Drying Up of Rivers Threatens Survival of Russian State, Mishina Says

Drying Up of Rivers Threatens Survival of Russian State, Mishina Says

Monday, June 5, 2023

 Staunton, June 3 – The dying of Russia’s smaller rivers and falling water levels in its largest ones not only undermines the health of the population and the ability of the economy to function but may threaten the survival of the Russian state itself given its dependence on water routes, Irina Mishina says.

            A decade ago, Russians talked about saving Russia’s rivers; but now they have joined the international chorus of experts who say falling water levels are irreversible and may lead to the demise of the country just as it has elsewhere, the Novyye izvestiya writer says (newizv.ru/news/2023-06-03/tretya-mirovaya-voyna-budet-za-presnuyu-vodu-uchenye-predskazali-gryaduschuyu-katastrofu-409278).

            Many of Russia’s smaller rivers, 50 in Voronezh Oblast alone, and some of its largest ones have seen water levels fall. And the problem is now not restricted to the summer months but has become yeararound, even on the Volga, the critical north-south water route in the central and western parts of the country.

            Shipping is now restricted or even blocked, the health of the people along the rivers is deteriorating, and the country’s economy is suffering as a result, Moscow specialists report, according to Mishina. Unfortunately, neither the population nor the government seems to recognize the severity of the likely consequences.

            Unless that changes, Mishina writes, the view of many international specialists that the next world war will be caused by water shortages may be proved true, with Russia, despite its historical status as the country with the most fresh water, becoming the trigger for such a universal development.

 

Aviation sector to more than double profits in 2023: IATA

Aviation sector's income to exceed $800B level this year, for 1st time since 2019, International Air Transport Association expects

Gokhan Ergocun |05.06.2023 - 

ISTANBUL

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Monday announced its forecast that the aviation sector's net profits will reach $9.8 billion in 2023, more than twice last year's figure of $4.7 billion.

In 2023, some 4.35 billion people are expected to travel by air, which is close to 2019 figures, the IATA said during its annual meeting in Istanbul.

This year, the air cargo volume is also expected to reach 57.8 million tons, while in 2019, the amount of air cargo was 61.5 million tons.

The overall income of the sector is forecasted to reach $803 billion, an annual rise of 9.7%, exceeding the $800-billion level for the first time since 2019.

The sector's expenditures will reach $781 billion this year, the association also predicted.

Willie Walsh, the director general of the association, said the aviation sector's costs eased partially, thanks to fuel prices, although still high but moderate.

The sector's return to net profitability is seen as a great success, even with a 1.2% net profit margin, he noted.

He added that operating with profitability in a period of economic uncertainty seems to be an important success, as the net profit increase came after the biggest loss of $183.3 billion in aviation history in the period 2020-2022.

The IATA also said the current inflation, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, supply chain issues, and regulator costs are risks for the sector in the upcoming period.

International air fares likely to keep rising, says aviation group

Passengers can expect to pay more as carriers turn to ‘greener’ fuel to meet emissions targets, warns Iata

Gwyn Topham 

Transport correspondent
THE GUARDIAN

Tue 6 Jun 2023 

International air fares are likely to keep climbing from their current highs over the next 10-15 years, with the cost of sustainable fuels expected to drive up ticket prices, according to the global airlines body Iata.

Extraordinary demand for travel since the Covid pandemic has led to steep fare rises on many routes, and Iata said consumers could expect to pay more as airlines increase the usage of scarce “greener” jet fuels in response to government mandates to cut aviation’s carbon emissions.


Willie Walsh, the director general of Iata and former chief executive of British Airways, said: “We’re going to require more and more SAF [sustainable aviation fuel], and that means more and more expense.”

While Walsh said that some economists believed sustainable fuels could eventually become cheaper than kerosene, he added: “I see certainty in the next 10-15 years that we’re looking at a significant increase in fuel costs. Unless there’s some compensating reduction in other costs – and I don’t see that – then people have to expect that there will be an increase in in average fares as we go forward.”

He added: “It will mean higher fares, because sustainable aviation fuel is more expensive than your traditional jet kerosene. And as we transition to net zero, it is going to cost some money.”

Airline costs have been driven up significantly as oil prices soared after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as higher labour costs. Walsh also pointed to constrained capacity due to a lack of spare parts, which have left some airlines unable to operate their full fleets.

Despite the much higher fares passengers are having to pay on many routes this summer, Iata said its analysis showed fares worldwide were still around 2019 levels in real terms at the start of 2023, having lagged behind inflation over the course of the pandemic.

Last year, Ryanair said the era of ultra-cheap flying was over. The coming impact of SAFs was suggested in a recent update of the UK’s sustainable aviation roadmap to net zero by 2050, which relies largely on offsetting and SAFs and replacing fleets with more fuel-efficient aircraft to slash net emissions.

