Researchers solve major issues blocking development of lithium-sulphur batteries

Staff Writer | January 9, 2023 | 

Sulphur. (Reference image by Robert M. Lavinsky, Wikimedia Commons.)

In a new study, researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory advanced sulphur-based battery research by creating a layer within the battery that adds energy storage capacity while nearly eliminating a traditional problem with sulphur batteries that caused corrosion.


In their paper, the scientists explain that a promising battery design pairs a sulphur-containing cathode with a lithium metal anode. In between those components is the electrolyte, or the substance that allows ions to pass between the two ends of the battery.

Early lithium-sulphur (Li-S) batteries did not perform well because sulphur species (polysulfides) dissolved into the electrolyte, causing its corrosion. This polysulfide shuttling effect negatively impacts battery life and lowers the number of times the battery can be recharged.

To prevent this polysulfide shuttling, prior research focused on placing a redox-inactive interlayer between the cathode and anode. The term ​“redox-inactive” means the material does not undergo reactions like those in an electrode. But this protective interlayer is heavy and dense, reducing energy storage capacity per unit weight for the battery. It also does not adequately reduce shuttling.

To address this, the Argonne group developed a porous sulphur-containing interlayer. Tests in the laboratory showed initial capacity about three times higher in Li-S cells with this active, as opposed to inactive, interlayer. More impressively, the cells with the active interlayer maintained high capacity over 700 charge-discharge cycles.

“Previous experiments with cells having the redox-inactive layer only suppressed the shuttling, but in doing so, they sacrificed the energy for a given cell weight because the layer added extra weight,” said Guiliang Xu, a chemist and co-author of the study. ​“By contrast, our redox-active layer adds to energy storage capacity and suppresses the shuttle effect.”

To further understand the redox-active layer, the team conducted experiments at the 17-BM beamline of Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source. The data gathered from exposing cells with this layer to X-ray beams allowed them to ascertain the interlayer’s benefits.

The data confirmed that a redox-active interlayer can reduce shuttling, reduce detrimental reactions within the battery and increase the battery’s capacity to hold more charge and last for more cycles. ​

“These results demonstrate that a redox-active interlayer could have a huge impact on Li-S battery development,” said Wenqian Xu, a beamline scientist at APS. ​“We’re one step closer to seeing this technology in our everyday lives.”

Going forward, the team wants to evaluate the growth potential of the redox-active interlayer technology. ​“We want to try to make it much thinner, much lighter,” Guiliang Xu said.

Scientists one step closer to turning coal into graphite

Staff Writer | January 8, 2023 |

Coal. (Reference image by James St. John, Flickr.)

A team at Ohio University carried out a series of simulations showing how coal can be converted to valuable—and carbon-neutral—materials like graphite and carbon nanotubes.


Using the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center’s Bridges-2 system, the researchers simulated coal and graphite in computer software and recreated the coal-to-graphite conversion virtually. Generations of scientists know that, at least in theory, it is possible to convert coal to graphite if the fossil fuel is put under enough pressure at a high enough temperature.

Pure graphite is a series of sheets made up of six-carbon rings. A special type of chemical bond called ‘aromatic bond’ holds these carbons together.

In aromatic bonds, pi electrons float above and below the rings. These “slippery” electron clouds cause the sheets to slide easily past each other. Pencil “lead”—a low-grade form of graphite—leaves a mark on paper because the sheets slip off of each other and stick to the paper.

Aromatic bonds have another virtue, important in electronic technology. The pi electrons move easily from ring to ring and sheet to sheet. This makes graphite conduct electricity, even though it is not a metal.

Coal, by comparison, is messy chemically. Unlike the strictly two-dimensional nature of a graphite sheet, it has connections in three dimensions. It also contains hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and other atoms that might disrupt graphite formation.

Simplified coal

To begin their studies, David Drabold and his team created a simplified “coal” that consisted of only carbon atoms in random positions. By exposing this simplified coal to pressure and high temperature—about 3,000 Kelvin, or nearly 5,000 Fahrenheit—they could take a first step in studying its conversion to graphite.

“To push out the amorphous-graphite paper we needed to do a lot of serious analysis,” said Chinonso Ugwumadu, a doctoral student in Drabold’s group. “Compared to other systems which we have, Bridges is the fastest and most accurate. Our home systems … take about two weeks to simulate 160 atoms. With Bridges, we can run 400 atoms over six to seven days using density functional theory.”

At first, the Ohio scientists carried out their simulations using basic physical and chemical principles via density functional theory. This accurate but calculation-heavy approach required many parallel computations. Later, they shifted their calculations to a new software tool, GAP (Gaussian approximation potential), which uses machine learning to carry out essentially the same computations much more quickly.

Their results were more complicated than the team had expected. The sheets did form. But the carbon atoms didn’t entirely develop simple, six-carbon rings. A fraction of the rings had five carbons; others had seven.

The non-six-carbon rings posed an interesting wrinkle, in more ways than one. While six-carbon rings are flat, five- and seven-membered carbon rings pucker, but in opposite senses of “positive and negative curvature.”

The scientists might have expected these puckers to ruin the formation of the graphite sheets. But sheets formed anyway, possibly because pentagons and heptagons balanced each other in the simulations. The sheets were technically amorphous graphite because they weren’t purely six-ringed. But again, they formed layers.

Carbon nanotubes

In another series of simulations, Ugwumadu followed up on his work with Rajendra Thapa to study molecules rather than solids. The conditions in these sims caused the sheets to curve in on themselves. Instead of sheets, they formed nested amorphous carbon nanotubes (CNTs)—a series of single-atomic-layer tubes, one inside another.

