From well cleanups to Sovereignty Act, Danielle Smith's big ideas keep deflating

Social Sharing

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Email
• Reddit
• LinkedIn

Premier's key aides are also the guys behind her most controversial policies

Jason Markusoff · CBC News · Posted: Feb 26, 2023 

Amid criticism of a key plan to pay companies to clean up inactive oil and gas wells, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has stressed that it will face months of consultation, and her cabinet may decide to nix it. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

For some time there, Premier Danielle Smith had been a big believer in RStar, a program that would hand oil and gas companies financial incentives to clean up the inactive wells, which was already their legal requirement.

She wrote glowingly about it. She lobbied other politicians about it.

She campaigned on it. She hired Kris Kinnear, the program's chief advocate, as a "special project manager" in her premier's office, and another big booster, MLA Peter Guthrie, as her energy minister.

Then, almost as quickly as the government confidently released the outline of such an incentive scheme in early February, Smith hit the dimmer switch on her twinkly, twinkly little star initiative.

In a statement this week, the premier stressed that consultations on the $100-million program will take "several months to complete," and cabinet would decide "whether or how" (emphasis mine) to proceed with the idea.

This keeps the program in limbo until at least the fall, according to the Globe and Mail.

Starry or nebulous

The program was rejected by the United Conservative Party government when Jason Kenney was premier and Smith was a lobbyist — but it seemed inevitable this new premier would champion it into existence. 

Then came torrents of criticism from everyone from the Alberta NDP and environmentalists to the unlikely critics at Scotiabank, who similarly despaired trampling over the "polluter pays" principle of well remediation.

• Alberta landowners fear repeat of orphan well crisis as renewable energy booms

And now, with the election coming, it's banished to the isle of long-term consultations. Smith's team may have no desire to keep discussing the program Alberta Energy has rebranded the Liability Management Incentive Program.

(Is this how it's done now? If you want to take the steam off a too-hot government program, give it a more boring name? RStar becomes Liability Management Incentive Program, Just Transition becomes the Sustainable Jobs Plan? What happens when controversy washes over, let's say, Travel Alberta?)

Demonstrators in favour of Smith's Sovereignty Act in Edmonton last December. (Caleb Perreaux/CBC)

Similarly, the Smith government gave its Sovereignty Act the decidedly less spicy name Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act, in hopes of defusing criticism. And while it was the centrepiece of Smith's UCP leadership campaign, and her much-hyped Bill 1 last fall, the premier has in 2023 ceased to say much about it, or express interest in ever, ever using this legislative dynamite against the federal government. 

Smith has been up-front about her fondness for the political trial balloon, the idea of launching various ideas into the sky and not being too proud to watch others blow them onto a new course or deflate them entirely.

However, Smith's campaign for premier only articulated a limited number of specific major policy ideas.

Check the checklist

Fire the Alberta Health Services board — that was straightforward enough. Sovereignty Act — a bumpy ride that seems to have landed off the map. RStar — see above.

A $300 health spending account for each Alberta, launched this spring via app — more complex than she anticipated, so it won't come this spring.

During the campaign, these ideas weren't launched as mere balloons. They were rockets designed to launch Alberta into greater frontiers.

But then, when stress-tested in reality, and pulled through the machinery of government, nothing seemed quite as easy, certain or even workable.

• Alberta premier says no decision on using Sovereignty Act on 'anything' — including 'just transition'

This happens with so many politicians' promises — remember Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's firm promise that 2015 was the last time we'd vote in a first-past-the-post system? But the abandonment rate or deferral of so many of Smith's key ideas appears to be in a different tier.

Notionally, a more comprehensively formed idea on the campaign trail will more smoothly transition into government policy. Notionally, too, savvy political advisers will protect a candidate or premier from less battle-ready plans.

But what if the people who concoct these campaign ideas are her advisers? Kinnear, who'd spent years promoting RStar for a coalition of small oil and gas sector firms, was Smith's campaign coordinator.

Rob Anderson, her campaign chair and now the executive director of the premier's office (Smith's top aide, effectively), was also co-author of the strategy blueprint that invented the Sovereignty Act concept — which Anderson initially had argued would let Alberta wall itself off from the federal carbon tax, Supreme Court ruling be damned.

A decommissioned pumpjack near Cremona, Alta., in October 2016. Thousands of inactive wells dot the Alberta landscape. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

Political advisers are in effect gatekeepers, but almost nobody is good at locking out their own ideas. Having good idea screeners may be especially vital to a politician's success when that leader is someone renowned for enthusiastically embracing all manner of ideas and/or balloons.

