Three Ships with Fake Identities Seized at Indian Scrapyards

Ships beached at Alang, India for recycling (file photo)

PUBLISHED DEC 23, 2021 5:52 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

Indian officials are reporting that they are detaining three vessels that arrived at the scrapyards in Alang earlier this month under false pretenses. Government officials said on December 20 that they are planning to confiscate the vessels that are currently in the anchorage at Bhavnagar where vessels are checked in and cleared for beaching. It is unclear what India will do with the vessels now that it has decided to seize.

Three years ago, the European Union passed stricter requirements covering the demolition of vessels owned or registered within the EU. All ships over 500 gross tons must be processed through licensed recycling sites which currently are limited to mostly the yards at Aliaga, Turkey for larger ships and a few specialized recycling operations in Europe. Recently, plans were announced to launch a recycling operation in Scotland, but the yards in India have not gained EU licenses. 

EU shipowners either deal with the limited number of licenses yards or in many cases sell ships to intermediaries that often purport to be working on behalf of buyers that will operate the ships or say the ships will be resold. They frequently make brief stops in the Middle East before arriving in India and beaching, despite the protests of NGOs and environmental groups calling on the EU for better enforcement of the regulations. Recently, prosecutors in Iceland seized documents from a shipowner’s offices investigating the sale of two ships that ended up at the yards in India.

Officials from India’s Customs Department and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) reported on Monday that their review of documents showed that three ships arrived at the beginning of the month with falsified documents. One of the vessels, arrived at the anchorage of December 5 under the name Coral, an 18-year-old crude oil tanker that had until recently been registered in Liberia. It arrived under the flag of convenience from Sao Tome Principe after a voyage from the Persian Gulf. 

Inspecting the documents from the Coral, Indian officials said the ship arrived using an incorrect IMO identification number as did a second vessel the Sea Golden that also came to the anchorage on the same day. In at least one case, the vessel was using the identity of a sister ship that had been scrapped several years ago.

Three days later, the third vessel, the Harriet, arrived in the anchorage. A review of the documents revealed the ship is “under UN sanctions,” although officials declined to provide details. They said that all three ships arrived using forged documents and were being confiscated. 

The Ship Recycling Industries Association which oversees the operations at Alang told the Indian Express that it is difficult to check a vessel’s documents during the bidding process to acquire tonnage. They compared it to buying a secondhand car where you have to trust the seller. “No ship-recycler will knowingly buy a vessel with forged documentation,” Haresh Parmar, joint secretary of SRIA and a ship-recycler at Alang told the newspaper. He said these issues only surface when the documents are reviewed by the authorities when the vessel reaches the anchorage.

The association noted increased competition for ships due to the strong scrap prices earlier in the year. They said the market had been strong with a steady pace of ships arriving each month in 2021. They reported that more than 200 ships had been acquired for demolition and this included a record number of passenger ships this year. They are however concerned that iron ore prices are declining and mills are closing in India, which they speculate could lead to a slowdown and decline in the business in the future.

 

Royal Navy Sailors Find Themselves Chasing Monkeys 

RFA Wave Knight had a "monkey problem" arriving at Grand Turk (RN file photo)

PUBLISHED DEC 21, 2021 6:08 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

[Brief]   No one would ever accuse Great Britain’s Royal Navy of “monkeying around,” but according to U.K. tabloids, a ship of the fleet had a monkey problem to sort out recently. It might have been just a sea shanty if the Royal Navy had not released a photo and replied to inquiries telling the media, “We take our responsibility to wildlife seriously and try to help.”

The story reportedly began in Barbados, where the RFA Wave Night, a fast fleet tanker that supplies vessels with essential supplies around the world, made a brief port call. The vessel is currently on deployment as part of the Atlantic Patrol working in the Caribbean to provide aid and support other ships on the mission.

After departing Barbados, the crew reported spotting a green monkey dashing about their ship. They believed the primate had come aboard as a stowaway in Barbados. The animal was spotted running about the outer decks and at one point high atop the bridge. It was also discovered that the monkey was carrying a child around with it on the vessel.

