Time running out to transform food system

As we approach the end of another year, the evidence suggests the food industry response to environmental crisis remains underpowered. Nick Hughes reports.

The end of the hottest calendar year ever recorded feels like an appropriate moment to take stock of the progress made on key environmental and social issues during 2023.

Amid the noise of the annual COP climate jamboree it can be hard to separate genuine measures of progress against key sustainability indicators from the political and corporate spin that events of such global significance inevitably attract.  

For the UK food industry specifically, the picture has become clearer following the publication of a series of reports charting progress against time-bound commitments to tackle critical issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, water security and waste.

In each case, the answer to the question ‘what progress are we making?’ is – to put it mildly – ‘not nearly enough’.

Wrap found that progress against all three Courtauld Commitment 2030 targets (covering water, waste and greenhouse gas emissions) needs to speed up rapidly or risk failure. The Food Foundation described a state of stagnation in business transparency on key health and environmental indicators. WWF, meanwhile, reported that food retail has a very long way to go to meet the target of halving the environmental impact of UK shopping baskets by 2030.

Certain companies have shown leadership throughout the year: we’ve seen caterers continue their efforts to shift diets by substituting meat with vegetables and pulses; businesses engagement with regenerative agriculture is growing; new partnerships have been formed to redistribute food surplus; and some businesses have parked commitments to carbon neutrality (largely achieved via offsetting) and pledged to refocus on deep decarbonisation.

But an overall conclusion is straightforward to reach: progress on key issues is nowhere close to where it needs to be as we enter the middle years of a critical decade for action on climate and the environment. As UN secretary-general António Guterres told COP28 delegates in Dubai: “We are living through climate collapse in real time.”

On health, meanwhile, a recent report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change found that the cost to the UK of obesity and overweight spiralled to £98bn in 2021, up from the previous estimate of £58bn and equivalent to almost 4% of GDP.

Targets slip

Wrap is known for maintaining a diplomatic tone in its public communications no matter how frustrating the news it has to report, but reading between the lines of its latest milestone report for the Courtauld Commitment 2030 the signs of exasperation are evident. “It is never easy to report that targets are slipping,” wrote Estelle Herszenhorn, head of food systems transformation. On emissions, companies need to “move from measurement to action”, she urged. On water, “we need more businesses to engage” given a dearth of signatories to Wrap’s water roadmap.

On waste, director of behaviour change and business programmes, Catherine David, offered a polite rebuke of her own. “The latest food waste headline statistics are not where we need them to be,” she wrote.

That’s something of an understatement. Despite per capita food waste falling by 18.3% between 2007 and 2021 (against a 50% target by 2030), Wrap reported that food waste actually rose by 5.6% between 2018 and 2021 driven by an increase in household waste.

Although the manufacturing sector is on track to achieve the 50% by 2030 target and retailers are just over halfway there, data for the hospitality and foodservice sector is still not sufficiently reliable to report progress – a familiar failing not just on waste but across a range of health and environment measures.

There are signs too that Wrap is close to hitting a ceiling of businesses willing to commit to its food waste reduction roadmap: 366 out of 690 large food businesses in the UK are now committed to the roadmap, up 15 on last year compared with a 33 jump in signatories the year before and a 57 increase between 2020 and 2021. Hopes to grow industry engagement perhaps now rest on a possible reversal of the government’s decision not to require mandatory food waste reporting for large businesses. 

On greenhouse gas emissions, the picture is not much better. Wrap modelled a 14% reduction in total emissions between the baseline year of 2015 and 2021 against a target for a 50% absolute reduction in emissions associated with food and drink consumed in the UK by 2030. The biggest drivers of the reduction have been a decrease in the GHG intensity of energy since 2015 and improvements to energy use efficiency – relatively low-hanging fruit in an emissions reduction context – and Wrap said current action and investment is not sufficient to achieve the net-zero ambitions of the food and drink sector.

Stuck on scope 3

Measurable progress in reducing scope 3 emissions remains a major sticking point for businesses. Wrap said the absence of a consistent methodology for measuring scope 3 emissions is creating an unreasonable burden on producers and suppliers in food supply chains, generating mistrust in the data being reported and blocking meaningful action on reducing food system impacts.

WWF highlighted a similar issue in its latest report charting retailer progress towards meeting a target of halving the environmental impact of UK shopping baskets by 2030. With Asda engaging for the first time this year, 10 out of the 11 major UK food retailers representing over 90% of the UK grocery market are now reporting against at least some of WWF’s basket metrics (Iceland is the exception).

The report found some cause for optimism in areas like tackling deforestation and land conversion in palm oil supply chains, yet overall it found food retail “has a very long way to go” if it is to spearhead the change that’s needed to hit the shopping basket target, both within supply chains and across the wider food system.

On scope 3 emissions specifically, WWF found no indication that emissions are reducing across the sector. Of the six retailers to have provided data across multiple years, half have produced increases in scope 3 emissions. The remaining three have reported small reductions, however WWF said the data has neither the coverage nor the comparability, to report an overall figure.

Transparency lacking

The news doesn’t improve as we turn to The Food Foundation’s latest annual assessment of the state of the nation’s food industry. Business transparency has stagnated, the charity claimed, with fewer companies disclosing sales-weighted data against key environment and health metrics than in the previous year.