It projected that fewer people would fly in coming decades as a result of being priced out – a “demand reduction impact” that would account for about 14% of the required cuts to hit the target.

However, airlines are reporting rising custom despite higher prices.

The president of Emirates airline, Sir Tim Clark, said the “eye-opening” demand for air travel, even in premium cabins at high fares, defied economic wisdom. He added: “In winter last year, for every seat we sold another five people wanted it … We could have put it out to auction if we’d wanted to.skip past 

“People who used to fly at the old fare levels are piling in at the new fare levels. It just doesn’t seem to make sense in the way we used to understand it. All I know is that we’re moving – so we’ll take it.”

Clark, whose airline was a notable opponent of the capacity cuts imposed at London Heathrow last summer, warned the British government it needed to do more to support international aviation.

Clark said: “The UK needs all the help it can get. If it’s going to work with Brexit, and you’ve said yah-boo Europe, it’s not where we need to be, we need to be in China, India, Australia, America, then you’ve got to move people and goods to those places. So [airline capacity] is vital. If that is lost on the government of the UK, they will pay the price.”

First steps agreed on plastics treaty after breakthrough at Paris talks

Delegates from 180 nations set out pathway to binding global agreement on tackling plastic pollution as soon as 2025

Emma Bryce

Tue 6 Jun 2023 

Nation-state representatives have taken the first concrete step toward a legally binding treaty to regulate plastic, described as the most important green deal since the 2015 international climate agreement.

The banging of a recycled-plastic gavel, on Friday night at Unesco headquarters in Paris, signalled the end of a fraught process, marked by accusations of exclusion and industrial lobbying. Talks threatened to fall apart, but in the end delegates were able to broadly agree on key elements that the treaty should contain, laying the groundwork for the future agreement.


Attended by delegates from 180 nations and dozens of stakeholders including civil society groups, waste pickers and a coalition of scientists, the talks were the second of five meetings to thrash out the wording of the new treaty, which could come into force in 2025.

The world produces almost 400m tonnes of plastic every year; an estimated 14m tonnes escape into the ocean annually. There is a growing recognition that this vast international problem requires a harmonised global response.

While plastic has historically been viewed as an environmental waste problem, critics now emphasise the array of harms this fossil-fuel-derived and chemical-rich product causes to the environment and human health across its entire lifecycle. The production of plastic has been shown to worsen air pollution, while its material waste intensifies flooding and starves wildlife. Plastic particles are now found in the air, in drinking water and in human blood.

Small but deadly … microplastic particles washed up on a beach.
Photograph: Alistair Berg/Getty Images

Stakeholders used the talks to call for plans to manage microplastic pollution, regulate the thousands of hazardous chemicals baked into plastics, create a financial mechanism to support the transition, and protect the rights of people disproportionately exposed to plastic chemicals and waste, such as those in “Cancer Alley”, a region in the US state of Louisiana with a high concentration of petrochemical plants along the Mississippi.

“We hear a lot about microplastics. But we get the impacts of plastic even smaller, as particulate matter,” says Jo Banner, co-founder of the nonprofit Descendants Project, which campaigns to support affected communities in Louisiana.

Many countries called for action to go beyond cutting plastic pollution, to curb production as well. Pacific Islands delegates led those calls, due to the unique challenge plastic brings to states such as the Marshall Islands. These are too small to adequately manage and dispose of plastic waste, leaving mountainous waste dumps that have become the islands’ tallest peaks.

The United Nations Environment Programme president, Espen Barth Eide, wields a recycled-plastic gavel at the Paris talks. Photograph: UNEP

“When things are moved across to the islands, who are the least suited to implement and enforce, the burden should not be placed on them,” said Sefanaia Nawadra, director general of the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme, an intergovernmental organisation representing the Pacific states. “That’s why we’re pushing for control on the upstream side.”

The talks began with fierce disagreements about procedure, which many civil society groups and country delegates, including prominent voices from Mexico, claimed was a stalling tactic by oil- and plastic-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia and Brazil, together with fossil fuel and petrochemical lobbyists.

However, a compromise postponed these procedural discussions to a later date, and observers to the closed-door negotiations said widespread agreement emerged on the potential core features of a future treaty. A majority of countries agreed that it should be global and legally binding, rather than voluntary.

Meanwhile, the WWF said that 94 of the 180 nations in Paris had agreed that some especially harmful polymers, chemicals and plastic products – which might include intentionally added microplastics and PFAs (“forever chemicals”) – should be banned or phased out

“We clearly have plastic-producer countries and industries very determined to throw wrenches in the works, and at the same time a growing ambition to address this problem at the root,” said Sirine Rached of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

The plastics treaty promises to make a ‘positive difference’. 

Photograph: Mario De Moya/Alamy

The draft document will be written in the coming months as a springboard for granular discussions of the final treaty text. “This mandate was hard fought for, but at least provides a clear direction of travel towards starting to draft the plastics treaty in earnest,” said Christina Dixon, ocean campaign leader at the Environmental Investigation Agency.