Officials on Grand Turk Island, an island in the Turks and Caicos, however, learned that the monkey was aboard the vessel. They informed the ship, which was due to make a stop in their port, that it would not be permitted to arrive for “biological safety reasons.” 

 

 

The British tabloid, The Sun, which first reported the incident, said that is when the problems began. The tabloid reported, “It all went wrong when the crew was trying to trap,” the monkey. “It was really bad.” By all accounts, the sailors were given a net to capture the animal and were chasing it all about the outer decks as it dashed from point to point outwitting them. 

When the animal finally seemed to be cornered, it dove over the side of the ship to the water some 80 feet below while holding its child. Last seen, the sailors reported, the monkey was doing the doggie paddle to shore after its stowaway voyage.

When the sailors of the RFA Wave Knight are not chasing a monkey, they provided aid earlier this year both to St. Vincent after its devastating volcanic eruption and to Haiti after the earthquake in August. As part of the task force working with the U.S. Coast Guard and another mission with the Dutch Royal Navy, they also recently assisted in the capture of millions of dollars of cocaine, one of several drug seizures by the task force on their current deployment.  The U.S. Coast Guard reported earlier this month that the RFA Wave Knight crew seized about 1,200 pounds of cocaine. Following the three interdictions, they reported that nine suspected drug smugglers from the Dominican Republic and Columbia were apprehended. 

 

Regulators Order Shell's Prelude LNG to Shut Down for Safety Review

File image courtesy Shell

PUBLISHED DEC 24, 2021 12:15 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

After a Australia's National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) has ordered Shell to keep its massive Prelude LNG offshore gas facility shut down until it can prove that it has made safety improvements. 

Earlier this month, a small fire in an electrical compartment knocked Prelude's power supply offline, forcing a shutdown and a rush to get generators back up and running. According to NOPSEMA, that restart effort failed repeatedly, and Prelude's power kept shutting down for three days. With HVAC offline, heat exhaustion from rising temperatures inside the vessel put two workers in Prelude's hospital bay. 

According to WA Today, Prelude's automatic safety systems shut down all production systems and began flaring gas when the fire was detected. This took out the gas supply for the facility's steam-fed turbine generators. An emergency diesel generator failed to start, and two backup diesel generators kept tripping and failing as well. 

The power failure briefly took down all comms on the platform, and the crew reportedly had resort to calling a nearby support vessel over VHF to get messages out. The support vessel served as a relay station, using a satellite phone to send text messages back to management on shore.

“What happened on the Prelude under Shell’s watch earlier this month is unforgivable,” said Brad Gandy, spokesman for the labor group Offshore Alliance and local secretary for the Australian Workers Union. "This is not the first time similar failures have occurred on the Prelude and clearly Shell has not learned from its past mistakes.”

NOPSEMA's inspectors boarded Prelude on December 9-10, and their report was not favorable. "The Inspectors concluded that the operator did not have a sufficient understanding of the risks of the power system on the facility, including failure mechanisms, interdependencies and recovery," NOPSEMA said.

The inspectors found that the loss of power knocked out comms, access to the ship's safety documentation, evacuation systems for helicopter or boat transfer, lighting, potable water, safety systems, HVAC, sewage treatment and some of its core process equipment. 

Crewmembers told WA Today that they were managing human waste manually because the sewage system was shut down, and without power for transfer pumps, they had to shuttle cans of diesel around by hand to keep a backup generator running. 

The problems aboard Prelude could not have affected a more sophisticated ship. Along with the $13 billion aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, Prelude is a top condender for the title of the most complex and expensive vessel ever built: though its final cost has not been disclosed, it is estimated at between $12-17 billion. After the heavy-lift ship Pioneering Spirit, Prelude is the world's second-largest vessel by displacement. 

Concluding that Shell has not shown an ability to manage such a complex asset, NOPSEMA ordered that Prelude must be shut down until the operator can convince regulators "that the facility can safely recover essential power and associated essential services following a loss of power, and that the safety systems and essential support systems operate to maintain safety of personnel."