The Food Foundation said the negative trend has not been helped by the lack of leadership from government, and the fact there is still no agreed way of consistently measuring and reporting the nutrient and carbon content of food (as had been the intention of the UK government’s food data transparency partnership, which has since been made voluntary for health reporting and had its environmental scope narrowed to measuring scope 3 emissions).

Overall, the out of home sector performed worse than retailers on setting targets and disclosing data for sales of both foods high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) and fruit and vegetables. Of the 27 largest retailers and out of home sector companies assessed, none has both a target for and currently discloses relative sales of animal and plant protein.

Contact caterers are leading the way on shifting consumption from meat to plants. The report highlighted Compass’s target for a 25% reduction of animal protein by 2025 and 40% by 2030, alongside Elior’s ambition for a 40% reduction in beef consumption by 2025, and Sodexo’s goal for 33% of menus to be plant-based worldwide by 2025.

The final report for The Food Foundation’s Peas Please campaign meanwhile showed 23 businesses obtained a green traffic light for fully meeting their pledge commitments to sell or serve more portions of vegetables. These included out of home brands like Greggs, JD Wetherspoon, Brewers Fayre and Zizzi.

Such commitments hint that some progress is being made on previously intractable issues like dietary change. But as a collective, the level of business ambition across a range of sustainability indicators is nowhere near high enough – a problem exacerbated by a lack of government leadership on food systems change.

Speaking at the launch of The Food Foundation industry report, Juliane Cailloutte-Noble, CEO of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, recalled a recent conference she had attended in which a World Bank representative noted how the energy and transport sectors had been working hard on decarbonisation for the past ten years and warned that without action the food system could account for 60% of global emissions within the next decade (up from a current 25-30%). 

It’s important not to lose hope. There are reasons to believe that the food system can be transformed in a way that respects planetary boundaries and supports healthy lifestyles (look out for a ‘Five reasons to be positive’ Footprintanalysis in early January). Yet as the climate crisis continues to unfold around us in 2024 and beyond, food businesses risk finding the finger of blame increasingly pointed in their direction. 

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Dec 10, 2023

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by

Footprint

in Out of Home News Analysis

She’s with him: Hillary Clinton steps out as a key player in Biden’s re-election effort

Clinton hosted a $1 million fundraiser at her Georgetown home.

Former President Bill Clinton speaks as former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton looks on during a conversation about current global challenges at Swansea University Bay Campus in Wales on Nov. 16.

Ben Birchall / PA via AP

Dec. 10, 2023
By Jonathan Allen, Peter Nicholas and Megan Lebowitz

WASHINGTON — On the final Monday in November, in a Washington home stately enough to have a name — Whitehaven — members of the Women’s Leadership Forum raised just shy of $1 million for President Joe Biden’s re-election effort. Their host: Hillary Clinton.

Two weeks earlier, Clinton published an op-ed in The Atlantic that forcefully made the case for Biden’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war, putting her credibility on the line as progressives demanded a cease-fire. And two weeks before that, at a Columbia University panel on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Clinton shut down a heckler who asked her to comment on Biden’s “warmongering.”

In those moments, in an interview on “The View” and in social media posts, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee is stepping into a role as one of the most prominent and influential surrogates in Biden’s re-election effort. As a former secretary of state, she has the bona fides to provide Biden with a measure of political cover amid a war in the Middle East that has split the Democratic Party.

Clinton is popular with women and key parts of the Democratic base and remains a fundraising draw who can help ensure Biden has the money to get his message out. There is still a two-for-the-price-of-one theme when it comes to her family: Husband Bill Clinton made a cameo at the fundraising event at their Washington home.

Clinton’s role is only expected to grow in the new year, but for now, she is filling a space that at a later point in the campaign season former President Barack Obama will join. Obama’s habit is to plunge in closer to Election Day — a reality that rankles some Democratic strategists who say the party sorely needs him right now.

Biden and Clinton have not always been close — she elbowed him out of running in 2016, and her first visit to the White House during his presidency was in September — but the president is thirsty for allies right now. His approval numbers are at an all-time low, and he is running neck and neck with a Republican front-runner, former President Donald Trump, who is under indictment in four separate cases.

“At the end of the day, Biden needs all the help that he can get,” a Democratic strategist said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk openly about Biden’s prospects. “What he needs is both the spirit and the actual reality of unity.”

Clinton’s re-emergence is emblematic of a larger Democratic effort to more fully deploy high-profile allies in Biden’s re-election fight, according to two people familiar with his campaign’s effort. While Obama has appeared in fundraising videos for Biden, some Democrats would like him to be more visible on the campaign trail and use his formidable star power to give Biden a much-needed boost.

“We are very eager to get our surrogates engaged,” one of the people said, pointing specifically to the Clintons and former first couple Barack and Michelle Obama as figures who can gin up excitement for a Biden candidacy that could use more of it.

When Biden flew on Air Force One to a memorial service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter late last month, the Clintons and Michelle Obama accompanied him. The group, which included first lady Jill Biden, was photographed together on a tarmac, creating an indelible image of unity among three Democratic first families in support of a grieving fourth.

The White House recently hired Dennis Cheng, a longtime fundraiser for both Clintons, to bolster its outreach to political allies. The hire had more to do with Cheng’s ability to connect with party elites than his relationship with the Clintons, the two people familiar with Biden’s re-election campaign said, but it won’t hurt in sealing the bond between Biden and his onetime intraparty rival.