Civil society and rights groups raised concerns about the lobbying influence of industry groups, including the American Chemistry Council and Plastics Europe. The French investigation newspaper Mediapart counted 190 industry representatives at the Paris talks, while many other organisations, including groups of Indigenous leaders and waste pickers, were told at short notice by the United Nations Environment Programme that there would be limited space at the event.

Many are also concerned about the promotion of ideas such as chemical recycling. This is often used to transform plastics into fuel in a process that produces significant carbon emissions.


Plastic waste puts millions of world’s poorest at higher risk from floods

The treaty has an unusually ambitious timescale for globally binding agreements, with the next round of talks in Kenya scheduled for this year, and the final agreement planned for late 2024.

“It’s clear that most governments in the world want this and are ready to put in place global regulations on plastics,” said Eirik Lindebjerg, a policy manager at WWF. “It’s a massive opportunity to create an environmental agreement that will really make a positive difference to people’s lives.”

States haven’t stopped spying on their citizens, post-Snowden – they’ve just got sneakier

The historic leaks prompted legislation: yet governments are finding new ways to monitor us. The UK’s online safety bill is one of them

Heather Brooke
Tue 6 Jun 2023 

It’s been 10 years since Edward Snowden holed up in a Hong Kong hotel room and exposed Britain and America’s mass surveillance operations to a group of journalists. His bombshell revelations revealed how the US and UK governments were spying on their citizens, intercepting, processing and storing their data, and sharing this information. Since then, although neither state has lost its appetite for hoovering up huge amounts of personal data, new transparency and oversight constraints, together with the growth of encrypted technology, have tilted the balance towards privacy.

Snowden’s revelations sparked outrage and anger. Bulk interception was being done without a democratic mandate and with few real safeguards. When the scope of this surveillance came to light, officials claimed most of the information was not “read” and therefore its collection did not violate privacy. This was disingenuous; the data could reveal an intimate picture of someone’s life – a fact that was upheld in later legal challenges, which proved the surveillance violated privacy and human rights law.

After the leaks, three reviews took place in the UK. The first was done by parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC). It did little to interrogate what the spies were actually up to, even while acknowledging that new legislation was required. A review by David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, was more circumspect and suggested a series of improvements. Finally, the Home Office convened a panel (of which I was a part, alongside an ex minister, former security chiefs and Martha Lane Fox) that produced a report and a series of recommendations.

These three reports eventually led to the 2016 passage of the Investigatory Powers Act, which clarified what types of state surveillance were allowed and how these needed to be authorised. The act allowed bulk interception – much to the dismay of many privacy campaigners – but changed the process governing how this interception was authorised. This meant that while a secretary of state could sign off a warrant justifying the most intrusive powers, that warrant must also be approved by an independent judicial commissioner.

The legacy of Snowden’s leaks is mixed. Bulk interception and surveillance hasn’t stopped, despite there now being greater transparency and more oversight. “There are a few more safeguards, but mostly it continues,” Caroline Wilson Palow, the legal director at Privacy International (PI), told me. The greatest legacy of Snowden’s leaks are the legal challenges they have made possible. Until these revelations, it was nearly impossible to bring a legal case challenging state surveillance. There have now been several successful lawsuits.

Beginning in 2013, civil rights organisations, including PI, Liberty and Big Brother Watch, began challenging bulk interception and surveillance in the European court of human rights and English courts. The human rights court rulings set a precedent across Europe that such spying requires prior independent or judicial authorisation that must be meaningful, rigorous and check for proper “end-to-end safeguards”. Earlier this year, MI5 was found to have acted unlawfully by the investigatory powers tribunal in retaining huge amounts of personal data after a case was brought by PI and Liberty. None of these cases would have been possible if Snowden’s information hadn’t come to light, and hopefully they put pressure on the intelligence agencies to pay attention to the legal safeguards.

As technology evolves, so too does surveillance. States have found new ways to spy on citizens, particularly using the mobile phones we all carry around. Intrusive spyware such as Pegasus, sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, can turn a person’s phone into a 24-hour surveillance machine. A 2021 investigation by the Guardian and other media organisations showed how activists, journalists and lawyers had been targeted by malware bought by countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary and India.

Too often, security services conflate protection of those in power with protection of the public. Politicians have long used their security services and surveillance powers to stifle protest and dissent by targeting anyone who might legitimately challenge (or even question) their hold on power. This is why the interests of the security services so often come at the expense of the public. Even so, the rallying cry of protecting the public is often used to justify such invasive surveillance.

We can see something similar happening with the UK’s online safety bill. Discussions about this have conflated the public’s legitimate concern about bad online behaviour with the security services’ agenda of breaking end-to-end encryption. Gaining a backdoor to encrypted chat has been on spies’ wishlist almost since the internet was invented. But there is no guarantee this will make the internet safer or free from harm.