Put a bug in Danielle Smith's ear, it might soon find its way to her mouth.

Unpredictability abounds in such situations, and unpredictability is one of the scariest elements in politics (abundant as it is recently in Alberta).

The best political advisers instill discipline or tell a premier or leader what they might not want to hear. And then there's the panels a politician creates to tell them exactly what they want to hear.

Putting a bug in her ear

David Yager, a former Wildrose Party president whose writing on energy constantly swipes at "environmental radicals" and international climate plans, was picked to lead Smith's new advisory panel on Alberta's energy future.

Smith chose former Reform Party leader Preston Manning to chair a panel to review the province's handling of public health emergencies — after he'd spearheaded efforts to launch a "citizen's inquiry" into Canada's COVID response, which primarily attracted those who disparaged it.

Along with former Supreme Court justice John Major, the premier appointed Dr. Martha Fulford as its lone infectious disease specialist. Fulford advocated for groups that denounced mask mandates and other restrictions, putting her right in alignment with Smith's longstanding position on public health emergencies.

• Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning to lead review of Alberta's COVID-19 response

Politicians hear what they want, listen to whom they want, decide who gets close to them as advisers and staff. Smith did, with a bit of Lincolnesque Team of Rivals flourish, also stock her premier's office with key aides to her leadership competitors Rajan Sawhney, Travis Toews and Rebecca Schulz. Somebody within government was able to tamp down the RStar ambitions of Kinnear, or Anderson's belief in what a Sovereignty Act could do.

We find out later this year what Yager or Anderson advise and how that meets reality. Or, through an election, maybe Albertans have some entirely different ideas about who should lead them.

Dow said it would recycle our shoes. We found them for sale in Indonesia

(Pexels/yasvanth kumar)

LONG READ 

Joe Brock, Yuddy Cahya Budiman and Joseph Campbell
Reuters
Published Feb. 25, 2023 

At a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile.

There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles.

These familiar shoes had traveled by land, then sea and crossed an international border to end up in this heap. They weren’t supposed to be here

Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the spongy material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore.

Dow, a major producer of chemicals used to make plastics and other synthetic materials, in the past has launched recycling efforts that have fallen short of their stated aims. Reuters wanted to follow a donated shoe from start to finish to see if it did, in fact, end up in new athletic surfaces in Singapore, or at least made it as far as a local recycling facility for shredding.

To that end, the news organization cut a shallow cavity into the interior sole of one of the blue Nikes, placed a Bluetooth tracker inside, then concealed the device by covering it with the insole. The tracker was synched to a smartphone app that showed where the shoe moved in real time.

Within weeks, the blue Nikes had left the prosperous city-state and were moving south by sea across the narrow Singapore Strait to Batam island, the app showed. Reuters decided to put trackers in an additional 10 pairs of donated shoes to see if wayward pair No. 1 had been a fluke.

It wasn’t.

None of the 11 pairs of footwear donated by Reuters were turned into exercise paths or kids' parks in Singapore.

Instead, nearly all the tagged shoes ended up in the hands of Yok Impex Pte Ltd, a Singaporean second-hand goods exporter, according to the trackers and that exporter’s logistics manager. The manager said his firm had been hired by a waste management company involved in the recycling program to retrieve shoes from the donation bins for delivery to that company’s local warehouse.

But that’s not what happened to the shoes donated by Reuters. Ten pairs moved first from the donation bins to the exporter’s facility, then on to neighboring Indonesia, in some cases traveling hundreds of miles to different corners of the vast archipelago, the location trackers showed.

Using the smartphone app to trace the movement of each shoe, Reuters journalists later traveled by air, land and sea to recover three pairs - including the blue Nikes - from crowded bazaars in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, and in Batam, which lies 12 miles (19.3 kilometers) south of Singapore. Four pairs ended up in locations in Indonesia that were too remote for Reuters to track down in person. In three other cases the trackers stopped sending a signal after they reached Indonesia.

The 11th pair remains in Singapore, but their fate is not what Dow and Sport Singapore had promised in media releases and a promotional video posted online. Those shoes - a pair of men’s white Reeboks - ended up in a public housing project about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from a community sports center where Reuters had dropped them into a donation bin on Sept. 8. Its tracker still blinks from that location, according to the app, an indication that they may have been taken from the donation bin. Reuters visited the housing project but wasn’t able to find the exact location of the shoes.