CNTs have been hot in materials science lately, as they are in effect tiny wires that can be used to conduct electricity at incredibly small scales. Other promising applications of CNTs include fuel cell catalysis, the production of supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries, electromagnetic interference shielding, biomedical sciences, and nano-neuroscience.

One important facet of the CNT work was that Ugwumadu studied how amorphous wrinkles in the tube walls affect the movement of electricity through the structure. In materials science, every “bug” is also a “feature”—engineers may be able to use such irregularities to tune the behaviour of a given CNT to match the exact requirements needed in a new electronic device.

The group continues to study the conversion of carbon atoms to graphite and related materials.

Europe needs to invest over €300 billion in the next two years to reach climate goals — study

Staff Writer | January 10, 2023 | 

Solar panels in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France. (Reference image by Christian Pinatel de Salvator, Wikimedia Commons.)

Europe needs to invest €302 billion annually to build relevant infrastructure over the next two years if it wants to reach its goals of becoming climate neutral by 2050 and reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, a new study has shown.


According to the paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, major investments in power generation from renewable energies, electricity grids, storage devices and other infrastructure are urgently required across the EU and neighbouring countries.

To reach this conclusion, the authors of the study built on 56 relevant technology and investment studies from academia, industry and the public sector. They focused on the countries in the EU but also took into account data on the UK, Norway and Switzerland.

In their view, the most dramatic increase in the need for investment is in power generation from renewable energies.

“In order to drive forward the decarbonization of all areas of life, around 75 billion euros need to be invested in solar and wind power plants in the coming years. This is 24 billion euros more per year than in the recent past,” Bjarne Steffen, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and co-author of the study, said in a media statement.

The situation is similar when it comes to the expansion of distribution networks and railways. In these areas, too, 40% to 60% additional financial flows are required compared to the 2016–2020 period to expand electrification and shift traffic from road to rail.

Steffen and his co-author Lena Klaaßen also noted that the war in Ukraine is reinforcing these trends further.

“To import as little gas as possible from Russia, Europe would have to invest around 10 billion euros more per year in solar energy and wind power. In comparison, significantly less investment—around 1.5 billion euros per year—is needed in additional natural gas infrastructure such as LNG terminals,” Steffen said.

According to the paper, fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas are likely to tie up less capital in the future in Europe. The investment required in conventional power plants in particular is set to fall by 70% within the space of a few years.
New policies

Klaaßen pointed out that the money to make such big investments is readily available in Europe — given the size of the continent’s equity and bond markets. The main challenge, however, is to put the necessary political policies in place quickly enough to ensure that capital flows into the right projects.

“Political measures should be tailored to funding in those sectors where there is the greatest need for investment,” she explained. “For example, existing regulations in the EU focus on identifying sustainable securities, despite the fact that important climate-relevant infrastructure is not at all financed via the equity markets.”

The researcher mentioned that the expansion of renewable energies, in contrast, is often made possible by private investors such as pension funds and banks. Yet, the data show that the public sector could minimize its risk through revenue warranties and by making approval procedures as quick and predictable as possible.

Carbon-capture plants also have harmful emissions — but there is a solution

Staff Writer | January 5, 2023

Coal-fired power plant in Germany. (Reference image by Arnold Paul, Wikimedia Commons.)

A group of scientists has come up with a machine-learning solution for forecasting amine emissions from carbon-capture plants using experimental data from a stress test at an actual plant in Germany.


In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, the researchers explain that amines are compounds used in the chemical processes of carbon-capture plants and natural gas processing and refining plants. Amines are also used in certain pharmaceuticals, epoxy resins, and dyes.

The problem is that amines could also be potentially harmful to the environment as well as a health hazard, making it essential to mitigate their impact. This requires accurate monitoring and predicting of a plant’s amine emissions, which has proven to be no easy feat since carbon-capture plants are complex and differ from one another.

This is where the new development comes in.

Tested in Niederhauẞen, on one of the largest coal-fired power plants in Germany, the solution was used for a full year to monitor a slipstream that is sent from the power station into a carbon capture pilot plant.

Stress test

The scientists created a stress test to study amine emissions under different process conditions. “We developed an experimental campaign to understand how and when amine emissions would be generated. But some of our experiments also caused interventions of the plant’s operators to ensure the plant was operating safely,” Susana Garcia, co-author of the study, said in a media statement.

These interventions led to the question of how to interpret the data. Are the amine emissions the result of the stress test itself, or have the interventions of the operators indirectly affected the emissions? This was further complicated by a general lack of understanding of the mechanisms behind amine emissions.

“In short, we had an expensive and successful campaign that showed that amine emissions can be a problem, but no tools to further analyze the data,” study co-author Berend Smit said. “When Susana Garcia mentioned this to me, it sounded indeed like an impossible problem to solve. But she also mentioned that they measured everything every five minutes, collecting many data.”

Looking for patterns

With the help of PhD student Kevin Maik Jablonka, the group developed a machine-learning approach that turned the amine emissions puzzle into a pattern-recognition problem.

“We wanted to know what the emissions would be if we did not have the stress test but only the operators’ interventions,” Smit explained. “This is a similar issue as we can have in finance; for example, if you want to evaluate the effect of changes in the tax code, you would like to disentangle the effect of the tax code from, say, interventions caused by the crisis in Ukraine.”

In the next step, Jablonka used powerful machine learning to predict future amine emissions from the plant’s data.

With this model, the team was able to predict the emissions caused by the interventions of the operators and then disentangle them from those induced by the stress test. They were also able to use the model to run all kinds of scenarios for reducing these emissions.

The conclusion of this work was described as “surprising”. As it turned out, the pilot plant had been designed for pure amine, but the measuring experiments were carried out on a mixture of two amines: 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol and piperazine. The scientists found out that those two amines respond in opposite ways: reducing the emission of one increases the emissions of the other.