In its current form, the bill would effectively deputise spying activities to technology companies, which could scan users’ messages and social media posts for evidence of harms that they could then report to the authorities. Understandably, there’s huge demand for more accountability online, where bad and dangerous behaviour often goes unchecked. But the proposed bill will allow intelligence agencies to spy on ordinary citizens via technology platforms.

The fact is, the majority of online abuse isn’t happening in secret. It’s in plain sight and still nothing is done about it. Bad behaviour online has few consequences. Women face rape and death threats simply for daring to speak out online. Any teenager can access radicalising messages from racists and misogynists or watch extreme pornography showing physically violent, hostile depictions of sex. They don’t need cryptography to view such things.

This raises the elephant in the room around any discussion about online safety: the business model of big tech. It, too, relies on mass surveillance but of a different kind, where users’ behaviour is watched by machines in order to build algorithms, so that social media can serve up posts they think we’ll engage with. The monetisation of users’ attention has incentivised tech companies to create algorithms that tend toward extreme, radicalising content as that is the kind that draws the most engagement. Breaking encryption does nothing to solve this problem.

Snowden’s leaks put paid to any doubt we live in a surveillance society. But thanks to the revelations, the security services themselves came under scrutiny and were found lacking. Mass surveillance was checked, if only through more accountability. Now we face another push by the state to spy on us under the guise of online safety. Let’s not be fooled that surveillance makes us safer. The reality is nothing puts us in more danger.

Heather Brooke is an author, investigative journalist and a member of the Royal United Services Institute panel appointed to examine government surveillance

CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Binance mishandled funds and violated securities laws, according to SEC lawsuit

Fatima Hussein, The Associated Press

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao answers a question during a Zoom meeting interview with The Associated Press

 on Nov. 16, 2021. (AP Photo, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao are accused of misusing investor funds, operating as an unregistered exchange and violating a slew of U.S. securities laws in a lawsuit filed by the SEC.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit on Monday lists thirteen charges against the firm — including commingling and divert customer assets to an entity Zhao owned called Sigma Chain.

Binance is a Cayman Islands limited liability company founded by Zhao and the charges are familiar to practices uncovered after the collapse of the second largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, last year.

The lawsuit lays out the extent to which the firms owners knew of the alleged legal violations: "Binance’s CCO bluntly admitted to another Binance compliance officer in December 2018, “we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”

SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a written statement that Zhao and Binance “engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law.”

“The public should beware of investing any of their hard-earned assets with or on these unlawful platforms,” Gensler said.

In a social media post, Binance said that it has been cooperating with the SEC's investigation but said that the agency “chose to act unilaterally and litigate.”

“While we take the SEC’s allegations seriously, they should not be the subject of an SEC enforcement action, let alone on an emergency basis. We intend to defend our platform vigorously,” the company said in a Twitter post. “Unfortunately, the SEC’s refusal to productively engage with us is just another example of the Commission’s misguided and conscious refusal to provide much-needed clarity and guidance to the digital asset industry.”

The lawsuit comes roughly eight months after the collapse of FTX, which was also accused of co-mingling customers' funds and investing the proceeds in high-risk investments that customers were unaware they were participating in.

U.S. prosecutors and the SEC charged FTX's founder Sam Bankman-Fried with a host of money laundering, fraud and securities fraud charges in December. His criminal trial is likely to be in the fall.

“The new complaint from the SEC against Binance is a laundry list of charges laying out exactly the same claims that many in the Bitcoin and crypto communities have made against Changpeng Zhao and his companies for many years. These practices of Binance have essentially been open secrets, so no one who operates in the space will be surprised by any of the charges,” said Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan Bitcoin, a bitcoin financial services company.

U.S. regulators have gone after Binance before.

In March, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed an enforcement action against Binance and Zhao in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois charging them with numerous CTFC violations.

The complaint also charges Samuel Lim, Binance’s former chief compliance officer, with aiding and abetting Binance’s violations.

____

AP Business Writer Ken Sweet contributed to this report from New York.

Explainer

SEC crypto crackdown: US regulator sues

Binance and Coinbase

Securities and Exchange Commission is targeting

cryptocurrency firms it thinks are bypassing regulation

Jonathan Yerushalmy and Alex Hern

THE GUARDIAN
Tue 6 Jun 2023

On Monday, after months of discussions, threats and warnings, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) took aim at the most powerful force in the world of cryptocurrencies.

The US financial watchdog accused the crypto exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao of operating a “web of deception,” charging him and his exchange with 13 offences.

Binance handles billions in investments for many everyday investors, but the effects are likely to stretch far beyond the cloistered, online world of crypto.

The company sponsors the Italian football team Lazio and the Argentina national team. It also sponsored the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations tournament. It has also extended its interests with venture capital investments as well as a $500m stake in Elon Musk’s Twitter.