Presented with Reuters’ findings early this year, Dow said on Jan. 18 that it had opened an investigation along with Sport Singapore, a state agency, and other sponsors of the program: French-owned sporting goods retailer Decathlon S.A.; banking giant Standard Chartered plc; ALBA W&H Smart City Pte. Ltd (Alba-WH), a local waste management firm; and B.T. Sports Pte Ltd, a Singaporean firm responsible for shredding the donated footwear at a local facility.

On Feb. 22, Dow said in an emailed statement to Reuters that the investigation had concluded and, as a result, Yok Impex would be removed from the project, effective March 1. It did not explain why a used-clothing exporter had been involved in retrieving footwear from the donation bins, but said the program’s partners were now searching for another company to collect the shoes.

“The project partners do not condone any unauthorized removal or export of shoes collected through this program and remain committed to safeguarding the integrity of the collection and recycle process,” said the statement, which Dow issued on behalf of all the sponsors.

Reuters reporters visited the premises of Yok Impex on Feb. 23 to ask about whether it had been removed from the project. The trader’s accountant, June Peh, told Reuters the firm would be leaving the program when its one-year contract comes to an end, without giving a reason for its exit or an exact date.

In January, Decathlon sent Reuters a statement saying it had not authorized the export of any shoes from the program. Standard Chartered and B.T. Sports did not respond to requests for comment. Sport Singapore and Alba-WH referred questions to Dow. Alba-WH is a partnership between ALBA Group, a major German waste management company, and Wah & Hua Pte Ltd, a Singaporean waste disposal firm. The two companies did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Reuters tracked the 11 pairs of shoes over a six-month period. All the footwear was placed in different donation barrels around Singapore between July 14 and Sept. 9 of last year. While the sample was small, the fact that none of these shoes made it to a Singapore recycling facility underscores weaknesses in the system.

The findings come as environmental groups say chemical companies like Dow are making exaggerated or false claims about recycling in order to burnish their green credentials, and to undermine proposed regulations to rein in the soaring production of plastics used in single-use packaging and fast fashion.

The donated shoes that ended up in Indonesia have added to a flood of illegal second-hand clothing pouring into that developing country, according to a senior government official there, who said such cast-offs pose a public health risk, undercut its local textile industry and often pile more waste into its already bulging landfills.

Dow told Reuters the Singapore shoe project was making progress. A sports facility under construction in Jurong, a district in western Singapore, will use recycled shoe material in its surfaces, Dow said in its January statement. The company also pointed to Kallang Football Hub, a new soccer complex whose running track purportedly was the first in Singapore to be made from recycled shoe granules. Dow said these builds will use the 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) of recycled shoe material that have been produced through the Singapore recycling project so far.

Reuters was unable to verify if these sports surfaces had been built because both complexes are under construction and cordoned off from the public.

A pilot project in 2019 collected 21,000 pairs of shoes, Paul Fong, Dow’s Singapore manager, said in a promotional video posted on social media in July 2021 when the nationwide program was launched. Another pilot project in 2020 collected 75,000 pairs of shoes, Fong said in that video. Fong did not respond to emailed questions.

Dow and its partners declined to say how many of the shoes collected during the pilot phase had gone on to be recycled, nor would they provide those figures for the countrywide rollout. They did not explain what procedures were in place to ensure that donated shoes weren’t exported, diverted for resale or pilfered from bins.

HIDDEN TRACKERS

Dow manufactures silicone rubber and plastic used in soles and midsoles of sports shoes. The multinational and Sport Singapore said in their 2021 media releases that their “first of its kind” program would divert 170,000 pairs of shoes annually from the landfill. The program partners did not respond to questions about what would happen to these shoes or how many would be recycled to make sports surfaces.

Under the slogan “Others see an old shoe. We see the future,” they called on the public to donate used shoes with rubberized soles to help ease the burden on Singapore’s incinerators and its only landfill.

Dozens of wheelie bins for donations were placed across the city-state of 5.6 million people. These containers turned up in parks, community centers, schools and outlets of retail sponsor Decathlon. Singapore residents began depositing thousands of used sneakers, flip-flops and school shoes. In the promotional video, members of the public, including school children, talked enthusiastically about donating.

“I contributed 15 pairs of shoes,” student Zhang Youjia said in the video, which was produced by Dow.

The ten pairs donated by Reuters that were exported moved initially from the recycling drop-off bins to the warehouse of Yok Impex, situated in west Singapore close to the island’s biggest dockyard.

From there, the shoes traveled by sea to Batam, an entry point for goods entering Indonesia, which has a population of more than 270 million people, the fourth-largest in the world.

Guided by the smartphone app, Reuters in December followed two of the trackers to the same location in Batam: Pertokoan Cipta Prima, a sprawling flea market catering to low-income shoppers. There, dozens of vendors working out of rows of crumbling concrete shops patched with tarpaulin and metal sheets were selling everything from T-shirts and refrigerators to plastic toys.