“I am very enthusiastic about the potential impact of this work; it is a completely new way of looking at a complex chemical process,” Smit said. “This type of forecasting is not something one can do with any of the conventional approaches, so it may change the way we operate chemical plants.”

First Quantum to appeal Panama order to halt giant copper mine

Cecilia Jamasmie | January 10, 2023 | 

Cobre Panama mine, the company’s largest copper operation. (Image: First Quantum Minerals.)

Canada’s First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM) said on Tuesday it planned to appeal an order by Panama’s government to halt its giant copper mine in the country as the two sides remain in talks over a new contract that would increase royalties paid by the miner.


The Central American country’s government decided in December to create a plan to halt operations at Cobre Panama copper mine. The move, unusual among Latin American countries, came after the Vancouver-based miner missed a deadline to ink a new contract due to disagreements on royalties and tax payments.

Panama has demanded First Quantum to pay a corporate tax of at least $375 million a year, along with a profit-based mineral royalty of 12% to 16%, which represents a steep rise on the $61 million the company paid in 2021.

First Quantum said on Tuesday it was prepared to agree with, and in part exceed, the objectives that the government outlined in a pre-agreement reached in January 2022 regarding revenues, environmental protections and labour standards.

“I don’t think we’re very far away,” chief executive officer Tristan Pascall said in a Tuesday call with analysts to provide an update on the negotiations. “There has been progress and movements since December 14 and these final items do need to be resolved, but they do need to be resolved fairly for us to close this out.”

First Quantum noted the minimum payment structure proposed is both unique and unprecedented in the mining industry.

“Under the newly proposed profit-based royalty, the government would receive revenue that is multiple times higher than under both the existing contract and the current Panamá Mining Code,” First Quantum said in the statement. “The proposed royalty rates would be amongst the highest, if not the highest, paid by copper miners in the Americas,” it noted.

The company noted that it has already given a number of concessions to the government, including elimination of $250 million in tax credits and a limit to the ones that can be used in any one year going forward.

It also said it was ready to place Cobre Panama, responsible for 1.4% of global copper supply, into “care and maintenance” if the country did not offer certain legal protections.

First Quantum has demanded assurances that the current revised mining code will be in place beyond the current administration, as Panama is gearing up for a general election, expected in May this year.

Operations continue as normal, the miner said, with no disruption to production for now.

The miner also noted it had notified the country about two arbitration proceedings, days after the order to halt operations.

Panama weighs mine options

The Panamanian government is reportedly working with a financial advisor to identify new potential partners for Cobre Panama, which raises concerns about the country nationalizing the asset or removing First Quantum’s license to operate, experts at BMO say.

“Our base-case expectation is that the government’s position is part of a broader negotiation; however, the recent escalation does raise uncertainty about First Quantum’s ability to operate in the country long term, and the risk that investors will see in Panama going forward,” BMO Metals and Mining analyst, Jackie Przybylowski, wrote.

From a copper market perspective, any sustained outage at the mine would further tighten global supplies, contributing to an expected annual deficit of 4.7 million tonnes by 2030.

“The government is prepared to face all potential legal scenarios that may arise and will continue to ensure that workers’ labor rights are maintained and protected,” the Commerce and Industry Ministry said earlier this month.

Cobre Panama is the biggest foreign investment in the Central American nation, supporting 40,000 jobs. (Image courtesy of Minera Panama.)

The local unit of First Quantum, Minera Panamá, said that suspending jobs to reduce expenditure would be “a last resort”.

Still, the company would need to cut “the various programs and projects that we undertake in the communities and beyond which benefit so many Panamanians.”

Cobre Panama achieved commercial production in September 2019. The asset is estimated to hold 3.1 billion tonnes in proven and probable reserves and at full capacity can produce more than 300,000 tonnes of copper per year, or about 1.5% of global production of the metal.

The company says it has invested around $10 billion in Cobre Panama, the largest private investment ever in the country, and was contemplating expanding the processing capacity of the mine from 85 million tonnes per year to 100 million tpy in 2023. This would have allowed it to boost production to nearly 360,000 tonnes of copper by the end of this year and to 350,000-380,000 tonnes in 2023.

First Quantum is one of the world’s top copper miners and Canada’s largest producer of the metal. It produced 816,000 tonnes of copper in 2021, its highest ever, thanks mainly to record output at Cobre Panama.

The Cobre Panama mine complex, located about 120 km west of Panama City and 20 km from the Atlantic coast, contributes 3.5% of the Central American country’s gross domestic product, according to government figures.
Fairly uncommon move

Panama’s decision is a major blow to chief executive Tristan Pascall, who succeeded his father, Phillip, in May.

Latin America is the region where risks of asset seizures and taxes hikes have increased the most in the past two years, risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft estimates.

The practice, however, has been rare in Latin America’s recent past. One of the last major expropriations was in 2012, when then-Argentina President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government seized a 51% stake in the country’s largest oil and gas producer, YPF SA, from Repsol SA.

Almost ten years later, in April 2022, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador declared lithium a “strategic mineral” whose exploration, exploitation, and use are the exclusive right of the country, through a new state-run company called Litio para Mexico, or Lithium for Mexico.

Copper shipments from Cobre Panama. (Image courtesy of Cobre Panama.)

First Quantum aims to appeal Panama order to halt copper mine

Bloomberg News | January 9, 2023 |
Cobre Panama. (Image courtesy of Minera Panama).

First Quantum Minerals Ltd. plans to appeal an order by Panama’s government to halt production at a massive copper mine in the Central American country as the two sides try to reach a tax agreement for the project.


Panama’s Ministry of Commerce and Industries issued a resolution Dec. 20 that gave First Quantum 10 business days to submit a plan for putting the Cobre Panama mine on care and maintenance, a status that would halt commercial operations. The ministry has already rejected a request by First Quantum to reconsider the decision.