Regulator Orders Shell to Keep Prelude FLNG Output Shut Until it Can Prove It Is Safe

OE Staff December 24, 2021

The Prelude FLNG facility, with the Valencia Knutsen berthed side-by-side (File Photo: Shell)

 Australian oil and gas industry safety regulator NOPSEMA has ordered Shell to keep the giant Prelude FLNG facility off W. Australia shut until it can convince the regulator that it can keep the facility properly powered and that the safety systems are operational.

The order comes after production from the floating facility was shut earlier this month after a sudden loss of power, and subsequent failed attempts to re-establish reliable power aboard.

In its report on Thursday, NOPSEMA said: "At around 22:40 on 2 December 2021, the Shell Australia Pty Ltd owned and operated Prelude FLNG facility experienced an unplanned event that resulted in a complete loss of power at the facility, which subsequently led to unreliable and intermittent power availability over 3 days. Multiple attempts during this period were made to re-establish reliable power."

 NOPSEMA said that the loss of power had impacted the habitation and working conditions of the personnel on the facility, and that by December 6, 2021, the failure to restore reliable power was seen to represent an ongoing impact and risk to the health and safety of the person on the facility and NOPSEMA arranged to visit the facility. 

"The Inspectors were mobilized at the first available opportunity on 8 December 2021, returning on 10 December. The Inspectors concluded that the operator did not have a sufficient understanding of the risks of the power system on the facility, including failure mechanisms, interdependencies and recovery," NOPSEMA said.

Lightning, Comms, Safety Systems all affected

According to NOPSEMA, the power failures directly impacted emergency response capability, operation of safety-critical equipment (e.g., communications, access to safety-critical documentation and information, Permit to Work System), and evacuation of personnel by helicopter or boat. 

Essential services such as lighting, safety systems, communication systems, potable water systems, sewage treatment and HVAC were affected, too, with seven people treated for heat-related conditions).

The functionality of process equipment required to effectively manage the LNG inventory was also affected.

NOPSEMA thus ordered Shell to keep the LNG production from the Prelude FLNG unit shut, until it can "demonstrate to NOPSEMA’s satisfaction that the facility can safely recover essential power and associated essential services following a loss of power, and that the safety systems and essential support systems operate to maintain safety of personnel."

NOPSEMA also ordered Shell to develop a detailed plan, schedule, and commitment to timely implementation of all necessary corrective actions, and present the plan to NOPSEMA once complete.

Under the orders by NOPSEMA, Shell is expected, on the first business day of each month starting March 2022, to provide an update to NOPSEMA detailing progress under the orders made by the regulator.

The 488 meters long, Shell-operated Prelude FLNG unit forms part of an offshore development that produces natural gas from the remote namesake field approximately 475km north-northeast of Broome in Western Australia.

The first LNG shipment from the project - originally sanctioned in 2011 - was shipped back in June 2019, via the Valencia Knutsen LNG tanker to customers in Asia. Shell is the operator of the project, with other partners being INPEX, CPC, and KOGAS.

The world's largest FLNG facility had in January this year resumed LNG cargo shipments, almost one year after a shutdown caused by an electrical trip.

This Is a Do-or-Die Moment for Chile’s Incoming President
Dec. 24, 2021

Credit...Javier Torres/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Cristian Farias
Mr. Farias is a Chilean-American journalist who writes about law, justice and politics.

“Today, hope triumphed over fear,” declared Chile’s new president-elect, Gabriel Boric, a leftist lawmaker and former student activist, in a speech Sunday celebrating his victory over far-right rival José Antonio Kast.

The refrain took on a life of its own, and all week Chileans, on social media and on the streets, repeated it, if only to serve as a reminder that fear-mongering and polarization should have no place in electoral politics.