The news agency spotted half a dozen stores selling used shoes, all clustered in the same area. At three of them, Reuters saw footwear stuffed into sacks emblazoned with the words “Yok Impex,” along with the Singapore company’s dolphin logo.

The first pair to be tracked down were the blue Nike running shoes. The app led to a gloomy, cluttered shoe store. But the sneakers weren’t on display. Using a function on the app to make the tracker start beeping, a reporter followed the sound to the back of the shop, finally locating those Nikes at the bottom of a mound of loose footwear. It had been five months since Reuters had deposited them into a donation barrel at a gleaming Decathlon store in Singapore. Reuters bought them back for 180,000 rupiah (US$12).

The second tracker - tucked into a pair of women’s black Nikes - was located at a nearby shop. Reuters had dropped those shoes into a Dow recycling bin at a Singapore community center in September, three months earlier. They cost 120,000 rupiah (US$8) to repurchase.

Other shoes went on a far longer voyage.

INCREDIBLE JOURNEY

A pair of pink and orange New Balance sneakers - donated by Reuters in Singapore on Sept. 7 - landed in the same Batam market a week later, the tracking app showed. By early October, they had moved to a nearby island called Bintan, before making a 400-mile journey to Medan, a city of 2.4 million people in northern Sumatra. On Oct. 10, the shoes traveled another 800 miles to Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, according to the app.

Indonesia's second-hand clothing industry is made up of a complex network of traders, and they often exchange goods across different regions, two garment merchants told Reuters.

Three weeks later, on Nov. 1, two Reuters reporters searched a frenzied mall in Jakarta looking for the shoes, eventually discovering them in a cramped shop on the third floor. The sneakers, freshly cleaned and fitted with a new pair of laces, had crisscrossed Indonesia on a marathon eight-week journey. They cost Reuters 300,000 rupiah (US$20) to buy back.

To learn more about Yok Impex’s role in the movement of these shoes, Reuters on Jan. 6, 2023, paid an unannounced visit to that used-clothing exporter, and was invited onto the premises. There reporters spotted wheelie bins from Dow’s shoe program stacked up in a backyard. Inside, women sorted through tables piled high with old shoes, carefully placing them into piles and then transferring them into sacks like the ones seen at the Batam flea market.

Yok Impex’s logistics manager, Tony Tan, told Reuters that waste handler Alba-WH was paying his company to collect the shoes from the donation bins around Singapore and then deliver the shoes back to Alba-WH.

Tan said Yok Impex did not export shoes it collected for the program. When informed that Reuters had found shoes it had donated being resold in Batam by merchants who had Yok Impex sacks in their shops, Tan said it was possible that shoes from the program got placed in error with other footwear it exports to Indonesia.

“Sometimes the workers mix it up. I'm not sure because we all collect from some other suppliers,” Tan said. “It's a mistake. I think, some mistake.” Tan did not elaborate.

BANNED TRADE

In 2015, Indonesia’s Ministry of Trade introduced the Prohibition of the Import of Used Clothing regulation. The measure banned the import of used clothes and footwear over concerns about hygiene and the potential of these items to spread disease, as well as the need to protect the local textile industry.

Veri Anggrijono, Director General of Consumer Protection and Trade Control at the trade ministry, told Reuters that the illegal second-hand clothing import market in Indonesia is worth millions of dollars a year.

"It's a well-organized activity because when we raid them in one place, then it will go quiet, then continue again,” Anggrijono told Reuters in an interview at his office in Jakarta. He said the importer is the party liable under the law, not the exporter or market seller.

Anggrijono said importers can be charged under trade and consumer protection laws, which carry penalties that can include imprisonment and fines. But he said so far the only action the trade ministry has taken is to revoke import licenses, as well as seizing and destroying used clothing.

A torrent of cheap, unregulated second-hand clothing flowing into Indonesia also adds to the country’s mounting garbage problem, said Dharmesh Shah, a policy advisor to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, a nonprofit working on waste pollution. He said much of that merchandise is in such poor condition that vendors can’t resell it.

“They sort through it and a very small percentage is actually reusable,” Shah told Reuters. “It just gets burned in open dumps or goes into rivers or in landfills.”

Two market vendors in Batam, who asked not to be named, told Reuters they buy sacks of shoes of differing grades from used-clothing traders such as Yok Impex, but don’t know exactly what they’re getting until they open them up. They said it’s not uncommon to throw out half the shoes they receive because the footwear is not good enough to sell.