“Our next step will be to submit an appeal,” the Vancouver-based miner said in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News.

First Quantum and Panama have been negotiating new tax terms for more than a year on a mine that accounts for about 1.5% of global copper output. The talks failed to produce an accord by a Dec. 14 deadline set by the government, putting the two sides at an impasse when the threat of a global copper shortfall looms large.

In the meantime, First Quantum said it is drawing up the maintenance plan for the mine to submit to government. The metals producer would be forced to suspend “a significant amount” of workers if the mine goes into maintenance mode, according to the Jan. 6 memo.

“This is a drastic and, in our view, unnecessary step, which will potentially have a huge impact on our employees, our suppliers and the community around us,” First Quantum said in the letter. “This is not an action that should be taken lightly, but we will regrettably be compelled to follow the government’s directive if the final outstanding terms cannot be resolved on a reasonable basis.”

If the order is approved by authorities, First Quantum would have two days to comply.

First Quantum and the Panamanian government resumed negotiations in late December, but an agreement remains elusive. One of the sticking points appears to have been over a minimum $375 million contribution, with First Quantum pushing for an exception in the case of much lower metal prices and profit.

“We are prepared to agree with, and even exceed, the objectives that the government outlined to us in January 2022 related to revenues, environmental protections, and labor standards, including a minimum revenue agreement that is unique and unprecedented in the mining industry,” the Jan. 6 memo said. “This includes a minimum $375 million in government income per year, with downside protections aligned with the government’s position.”

(By Yvonne Yue Li)

First Quantum could suspend Panama jobs due to gov’t order to halt operations
Reuters | January 8, 2023 |

First Quantum Minerals personnel and representatives from the Panamanian government in 2021. (Reference image by First Quantum Minerals, Facebook.)

Canada-based miner First Quantum would suspend a “significant amount” of jobs at its operations in Panama if the Central American government forces it to halt operations during a contract dispute, the company said in a letter.


“If we have to reduce operations to care and maintenance mode, the company will need to take steps to reduce expenditure across the business. We could be forced to suspend a significant amount of our valued workforce,” the letter sent to employees and seen by Reuters said.

The company’s Cobre Panama mine generates about 40,000 direct and indirect jobs and interacts with some 1,800 suppliers, according to a consultant.

First Quantum was notified on Dec. 21 of a government order for it to create a plan to halt operations within 10 working days, after it missed a deadline for a new contract due to disagreements centered on royalties and tax payments.

“This is a drastic and, in our view, unnecessary step, which will potentially have a huge impact on employees, our suppliers and the community around us,” said the letter, signed by General Manager Alan Delaney.

First Quantum is working on the plan, but expects to reach a deal with the government before the order is enacted, the letter said, adding that its next step will be issuing an appeal.

A spokesperson for the government did not reply to a request for comment on the timetable for the order. The Canada-based miner did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The two parties have been at odds for more than a year over payments to the government, contract stability and the area of the company’s operations. The government has pushed to raise annual royalties to $375 million.

First Quantum is prepared to meet and even exceed $375 million in royalties per year with downside protections, the letter said, though it did not outline the remaining hurdles preventing the two parties from reaching a contract.

(By Valentine Hilaire; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

UN chief calls for sweeping reform of 'biased' financial system




Mon, January 9, 2023 
By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Emma Farge

GENEVA, Jan 9 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for sweeping reform of the international financial system to allow for low-income countries vulnerable to climate calamities to receive adequate funding from richer nations.

Addressing a conference in Geneva on rebuilding efforts in the wake of devastating floods in Pakistan, Guterres said the international financial system was skewed to benefit wealthy countries and should be reformed to ensure a more equitable distribution of resources.

"It is very clear that the present system is biased," he told reporters in a strongly-worded critique of what he called a "morally corrupt global financial system".

"The system was conceived by a group of rich countries and naturally it basically benefits rich countries."

Guterres was speaking alongside Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who said Pakistan needed $8 billion from the international community over the next three years to support recovery efforts after floods that killed at least 1,700 people, displaced millions and damaged critical infrastructure.

"We need a new debt architecture and we need to make sure that debt relief is effectively provided by the system even to middle income countries that are on the verge of very difficult, very dramatic situations including suspending payments," Guterres added.

The International Monetary Fund, whose delegation was meeting Pakistan's finance minister on the sidelines of the conference, has yet to approve the release of $1.1 billion originally due to be disbursed in November last year. That has left Pakistan with only enough foreign exchange reserves to cover

one month's imports.

Voicing frustration at the inaction of global leaders and scant investment to combat climate emergencies, Guterres called for the vulnerability of countries to be taken into account when major financial institutions distribute below-market-rate financing.

"We need to redesign our financial system in order to be able to take into account vulnerability and not only GDP when decisions are made about concessional funding to countries around the world," he said. (Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Emma Farge; editing by Mark Heinrich)

United Nations Executive Secretary Talks with Protiviti: 'We Need Private Sector Engagement, Investment to Solve Environmental Crises'

Mon, January 9, 2023 

In this article:

Ibrahim Thiaw
Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme

Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, on climate change, biodiversity and productive land loss requiring immediate action, featured in exclusive interview with 'VISION by Protiviti'

MENLO PARK, Calif., Jan. 9, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- In an interview with VISION by Protiviti, the United Nations' (UN) Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification calls on global business leaders to take an active role in helping to solve the planet's biggest problems. "Businesses need to shift from a linear economy — extracting resources, using them quickly and discarding them as waste — to a circular economy where used products are repurposed and re-injected in the economy," said Ibrahim Thiaw in an interview with global consulting firm Protiviti while he was at COP27, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Protiviti logo. (PRNewsFoto/Protiviti) (PRNewsfoto/Protiviti)

"Business has a huge role to play in shaping the consumption patterns of the growing middle class, as it will demand more land, water and other resources. There is a dire need for investments that, at once, match this huge consumer demand for change, and ensure we adapt to the multiple disruptions exacerbated by climate change and land degradation," stated Thiaw.