But hope alone will only get Mr. Boric so far. The 35-year-old leader immediately faces the challenge of helping those struggling in a Covid economy, including older Chileans crushed by meager or no pension benefits. But the biggest test of his presidency, the one that will not only cement his place in Chilean history but define society in a post-dictatorship nation, will be his leadership ahead of a referendum next year on a new Constitution that would enshrine rights and values for a more equal, inclusive nation and break with the charter birthed under Augusto Pinochet.

In 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to leave the old text behind, and less than a year later, they selected 155 drafters to write the new one. But weariness from the pandemic, funding controversies, and frictions over procedure and substance inside the constitutional convention — the body tasked with drafting the charter — could easily erode its public support. And if those are the challenges now, there’s no telling what challenges lie ahead once the framers approve the text of the new Constitution and it is up to the citizenry to debate and ratify it. A torrent of fake news around the constitutional process shows that bad actors are hard at work seeking to delegitimize it.

Any misstep in the process could undermine the credibility of a new Constitution — and provide fodder for supporters of the old order, including figures like Mr. Kast, to rally around rejecting it.

This is do-or-die for Mr. Boric.

With history as a guide, Mr. Boric starts off with reason to hope that Chilean society, at a pivotal moment for its democratic project, will choose wisely. Mr. Boric was only 2 years old when Chileans, in a historic plebiscite in 1988, rejected the military rule of Mr. Pinochet, setting Chile on a path to democracy and self-determination. Then, nearly 56 percent of voters said no to the dictator’s brutal regime, opening the door to a modern era of democracy and institutional growing pains.

More than 30 years later, by a similar margin, Mr. Boric’s message of hope and change prevailed over Mr. Kast’s dire warnings that Chile was on the precipice of abandoning this political and economic model, and descending into Communism. Fifty-six percent of the Chilean electorate rejected that message and voted for Mr. Boric, making him the youngest president to reach La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, and the candidate to receive the highest number of votes in a presidential contest in the nation’s history. Turnout likewise shattered records. Mr. Boric’s mandate is clear.

Yet the president-elect, for all his youthful energy and commitment to dignity, equality and the internment of neoliberalism, is keenly aware he’ll need more than just rhetoric to govern and make a reality the social promises that propelled him to power. In his same acceptance speech on Sunday, Mr. Boric was candid in his assessment that the future of his campaign promises — among them access to quality health care for all and overhauling Chile’s privatized pension system — will require consensus, meeting others in the middle, and taking “short but steady steps” in the face of a closely divided national Congress.

This is not the discourse of a onetime student leader who cut his teeth organizing marches for better public education and, in the process, found himself in the cross hairs of President Sebastián Piñera’s first administration nearly a decade ago. Mr. Boric’s newfound pragmatism is a promising early sign for the constitutional process, as the approach holds appeal for those voters who are neither highly progressive like him nor far-right sympathizers like Mr. Kast. But as he juggles forming a cabinet and leading a government on one hand, he will also need to blend intellectual rigor, communications skills, and a solemn urgency about future milestones in the constitutional process on the other. Nothing can be left to chance — and every person in his team, no matter their role, must make the new Constitution their true north in everything they do.

Mr. Boric has no room for error in this constitutional moment. After the social protests that rocked and nearly broke Chile in October 2019, he was a key signatory to the document that set in motion the process toward Chile’s new founding charter. Mr. Boric broke from his own party, and risked his own political future, when he took that visionary step.

In the presidential seat, Mr. Boric will have to walk the fine line of championing the new Constitution — which could inevitably circumscribe his own power — and not alienating that part of the electorate that doesn’t share the progressive values of the drafting committee members who themselves are still debating key provisions. These include the enumeration of fundamental rights, the role of government in protecting them, and the state’s responsibilities to Indigenous peoples, political minorities and the environment.

All of these issues can be highly divisive. And they explain why Mr. Boric, during his victory speech, urged all Chileans to guard the constitutional process. The new Constitution, he said, must be one of encuentro — a meeting place where all Chileans agree on fundamental values and agree to disagree on everything else.

