The target on Dedina is part of a wider pattern of retaliation against those suing Exxon and other oil companies.

In an unusual move in 2016, Exxon persuaded a Texas judge to order the attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, to travel to Dallas to be deposed about her motives for investigating the company for alleged fraud for suppressing evidence on climate change. The judge also ordered that New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, be “available” in Dallas on the same day in case Exxon wanted to question him about a similar investigation.

Healey accused Exxon of trying to “squash the prerogative of state attorneys general to do their jobs”. The judge reversed the deposition order a month later and Healey filed a lawsuit against the company in 2019, which is still awaiting trial.

But similar tactics persuaded the US Virgin Islands attorney general to shut down his investigation of the oil giant.

Patrick Parenteau, a law professor and former director of the Environmental Law Center at Vermont law school, said the attempt to question Dedina and other officials is part of a broader strategy by the oil industry to counter lawsuits with its own litigation.

“These cases are frivolous and vexatious. Intimidation is the goal. Just making it cost a lot and be painful to take on Exxon. They think that if they make the case painful enough, Imperial Beach will quit,” he said.

The city’s lawsuit claims it faces a ‘significant and dangerous sea-level rise’. 

Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

If the intent is to kill off the litigation against the oil industry, it’s not working. Officials from other municipalities have called Exxon’s move “repugnant”, “a sham” and “outrageous”, and have vowed to press on with their lawsuits.

Dedina described the action as a “bullying tactic” by the oil industry to avoid accountability.

“The only conspiracy is [that] a bunch of suits and fossil-fuel companies decided to pollute the earth and make climate change worse, and then lie about it,” he said. “They make more money than our entire city has in a year.”

The city’s lawsuit claims it faces a “significant and dangerous sea-level rise” through the rest of this century that threatens its existence. Imperial Beach commissioned an analysis of its vulnerability to rising sea levels which concluded that nearly 700 homes and businesses were threatened at a cost of more than $100m. It said that flooding will hit about 40% of the city’s roads, including some that will be under water for long periods. Two elementary schools will have to be moved. The city’s beach, regarded as one of the best sites for surfing on the California coast, is being eroded by about a foot a year.

Imperial Beach sits at the southern end of San Diego bay. Under one worst-case scenario, the bay could merge with the Tijuana River estuary to the south and permanently submerge much of the city’s housing and roads.

A view of the Tijuana River estuary.

 Photograph: John Francis Peters/The Guardian

The city has received some help with creating natural climate barriers. The Fish and Wildlife Service restored 400 acres of wetland next to the city as a national wildlife refuge which also acts as a barrier to flooding, and is expected to restore other wetlands together with the Port of San Diego. A grant is paying for improved equipment to warn of floods.

But that still leaves the huge costs of building new schools and drainage systems, and adapting other infrastructure. Dedina said that without the oil companies stumping up, it won’t happen.

“People ask, how did you go against the world’s largest fossil fuel companies? Isn’t that scary? No. What’s scary is coastal flooding and the idea that whole cities would be under water,” said the mayor.

“Honestly, bring it on. I can’t wait to make our case. I can’t wait to take the fight to them because we have nothing to lose.”

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story

NORTHERN ONTARIO

Forestry company filling skills gap, labour shortage through international recruitment

About 10 international workers have already arrived and more are expected over the winter
2 days ago By: Dariya Baiguzhiyeva

EACOM's sawmill in Gogama produces 110 million board feet of lumber annually, in addition to wood chips, sawdust and shavings.

Supplied photo

EACOM Timber Corp. is addressing the employment issue in the north through international recruitment.

The forestry company has been working with IVEY Group, a Sudbury-based international recruitment and consulting firm, to recruit and retain workers in northern communities.

The partnership has been ongoing for several years, according to Jean Brodeur, EACOM’s director of communications and government relations.

“Employment has been an issue for us in Northern Ontario or northern Quebec,” he said. “It’s isolated communities. If you look at Timmins or other sites we have, it’s very difficult to find employees available.”

According to Statistics Canada's recent job vacancy data, the labour shortage has affected multiple sectors of the economy.

EACOM hired IVEY to recruit international employees for the Gogama sawmill, said Anthony Lawley, the CEO and president of IVEY Group. The two companies do business on other sites as well, he said.

About 10 international workers from Ukraine, Mexico and Honduras have already arrived in Gogama. More employees are expected, including a group of six arriving in the winter, according to Brodeur.

EACOM also recently announced a $10-million investment to build a new 44-unit housing facility in Gogama over five years.

The housing complex will house new international employees and their families as well as corporate and regional employees who travel to the area on business.

