Twitter's crypto head and staff resign in mass Musk exodus

Emily Nicolle, Bloomberg News

Nov. 18,2022

The head of Twitter Inc.’s crypto development team has left the company, part of a mass exodus of employees since new owner Elon Musk issued a blanket ultimatum to staff.

Tess Rinearson, who was tapped to spearhead Twitter’s crypto team last year, posted a tweet late on Thursday with the salute emoji, followed by a blue heart  -- the former being a symbol for departing Twitter employees to signal their goodbyes.

Rinearson also changed the Twitter bio on her now private account to “did not click the button”, referring to Musk’s requirement for all remaining staff to opt in to remain employed at the firm by clicking “yes” on a form before Thursday’s 5 p.m. Eastern Time deadline. If they did not respond, employees were offered three months’ severance.

She wasn’t the only exit from Twitter’s crypto unit that day, with Hamdi Allam, a senior software engineer on the project, also posting a tweet to say he’d left the business. Both didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Earlier on Thursday, so many employees had either decided to leave the firm or been dismissed that Twitter abruptly shuttered its offices. Musk had told staff to either accept his proposed “hardcore” work environment or leave, though in the final hours before the deadline, he tried to convince some key executives to stay.

Under Rinearson’s leadership, Twitter had implemented a tool allowing crypto art collectors to link a nonfungible token to their profile pictures, distinguishable by their hexagonal shape on users’ accounts. Rinearson was previously vice president of engineering at blockchain development firm Interchain, working on projects like Cosmos. 

The future of Twitter’s crypto ambitions remained unclear on Friday, along with the social network’s ability to continue operating normally due to the amount of staff that had left the firm.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

U.S. opened Live Nation probe before Taylor Swift ticket fiasco

Leah Nylen, Bloomberg News

Nov 18, 2022

The Justice Department is probing Live Nation Entertainment Inc. and its Ticketmaster unit over whether the entertainment giant is abusing its power over the live music industry, three people familiar with the investigation said. 

The probe comes amid a debacle for the ticketing giant, which was forced to cancel public sales for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour after its site crashed earlier in the week during massive presale demand.

Shares of Live Nation Entertainment fell as much as 9.5 per cent  after the New York Times reported on the probe earlier Friday, and was down 7.3 per cent  to US$66.49 as of 3:44 p.m. in New York.

The antitrust investigation began earlier this year, before the Swift ticketing fiasco. It was based on complaints by live event venues and ticketing companies, the people said, asking not to be named discussing a confidential probe. 

The new probe is separate from court-ordered monitoring of Ticketmaster that the government imposed in 2019 in response to previous antitrust complaints. 

The Justice Department declined to comment. Ticketmaster and LiveNation didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Scrutiny of Ticketmaster is building based on a rising chorus of complaints in recent months. The attorneys general of North Carolina and Tennessee said they were investigating consumer complaints over Ticketmaster and the Senate plans to have a hearing about it next month chaired by Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

Live Nation, the world’s largest concert promoter, acquired Ticketmaster, the largest ticketing site in 2010, in a deal that received close scrutiny from regulators. The Justice Department approved the merger in a 2010 settlement that required Ticketmaster to license its ticketing software and divest some ticketing assets. In 2019, the DOJ’s antitrust division found that Live Nation and Ticketmaster violated the terms of that settlement and imposed new conditions, including an ongoing monitor. 

Ticketmaster has perennially fielded complaints from fans and politicians about the price and availability of concert tickets. This summer the company came under fire when some seats for Bruce Springsteen shows were sold for thousands of dollars, using the company’s dynamic pricing mechanism. Ticketmaster said the highest-priced tickets accounted for a relatively small number of seats.

Swift’s concert sales fiasco has rekindled the ire. Many would-be concertgoers were approved by Ticketmaster’s verified fan process, which is designed to weed out ticket scalpers, only to find they were put on a waitlist. Others saw the site crash when they tried to buy tickets. The company ended up canceling sales to the general public, which were originally scheduled for Friday, citing unprecedented demand and limited supply.

Swift said the bungled presale for her upcoming “Eras Tour” concerts, was “excruciating” and that it was difficult to “watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”

Live Nation isn’t the promoter of the Swift shows, that’s done by AEG and Messina Touring Group. Nor is Ticketmaster the only seller. Swift added concerts in recent weeks to meet the demand. The artist hasn’t toured in years, and the album she released last month, Midnights, has been another strong seller.

US Justice Department investigating Ticketmaster, Live Nation over monopoly concerns

National Trending Staff
Nov 18 2022, 


Piotr Swat/Shutterstock

The US Justice Department is investigating Ticketmaster and Live Nation Entertainment to determine whether an abuse of power has occurred in the live music industry.


The New York Times reports that this investigation was already underway before Ticketmaster began making headlines for botching Taylor Swift’s concert ticket sales.