Setting this constitutional project on a firm foundation — or to a “safe harbor,” as he put it on Tuesday — is the key to Mr. Boric’s political legacy. His greatest challenge, beyond making it past his honeymoon with voters and responding to specific demands, will be to show that he’s the president of not just the here and now, but also of Chile’s imminent next founding — the first chief executive who’ll chart the nation’s future course based on the first charter ever written by Chileans themselves.

NYT

Opinion: A clear and present danger for the continued efficiency of rail transportation in Canada

DECEMBER 23, 2021

Smoke rises from a derailed Canadian Pacific Railway train near Guernsey, Sask, on February 6, 2020. TCI is the largest shareholder in Canadian Pacific Railway Limited.

Matt Smith / The Canadian Press

Pierre Lorty is a Senior Business Consultant at Denton Canada LLP.

The Government of Canada is facing a very unhealthy situation in which a foreign hedge fund holding significant equity positions in both CN and CP engaged in anti-competitive behavior affecting Canadian Railways and then In an effort to revamp the board, it has increased its stake in CN. And redirect your business strategy.

The stakes are high.

The saga in which the Canadian National Railway Company is embroiled involves a relatively new and unresolved competition policy challenge. The issue has been brought to the fore by the overlapping share ownership and conduct of TCI Fund Management Limited, an active investor in Canada’s only two national railways. A growing body of empirical work indicates that, even when possessed by passive institutional investors, common stock ownership in concentrated markets more often leads to higher prices, lower market output, and lower product and service quality than would otherwise be the case. 

Will happen.

TCI is the largest shareholder in Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, and in the midst of the bidding process to acquire the Kansas City Southern Railway, TCI attempted to block CN’s bid and from interfering in regulatory proceedings related to CP’s proposal from the company. urged to escape. , In September, TCI announced that it had increased its stake in its outstanding shares in CN to 5 percent in order to gain the right to convene a special meeting of shareholders under the Canada Business Corporation Act. It also said that it was starting a proxy battle with CN over the election of a slate of directors and the appointment of a new chief executive officer to be nominated by TCI.

The basic premise of Canada’s Competition Act is that competitive markets offer lower prices, better product quality, and the greatest opportunities for business innovation, which benefit not only individuals, but the economy as a whole. While transactions that may substantially reduce competition are prohibited, law enforcement is less straightforward in minority-owned situations. However, the merger provisions of the Act should be explicitly used to deal with such anti-competitive behaviour.

In a seminal 2018 paper, researchers found that the higher the concentration of common ownership by institutional funds in the airline industry, the lower the competition, and the higher the fares. Subsequent empirical studies in the United States and other industries in Western Europe reached the same conclusion. The point is, if common ownership of competing firms by passive investors has anti-competitive consequences, what should be expected of an activist hedge fund, which, given the high management fees, tends to compensate its investors on a risk-adjusted basis. should generate sufficiently high returns. do they charge? We don’t have to look very far for answers. In applying the US antitrust law, the Federal Trade Commission describes six types of conduct—all of which apply to TCI’s campaign against CN, including nominating candidates for election to the board—that it deactivates. Moves out of the realm of investment a more proactive mode which would guarantee regulatory intervention.

If TCI gets its nominees elected to the board of CN, it will be in a position to have a significant impact on the management of the company. Since TCI’s interests in CP and CN overlap, there is no reason for them to be pro-growth, as the increase in the growth rate of one company will be largely at the expense of the other.

Despite TCI’s remarks in a statement that CN should be “the fastest growing railroad in the industry”, TCI remains focused on increasing margins. In TCI’s view, “CN has a pricing problem.” In these circumstances, both the management teams of railways may be motivated to pursue anti-competitive and self-service strategies, whereby we can achieve high level of profitability to increase profitability in the short term without jeopardizing each other’s market position. Can expect prices and low investment. One possible consequence is that TCI’s influence on both companies may be positioned to advance the interests, not of one railway over the other, but at the expense of both shippers, rail safety, resilience, and the public.