The SEC appears bent on a wider crypto crackdown, prompted by the collapse last year of the Bahamas-based FTX, whose founder, the US national Sam Bankman-Fried, has now been charged with securities fraud, money laundering and other offences.

On Tuesday, the SEC accused another crypto platform, Coinbase, of putting customers at risk by operating as an “unregistered broker, exchange and clearing agency”.

What is Binance?

Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Through its online platform, the company offers simplified avenues for buying and selling cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, in exchange for small fees.

Binance dominates crypto trading. Last year its trades accounted for up to 70% of the market, with billions of dollars pumped through the exchange every day. As the company has faced a tougher regulatory environment, its share of the market has fallen – but it still accounts for around 50% of the monthly crypto exchange volume.

In 2019, Binance was facing a regulatory crackdown in the US over a number of potential violations. In response, it restricted access to its main exchange –Binance.com – in the US and launched a new business: Binance.US.

Binance.US offered fewer crypto and digital assets than its parent company – but crucially, it was billed as an entirely separate exchange that was run independent of Binance.com. Binance.US would be subject to US regulations and therefore be able to operate legally within the country.

What is Binance and its founder accused of?

Among the central allegations from the SEC is that Binance and Zhao failed to truly split the US company from the US exchange that it was spun off from.

Binance.US says that, from 2019, its customers were restricted from transacting on Binance.com. However, the SEC alleges that in reality, Binance and Zhao “subverted their own controls to secretly allow high-value US customers to continue trading on the Binance.com platform”.

The SEC alleges that, while Binance publicly claimed that Binance.US was a separate, independent trading platform for US investors, Zhao secretly controlled the US company behind the scenes.

Among the products that Binance.US is alleged to have illegally offered its US customers are commodity derivatives – which effectively place a bet on the price of a cryptocurrency rather than buying it directly. Another US regulator filed a lawsuit in March claiming that Binance had been offering these services since July 2019, despite not being registered with the derivatives markets regulator.

The SEC complaint includes evidence that the Binance leadership were aware that they were contravening US regulations. A message from the Binance chief compliance officer to a colleague, included in the evidence in the lawsuit, reads: “We are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”

The SEC alleges that assets were diverted to a separate entity, owned and controlled by Zhao, called Sigma Chain. This was used for so-called “wash-trading”, in which a trader buys and sells the same asset between their own accounts, in order to give the “artificial appearance of” increased trading volume. Through this practice, the SEC alleges that Zhao was able to inflate the Binance.US trading volume.

What does Binance say?

Binance says that it has actively cooperated with the SEC since the start of its investigation and and “respectfully disagrees” with the allegations.

“We intend to defend our platform vigorously,” the company said in a blogpost, but added that “because Binance is not a US exchange, the SEC’s actions are limited in reach”.

“As with other crypto projects facing similar suits, the Commission has determined to regulate with the blunt weapons of enforcement and litigation rather than the thoughtful, nuanced approach demanded by this dynamic and complex technology,” Binance said.

The company added that “any allegations that user assets on the Binance.US platform have ever been at risk are simply wrong.”

How significant is this?

News of the SEC charges sent the price of bitcoin – the largest and most commonly traded crypto asset – to its lowest point in almost three months.

When rival exchange FTX collapsed last year, the price of bitcoin fell by close to 25% in a matter of days. There is no sign that Binance is close to any sort of collapse – and the company has sought to calm its customer and curb a sudden withdrawal of deposits by saying that “all user assets on Binance and Binance affiliate platforms, including Binance.US, are safe and secure”..

Known as “CZ”, Zhao is one of the most prominent leaders in the crypto sector – particularly after the fall of his rival, Bankman-Fried.

Is it part of a broader crackdown?

On Tuesday, the SEC announced a new set of charges, this time targeting Coinbase, the US-domiciled crypto exchange that has long marketed itself as the most respectable crypto exchange. Not so, argued the regulator, which has accused Coinbase of operating an unlicensed securities exchange, brokerage and clearing agency, putting customers at risk in the process.

The pair of enforcement actions suggest the SEC has decided to take broad aim at cryptocurrency firms it sees as bypassing regulation, either by blurring the distinction between on- and offshore services, as with its allegations against Binance, or by trading unregulated securities, as it alleges Coinbase has done.

At the heart of the issue is a more fundamental question: are cryptocurrencies something truly new, which needs a unique regulatory regime, or are they simply digital versions of pre-existing financial instruments which the SEC already regulates? The agency believes that a good portion of the industry is the latter, and is seeking to ensure that crypto companies either comply, or stop operating in the US.

What now for crypto?

The sector, already bruised by the collapse of FTX, is firmly in the midst of a “crypto winter”, with investment drying up and regulators preparing to pounce. The SEC’s interpretation of US law is potentially damaging for a broad swathe of the industry, and could prompt companies to move elsewhere, but regulatory havens are increasingly few and far between.