The interview, conducted by Protiviti's Baris Karapinar, ESG and Sustainability lead for the firm's operation in Switzerland, wrapped up Protiviti's six-month exploration of the business impact of sustainability in a content series titled "Future of ESG," the latest theme explored on the VISION by Protiviti online thought leadership platform.

Thiaw calls on the private sector to help solve Earth's environmental challenges, including climate change, drought, water scarcity, land degradation and biodiversity loss. Doing so will give people a chance to generate 50 percent more wealth over the next three decades, Thiaw says. "The world has a choice: Either we continue with the current nature-destructive path and lose up to half of the global GDP by 2050, or we take a sustainable land management approach to combat the current environmental crises we're facing."

The UN has led the global effort to raise awareness and affect action with its Sustainable Development Goals, a call for action by all countries — poor, rich and middle-income — to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. "The global economy will lose an estimated US$23 trillion by 2050 through land and soil loss alone if we continue with business as usual," Thiaw said.

The economic returns of restoring land and reducing degradation, greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity loss are estimated at US$140 trillion every year. That's about 1.5 times the global GDP of $93 trillion in 2021, according to the UN. "This is an investment opportunity, not a threat to business," Thiaw said. Perhaps business could shift to a more 'nature-positive' business model, where the ultimate objective goes beyond the traditional bottom line of a company to embracing 'doing good,' as well, he added. "The possibilities for business to drive change are unlimited. The choice is ours."

Cory Gunderson, executive vice president, Global Solutions, Protiviti, says the United Nations' message couldn't be clearer. "Business leaders will play a critical role in helping solve some of the planet's biggest challenges. There are many paths to explore. We believe having clear strategic goals and objectives to address ESG matters is a key to future success. And it can be good business. We're thrilled to highlight the key issues facing businesses, including ESG, in our landmark VISION by Protiviti program," said Gunderson.

The interview with Thiaw is one of more than 30 pieces of content, including videos, podcasts and articles, currently available as part of VISION by Protiviti's Future of ESG initiative available here.

 Other highlights include:

Morgan Stanley's Carla Harris on what lies ahead for ESG


Accelerating digital and net zero sustainability with Microsoft


AWS Energy Solutions Lead on Scope 3, 'data obesity' and a decarbonized future


Protiviti-Oxford survey finds ESG enthusiasm gap among North America executives


Boardroom Buzz: Cambridge dean on the business of sustainability


Inside The Economist's global ESG rankings


A global 'grand bargain' will be required for complicated climate transition in India


CEO of Nepad: Agenda 2063 could transform Africa into 'global powerhouse'

VISION by Protiviti is a provocative thought leadership series that puts megatrends under the microscope to provide strategic insights for C-suite executives and board members. Content is available in a variety of formats, including articles, podcasts, video interviews and special events. Subscribe to VISION by Protiviti for free here. In Q1 2023, the series will explore the metaverse.

About Protiviti

Protiviti (www.protiviti.com) is a global consulting firm that delivers deep expertise, objective insights, a tailored approach, and unparalleled collaboration to help leaders confidently face the future. Protiviti and its independent and locally owned Member Firms provide clients with consulting and managed solutions in finance, technology, operations, data, digital, legal, governance, risk and internal audit through its network of more than 85 offices in over 25 countries.

Named to the 2022 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list, Protiviti has served more than 80 percent of Fortune 100 and nearly 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies. The firm also works with smaller, growing companies, including those looking to go public, as well as with government agencies. Protiviti is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Half (NYSE: RHI). Founded in 1948, Robert Half is a member of the S&P 500 index.

Protiviti is not licensed or registered as a public accounting firm and does not issue opinions on financial statements or offer attestation services.

All referenced marks are the property of their respective owners.

Editor's note: Protiviti photo available upon request.


View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/united-nations-executive-secretary-talks-with-protiviti-we-need-private-sector-engagement-investment-to-solve-environmental-crises-301716293.html

SOURCE Protiviti

EXPLAINER: Roots of the Brazilian capital's chaotic uprising



Police stand on the other side of a window at Planalto Palace that was shattered by protesters, supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro, after they stormed the official workplace of the president in Brasilia, Brazil, Sunday, Jan. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres
CARLA BRIDI
Mon, January 9, 2023 

SALVADOR, Brazil (AP) — Thousands of Brazilians who support former president Jair Bolsonaro invaded the Supreme Court, presidential palace and Congress on Jan. 8 in an episode that closely resembled the U.S. Capitol insurrection in 2021. The groups were able to break through police barricades along the capital Brasilia’s main boulevard and storm the buildings, damage furniture, smash windows and destroy artworks. As they unleashed chaos in the capital, Bolsonaro was holed up in Florida, home to his ally, former U.S. President Donald Trump. The incident sparked accusations that Bolsonaro's actions stoked the flames of dissent and ultimately produced the uprising.

WHO ARE THESE PROTESTERS, AND WHAT DO THEY WANT?

The protesters are hardcore Bolsonaro supporters, some of whom have been camped outside a military headquarters in Brasilia since Bolsonaro lost the Oct. 30 presidential election and reject the race’s results. Others traveled to Brasilia for the weekend on buses. They have been demanding military intervention to oust newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, alleging he is a thief who will lead the country into communism, and restore Bolsonaro to power.

HOW DID BRAZIL GET TO THIS POINT?