Officers should not be swayed by the argument that directors are bound by their fiduciary duty to all stakeholders. There is, of course, no reason to expect TCI-nominated directors to engage in serious work. However, many studies show that the behavior and objectives of a company are dependent on its owners and that even in the absence of a coordinated mechanism with common shareholders, management may, on its own initiative, pre-empt its conduct. Formally aligns with what it considers to be the most influential shareholder’s interest.

There is no valid reason why the turmoil should not be subject to an antitrust investigation by Canadian authorities because of short-term financial objectives affecting a significant piece of Canada’s infrastructure.

Vertical farming on the rise in B.C. but facing challenges for land, say advocates

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Lettuce can be grown under LED lights no matter the time

or season, farmers want more access to ALR land

Baneet Braich · CBC News · Posted: Dec 23, 2021 

Rows of herbs and lettuce growing in vertical farming machines at Cubic Farms' facility in Pitt Meadows, B.C. (Gian Paolo Mendoza/CBC)

Farming for Alycia van der Gracht means producing up to 900 heads of lettuce a month inside a classroom at the University of the Fraser Valley in Chilliwack, B.C.

She grows shelves of lettuce, cilantro and bok choy in just a two-by-four metre space in a highly controlled environment under LED lights, no matter the season or time of day. 

"You use less water, you use your own sunlight, so if it's shadowy or cloudy or winter, the plants still get everything they need, " said van der Gracht about her vertical farm, called QuantoTech, which uses no pesticides, fungicides, or herbicides.

Vertical farming in B.C. is a growing sector of agriculture known as agritech. B.C.'s Ministry of Agriculture said there are currently 150 agritech companies in the province, which produce microgreens, leafy greens and herbs using fewer resources such as water.

QuantoTech grows lettuce, cilantro, and bok choy from its vertical farm in Chilliwack B.C. The company is developing to serve rural and urban communities. (Baneet Braich)

Growers like van der Gracht say vertical farming combats food insecurity, especially in rural or northern communities. 

"It's really important to have something scalable and local that you can grow and not be cut off," she said.

• Greens grown in a warehouse? Vertical farming a growing trend in Ontario

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Experts say the futuristic way of growing food is way to combat climate change and food insecurity. They also say, though, that vertical farmers like van der Gracht's are facing challenges over where they are able to operate.

ALR friendly to vertical farmers?

Lenore Newman, director of the food and agriculture institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, said vertical farmers face challenges such as high startup and operational costs, and navigating government policy, such as rules that govern B.C.'s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) land.

The ALR protects approximately 4.7 million hectares of arable land in B.C. and according to the Agricultural Land Reserve Use Regulation, constructing a structure for indoor or vertical farming is allowed only if the total area from which soil is removed or fill is placed is 1000 m² or less. 

"It's difficult to do vertical farming on the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). It's possible but … there's a lot of caveats to that," said Newman.

Experts say B.C. should allocate up to 0.25 per cent of Agricultural Land Reserve land that is ill-suited for traditional farming to agricultural-industrial use like vertical farming. (Baneet Braich)

She and others want to see provincial rules changed to make more ALR land available to budding vertical farmers, considering that finding space in industrial areas is difficult and expensive.

"Industrial land costs millions of dollars more, there is almost a zero vacancy rate for industrial," said Newman.

• Calgary's large indoor veggie farms aim to match the price of California imports

A provincial 2019 Food Insecurity Task Force Report outlined several recommendations to help increase food security in the face of climate change in B.C. They included more space for growing food, better transportation systems and allowing farms to be closer to processors.

Newman wants the province to move faster on these recommendations that she says could help vertical farmers.

"It's been two years so we're kind of missing the bus. This actually makes me quite angry, that we're still sitting around waiting to see what's going to happen," said Newman who added that she remains hopeful progress will be made. 

CubicFarms sells their technology directly to farmers to grow and sell produce. (Gian Paolo Mendoza/CBC)

Van der Gracht is also hopeful that the province will change rules to allow bigger vertical farm operations on ALR land.