The same day Hillary Clinton raised money for Biden, her husband sat down to lunch in New York with Argentina’s President-elect, Javier Milei and former Sen. Chris Dodd, who is Biden’s special adviser for the Americas. In doing so, Bill Clinton served as a high-profile surrogate for Biden, who did not meet with Milei. Dodd checked in with the White House before the lunch to go over discussion points, and Bill Clinton alerted the State Department that he would be meeting with Milei, said people familiar with the lunch.

“I don’t know of a couple that could be any more helpful to President Biden than the Clintons,” said Tom Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader. “They have an enormous level of support and admiration within the Democratic Party.”

“You’ve had politicians over the years say that every election is the most important election in our lifetimes,” Daschle continued. “This is literally the most important election in all of American history. The stakes have never been this high. Everyone feels the need to do their part to ensure that we get through the next 14 months.”

People close to Hillary Clinton anticipate she’ll be a tireless campaigner for the Biden campaign, rallying Democratic voters by laying out the stakes and explaining why a Trump victory could subvert America’s democratic norms.

Both she and Bill Clinton feel a degree of loyalty to the Democratic Party that not everyone in the party’s orbit shares, a person close to her said.

“She and her husband will do whatever is asked of them,” this person said. “Some elected [officials] and former elected [officials] are, ‘Send us a list and we’ll do two out of the 20’” events. “She’ll do 18 out of the 20.”

She is also well positioned to caution voters that if they support a third-party candidate, they may cut into Biden’s margin and flip the election to Trump, Democratic strategists said.

In her 2016 loss to Trump, she saw some of her support peel off in favor of Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s campaign, contributing to her defeat in closely contested states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

“She is the proof point of what can happen if you throw away your vote on someone other than President Biden because you’re mad at one little thing,” said a longtime Democratic strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk more freely. “That happened to her.”

Among other lessons learned from 2016 was the need to engage earlier, explained Amanda Renteria, Clinton’s former national political director for the 2016 campaign.

“What folks have now realized is actually you have to push back early and make sure you don’t get defined by whatever is happening out there,” Renteria said. “And so not only are you seeing Hillary pick up, but there’s a lot more pushback on what the narrative is out there, what the theme is out there.”

Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said in an interview that “Barack Obama ought to step up. Every Democrat and independent who cherishes the democracy that we have gotten to know — and if they want to stop it from unraveling — better step up with checkbooks and every waking moment try to motivate people to vote.”

Democrats seem happy to have any amount of Obama. “We would like to have him out there for as much time as he’s willing to give us,” the Democratic strategist said. “And if he’s willing to give us more than he already does — which is not much — we’d be very relieved.”

But people close to both presidents say that Obama’s value grows as the election draws nearer.

“Obama drives turnout,” said one Democrat who has raised money for Obama and Biden. “That happens later in the campaign.”

A Biden campaign spokesperson, Seth Schuster, said in a prepared statement that Biden “is proud to have the support of President Obama and Secretary Clinton. They are both trusted leaders, and we’re grateful that — a year out — when the focus is building the infrastructure, raising money, and mobilizing our voters to carry us to victory in November 2024, they have already been effective mobilizers of the Biden-Harris coalition.”

An Obama spokesman suggested that the former president’s objective is not simply to campaign for its own sake, but to choose moments and spots that maximize the chance of reaching voters.

“Our strategy will be based on driving impact,” said Eric Schultz, a senior Obama adviser. “We place a huge emphasis on finding creative ways to reach new audiences, especially tools that can be directly tied to voter mobilization or volunteer activations. We are deliberate in picking our moments because our objective is to move the needle.”

As the calendar turns to 2024, Biden’s team will continue to push for high-level surrogates to make the case that democracy is on the line with Trump on the ballot. Biden’s allies say there’s no excuse for any top Democrat to stay out of the fray.

It’s “all hands on deck,” said one of the people familiar with his campaign.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disembark Air Force One at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Ga., on Nov. 28 to attend services for former first lady Rosalynn Carter.

Anbdrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP - Getty Images

Jonathan Allen is a senior national politics reporter for NBC News, based in Washington.

Peter Nicholas is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.

Megan Lebowitz is a politics reporter for NBC News.

Carol E. Lee contributed.

‘Fortnite’ Has Actually Made The Metaverse After Everyone Else Quit

Paul Tassi
Senior Contributor
News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.
Dec 10, 2023

Fortnite

EPIC

It is abundantly clear at this point that the last few years have taken the term “metaverse” from an aspirational (though also dystopian) sci-fi concept to a buzzword destroyed by tech companies and grifters trying to build some weird, demented, overmonetized version of it.

We saw this in big and small ways, a bunch of web3 blockchain “metaverses” where companies would buy land and Paris Hilton would hang out with an ugly avatar. These were dismal, empty, gross places that served no purpose except for attempting to make their founders rich by selling air.

Then we saw this at a huge scale with Facebook, I mean Meta, where they changed their name to Meta to better personify Mark Zuckerberg’s VR-driven vision of the metaverse. And while yes, in fiction, the metaverse is an immersive VR experience that transports the user “in person” to the virtual space, the tech we have now is not remotely close to that. Zuckerberg spent a fortune on his version of Ready Player One’s OASIS, Horizon Worlds, that featured a bunch of horrifying legless avatars running around (so to speak), getting up to a few hundred thousand players and then…promptly losing a few hundred thousand players. While the Meta VR arm still exists, VR itself remains a niche and not anywhere close to the metaverse that was promised. Meta, of course, is now pivoting mainly to AI like everyone else.