Throughout his administration, Bolsonaro trained fire at Supreme Court justices for opening investigations targeting him and his allies. He repeatedly singled out Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who presided over the electoral authority during the election, and at one point pushed Brazil to the brink of an institutional crisis by threatening to disobey any of de Moraes' future rulings.

Bolsonaro also sowed doubt about the reliability of Brazil's electronic voting machines, then declined to concede defeat. After his loss, he largely vanished from view, though he addressed his supporters once to tell them they had the power in their hands and that he controls the armed forces. His supporters maintained hope Bolsonaro or the armed forces would lead an intervention to overturn the results.

WHAT HAS BOLSONARO CLAIMED ABOUT THE VOTING SYSTEM AND ELECTIONS?

Bolsonaro insisted the electronic voting system should feature a printed receipt in order to enable audits, but Congress' Lower House in 2021 voted down his proposal for that change and electoral authorities say the results can already be verified. Security experts consider electronic voting less secure than hand-marked paper ballots because they leave no auditable paper trail. Brazil’s system is, however, closely scrutinized and domestic authorities and international observers have never found evidence of it being exploited to commit fraud since its adoption in 1996.

After the 2022 elections, Bolsonaro and his party petitioned the electoral authority to nullify millions of votes cast on the majority of voting machines that featured a software bug — the machines lacked individual identification numbers in their internal logs. The request didn’t say how the bug might affect results, and independent experts said that it would not undermine reliability in any way. The electoral authority's president swiftly dismissed the request and imposed a multi-million dollar fine on the party for what he called a bad-faith effort.

WHAT ARE BOLSONARO’S TIES TO TRUMP AND HIS ALLIES?

Former U.S. President Donald Trump was one of Bolsonaro’s few foreign allies and Bolsonaro often exalted his American counterpart’s leadership, even posting photos of himself watching Trump’s addresses.

Bolsonaro and his lawmaker son Eduardo visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and both attended dinners at the house of Steve Bannon. The longtime Trump ally amplified Bolsonaro's claims about the electronic voting system before the October vote and, after the Jan. 8 uprising in Brasilia, called the protesters “Brazilian freedom fighters” in a video on social media.

Eduardo Bolsonaro has repeatedly attended the Conservative Political Action Conference in the U.S., positioning himself as the international face of the right-wing movement led by his father and making inroads with his American counterparts. Jason Miller, the former Trump campaign strategist, also met with Eduardo in Brazil. On the eve of the Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, Eduardo was in Washington, and met with Ivanka Trump and My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell.

After Trump lost his reelection bid, then-President Bolsonaro waited five weeks before recognizing Joe Biden’s victory and was one of the final world leaders to do so.

WHY IS BOLSONARO IN THE U.S.?

Bolsonaro flew to Florida two days before Lula’s Jan. 1 inauguration, when the outgoing president traditionally bestows the presidential sash to his successor. Instead, Bolsonaro took up temporary residence in the home of a Brazilian former mixed martial arts fighter outside Orlando. He hasn’t specified the reasons for his departure, and analysts have speculated it marks an attempt to avoid potential prosecution in connection with several ongoing investigations targeting him, blame from backers for not mobilizing the armed forces or responsibility for his supporters’ actions.

How Miami got an undeserved central role in Brazil riots, accusations against former leader

Nora Gámez Torres
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Carl Juste/cjuste@miamiherald.com


From the nation’s “cocaine capital” in the 1980s to its label “home of the Cuban mafia” by Fidel Castro, Miami has been accused of so many things that over the years, the city has earned an oversized reputation for being at the center of things — even when it’s not.

The latest example involves a Latin American country, a defeated presidential candidate who had warned he would not accept the election’s results — and hundreds of rioters breaking into the presidential palace, congress and the supreme court.

This time Miami is getting the blame as the nerve center from which former right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who repeated false claims of election fraud, plotted the attack by his supporters on the South American nation’s main government buildings in the capital, Brasilia, on Sunday.

Except the Brazilian press and videos circulating online actually place Bolsonaro in Orlando, to where he traveled before the year’s end on the presidential plane to skip the Jan. 1 inauguration ceremony of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to whom he lost his reelection bid.

That detail didn’t matter much for Bolsonaro critics, mostly from the left, who have inundated social media with references to Miami as the conspiracy nest for the riots.

“Fascism uses the same tactics everywhere. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro is happy spending time in Miami, where all fascists and gusanos [worms] meet,” wrote Andreína Chávez Alava, a former Telesur journalist from Ecuador, using the pejorative term Fidel Castro coined to refer to his home-grown opponents of the Cuban revolution.

“Bolsonaro sheltered in Miami leading the fascist mob of his followers with the complicity of the head of the Federal District in a remake of the assault on the Capitol by Trump and his henchmen,” wrote Carmen Hertz, a member of the Chilean Congress from the Communist Party. “How dangerous the ultra-right is for democracy and the lives of the citizens!”

President Lula himself opened the gate to the comments during remarks blaming Bolsonaro for encouraging the riots.

“This genocidal man ... is encouraging this via social media from Miami,” Lula said on Sunday at a press conference. “Everybody knows there are various speeches of the ex-president encouraging this.”

Bolsonaro’s response, denying the accusations and condemning the attacks several hours after, was also widely commented on in social media and Latin American media outlets as being sent “from Miami.”

Officials from countries with left-leaning governments such as Colombia and Cuba have also echoed the accusations, which go hand-in-glove with the propaganda narrative that links the U.S. and Miami, home to thousands of Latin Americans who fled leftist regimes, with every political crisis in the region.

“#Bolsonaro in #Miami and his followers in #Brasilia try to force with violence in the streets what he could not achieve at the polls,” said Cuban Foreign Ministry official Johana Tablada. “NotothecoupinBrazil,” she added in her tweet in Spanish.