“If you don’t have accommodation for them, then you have to essentially be on breaks in terms of recruitment because you don’t have a place to have them. That was becoming an outstanding issue for us, so we needed to find a solution,” Brodeur said about the housing project.

Hiring internationally has become essential due to the labour shortage and the skills gap, Lawley said.

“The other thing with Gogama is Côté Gold Project is hiring a ridiculous amount of people … and because of the industry, they’re able to pay a higher wage. So, people are quitting, going to work for the mining project,” he said noting people are also reluctant to move to Gogama because of its location. “People would rather live in Timmins or Sudbury than Gogama.”

Lawley said IVEY Group has partnership agreements with many various organizations outside of Canada. The firm recruits employees in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Ukraine for its clients.

“It is extremely difficult today to find workers,” Lawley said. “It’s not stealing jobs from Canadians, it’s not importers trying to hire cheap labour … These people coming here for an opportunity to change their life for something better.”

– TimminsToday

 

Report: Decaying Yemeni FSO Threatens the Health of Millions of People

The FSO Safer in better days (Conflict Observatory)

PUBLISHED OCT 12, 2021 9:04 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

The abandoned FSO Safer continues to rot off Yemen’s Red Sea coast, threatening the region with environmental catastrophe. Although negotiations to offload the defunct vessel have been ongoing for months – and are now being led by the UNSC - there is no expected date for a resolution.

The FSO Safer has undergone no major maintenance since 2015, when it came under the control of Houthi rebels at the start of Yemen’s civil war. It poses a significant environmental threat to the biodiversity-rich Red Sea, and a potential oil spill would spell doom for the livelihoods of an estimated 28 million people in the region.

The vessel contains 1.1 million barrels of Marib light crude oil - about four times the 260,000 barrels that spilled from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989.

The UN Security Council blames Houthi rebels for delaying a technical assessment of the tanker that the body had deployed back in March. The Iran-aligned Houthis are in control of Yemen’s western Red Sea ports, where the tanker is moored.

A research paper released on Monday modeled the immense environmental and economic impacts of a potential spill by the rotting vessel. The team of researchers from Harvard, Stanford and UC Berkeley simulated the Safer oil spill over a variety of weather conditions, along with the expected spread in the Red Sea region.

The team found that all of Yemen’s fuel imported through its key Red Sea ports - Hudaydah and Salif - would be disrupted, in addition to 93-100 percent of Yemen’s Red Sea fisheries. A major oil spill would also threaten the clean water supply for about nine million people through contamination of desalinization plants.

“If the spill spreads unmitigated for three weeks, oil will probably impede passage throughout the Gulf of Aden and could reach ports as far as Eritrea and Saudi Arabia,” the authors wrote.

The authors estimate that for every month of Red Sea port closure, delivery of 200,000 tonnes of fuel for Yemen will be disrupted. This is equivalent to about 38 percent of the nation's fuel needs, and would create a fuel price spike that could worsen the nation's long-running humanitarian crisis.

In addition, port closures in the Red Sea would lead to severe food aid disruptions. This could affect the 5.7 million people in Yemen currently requiring food assistance.

The long-term and global impacts of a potential spill could be difficult to model. Ecological and environmental impacts through wildlife endangerment and coastline contamination can persist for years or decades. The spill could have a potential impact on the Red Sea coral reefs, which have been much-studied for their unique resilience to seawater warming.

The paper concludes by calling on the international community to find a long-term solution for the handling of the oil on board Safer.

 

First Submerged Wave Energy Technology Begins Trials off California

Wave energy prototype ie beginning a six-month trial in the ocean (CalWave)

PUBLISHED OCT 11, 2021 4:58 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

California’s first at-sea, long-duration wave energy pilot is getting underway with a unique fully submerged technology. Developed by CalWave Power Technologies, the system was deployed on September 16 off the coast of San Diego and will be tested for six months with the goal of validating the performance and reliability of the system in the open ocean.

Operating fully submerged, CalWave believes its xWave architecture has unique capabilities that will contribute to the commercialization of wave energy technologies. The company says that its system achieves high performance while being able to control structural loads in rare but destructive storms on all parts of the system. Further, because it sits below the surface the system eliminates visual impact.

“CalWave’s long-duration deployment is a novel open water demonstration of a wave energy technology with active load management features,” said Jennifer Garson, Acting Director of the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO). “WPTO is pleased to recognize this accomplishment as a major milestone for unlocking the potential of wave energy from our oceans and providing access to clean energy for the growing blue economy in the US.”