But, slow and steady may win the race, and I believe that’s what we’re seeing with Fortnite now. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has been a bit obnoxious with his side of the metaverse fight, where he believe its fundamental existence relies on getting Apple, Google, Steam and everyone else to get ride of their 30% revenue cut or else that will “strange the metaverse” before it can actually exist.

LEGO Fortnite

EPIC

But the rest of Epic? They have been…building the actual metaverse, or at least the closest we’re going to get to it. And unlike Facebook trying to capture the magic of OASIS with VR, Fortnite is doing it with normal gameplay, but creating the virtual spaces and cast of characters that made that universe so appealing in the first place. Something no one else trying to do this ever really understood.

We saw glimpses of this for years, with large-scale mass-watched events like meteor strikes or rocket launches on the Fortnite map, then Travis Scott or Ariana Grande concerts. Those were the first inklings of “metaverse moments” that made it feel like Fortnite was on the right track. But for a while, it felt like that came and went and Fortnite had missed its chance, stuck in the same rut with its wider ambitions stalled.

Instead, behind the scenes, they were prepping a large-scale launch that would make Fortnite more metaverse-y than ever. After refueling Fortnite’s playercount with its return to the OG map, they ended that period by launching LEGO Fortnite, a survival minigame and its own separate world, racing Fortnite channeling Rocket League and concert Fortnite which draws on Guitar Hero and Rock Band DNA.

So, in effect the game now has battle world (Fortnite Battle Royale) survival/building world, racing world and music world. This is a long-term vision as shared by Donald Mustard that is finally becoming real, and what the fictional metaverses have channeled before now:

There are always jokes that Fortnite is building a literal zoo of IPs for its game, as if there’s a popular movie, game or TV franchise you can think of, there’s probably an 80% chance Fortnite has grabbed it and made a handful of skins out of it.

This is a game that now has close to every major superhero in it. Ripley from Alien, Kratos from God of War. Master Chief from Halo. Chun-Li from Street Fighter. And now, Goku, Peter Griffin, The Incredible Hulk and Optimus Prime can rock out in a concert together.

And it’s working. Fortnite, especially after the launch of LEGO Fortnite which is siphoning off Minecraft players, is hitting new concurrent playercount records. There are more people playing Fortnite right now than every game on Steam combined. It has once again climbed to be one of the biggest games in the world, if not the biggest, outside of whatever big mobile title people are checking into a few times a day.

I always said that if anywhere had the potential to truly become the metaverse, it was Fortnite. These blockchain imitators almost killed the concept before they died themselves. Facebook making the metaverse was essentially channeling the villains from Ready Player One trying to do the same. But after a few years of relative quiet, Epic has come out and shown yeah, maybe they can actually do it now that everyone else has abandoned the concept. And I hope I they can.

COP28 pledges not enough to limit global warming to 1.5C, IEA warns


BY:RHODRI MORGAN
CITY A.M.
SUNDAY 10 DECEMBER 2023 


The IEA has said that the fossil fuel emission pledges made so far at COP28 are not enough

Pledges made at COP28 to cut fossil fuel emissions will not be enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, according to one of the world’s foremost energy bodies.

So far agreements have been reached to triple renewable energies and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements, while 50 oil and gas companies have agreed to cut out methane emissions and eliminate routine flaring by 2030 under the Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Charter.

But the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in an analysis published today that the commitments made so far at the climate conference “would not be nearly enough” to avoid the temperature benchmark.

According to the analysis, if everyone delivered on their commitments, it would lower global-energy related greenhouse gas emissions by 4 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030.

That is about a third of the emissions gap that needs to be closed in the next six years to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, as agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“The IEA will continue to monitor the ongoing developments at COP28 and update its assessment as needed,” it said.

In September, the energy body said that global demand for fossil fuels is “set to hit a peak in the coming years” before gradually declining as the world’s push for renewable energies slowly takes over.

The COP summits have come under routine scepticism for serving more as a talking shop than a foreground to create real progress.

Last week, Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate tsar, warned countries negotiating at COP28 not to fall into point-scoring when pledging action on climate change.

The 1.5 degrees target has also been decried as unrealistic, including during the summit by billionaire philanthropist, Bill Gates.

University Of Wisconsin Regents Turn Down Deal With Legislature To Limit Diversity Efforts

Michael T. Nietzel
Senior Contributor
FORBES
Dec 10, 2023

A deal brokered by University of Wisconsin leaders and Republicans in the State Assembly has been voted down by the UW system Board of Regents.

GETTY

The University of Wisconsin (UW) System Board of Regents has voted to reject a deal the university’s own administrators had negotiated with Robin Vos, the top Republican in the Wisconsin State Assembly, to limit diversity efforts in exchange for additional UW funding.

The surprise 9-8 vote against the deal came after six months of bargaining had yielded a compromise that would have required UW to end various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in exchange for $800 million for the UW system.

The proposed deal had several elements that Vos had hoped would sweeten the pot enough to get the university to go along with what many criticized as a betrayal of traditionally underrepresented groups.