RECYCLING FLOPS

This is not the first novel recycling scheme launched by Dow that hasn’t lived up to its billing.

In 2021, a Reuters investigation found that a program in Idaho that the company said was using breakthrough technology to turn plastic waste into clean fuel was actually burning plastic trash to fuel a cement plant.

At the time, a Dow spokesperson said the Boise program was helping to “transform waste into valuable products.”

The same year, Reuters found that a Dow-backed project in India, which was supposed to collect plastic trash from the Ganges river and use high-tech machinery to transform the waste into clean fuel, had been shut down following regular equipment malfunctions.

The India project was run by The Alliance To End Plastic Waste (AEPW), a nonprofit group set up by big oil and chemical companies. At the time, a spokesperson for the AEPW confirmed that the project had ended, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Selling the promise of new recycling technologies, whether to turn shoes into playgrounds or plastic bags into clean fuel, is an attempt to lull the public into a false sense of security about the environmental impact of increased consumerism, environmental groups like Greenpeace and Break Free From Plastic say.

Dow declined further comment on those claims or its track record on recycling.

Jan Dell, founder of The Last Beach Cleanup, a U.S. nonprofit focused on reducing plastic pollution, said large petrochemical companies should have to report on the results of their sustainability projects with the same transparency as the profit-making parts of the business.

“Dow promised to pick up these shoes and grind them into materials and make them into playgrounds, and instead they're being found all over another country. They literally cannot be believed,” said Dell, after being given details of Reuters’ findings.

Promises about new recycling technologies also make good business sense for petrochemical companies, according to Dell, who said throw-away consumer culture is good for their profits. People are more likely to purchase more of a product when they are told it can be recycled into something useful, according to a 2013 study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

In its Jan. 18 statement, Dow said the shoe recycling partners are “energized by the common vision of sport championing a greener and more sustainable Singapore.” Dow did not comment on the Journal of Consumer Psychology study.

In July of last year, Dow launched a similar shoe recycling program in Malaysia, which has a population of 33 million people and neighbors Singapore to the north. In promoting that project, Dow’s Fong pointed to the Singapore shoe program as the blueprint for success. For its Malaysian initiative, Dow partnered with a local nonprofit and a textile firm. Neither responded to requests for comment.

Back in Singapore, Dow’s efforts are already winning accolades.

On the evening of Oct. 6, Fong and other partners in the Singapore shoe recycling program stepped onto the stage of an elegant ballroom at the Equarius Hotel beach resort on Sentosa Island, just off the mainland. There they were presented with the “Most Sustainable Collaboration” award at a glitzy event hosted by the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce, the city-state’s oldest business association.

Rambler pauses copper-gold mine in Newfoundland amid financial restructuring talks

Staff Writer | February 19, 2023 | 

A drill rig underground at the Ming copper-gold mine in Newfoundland.

 Credit: Rambler Metals and Mining

Rambler Metals (AIM: RMM) has decided to pause operations at its 100% owned Ming mine located on the Baie Verte Peninsula of Newfoundland and Labrador, pending the delivery of key supplies to the mine site. It is expected that the mine will recommence on or before February 24.


This decision comes at a time when the London-listed copper-gold producer is continuing discussions around its financial restructuring. Rambler had previously defaulted on its loan agreement with Newgen Resources Lending, for which it is in the process of finding a solution, including refinancing or restructuring of the company.

Earlier this month, the company also defaulted on its gold purchase and sale agreement with Elemental Altus Royalties (TSXV: ELE), under which it is required to make minimum gold deliveries of 1,200 ounces in each of the first three years. As no sale and delivery of gold has occurred in the last two financial quarters, the default condition has been triggered.

Rambler was formed in 2005 with the purpose of bringing the former Ming mine in Newfoundland and Labrador back into production. The company acquired the consolidated Ming property that year and subsequently proceeded to diamond drilling, mine dewatering, permitting, and finally, construction. Commercial production was declared at Ming in 2012.

The mine contains 10.6 million tonnes of measured and indicated resources at a grade of 1.77% copper, 0.61 g/t gold, 3.88 g/t silver and 0.15% zinc. Inferred resources stand at 1.8 million tonnes grading at 1.91% copper, 1.83 g/t gold, 8.82 g/t silver and 0.66% zinc.

In addition to Ming, Rambler also owns 100% interest in the former-producing Little Deer complex located within the Newfoundland Appalachians

GEMOLOGY

G-7 and EU looking at ways to track and trace Russian diamonds

Bloomberg News | February 19, 2023 | 

Russian diamonds. (Image by Ptukhina Natasha, Wikimedia Commons.)