"We'd be much more productive on that land. And we don't need any of the nice land," she said.

Newman and her colleagues said a significant portion of B.C.'s agricultural land reserve is unused or underutilized. The task force report said that while the most fertile land should be protected for agricultural production, up to 0.25 per cent of ALR land with low soil quality, ill-suited for farming should be allocated for agritech.

The Ministry of Agriculture says it is continuing to study the task force's recommendations, with an update to come in the spring of 2022.

This module at CubicFarms harvests about 9,500 heads of lettuce per month. (CBC News)

Dave Dinesen, CEO of CubicFarms in Langley, said he's hopeful changes will come to B.C.'s agritech sector that allow it to quickly expand.

His company sells modules, worth $150,000 each, that fit in shipping containers and can grow up to 300,000 leafy green, herbs or microgreen plants each year.

Dinesen says the technology dramatically reduces the need for water. One module can grow as much lettuce as is produced on a piece of land the size of a football field.

The modules also use approximately one litre of water to grow one head of lettuce. The same head of lettuce grown in a field would require 24 litres of water, according to Dinesen. 

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  It's not just a fad — there's real value to eating local during this pandemic

Dinesen also said vertical farming made possible with technology, which his company supplies, produces local food and reduces the need for complicated and vulnerable supply chains.

"There's not much more vulnerability than food supply," he said. "And we've seen these types of panics in stores when borders are closed or roads are washed [out] … we're seeing all of these problems."

 Calgary

A former geologist imports a popular Chinese model to grow veggies year-round in Alberta's harsh climate

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Passive solar greenhouse operates without fossil fuels to

grow tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, cabbages and more

Bryan Labby · CBC News · Posted: Dec 24, 2021

Tomato plants grow in a passive solar greenhouse at Fresh Pal Farms near Olds, Alta., in early December 2021. Last year, it produced more than 13,000 kilograms of tomatoes alone, while relying on no heat source other than the heat from the sun. (Bryan Labby/CBC)

Dong Jianyi has taken an almost scientific approach to growing tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, cabbages and other fresh vegetables at his unconventional farm operation near Olds, Alta.

The former geologist who worked in the oil and gas sector now runs a passive solar greenhouse operation that allows him to grow veggies year-round — and without using any conventional fossil fuel sources to keep his veggies nice and toasty during Alberta's harsh winter climate.

Dong's Fresh Pal Farms is believed to be one of the largest commercial passive solar greenhouses in Alberta.

He closely monitors and graphs the temperatures inside and outside the greenhouse, moisture and humidity levels and soil conditions. He also keeps an eye out for diseases and pests. Tracking all of the conditions comes with challenges, but he says it's going well.

Last year, he produced more than 13,000 kilograms of tomatoes alone. 

"I really like agriculture and I think it's good opportunity," Dong said in early December from California, where he was working as an agriculture consultant.

A recent visit to the greenhouse confirmed that tomatoes and cabbages were still growing in early December — one of the final crops before Dong and his small team transition to planting seedlings for next year.

Before that, they might sneak in a crop of hardy leafy vegetables such as kale or spinach, which he says can tolerate the shorter days with fewer hours of sunshine.

Fresh Pal Farms owner Dong Jianyi, shown during a video conference, says passive solar greenhouses are common in his native China, but he wanted to know if that same model could be duplicated here. (Google Meet)

Dong, 40, came to Canada in 2014 shortly after quitting his job with an oil service company in China. At the time, oil prices were crashing and he was looking for a more stable future for himself and his young family, so he decided to transition to agriculture. 

He says passive solar greenhouses are common in his native China, but he wanted to know if that same model could be duplicated here.

"In north China, it also gets really cold and pretty dark in winter, but people can grow year-round."

He spent six months working and learning about the model in Manitoba. He also travelled back to his native China to talk to farmers, builders and manufacturers as part of his research before launching his operation. 

The $250,000 greenhouse kit was shipped from China in two containers. 