For example, in exchange for capping DEI hiring for three years and restructuring about a third of existing DEI positions into student success roles, the UW system would have received $800 million for pay raises, a new engineering building at UW-Madison and several other building projects across the system.

Other elements of the deal were also problematic. For example:

• It would have required UW-Madison to end a hiring program aimed at diversifying its faculty ranks.
• It would have obligated the flagship campus to solicit private donations for a faculty position focused on “conservative political thought, classical economic theory or classical liberalism.”
• The UW System would have had to remove diversity statements from the student application process and support a bill that would guarantee admission to the top 5% of Wisconsin high school students (at UW-Madison) and the top 10% of in-state students (at other UW campuses).

"The Legislature has made decisions over the years that have proved to have a negative lingering effect on our public universities," Regent Angela Adams said during the special meeting, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "But to finally and begrudgingly propose to start funding the universities in exchange for insulting people historically excluded and underrepresented in higher education is a nonstarter for me. It's divisive, it's polarizing, and will ultimately lead to even more negative effects on the university system for decades to come."

The vote constitutes a significant dispute not only between the board and the State Assembly but between the board and UW System President Jay Rothman and UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, who had worked out the deal with Vos.

It’s highly unusual for a board to reject its chief administrators’ recommendations, particularly on a matter as public, partisan and protracted as this one, and what the rebuke means for their future in the system remains unclear. It’s also uncertain whether the board’s decision might be emulated by other governing boards facing pressure from their state legislatures to curtail DEI initiatives.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, who had previously sued the State Assembly over its blocking of the pay raises for UW employees and who appointed all the board members who voted against the deal Saturday, called for common ground:

It’s clear the regents are deeply divided over this proposal, have immense concerns about this process and the difficult position they were put in, and are all committed to their charge—doing what’s best for our past, present, and future students, faculty, and staff, and the institutions that have defined our state for generations.

I believe that’s what they did today in voting their values, and I understand and support their decision and vote.

I look forward to this discussion continuing in the weeks and months ahead. I urge legislative Republicans to remain in those conversations so we can work together and find common ground to do what’s best for the UW System, including investing in the UW-Madison engineering building.

In the meantime, I again urge legislative Republicans to release the already-approved UW System employee raises and investments included in the biennial budget that are well overdue.

Describing the deal as "our best and final offer," Vos said, "we negotiated in good faith and expected the same," in a text message to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in Saturday. "It's a shame they've denied employees their raises and the almost ($1 billion) investment that would have been made in the UW System to continue their ideological campaign to force students to believe only one viewpoint is acceptable on campus."

TORY PROTECTIONISM

Telegraph takeover ‘completely unacceptable’ says former MI6 chief

BY:JESS JONES

A former MI6 chief has sounded the alarm bells over what he calls a potentially calamitous foreign takeover of The Telegraph.

A former MI6 chief has sounded the alarm bells over what he calls a potentially calamitous takeover of The Telegraph by an Abu Dhabi-backed firm.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who led the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2004, said ministers should block the “completely unacceptable” takeover by the authoritarian state, which poses a “profound security concern” to the UK.

The government should “put a peg in the ground and say no way”, Dearlove told The Sunday Telegraph.

“It’s completely inappropriate for an autocratic state – even at arm’s length – to be the owner of The Telegraph and The Spectator,” he added.

The Barclay brothers, former owners of the right-leaning titles, recently restored a nearly £1.2bn debt in an attempt to reclaim their titles. The amends was facilitated by RedBird IMI media fund, backed by a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family.

Chief executive of Redbird IMI and former CNN boss, Jeff Zucker, said the Barclay era of ownership of the papers “will come to an end” if the takeover is green-lighted by the government.

Zucker faced a grilling on the deal over the weekend.

When questioned about staff concerns, Zucker told The Sunday Times: “I understand why they are anxious and nervous, and I respect it. But in time it will be proven to be misplaced.”

He has vowed to resign if the Telegraph faces any editorial influence from the UAE, arguing its value lies with its editorial freedom.

“I think the other thing that people are missing here is it makes no sense whatsoever for anyone to make an investment of this magnitude and to interfere and throw away that good money”, he added.

Nearly 70 per cent of Telegraph subscribers have said they would be “a bit less likely” or “much less likely” to continue subscribing in the event of a foreign takeover, according to a recent YouGov poll.

With the government’s intervention through a Public Interest Intervention Notice (PIIN), watchdogs Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority are now tasked with probing the potential ownership transition.

The outcome, due by 24 January next year, rests in the hands of media secretary Lucy Frazer, who holds the final say.

Zucker is unbothered about the prospect of the government blocking the deal. “We’re confident that we can satisfactorily answer all questions of the government, and so I’m not going to get into that hypothetical,” he said.

If the government gives the go-ahead for the deal, Redbird IMI will gain control of the papers through a debt-for-equity swap.

Brazil petrochemical giant’s salt mine partially collapses

The Mutange neighborhood in Maceio, Brazil, where a mine belonging to Brazilian petrochemical giant Braskem collapsed on Sunday 

(Itawi Albuquerque/AP)

SUN, 10 DEC, 2023 - 
DIANNE JEANTET, 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A mine belonging to Brazilian petrochemical giant Braskem ruptured and partially collapsed on Sunday in the northeastern coastal city of Maceio, the city’s civil defence authority said.