“Bolsonaro flees by helicopter to Miami and from there orders a failed coup attempt,” tweeted Moisés Ninco Daza, Colombia’s ambassador to Mexico. “A clear example of the cowardice of anti-Latin American fascism. They are and will be defeated by popular power.”

Some of the messages on Twitter were from current or former journalists affiliated with Telesur, Venezuela’s government-paid television channel, as well as accounts linked to troll farms that routinely promote Cuban government propaganda, which suggests that coordinated disinformation efforts might be behind some of the mentions of the supposed Miami connection in social media.

“How similar!” commented a Cuban Twitter account under the name Frank Lamadrid of pictures of the assaults on the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 and the Brazilian Congress on Sunday. “Does this have something to do with Bolsonaro’s refuge in Miami?” The tweet included the hashtag #DeZurdaTeam, the name of a group linked to the Cuban government that routinely disseminates propaganda on Twitter. The group has been busy retweeting content in support of Lula da Silva, the third-time Brazilian president from the Workers Party who is close to Raúl Castro.

From day one, Bolsonaro’s stay in Florida has not gone unnoticed. Videos of him wandering around a Publix, eating at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and addressing supporters outside a residential Orlando complex have gone viral. The United Kingdom’s Daily Mail reported that Bolsonaro has been living in an Orlando property owned by former Brazilian Ultimate Fighting Championship fighter Jose Aldo. That rental property has eight bedrooms and is near Disney World.

Brazilian media outlet O’Globo reported Monday that Bolsonaro, 67, who was stabbed on the campaign trail in 2018 and had undergone multiple surgeries in the past, was admitted on Monday to AdventHealth Celebration “with acute abdominal pain.” The Orlando-area hospital is popular with Walt Disney visitors. But it is unclear if the former president might have been admitted under another name to protect his privacy because a hospital employee told the Miami Herald there was no patient there with that name.

Some Democratic U.S. House members like Joaquin Castro of Texas have called on the U.S. government to expel Bolsonaro to Brazil, where he faces several criminal investigations for alleged corruption and other charges.

“I stand with @LulaOficial and Brazil’s democratically elected government,” Castro said. “Domestic terrorists and fascists cannot be allowed to use Trump’s playbook to undermine democracy. Bolsonaro must not be given refuge in Florida, where he’s been hiding from accountability for his crimes.”

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday the Biden administration had not received an extradition request, according to Bloomberg, but Bolsonaro’s Florida vacation is likely to create diplomatic tensions with the newly elected Lula, himself formerly convicted of corruption and later acquitted. The Biden administration sent U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — but not Vice President Kamala Harris, as some expected — to Lula’s inauguration, setting the relationship up for a cool start.

Early on Monday, President Joe Biden, who is in Mexico for a North American leaders summit, issued a joint statement with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemning the violence in Brazil and expressing their desire to work with “President Lula on delivering for our countries, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond.”

While most prominent Miami Republicans, some of whom personally met Bolsonaro during a Florida trip in 2020, have stayed silent about the riots in Brazil, at least one, former Miami-Dade commissioner and current Hialeah Mayor Esteban Bovo, weighed in.

He used his private Twitter account to reply to Democratic U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, who referred to Bolsonaro as a “strongman” with “bogus claims of election fraud” and lamented that “the world will suffer the consequences of Trump’s terrible example for years to come.”

Schiff ended his tweet: “We stand with you, Brazil.”

Bovo replied: “Leftists seem to [be] coming together to support the corrupt new leader of Brazil.”

Democratic Reps Say Brazil's Bolsonaro Should Be Kicked Out Of Florida

Marita Vlachou
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Democratic lawmakers called on President Joe Biden to extradite former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro back to his country from Florida following the ugly scenes in Brasilia that echoed the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said the U.S. should not allow Bolsonaro to stay after thousands of Bolsonaro supporters on Sunday attacked key government buildings in Brazil’s capital, including Congress and the Supreme Court. The rioters demanded that Bolsonaro be reinstalled president or that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva be removed from office despite his win in October’s general election.

“He basically used the Trump playbook to inspire domestic terrorists to try to take over the government,” Castro told CNN.

Bolsonaro, who never acknowledged defeat, has been living in a rented home near Disney World in Orlando, Florida, since December, according to The New York Times. He did not attend Lula’s inauguration last week, mirroring the 2021 behavior of former President Donald Trump, who skipped Biden’s inaugural ceremony.

Former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, center, meets with supporters outside a vacation home where he is staying near Orlando, Florida., on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023.

Former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, center, meets with supporters outside a vacation home where he is staying near Orlando, Florida., on Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2023.

“He basically used the Trump playbook to inspire domestic terrorists to try to take over the government,” Castro told CNN.

Castro continued: “He’s actually very close to Donald Trump. He should be extradited to Brazil. In fact, it was reported that he was under investigation for corruption and fled Brazil to the United States.”

While Republicans are trying to stoke fear over asylum seekers crossing into the U.S., Bolsonaro is on U.S. soil close to Trump, Castro pointed out.

Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) echoed Castro, writing that the U.S. should stand by Lula and “cease granting refuge to Bolsonaro in Florida.”

Biden denounced the attack on Brazilian democracy, but he made no reference to Bolsonaro’s status in Florida.

“Brazil’s democratic institutions have our full support and the will of the Brazilian people must not be undermined,” Biden wrote.

Bolsonaro addressed Brazil’s violence on Twitter, denying that he was in any way responsible.

Following Brazil's far-right uprising, Biden will bring Lula to the White House

SHANNON K. CRAWFORD
Mon, January 9, 2023 

In the wake of a violent uprising on Sunday by supporters of Brazil's far-right former president, President Joe Biden on Monday spoke with the nation's newly inaugurated leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and extended an invitation to visit the White House.