Dong and his wife put it together almost entirely on their own. He even welded all of the steel pieces together after taking a four-day welding course.

'It feels like you are not in Olds'

The greenhouse is an impressive structure.

It's located east of Olds in Mountain View County. It's 100 metres long, 10 metres wide and six metres tall — the growing area inside covers about 750 square metres. Lengthwise, it runs east to west to maximize exposure to the sun.

The roof and south-facing wall are made up of two layers of polyolefin plastic with the air in between acting as an insulation barrier. 

The north wall, or the back of the greenhouse, is made out of clay and is one metre thick. The clay acts as a heat sink, capturing and storing heat from the sun during the day and releasing it through the night.

Hundreds of tomato plants were still producing in early December at Fresh Pal Farms. The roof features two layers of plastic to help insulate the building. A 100-metre long, one-metre thick clay wall on the right helps trap heat during the day and release it during the night. (Bryan Labby/CBC)

A large, thick, retractable blanket is lowered into place when the sun sets and is raised in the morning shortly after dawn.

In early December, the outside temperature was –5 C, but it was 28 C inside the greenhouse.

"You can feel kind of a wave of heat, a little bit of humidity, the smell, it feels like you are not in Olds, and you are somewhere tropical," said Sarah Singer, one of the volunteers at Fresh Pal Farms who provided a tour of the greenhouse.

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She's drawn to the operation for its unique features and minimal environmental impact compared to conventional greenhouses.

"People are surprised how large it is, that there is no heat and he runs it through the winter," she said.

"People like the smell when they come in.… In the winter, they'll say it's so warm in here."

Dong estimates it would cost nearly $30,000 per month to heat a similarly sized greenhouse that relies on a heating source fuelled by natural gas.

Extreme weather, big challenges 

There are challenges. The winter can be too cold and too dark. And the summers can be too hot. Dong says this past summer saw a week long heatwave with temperatures peaking at 36 C in late June. 

"The tomatoes, cucumbers, they don't grow well. They may crack, they may look ugly. That's a challenge," he said.

He doesn't use any fans during those high temperature days. Instead, he opens the bottom of the north wall and a portion of the roof to allow hot air to escape. He also rolls the blanket down to prevent the tomatoes from burning in the midday sun.

Sarah Singer volunteers some of her time at Fresh Pal Farms, intrigued by the environmentally friendly features of passive solar greenhouses along with the tasty vegetables grown inside. (Bryan Labby/CBC)

And there's the cold. Dong says it dipped to –38 C last winter, dropping the temperature inside the greenhouse to –5 C. He says they can add a layer of plastic over the tomato plants to protect them.

Is passive the future?

The manager of the botanic gardens and greenhouses at Old College says it's been exciting to watch Dong's passive solar project come together, including some of the innovative ways he's been dealing with heat and ventilation challenges in the summer and snow load in the winter.

"I'm really, really keen to see how how somebody like Jianyi can single-handedly innovate the way that we're growing in Alberta. So it has been really exciting to see his work.," said Daniel Chappell.

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Chappell, who converted an old barn into a passive solar greenhouse, says this type of model is attracting interest from people who are concerned about the environmental impact of traditional greenhouses, transportation costs and food security.

The challenge can be fronting the cost. He says the payback will come in subsequent years from not having to pay heating or cooling costs.

"So a lot of people who are trying to move into farming on a very small scale near urban centres, very, very keenly interested in this kind of thing," he said.

"If you can find the money to build it, but then it doesn't cost you thousands of dollars a month to heat it, then there's a lot of immediate benefit to be able to grow as a business person."

The south side of the greenhouse features two layers of plastic that act as an insulation barrier to keep temperatures inside warm enough for growing a variety of vegetables in the winter. (Bryan Labby/CBC)

Dong says that while he caters most of his business to the Chinese community in Olds and Calgary, he'd like to expand his offerings.

"I'd like to try the farmers' market and let everybody taste my produce."

He'd also like to help growers set up their own passive solar greenhouse operations by helping import the ready-to-build kits from China.