Group of Seven nations and the European Union are discussing ways to track Russian diamonds across borders, a move that could pave the way for restrictions on their trade in future, according to people familiar with the matter.


Previous EU attempts to sanction Russian gems have run into resistance from importer nations such as Belgium who argue that the effort would be futile because transactions will simply shift elsewhere without a mechanism to trace precious stones.

A diamond’s origin is clear at the start of the supply chain when it is issued a certificate under the Kimberley Process, which was designed to end the sale of so-called blood diamonds that financed wars. But after that they can become difficult to track.

Cut and polished stones are often intermingled at trading houses and the original certificate will be replaced with “mixed origin” documentation, making it near-impossible to keep track of where Russian diamonds are eventually sold.

The US has sanctioned the Russian mining giant, Alrosa PJSC, which accounts for about a third of the $80 billion global trade in rough diamonds. But the measures have had limited impact as much of the trade flows through other markets such as India.

The people with knowledge of the G-7 and EU discussions said a solution is not imminent, because tracing polished diamonds in a global market is extremely complicated. Still, two of the people said the G-7 could issue a statement on the matter as early as next week as part of the effort to maintain pressure on Russia as its war in Ukraine approaches the one-year mark.

(By Alberto Nardelli, Jennifer Jacobs and Jorge Valero, with assistance from Alex Wickham)

CUT THEIR SUBSIDIES

Governments spent record $1 trillion last year subsidizing fossil fuels

CHARGE THEM A WINDFALL TAX

Bloomberg News | February 19, 2023 | 

Even as global governments raise their ambitions to cut fossil fuels in the future, they spent a record $1 trillion last year subsidizing energy sources that are the main driver of climate change.


That’s the finding from the International Energy Agency, which estimates that the combined subsidies for oil, natural gas, electricity and coal hit an all-time high in 2022 as soaring energy prices crippled economies. It underlines the challenge for policy makers trying to grapple with the immediate threat of runaway fuel inflation, while still trying to push a shift to low-carbon sources.

The spending by governments in 2022 was more than double total global investment in renewable energy sources, according to figures from BloombergNEF. The splash of state cash on energy last year followed climate talks in November 2021 when world leaders pledged to end such subsidies.

“The Glasgow Climate Pact emphasized that phasing out fossil fuel subsidies is a fundamental step toward a successful clean energy transition,” the IEA said in its report. “However, today’s global energy crisis has also underscored some of the political challenges of doing so.”

The subsidies helped shield consumers from soaring energy prices as many economies were still recovering from the impact of the pandemic. As Russia cut supplies of natural gas following its invasion of Ukraine last year, the European Union spent $349 billion to reduce consumer energy bills.

(By William Mathis)

Deep-sea mining would impact ecosystems beyond those in targeted areas – report

Staff Writer | February 20, 2023 

Mineral-laden water emerging from a hydrothermal vent on the Niua underwater volcano in the Lau Basin, southwest Pacific Ocean. (Image courtesy of the Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center, provided by the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology).

An international team of researchers has published a study showing that the destruction of key hydrothermal vents by deep-sea mining could have knock-on impacts on vent fields hundreds of kilometres away.


According to the paper, which was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, hydrothermal vents are extreme deep-sea environments that exist in geologically active areas on the seafloor. These vents, which are like underwater geysers, spew hot water filled with minerals out from cracks in the seabed. And despite the intense heat and pressure, these vent systems teem with strange and unique life. The creatures around these vents, such as crabs, shrimps and worms, all rely on bacteria, which use chemical energy from the vent to make biomass.

The chemical-rich waters that sustain life also make these environments an attractive target for deep-sea mining. When the chemicals that come out of the earth’s crust meet the cold seawater, they precipitate and create chimney-like deposits on the seabed, called seafloor massive sulphides.

“These chimneys contain a high quality and quantity of gold, silver, copper and other rare earth minerals that we need to feed our technology-hungry society,” Otis Brunner, first author of the study, said in a media statement.

Brunner pointed out that, despite the abundance of minerals and metals in such deposits, resource extraction destroys the creatures living there, and severely impacts those on nearby chimneys within the same hydrothermal vent site.

“Each hydrothermal vent often hosts some endemic species, meaning they only live there. So if you remove or severely damage their ecosystem, not only have you lost those animals, but you’ve lost that species entirely,” he said.

And now, Brunner’s research shows that the damage to hydrothermal vent ecosystems is also unlikely to be limited to just one single vent site, but could impact other vent sites hundreds of kilometres away.