Video the authority distributed shows a sudden bubbling of the water in the Mundau lagoon in the city’s Mutange neighbourhood, caused by the mine’s rupture.

The area had previously been evacuated and there were was no risk to any people, it said in a statement.

Braskem’s 40 years of rock salt mining in Maceio has prompted the displacement of tens of thousands of people and on November 28 the company alerted authorities of the imminent risk the mine would collapse. Land around the mine has been steadily sinking ever since, falling a total of 2.35 metres as of Sunday morning.

Sunken ground at the Mutange neighbourhood in Maceio, Alagoas state, Brazil 

(Itawi Albuquerque/AP)


On November 30, Alagoas state governor Paulo Dantas warned of the possible “formation of large craters” following the mine’s collapse and said federal teams would arrive that night as back up.

Local residents were told not to travel near the area.

In the first few days, Braskem sent regular updates, including possible times at which the mine could collapse.

Between 1979 and 2019, when Braskem announced the shutdown of its rock salt operations in Maceio, the company operated 35 mines.

Troubles in Maceio began a year earlier, when large cracks first appeared on the surface. Some stretched several hundred metres. The first order to evacuate some areas — including parts of the Mutange neighborhood — came in 2019.

Since then, residents in five neighbourhoods have accepted Braskem’s payouts to relocate. According to the Brazilian Senate’s website, some 200,000 people in Maceio were affected by the company’s mining activities.

In July, the company reached a 356 million dollar (£284 million) settlement with the coastal city.

Aside from mine 18, which ruptured on Sunday, Braskem says it is in the process of filling eight other cavities with sand.

Rock salt mining is a process of extracting salt from deep underground deposits. Once the salt has been extracted, the cavities left behind can collapse, causing the soil above to settle. Structures built on top of such areas can topple.

Braskem is one of the biggest petrochemical companies in the Americas, owned primarily by Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras and construction giant Novonor, formerly known as Odebrecht.

John Whelan: Ireland is missing out on Green shipping-corridor expansion

The lack of involvement of Irish ports and the shipping lines that use them puts Irish exporters at a disadvantage to UK and other European exporters

\
The shipping lines operating from Irish ports have passed the cost of CO2 taxes on to their export and import customers. 

Picture: David Creedon

SUN, 10 DEC, 2023 
John Whelan

Members of the Global Maritime Forum have travelled to Dubai for the launch of their annual progress report on green shipping corridors, at COP28. Green-corridor initiatives have doubled and the number of stakeholders has increased significantly, but Ireland was a no-show.

The number of green-corridor initiatives around the world went from 21 to 44 over the past year, many of them in Europe, including green shipping corridors from the UK to Belgium, the Netherlands to the UK, the UK to Denmark, and Norway to the UK. Crucially, there was no mention of any green shipping corridor from Ireland.

The lack of involvement of Irish ports, and of the shipping lines that use them, puts Irish exporters who wish to move up the green value chain at a disadvantage to UK and other European exporters.

The omission of Ireland from green shipping corridors points to a lack of incentives to attract shipping lines to invest in the latest green shipping technology. Norway, Denmark, France, Germany, and Britain have co-invested with shipping lines to design new ammonia-, hydrogen-, and electric-powered ships for their routes in the Nordic area and in the Mediterranean.

These shipping lines are major operators in transporting goods in and out of Ireland weekly, and will continue with the older, higher-CO2-emitting vessels for longer than will countries that are committed to green corridors.

The report, released in conjunction with COP28, says that 2024 will be pivotal for green corridors, which are trade routes where zero-emission shipping is catalysed by public-sector and private-investor action. Along with the marked advancements, the report also identifies challenges when green shipping corridors commence, including fuel decisions to secure both commercial arrangements and the necessary port infrastructure.

Most of Ireland's ports are state-owned and operate under Climate and Transport Minister Eamonn Ryan's portfolio, which begs the question why an opportunity to show the nation's green credentials in this area of vital economic importance is not being taken.

The doubling of announced green-corridor initiatives over the past year was driven by increased government effort to establish green corridors, with the collaboration of industry and ports.

Green shipping corridors could enable the Department of Transport to create regulatory measures to decarbonise shipping, including financial incentives to lower the cost of green-fuel production. This could mobilise demand for green shipping.

Finally, green corridors could create secondary effects that reduce shipping emissions on other routes. For example, once the infrastructure to provide zero-emission fuel for one green corridor, such as Dublin to Holyhead, is established, it can then be used for shipping on other routes, such as Dublin to Cherbourg, fast tracking a second green corridor.

The UK has also pressed forward at COP28, with its initiative with the US, creating a Green Shipping Corridor Task Force to establish green shipping corridors between the two countries.

Europe's CO2 tax on shipping is also looming, with the introduction of EU ETS carbon-emissions regulations on January 1, 2024. The premise is that carriers must measure and report each ship's CO2 emissions and then buy allowances for each tonne of CO2 emitted. This should incentivise industry-wide investment in cleaner technologies, making them comparatively less expensive. However, the shipping lines operating from Irish ports have, instead, decided, in the absence of government support by way of green-corridor initiatives, to pass the cost of these CO2 taxes on to their export and import customers, adding to the difficulties created by this year’s weak trade growth.

Spotify slashes staff to move faster into AI – and Wall Street loves it

By Sergio Padilla, CNN
Sun December 10, 2023

The company joins other tech firms in retrenching as pandemic-era demand has dried up.