Wave energy devices work on the same principles as wind turbines or other hydro turbines the company explains. It’s a kinetic device that captures a renewable resource to produce electricity. Wave farms export power using the same electrical infrastructure as offshore wind farms. However, unlike conventional technologies that extract wave energy at the ocean surface, CalWave’s patented xWave architecture operates fully submerged at a range of different water depths and distances to shore. Its unique approach enables it to survive stormy seas and extreme conditions and allows for unique control of structural loads by eliminating excessive loads during storms. 

“Wave power is the largest unused renewable resource and the third-largest after wind and solar globally,” says Marcus Lehmann, CEO and Co-Founder of CalWave. “Wave power can provide power at night and during wintertime where other renewables can’t, and so far it is completely unused.”

The Department of Energy recently published a study including an updated resource assessment and found that wave power can provide up to 30 percent of the 2019 energy consumption in the US. CalWave believes that the wave energy industry is at an inflection point has the potential to complement existing renewable energy forms to provide reliable power when no other renewables are available.

Utility-scale units can be co-located with offshore wind farms using the same electrical export infrastructure and achieve a significantly higher joint capacity factor due to the complementary production profile of wind and wave power. According to the company, the CalWave x1 is well suited for the needs of end-users of the blue economy with applications in offshore inspection, aquaculture, ocean science, and others that require access to power and data offshore. 

Following the current demonstration, CalWave plans to prepare for the deployment of a larger unit at PacWave, the first commercial-scale, utility grid-connected wave energy test site in the US rated at 20 MW.

This project is supported by a US Department of Energy award. Partners including the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, DNV GL, and UC Berkeley have all collaborated with CalWave on the project.

 

 

 

 

 

(Photos courtesy of CalWave)

 'MAYBE' TECH

Plan to Transition Orkney Oil Facility to Green Hydrogen Production

Land alongside Orkney's Flotta terminal could be used for a hydrogen production facility (OWPL)

PUBLISHED OCT 12, 2021 5:56 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

One of the concepts that continues to draw attention for renewable energy is linking offshore wind energy generation with the production of hydrogen. Exploration has begun primarily along the North Sea where it is believed the combination could create new economic opportunities for the wind industry while creating a source of clean, renewable energy.
 
“We believe that green hydrogen could provide a critical alternative route to market for some of Scotland’s largest offshore wind projects and play a significant role in creating wider economic benefits as the North Sea goes through its energy transition,” explains Edward Northam, Head of Green Investment Group Europe.

A consortium formed by Macquarie’s Green Investment Group, TotalEnergies, and Scottish developer Renewable Infrastructure Development Group (RIDG) is studying the use of offshore wind to power the production of green hydrogen. They are exploring the opportunities to link with Scotland’s developing offshore wind farms to develop green hydrogen on an industrial scale. They are targeting the island of Flotta in Orkney, Scotland.  

“Flotta is an ideal location for green hydrogen production – it is surrounded by the best wind resource in Europe, it lies close to major shipping routes within the vast natural harbor of Scapa Flow. The time is right to maximize the incredible natural assets and geography of the Flow and Orkney to ensure a long-term sustainable, climate-friendly future for our communities,” said James Stockan, Leader of Orkney Islands Council.”

The Flotta Terminal has been in operation since 1976 serving as a crude oil reception, processing, storage, and export facility. Receiving oil, and previously natural gas, by pipeline, Flotta has a deep-water terminal for the export of the energy resources. Under the plan being proposed by the consortium, the Flotta terminal would be progressively transformed into a diversified energy hub where conventional oil and gas operations continue, alongside the development of a sustainable long-term green future for the facility.  

The Offshore Wind Power Limited consortium submitted a proposal to the Crown Estate Scotland’s offshore wind leasing round to develop a portion of the area west of Orkney. If successful, the proposal would develop renewable power and a green hydrogen production facility at the Flotta Terminal.?  

Plans to power the proposed Flotta Hydrogen Hub are being developed in partnership with Flotta Terminal’s owner Repsol Sinopec, and Uniper. 

“The production of green hydrogen is a hugely exciting opportunity for both offshore wind and the Scottish supply chain,” said Mike Hay, RIDG Commercial Director. “Projects with substantial capacity factors, such as the West of Orkney Windfarm, could deliver highly competitive power to facilities like the Flotta Hydrogen Hub which could, in turn, supply demand for hydrogen both nationally and internationally.”

The group believes the proposal provides a strong case repurposing the oil terminal facility to provide an additional 25 years or more of economic life to the aging facility. It would also position the region as a leader in the new green energy economy.