In the UK, the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has historically been a supporter of the sector, using his time at the Treasury to command the Royal Mint to make and sell a collectible “NFT” and pushing the Bank of England to issue guidance on stablecoins and “central bank digital currencies”. But in recent months, the UK has discussed introducing stricter rules itself, as Sunak’s attention has turned to AI: a May report from MPs called on cryptocurrencies to be regulated as a form of gambling.

Carbon capture and storage is ‘no free lunch’, warns climate chief

IPPC chair Hoesung Lee says over-reliance on the technology could mean the world misses 1.5C target

Fiona Harvey in Bonn

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 6 Jun 2023 

Over-reliance on carbon capture and storage technology could lead the world to surpass climate tipping points, the head of the world’s climate science authority has warned.

Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said using technologies that capture carbon dioxide or remove it from the atmosphere was “no free lunch” and that countries should be wary.

Lee noted that the IPCC had found it was likely that global temperatures could rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels but could then be made to return to below 1.5C by the end of the century. “The jargon for that is the overshoot,” he said. “Carbon dioxide removal methods will be much in demand if that overshoot indeed occurs.”

“But there will be a cost to doing that. There’s no free lunch. And that cost includes that the longer the period of overshoot, there will be additional global warming, and there will be consequences of increased warming. There is also the possibility of positive feedback from that additional warming, creating more losses and damages during the overshoot period,” he warned. “So one wishes to avoid such an overshoot scenario.”

The IPCC warned in its latest comprehensive report on climate science, published in three parts from 2021 to 2022 with a fourth summary chapter delivered in March, that it was “now or never” to take action on emissions, if the world was to have a chance of avoiding the worst ravages of climate breakdown.

Governments must make their own decisions on whether to use carbon capture and storage technology, Lee said, as the IPCC advised only on science, and was neutral on policy. “CCS technologies are all part of the solutions,” he told the Guardian in an interview, at in Bonn, where preparatory talks for the Cop28 UN climate summit are taking place this week and next. “The way to stay within the carbon budget is that [high-carbon] infrastructures should be equipped with some measures of emissions reductions. Our report very clearly indicates that unabated fossil fuels has to be changed, with some measures that can reduce carbon emissions.”

Some representatives of fossil fuel interests have been arguing that the latest IPCC report justifies their continued production of oil and gas, citing a finding that a small amount of oil and gas production in 2050 was compatible with the need to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by that date.

But one IPCC author told the Guardian that while the IPCC had found some oil and gas could still be produced in 2050, while sticking to the 1.5C limit, fossil fuel producers should not conclude from this that they could keep operating. “We need to reduce fossil fuels drastically,” the author said.

Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science at University College London, said: “Just because there is an understanding that complete removal of fossil fuel use would be almost impossible in this century is no justification to expand production. When we are aiming of a global net zero emission world by 2050 – this means no new fossil production now, halving production over the next 10 years and reducing it as close to zero as possible by 2050. None of this in any way justifies countries expanding their fossil fuel production and to use the IPCC as an excuse is dishonest and a misuse of the science.”

Prof Michael Mann, climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Guardian that oil producers were misrepresenting the IPCC’s findings if they argued for a continued use of fossil fuels. “The IPCC doesn’t weigh in what energy sources will or will not be needed decades from now. While low levels of carbon emissions could be offset with negative emissions technology by 2050, there is no room in such scenarios for substantive reliance on oil, gas, or coal decades from now if we are to achieve the necessary reductions.”

Lee responded: “I have noticed that, in the past, various people cite the IPCC in a way that suits their needs, for unknown purposes. However, our report is a public document, produced by experts, and through numerous independent scientific reviews. Decision makers have their own independent judgements for their own policymaking. We provide the science.”

Lee will step down as chair of the IPCC in late July, when a new chair will be chosen from four candidates, two of whom are women.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CCS 

Trudeau is betting $12.4 billion on a plan to clean up the world’s dirtiest oil

Robert Tuttle and Brian Platt, Bloomberg News

Canada is staking billions of dollars of public money on an oil industry plan to transform one of the world’s dirtiest crudes into one of the cleanest. But it’s relying on a technology with a checkered track record to prolong the life of a business critics say belongs in the history books.

The tar that infuses the sands in Canada’s remote northwest is so sticky the region’s Indigenous people traditionally used it to waterproof their canoes. It wasn’t much use for anything else until the 1960s, when the oil company that became Suncor Energy Inc. found a way to refine the bitumen into crude oil that could be sold on the global market.

Today, Canada is the world’s fourth largest oil producer, but the amount of energy it takes to extract and process oil-sands barrels makes many of the region’s grades among the most polluting crudes of all. A grade called Canadian Cold Lake, for instance, released 81.87 kilograms of planet-warming carbon dioxide for every barrel produced in July 2021 — four times the emissions for a barrel from Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field.