Nikos Pekiaridis/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

New YorkCNN —

Spotify made a name for itself in the audio-streaming business through its hyper-personalized user experience, thanks to artificial intelligence and a team of 9,800 staffers at the end of 2022.

But after three rounds of layoffs in one year: 590 positions in January, 200 in June, and another 1,500 this week, Spotify’s investments into AI to boost margins for its podcasting and audiobook divisions look like a complete overhaul in strategy that Wall Street seems confident can work.

“Spotify is leveraging AI across its platform, launching AI DJ, simulating a traditional radio experience, in 50 additional markets and rolling out AI Voice Translation for podcasts,” said Justin Patterson, equity research analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, in a research note. “Coupled with audiobooks rolling out to Premium Subscribers, we believe Spotify has several opportunities to drive engagement and eventually stronger monetization.”

Shares of parent company Spotify Technology SA are up more than 30% over the last six months and up more than 135% year to date.

The company joins other tech firms in retrenching as pandemic-era demand has dried up. It also has to make up for the more than $1 billion it spent on podcasting, much of which went toward deals with celebrities to make podcasts that never materialized and acquiring podcast studios that it later shuttered.

“Economic growth has slowed dramatically and capital has become more expensive. Spotify is not an exception to these realities,” Ek wrote in a letter to staff posted to the company’s website.

Jumping on the AI gravy train

In November, Spotify unveiled a partnership with Google Cloud to overhaul how the platform recommends audiobooks and podcasts through its use of one of Google Cloud’s language models, Vertex AI Search.

Large language models like ChatGPT are computer programs trained on large sets of data that can recite human-like text and information back to users based on what the program “knows.”

Spotify introduced an “AI DJ” in February and began using OpenAI’s “Whisper” voice translation tool to translate select episodes of English podcasts into Spanish, French and German.

A representative for Spotify said in an email to CNN that the company plans to expand the technology in the future pending creator and audience feedback. They also pointed to some comments made by Ek during the company’s third-quarter earnings call, where the word “efficiency” was used more than 20 times.

“The primary way you should think about these (AI) initiatives, (is that it creates) greater engagement and that greater engagement means we reduce churn,” he said during Spotify’s October earnings call. “Greater engagement also means we produce more value for consumers. And that value to price ratio is what then allows us to raise prices like we did this past quarter with great success.”

In a research note, Douglas Anmuth, managing director and internet analyst at JP Morgan, said that along with investments into advertisements by artists, investments into podcasts have the potential to drive engagement over the long term.
So how does personalization work?

Spotify has hyper-personalized its experience for users for about a decade. It was able to add that personal touch once it acquired music analytics firm, The Echo Nest Corp, in 2014, to combine machine learning and natural language processing.

Spotify’s technology builds a database of songs and artists by recognizing musical pitches and tempos and connecting the works of artists within a shared cultural context.

Metadata like release date and metrics like volume, duration and how likely a song is to get someone dancing also go into determining which songs fit a user’s taste.

From here, playlists like “Daily Mix” and “Discover Weekly” are born. So-called Time Capsules and “On Repeat” playlists gather a user’s most-listened to songs, to either keep users hooked to what they’re already listening to or revisit songs they haven’t heard in a while.

In an email to CNN, Anil Jain, global managing director of strategic consumer industries at Google Cloud said that its Vertex AI Search allows media and entertainment companies to build content discovery capabilities across video, audio, images and text. Jain did not comment on any details of the deal with Spotify.

Vertex AI Search considers a range of factors when recommending content for users such as real-time user behavior, content similarity and content related to what users are searching for.

Challenges and opportunities

Reece Hayden, senior analyst at ABI Research, expressed confidence that large language models (LLMs) could work to increase engagement across Spotify’s platform.

“Large language models can enhance personalization, improve recommendations, and ensure recommendations are more reflective of user interests by understanding entire text/video rather than utilizing keywords/metadata,” he said in an email to CNN.

He added that unlike keyword/metadata dependent “basic predictive models,” LLMs can understand and interpret podcasts to see if they match user interests and can gain a deeper understanding of user preferences by analyzing all user data to determine their preferences.

But that comes at a cost.

“Running LLMs to understand all podcasts/audiobooks is resource intensive and may add limited value compared to basic predictive models … LLMs bring additional data privacy and cost/resource challenges which will be significant,” he said.

He expressed faith in Whisper to help translate podcasts, but admitted mistakes may be made in the form of flubbed sentences or phrases as generative AI learns.

“Given the availability of data points, different language translations models like Whisper will quickly improve, ensuring a high degree of accuracy,” he said. “The downside of whisper is that its core competency is translating from other languages to English … Most podcasts are recorded in English and therefore it cannot be applied effectively across the board.”

Nuclear Power’s Pivotal Moment at COP28

Saleem H. Ali
Contributor
Environmental systems scientist at the University of Delaware

Dec 10, 2023,

TOPSHOT - France's President Emmanuel Macron (C) poses for a photo with other leaders and ... [+]

AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Among the less publicized achievements of COP28 has been a notable declaration by at least 20 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Canada to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050. This is a sensible science-based declaration, supported by the IAEA and the IPCC’s view that atomic energy has a role to play in decarbonization. The declaration thus deserves the attention of investors and the wider public. For too long, nuclear power has been stigmatized out of emotional fear rather than facts. The quest for a holy grail of global energy supply remains elusive, but much research continues to be cultivated and curated according to preferences and assumptions about a desired outcome.