"President Biden conveyed the unwavering support of the United States for Brazil's democracy and for the free will of the Brazilian people as expressed in Brazil's recent presidential election, which President Lula won. President Biden condemned the violence and the attack on democratic institutions and on the peaceful transfer of power," read a joint statement released by both Biden and the Brazilian president, who is commonly known as Lula.

The statement added that da Silva accepted the invitation to "visit Washington in early February for in-depth consultations on a wide-ranging shared agenda."

Sunday's attack on three of Brazil's seats of power -- its Supreme Court, Congress and the presidential office, called the Planalto Palace, in Brasilia -- was also condemned in a joint statement issued by Biden, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who convened in Mexico City on Monday for the North American leaders' summit.

"We stand with Brazil as it safeguards its democratic institutions. Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil," they declared. "We look forward to working with President Lula on delivering for our countries, the Western Hemisphere, and beyond."

The scenes from Brasilia on Sunday, of rioters overtaking government buildings while calling for a newly elected president's removal, echo the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

PHOTO: President Joe Biden meets his Mexican counterpart Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at an official welcoming ceremony before taking part in the North American Leaders' Summit at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico January 9, 2023. (Henry Romero/Reuters)

In responding to the turmoil in Brazil, Biden also confronts another conundrum created by da Silva's predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, who is currently staying in the U.S.

Bolsonaro had flown to Florida at the end of December, days before da Silva was inaugurated. Dubbed the "Trump of the Tropics," the populist ex-president refused to accept the results of Brazil's election when he was voted out in October and spread unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

While Bolsonaro condemned the "depredations and invasions of public buildings" in a tweet on Sunday after the violent rioting, da Silva and others accused him of implicitly spurring on his supporters with false allegations about a stolen election.

MORE: Jair Bolsonaro admitted to US hospital as Biden condemns 'outrageous' attack on Brazilian government

Some Democratic lawmakers in the U.S. were quick to call for Bolsonaro's removal.

"Nearly 2 years to the day the US Capitol was attacked by fascists, we see fascist movements abroad attempt to do the same in Brazil," New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "The US must cease granting refuge to Bolsonaro in Florida."

"He's a dangerous man. They should send him back to his home country, Brazil," Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas urged during a televised interview.

PHOTO: Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks during a meeting with Governors at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, on January 9, 2023. (Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden White House's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters on Monday that the Biden administration had not received any request from Brazil's government to extradite Bolsonaro but that "if we did receive such requests, we treat them the way we always do -- we treat them seriously."

While the U.S. and Brazil have an extradition treaty in place, it stipulates that the individual must be formally accused of an offense that is considered a crime in both countries. Bolsonaro is the subject of several investigations, but Brazilian authorities have not filed any charges against him.

MORE: House Republicans propose sweeping committee to review government's criminal investigations

Separately, if the Biden administration wanted to expel Bolsonaro from the country, it could revoke his visa without any legal justification. While that would be an extraordinary move, John Feeley, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Panama when the country's former president attempted to avoid corruption charges by fleeing to Florida, said it likely wouldn't be met by significant backlash on the international stage.

"I think one of the possible silver linings out of this whole episode is that there has been universal condemnation from Latin American governments," Feeley said. "There has been literally no government that has supported Bolsonaro. There have been some that have been quiet, but most have made very strong statements."

PHOTO: Protesters, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, clash with police during a protest outside the Planalto Palace building in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 8, 2023. (Eraldo Peres/AP)

While individual visa cases are confidential, State Department spokesperson Ned Price seemed to suggest that Bolsonaro -- who is believed to have entered the U.S. on a diplomatic visa as Brazil's head of state -- would have a grace period of 30 days to either exit the country or request a change to his immigration status before facing consequences.

The former Brazilian president was admitted to an Orlando-area hospital on Monday afternoon for abdominal pain resulting from a stabbing he endured on the campaign trail in 2018, his wife announced via Instagram.

ABC News' Aicha El Hammar Castano contributed to this report.

Tucker Cheers on Brazilian Insurrection and Repeats ‘Rigged’ Election Lies

William Vaillancourt
Mon, January 9, 2023 

Tucker Carlson reacted sympathetically to rolling anti-government riots Sunday in Brazil’s capital, claiming—without any evidence—that voters ousted far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro in what was “very clearly a rigged election.”

Instead of offering information to back up any of the widely debunked claims of fraud, the Fox host simply assured viewers that “millions of people in Brazil understand exactly what happened. They know that their democracy has been hijacked, possibly forever.”

Pro-Bolsonaro protesters, Carlson continued, “are angry because the new Lula government has eliminated their most basic civil liberties. Lula is working to turn Brazil into a Chinese-style dictatorship”—again, offering little evidence for the sweeping claims.

In addition, Carlson did not follow up when his guest, journalist Matthew Tyrmand, asserted that “there were many an agent provocateur” causing damage at the riots and made the stunning claim that “it looks like this is turning into a Reichstag fire,” in reference to the 1933 arson at the German parliament that Nazi leaders exploited to further their rule.

After rioters made their way into Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace, authorities made at least 400 arrests as of early Sunday evening. “There is no precedent in the history of the country [for] what they did today,” current president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wrote on Twitter in response. “For that they must be punished.”

Bolsonaro, an ally of Donald Trump, fretted to Carlson in an interview just last summer that if he were to lose reelection, the left would remain in power permanently.

After Bolsonaro refused to acknowledge his loss in October, he arrived in the U.S. earlier this month and has reportedly been living in the Florida home of an MMA fighter, perhaps to avoid corruption charges in Brazil.

Over the weekend, he was admitted to an Orlando-area hospital over “abdominal pain”—but posted Monday evening that he had since been discharged.