Although hydrothermal vents seem isolated from each other, many hydrothermal vent species can actually disperse from one vent to another while in the larval stage, assisted by ocean currents. If they reach another vent and the conditions at the new vent are similar, then the creatures can settle and mature into adulthood.

This means that if a species population is wiped out at one hydrothermal vent, then the population of the same species at another hydrothermal vent, where the larval used to disperse to, will also be threatened.

In his study, Brunner looked at vent sites within three sub-regions of the Northwest Pacific—the Okinawa Trough, the Izu-Bonin Arc and the Mariana Trough. He inferred how connected each vent site was to the others by comparing how many species the vent sites had in common.

By creating networks from the species data, the researcher and his colleagues identified which vent sites act as essential hubs within each sub-region.

Two vent sites, Sakai and North Knoll Iheya Ridge, were found to be the most important for maintaining connectivity in the Okinawa Trough sub-region and should be prioritized for conservation.

“Unfortunately, the Sakai and North Knoll Iheya vent sites are situated in the central region of the Okinawa Trough, an area of particular interest for mining,” Brunner said. “But any disturbance to these two sites would have particularly strong impacts on all the species at hydrothermal events across Japan.”

For the Izu-Bonin Arc and Mariana Trench, Nikko volcano and Alice Springs were the most important hub, respectively. There is no current interest in deep-sea mining at these sites.

The study also identified pathways of connectivity linking both the Okinawa Trough and the Mariana Trench to the Izu-Bonin Arc. However, these linkages only occurred across a few hydrothermal vents, including the Daisan-Kume Knoll in the Okinawa Trough, situated within an area of mining interest. Based on these findings, the scientists concluded that mining activity here could cause a collapse in the network across the Northwest Pacific region.

Finland tightens mining law as demand for minerals surges

Bloomberg News | February 20, 2023 

Stock image.

Finland’s parliament passed an overhaul of its mining law to better protect the environment and safeguard national production of minerals amid surging demand.


The new bill, approved on Monday, gives greater control to local residents in permissioning of new mining areas, aims to increase sustainability in the industry and evens the playing field for companies. Stricter regulation and higher fees are expected to help weed out unreliable operators and benefit those who comply with the rules, the government has estimated.

Finland is emerging as a key mining and processing hub for battery metals with more than €6 billion ($6.4 billion) in investments already planned, according to a new industry lobby group formed in January. Investors include BASF SE and Trafigura Group, which source nickel and cobalt chemicals from the Nordic country. In 2021, the government launched a national battery strategy, aiming to attract new projects in raw materials.

The need to reform the law arose as Finland has to ensure it can produce minerals needed when societies electrify, as well as to improve the level of environmental protections, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, head of the commerce committee at the legislature, said in a debate in parliament. The mining industry is also vital for security of supply of raw materials, she added.

Last week, the state-owned Finnish Minerals Group said its Sokli mine in northern Finland could produce nearly 10% of rare earth elements needed in Europe annually to make permanent magnets, which are used in electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels, according to preliminary findings.

(By Leo Laikola)

India opposes Vedanta’s $3bn zinc assets sale, rekindling debt worries

Reuters | February 20, 2023 |

Skorpion zinc operations in Namibia. Credit Vedanta Zinc International

The Indian government has opposed Hindustan Zinc Ltd’s $2.98 billion acquisition of assets from the flagship firm of Vedanta Resources, dealing a blow to billionaire Anil Agarwal’s plans to trim down the mining giant’s $7.7 billion net debt.


The government, which owns a nearly 30% stake in Hindustan Zinc, is against the miner buying some Africa-based zinc assets from Vedanta Ltd – its top shareholder with a near-65% stake – as it was a “related party transaction”.

“We always believe in and operate in perfect manners of corporate governance, so (there is) no deviation on that count,” Hindustan Zinc chief executive Arun Misra told CNBC-TV18. The company and Vedanta Ltd did not respond to Reuters‘ request for comment.

The development comes a week after Vedanta Resources said it had slashed net debt by $2 billion in the last 11 months, with plans to cut it further, seeking to allay concerns after S&P Global Ratings raised doubts about the group’s financial health.

S&P Global had said Vedanta Resources’ ability to meet its financial obligations beyond September would depend on a planned $2 billion fundraising as well as the proposed sale of THL Zinc Ltd, a Vedanta Ltd unit that holds zinc assets in Africa.

That deal, announced on Jan. 19, is now in doubt after the government-nominated directors on Hindustan Zinc’s board opposed the acquisition and said in a letter dated Feb. 17 that they would oppose further resolutions.