The critics of nuclear energy tend to use selective science which needs to be confronted head-on. Let us use the example of a paper published a few years ago in the prestigious journal Nature Energy which reflects proclivities in favor of renewable energy with a clear objective of marginalizing nuclear power. Despite a very elegant hypothesis-driven conceptual framework, the authors have designed a study that diminishes the carbon benefits of nuclear by using a regression analysis that is not well-suited to the core societal question at hand: is the future of nuclear power likely to assist with carbon mitigation?

Instead of addressing this question, the authors use aggregate carbon emissions data for countries and compare nuclear energy versus renewable energy dominance for two historic periods until 2014. The correlations are based on asymmetric units of comparison (given that only 31 countries are nuclear power producers while the full sample of countries with renewable portfolios is 123 in their data set). What the analysis does usefully show is that a switch to renewable energy technologies has definitively led to reduced carbon emissions, and that there can be some competition between the energy sources in terms of investment prioritization.

The history of carbon comparisons research on nuclear is highly contentious as the range of life cycle analyses (LCA) and environmental product declarations (EPD) methods used to compare carbon footprints from mines to markets makes outputs astronomically different. Indeed, composite literature reviews conducted earlier reveal widely divergent assessments from 4 to 220 gCO2/kWh giving ample space for activist anti-nuclear scholars to pounce upon.

As further analysis by the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency has shown, much of the inflated carbon range with nuclear stems from assumptions about concentrations of uranium ore and the construction materials (specially concrete) of conventional plants. However, much less of this will likely be relevant with future nuclear development and that is where industrial ecological research investment should be made. The high capacity factors of nuclear as well as clearly demonstrable reduced carbon of future nuclear power has now been firmly acknowledged by the International Energy Agency.

China Launches World's First Fourth-Generation Nuclear Reactor

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Dec 10, 2023, 

• China started up the world's first fourth-generation nuclear reactor this week.
• 
  
• The Shidaowan nuclear power plant, which features the world's first fourth-generation reactor, started commercial operations on December 6.
• 
  
• Lantau Group's David Fishman: "China is arguably peerless in actually building and commercializing next-generation nuclear power technology."

China has taken a step ahead of competitors in civil nuclear energy technology as it started up the world's first fourth-generation nuclear reactor this week.   

As many countries are starting to recognize that nuclear power generation will play an important role in the energy transition by providing additional net-zero electricity, the race for developing the latest generation of civil nuclear technology has begun.

And this week, China gained an advantage in that race.

The Shidaowan nuclear power plant, which features the world's first fourth-generation reactor, started commercial operations on December 6, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), one of the project's developers, said.

"China's independently developed high-temperature gas-cooled reactor demonstrator commenced commercial operation," CNNC said in a statement.

"It signifies that China has completed the world's first commercially operational modular nuclear power plant with fourth-generation nuclear technology, marking the transition of fourth-generation nuclear technology from experiments to the commercial market."

Generation IV reactors are considered safer and more efficient.

"The tests confirmed that commercial-scale reactors could be cooled down naturally without emergency core cooling systems for the first time in the world. It is the so-called inherently safe reactor," Tsinghua University, one of the joint developers of the reactor, said.

Such reactors can produce heat, electricity, and hydrogen and would help China and the world "become carbon neutral," Zhang Zuoyi, dean of the Tsinghua University Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology and chief designer of the Shidaowan reactor project, told South China Morning Post.

The fourth-generation reactor in operation now puts China "ahead of other countries in terms of nuclear technology research and development," Francois Morin, China director of industry group World Nuclear Association, told The Wall Street Journal.

According to Morin, Western countries are set to launch their fourth-generation nuclear reactors only in the early 2030s.

David Fishman, a China-based senior manager at energy consulting firm Lantau Group, told the Journal that "China is arguably peerless in actually building and commercializing next-generation nuclear power technology."

Many countries in the West, with the notable exception of Germany, have recognized that nuclear power generation would help them achieve net-zero emission goals.

At the COP28 climate summit currently underway in Dubai, the United States and 21 other countries pledged to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, saying incorporating more nuclear power in their energy mix is critical for achieving their net zero goals in the coming decades.   

The United States, alongside Britain, France, Canada, Sweden, South Korea, Ghana, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), among others, signed the declaration at the COP28 climate summit.

"The Declaration recognizes the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and keeping the 1.5-degree Celsius goal within reach," the U.S. Department of State said.

China is not a signatory to that declaration, but it aims to develop more nuclear energy capacities to reduce emissions as its demand for electricity rises.

As of 2020, nuclear energy accounted for 5% of China's generation mix, which continued to be dominated by coal, per data from the World Nuclear Association.

By 2035, nuclear energy is expected to make up 10% of the electricity generation mix and 18% by 2060, Chinese media quoted the China Nuclear Energy Association (CNEA) as saying earlier this year.

As of September 2023, China had 55 nuclear power units in operation with a combined installed capacity of 57 GW, and 24 units under construction with a total installed capacity of 27.8 GW, Xinhua quoted CNEA official Wang Binghua as saying. By 2060, that capacity is expected to jump to 400 GW, the official said.

China is also expected to approve six to eight nuclear power units each year "within the foreseeable future."   

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com