Under pressure to neutralize carbon emissions by mid-century while also supporting the domestic oil industry, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has so far pledged $12.4 billion in tax credits for building carbon capture systems. That includes a massive project that aims to suck up an annual 10 million metric tons of carbon emissions produced by the massive equipment at oil sands sites by 2030. By 2050, after billions more in investment, the system is expected to capture as much as 40 million metric tons of carbon annually, enough to zero out the emissions of Sweden and salvage an industry that accounts for 7% of Canada’s economy and more than a fifth of goods exports.

That’s if it works. Though carbon capture and storage technologies have been around for decades, efforts to scale them up have faced problems ranging from geological limitations to debilitating technical faults to prohibitive costs, leaving a trail of expensive, underperforming and sometimes failed projects in their wake. That makes this a high-risk strategy for the liberal Trudeau, who is unlikely to reap much political gain in conservative Alberta — the capital of the oil sands industry —  if the plan succeeds, but will face criticism if it fails to improve Canada’s subpar climate record.

“They’ve had decades to get it right and yet it’s struggled,” Bruce Robertson, Sydney-based analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an environmental research group, said by telephone. “We’ve only got a limited amount of money and there are probably better ways to spend it.”

Robertson authored a report that examined 13 major carbon capture schemes which together account for about two-thirds of emissions ever trapped. Of those, three have performed close to or as anticipated; Sleipner and Snohvit projects in Norway and Shell’s Quest project in Alberta. The rest have either failed to achieve their targets, were shut down, never took off or there was insufficient data on their performance.

Notable poor performers include the carbon capture component of Chevron Corp.’s Gorgon liquefied natural gas project, which started operation more than three years behind schedule and failed to meet its initial targets. Equinor ASA’s In Salah carbon capture project in Algeria was shut in 2011, less than a decade after launch, amid concern about the health of the storage reservoir. In Canada, SaskPower’s Boundary Dam project at a coal-fired power plant opened in 2014 but has consistently fallen short of its target. In the oil sands, the initial plan is to capture CO2 from the upgrader facilities that turn mined bitumen into lighter crude.

The equipment will also be used to extract CO2 from steam generators at well sites, which are used to force up deeper tar deposits. So-called amine wash technology will scrub the CO2 from flue gas, transport it south through a new 400-kilometer pipeline to Cold Lake, where it will be injected more than 1,000 meters underground into an aquifer called the Basal Cambrian Sandstone formation. Construction of the pipeline is expected to begin in 2026 and Imperial Oil Ltd. expects its Cold Lake gas flue facility to be among the first sites to deploy the technology later this decade.

The Pathways Alliance, the grouping of oil sands producers behind the plan, says the vast project is unlikely to face the kind of problems seen at In Salah because the BCS reservoir is already proven. It’s nearly flat, less prone to fracturing and is being successfully used to store carbon stripped by Shell’s Quest project near to Alberta’s provincial capital of Edmonton. These facilities also won’t have to contend with the coal ash that’s interfered with the capture system at Boundary Dam.

Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, Jonathan Wilkinson, has defended the approach as key to meeting emissions targets in a country that, despite the environmentally-friendly image of the Trudeau government, is one of the industrialized world’s climate laggards.

“For the oil sands and for many heavy industries, it is imperative that we find ways to reduce emissions. In the short term, that is almost certainly going to need to involve carbon capture,” Wilkinson said in an interview.  “We’ve been using, in the oil and gas space, amine technologies for CO2 removal for a long time. The difference is scale. It’s not really about, you know, does the technology work or not.”

The oil sands presents a conundrum for Trudeau. He styles himself as a global leader on climate, and has introduced a national carbon tax and a slew of other regulatory measures to de-carbonize industry. Still, he’s struggled to get Canada’s emissions under control. Although Norway’s US$1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund has blacklisted some oil sands producers and majors including Shell Plc, ConocoPhillips and BP Plc have sold stakes, the region is expected to keep pumping for decades, potentially frustrating Canada’s pledges to reduce its contribution to global warming. The country has set a target of cutting emissions by 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030, but environmentalists warn Canada needs to take even stronger measures to hit that target, while oil companies argue it's already too onerous for their industry.

Last year, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused oil to surge above US$100 a barrel, oil sands production climbed to about 3.16 million barrels a day, exceeding the pre-pandemic year of 2019, according to Alberta Energy Regulator data. Greenhouse gas emissions from well sites and mines in Northern Alberta surged to 81 million tons in 2021 —  a 2 million-ton increase over 2019 — and are poised to plateau at nearly 90 million tons in the next few years, according to Kevin Birn, chief analyst of Canadian oil markets at S&P Global. Even with a carbon tax on heavy industry and an emissions cap, Birn says, carbon capture is critical for Canada to have any hope of meeting its climate pledges.