“Flexibility comes down meaningfully if the deal doesn’t go through, and the pressure on Vedanta Resources will rise because of that,” said Anupam Gupta, an analyst at brokerage IIFL.

The developments follow a turbulent month at Gautam Adani’s eponymous conglomerate, which has seen its group companies’ shares crater after a short-seller’s report on their improper use of offshore tax havens, stock manipulation and high debt levels – allegations the Adani Group has rejected.
Cash wipeout

The Ministry of Mines, in its letter, urged Hindustan Zinc to “explore other cashless methods” to acquire the assets. The government is looking to sell its entire stake in Hindustan Zinc as part of its efforts to replenish state coffers.

“At current valuations, this deal would wipe out the entire cash on the books at Hindustan Zinc, which is why the government is opposing it,” said Heet Vora, an analyst at brokerage JM Financial.

Hindustan Zinc’s consolidated gross investments and cash and cash equivalents were 164.82 billion rupees (about $2 billion) as of Dec. 31.

The deal, analysts have said, is unfavourable to Hindustan Zinc’s minority shareholders, who have to sign off any board decision on related party deals in a meeting that Hindustan Zinc has to call within three months of announcing the deal.

The company had not yet called for a shareholder meeting but its board would consider the government’s position, it said in an exchange filing on Monday.

While miner Vedanta Ltd has been hit by a fall in commodity prices, Vedanta Resources is betting growth will be bolstered by its associate firms’ investment in areas like semiconductors, display glass, renewables, optical fibre, and transmission.

Hindustan Zinc’s shares have lost nearly 14.5% since the deal was announced a month ago, while Vedanta Ltd’d shares have lost about 5%. Both stocks were little changed on the day.

($1 = 82.7080 Indian rupees)

(By Meenakshi Maidas, Chris Thomas and Bharath Rajeswaran; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil, Devika Syamnath and Savio D’Souza)

Ecobat to build new battery recycling facility in Arizona

Staff Writer | February 20, 2023 | 

Credit: Ecobat Solutions

Ecobat, the global leader in battery recycling, is building its third lithium-ion battery recycling facility and its first in North America.


The new facility, located in Casa Grande, Arizona, will initially produce 10,000 estimated tonnes of recycled material per year, with plans to expand capacity to satisfy the increasing need to recycle lithium-ion batteries.

“We are thrilled to grow our global lithium-ion battery recycling footprint with a new facility in Casa Grande, Arizona,” CEO Marcus Randolph said in a media release.

“This facility, like our lithium-ion battery recycling facilities in Germany and the United Kingdom, represents a significant milestone in Ecobat’s strategy to grow our lithium-ion battery recycling business to a scale, similar to our world-leading lead battery recycling business,” he added.

Ecobat Casa Grande will repurpose lithium-ion batteries reaching end-of-life through diagnostics, sorting, shredding and material separation to produce a concentrated black mass containing the valuable materials in lithium-ion batteries.

It will be located approximately 1.6 km from the existing Ecobat Resources Arizona facility, which has been using state-of-the-art technology and a skilled workforce for 15 years to manufacture anodes. Start-up is expected in the third quarter of this year.

Earlier this month, Ecobat completed the sale of its Stolberg multi-metals processing plant in Germany to global commodities trader Trafigura.

China’s Baowu seeks deeper ties with Rio Tinto on iron ore trade

Bloomberg News | February 20, 2023


China Baowu Steel Group Corp., the world’s biggest steelmaker, will seek closer ties with iron ore miner Rio Tinto as China’s demand for the raw material rebounds.


Baowu is looking to benefit from efforts to repair trade relations between China and Australia, Chairman Chen Derong said in a Friday meeting with Rio officials, according to a press release. Beijing resumed some shipments from Australia earlier this month, in efforts to end more than two years of diplomatic spats.

The Chinese company is also keen to engage more in upstream production to help weather global market turmoil, said Chen. “We can’t rely on the old way to guarantee such an enormous amount of supply to China, we need to upgrade.”

Related: Rio Tinto, Baowu take next step towards developing Guinea joint venture

Baowu set up a joint venture with Rio Tinto last year to develop the $2 billion Western Range project in Western Australia. The Chinese firm agreed to buy up to 126.5 million tons of iron ore over 13 years at market prices via the joint venture.

Baowu leads China’s new giant iron ore trading consortium, the China Mineral Resources Group, which will make purchases on behalf of about 20 of the largest Chinese steelmakers.

Baowu absorbed Sinosteel last year and a few other smaller steelmakers in an industry-wide integration to give China more bargaining power in the international market and to help meet targets to lower carbon emissions.