The oil sands industry is betting that the deployment of carbon capture will keep costs down as emissions levies rise, but it’s also calling for more support to keep up with the U.S., which last year announced plans to provide operating subsidies for carbon-capture systems too.

“We’ve got a very tilted playing field in North America at the moment,” Derek Evans, chief executive officer of MEG Energy Corp., said in an interview earlier this year.

That would mean even more taxpayer money going to oil companies at a time of relatively buoyant energy prices and production, money that could be channeled toward solar, wind or clean fuel technologies.

Even if Canada’s expensive carbon capture experiment succeeds, say critics, the end product is still a barrel of oil produced via open pit mines and processing facilities that have devastated local ecosystems — a barrel of oil that will be burned and emit CO2.

“A legitimate net-zero pathway for the oil and gas sector — one that aligns with international emissions accounting standards — requires addressing downstream emissions,” said Kyra Bell-Pasht, director of research and policy at Investors for Paris Compliance, which holds companies accountable to climate pledges. “What is being paraded as a net-zero pathway is deeply and fundamentally flawed.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CCS 

Cenovus Restarts Oil Production Shut Down By Wildfires

By Charles Kennedy - Jun 06, 2023, 

Cenovus Energy has restarted some 62,000 bpd of daily crude oil production following a temporary shutdown caused by the wildfires in Alberta.

The company shut down a total of 85,000 bpd of production because of the wildfires last month, along with many other oil sands producers. The remainder should be back online within a week to ten days, according to the company.

Cenovus said it would need to wait for the reconstruction of power infrastructure in the area of the affected production that remains offline.

The wildfires that set Alberta aflame last month caused the shutdown of more than 300,000 barrels of oil in daily production in Canada’s oil heartland. The emergency caused oil prices to jump at the time.

The shut-down production accounted for almost 4% of Canada’s total oil output and prompted Alberta to declare a state of emergency in early May. Processing plants were also shut down because of the fires. Natural gas production also dropped because of the shutdowns, affecting exports to the United States.

By mid-May the wildfires began to subside and oil sands operators started reopening shut-down production.

“Assuming the current wildfire conditions continue, Rainbow Lake operations are expected to return to production within seven to 10 days, which represents approximately 20,000 BOE/d,” Cenovus said in an update late on Monday. “About 3,000 BOE/d remains offline awaiting power infrastructure to be rebuilt in various remote locations,” the company added.

Cenovus added that no major damage to its operations has been found by staff returning to the production sites and that it would continue to monitor the situation.

Cenovus is one of the largest oil sands operators in Canada. At the release of its first-quarter performance figures the company lowered its production guidance for the year after posting a lower than expected net profit for the three-month period.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

Wildfires force miners in Quebec and Labrador to halt operations

Cecilia Jamasmie | June 6, 2023 | 

Miners are evacuating employees and halting operations.

 (Image: CTV News | YouTube.)

Mining companies operating in Canada’s Quebec continue on Tuesday to evacuate employees and halt exploration work as at least 164 forest fires tear through the province and Labrador West, including 114 considered out of control.


About 200 military personnel were on the ground on Tuesday morning, while the provincial government said an emergency order banning access to wooden areas remains in place.

Patriot Battery Metals (TSX-V: PMET) (ASX: PMT) said it halted drilling and surface exploration field activities until the fire situation near its Corvette lithium project in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region improves.

Osisko Mining (TSX: OSK), which owns the Windfall gold project in the same region, has also suspended work and pulled out workers while it continues to monitor the situation.

Wallbridge Mining (TSX: WM) vacated the camp at its Fenelon gold project over the weekend and suspended all activities on the property located in Quebec’s northern Abitibi region.

The fire has cut off a highway and rail line between Quebec and Labrador West, damaging a telecommunications tower and a fibre-optic line belonging to Rio Tinto’s Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC).

This has forced (IOC) to idle its operation — including the mine, the concentrator and the pellet plant in Labrador City — until the rail line reopens.

According to consultancy Ernst & Young, climate change currently is the third main threat to the mining industry behind geopolitics and environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns.

Graphic taken from EY Knowledge analysis of the business risks and opportunities survey 2023.

Canada’s largest diversified miner Teck Resources (TSX: TECK.A, TECK.B)(NYSE: TECK) was hit last year by extreme weather events last year, which caused the Vancouver-based miner to miss its copper and steelmaking coal production targets.

Graphic taken from EY Knowledge analysis of the business risks and opportunities survey 2023.

The country is on track for its worst-ever year of wildfire destruction as warm and dry conditions are forecast to persist through to the end of the summer, the government said this week.

“The distribution of fires from coast to coast this year is unusual. At this time of the year, fires usually occur only on one side of the country at a time, most often that being in the west,” said Michael Norton, an official with Canada’s Natural Resources ministry.

There are currently 413 active wildfires, including 249 deemed out of control, and about 26,000 people are under evacuation orders across Canada.