According to the news outlet, antitrust investigators have anonymously spoken to sources in the concert management field — such as venue operators — to see if Live Nation maintained a monopoly in the industry.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010, garnering much more power than they did individually in the last decade. The merger was approved by the Justice Department despite suspicion and opposition from others involved in the music industry.

In 2019, just before the pandemic disrupted business for everyone, Live Nation organized 40,000 events and sold nearly 500 million tickets via Ticketmaster. That same year, an investigation found that Live Nation had violated terms of its decree. The Justice Department demanded clarification on ticket sale practices with venues, reports the NYT.


On Friday, Taylor Swift spoke up against the corporation on her Instagram story as well.

@taylorswift/Instagram

“It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.”

She went on to add that there was a “multitude of reasons” why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and that she’s trying to figure out how the situation can be improved in the future.

“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could,” she said. “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”

Legal trouble brews for Ticketmaster Canada and Live Nation

This story comes just under a month after a class-action lawsuit was filed against Ticketmaster Canada over delays in refunding customers for tickets they bought to shows affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In April, Shayne Beaucage filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster Canada and Live Nation, and it was certified as a class-action suit in Ontario in September. He now represents everyone in the class.

According to court documents, the plaintiff alleged that customers who purchased tickets to events that were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic were entitled to prompt refunds, in the original form of payment, under the terms of their contracts with Ticketmaster or under consumer protection laws.

Ticketmaster denied the allegations and said that by November 30, 2020, all ticket holders had been provided refunds, or the option to receive refunds, for all but 12 events in Canada that had been postponed, rescheduled, or cancelled after March 11, 2020, due to pandemic.

This excludes Quebec. The province has its own lawsuit against Ticketmaster Canada in progress.

In late September, a settlement agreement was proposed and Ticketmaster agreed to compensate certain members of the class by giving them $5 gift cards per eligible ticket purchased. The company would also have to pay $100,000 additionally to settle the class action, bringing the total costs to $137,545.

You could be eligible for credit if you bought tickets for any of the following events. These are the 12 events for which, as per Ticketmaster’s own admission, refunds were not available prior to November 30, 2020:

kmlaw.ca

In May of 2020, a person called Ryan MacIntyre helmed a class-action lawsuit against Ticketmaster Canada and Live Nation. With him were Canadians who purchased one or more tickets from the parties for events taking place after March 13 that year, that were postponed, rescheduled, or canceled.

If the settlement for Beaucage v. Ticketmaster Canada Holdings ULC et al. is not approved, litigation is expected to continue. Ontario Superior Court of Justice will hold a hearing on December 15 at 10:00 ET to share the verdict.

Taylor Swift: Antitrust Hero

The DOJ and multiple state attorneys general are investigating Ticketmaster following its disastrous handling of Taylor Swift's recent tour sale.

By Mack DeGeurin
Published Yesterday 

Taylor Swift’s legion of rabid fans might just be able to accomplish something decades of legal scholars, millions in political lobbying, and the Biden administration couldn’t: implement meaningful antitrust reform.

Sources speaking in a New York Times report Friday say the U.S. Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s parent company, following the disastrous fallout of the pop star’s most recent tour ticket sale implosion. The investigation into the ticket selling behemoth, long disdained by both consumers and artists alike, will reportedly revolve around whether or not it possesses anti-competitive monopoly power in the music industry.

Ticketmaster’s website crumbled earlier this week under the immense weight of Swift fans desperately attempting to purchase presale tickets for the artists’ “The Eras” Tour. On Thursday, the day Swift’s tickets were intended to become valuable to the public, Ticketmaster made the unprecedented decision to cancel ticket sales entirely. In a Tweet, Ticketmaster said they opted to cancel the sale due to, “extraordinary high demands on ticketing sales and insufficient remaining ticket inventory.”

Though the disastrous handling of Swift’s tickets will almost certainly come up in the investigation, DOJ officials have reportedly had their eyes on Ticketmaster for months, the Times notes. Investigators have spoken with music venues, and others within the industry to try and determine whether or not Ticketmaster’s notoriously noxious business practices amount to monopoly actions. The Live Nation Entertainment juggernaut is the result of a 2010 merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster who were both among the industry’s largest players at the time.

DOJ investigators aren’t the only ones looking into Ticketmaster either. This week, following a groundswell of complaints from Swift fans, the The Attorneys General of Tennessee and North Carolina each launched their own investigations into the company’s business practice to determine whether or not they violated consumer rights and antitrust laws. Members of Congress, meanwhile, are reportedly planning to hold a hearing by the end of the year where they will discuss Ticketmaster’s mishandling of the Swift ticket sales and other aspects of its business consumers have decried for years.

“Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services. That can result in the types of dramatic service failures we saw this week, where consumers are the ones that pay the price,” U.S Senator Amy Klobuchar wrote in a letter addressed to Ticketmaster.

Swift, who’s received her own share of criticism for her alleged complicity in the ticketing drama, spoke out against Ticketmaster this week in an Instagram post.

“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” Swift wrote. “I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”

The sustained outrage expressed by Swift fans has managed to fast track antitrust concerns related to Ticketmaster experts and advocates have nurtured for years. Earlier this year, an alliance of organizations led by American Economic Liberties Project launched a news campaign aimed at breaking up Ticketmaster. The coalition argues Ticketmaster sustained market dominance, which they say accounts for as much as 70% of the primary ticket and live event venues market, has exploited customers and held sports and music fans “hostage.”

“We are thrilled to see the Department of Justice Antitrust Division investigate Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s ongoing monopoly abuse of fans, artists, venues, and live events professionals,” the Break Up Ticketmaster Coalition said in a statement Friday. “This is a day of optimism and hope for over 40,000 people who have called on the DOJ to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster, a corporation that has bent and broken the industry to its will since its entities merged in 2010.”

Live Nation Entertainment did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.

Swift fans’ massive public backlash this week is just the latest in a string of high profile vocal complaints raised against Ticketmaster. In October fans attempting to purchase tickets for a Blink 182 reunion tour were forced to pay exorbitant prices, in some cases well over $600, for general admission tickets. Those absurd prices are made possible, in part, due to Ticketmaster’s so-called “dynamic pricing” algorithm, an anti-scalping feature created in coordination with Bruce Springsteen. That model, which works somewhat like Uber’s surge pricing, is intended to measure the market price of a concert ticket and jack up prices high enough to effectively wean out resellers. In reality, the system ends up pricing consumers out of tickets entirely.

Elsewhere, critics have accused Ticketmaster of price gouging withholding tickets, and rolling out ever more onerous and difficult to parse “service fees.”

“Everyday Americans are being scammed and extorted by Ticketmaster for wanting to see their favorite sports teams and artists perform,” Helen Brosnan, Executive Director of Fight Corporate Monopolies said in a statement. “More than a decade later, their merger has resulted in consumers being held hostage by a company that uses its monopoly power to make everyone’s experience miserable—artists, concertgoers and sports fans, and independent venues alike. It should have never happened in the first place and the DOJ must step in and break them up.”

Mass layoffs don't deter tech workers as they stick with sector, look to startups


Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
Nov 17, 2022

When Mary Hailu learned she was being laid off from her executive assistant job at Toronto auto sales startup Clutch in June, all she could think about was her eight-year-old daughter.

"I'm a single mom. I'm the only income in my family, in my household," said Hailu, who quit a stable engineering job to join the tech sector in 2021.Sign up to get breaking news email alerts sent directly to your inbox

"I was feeling very anxious, very worried about the future. I think I probably cried for two weeks and I still cry now, when I think about it."

Hailu's experience places her in a growing group of tech workers that have experienced a layoff this year as investor exuberance around the sector fades and companies re-examine payroll costs in preparation for a potential recession.

Despite the apparent downturn, tech workers like Hailu aren't fleeing the industry. A month after her layoff, Hailu was settling into a new role at a software startup.


"People in the tech industry are committed to the craft and they really are quite eager and quite motivated by what the industry has to offer," said Abdullah Snobar, executive director of the DMZ tech hub in Toronto.

"Although many are getting laid off, they're able to find new jobs quite quickly."

Several job boards show hundreds of tech openings at startups, big-name software companies and even banks, retailers and health care organizations even as Amazon.

A recent report from the Information and Communications Technology Council, a not-for-profit organization offering labour policy advice, predicted employment in the Canadian digital economy would reach 2.26 million by 2025, triggering demand for an additional 250,000 jobs.

But the near-term is offering many reasons for tech workers to be spooked.

Local startups — Clearco, Hootsuite and Wealthsimple — and global heavyweights — Meta, Twitter, Netflix, Microsoft, Oracle and Intel — have all made cuts in recent months.

Amazon.com Inc. began cuts this week that will reportedly slash 10,000 staff from its workforce, including several Canadians who announced their departures on LinkedIn.

Layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi has counted layoffs at 788 companies worldwide, resulting in at least 120,699 workers losing their jobs.

Several companies have also seen their valuations fall, which makes stock options less attractive, but workers are still sticking around.

Hailu's family recommended she look for work at a larger corporation, which they perceived to be more stable. Instead, she took a job with another startup because she felt she could make more of a difference at a smaller company.

"With larger corporations, it's difficult to make an impact. You don't always feel heard, sometimes you end up feeling like just a number," she said.


Tech culture is a big draw, Snobar agreed.

Tech companies offer splashy offices with foosball tables, free meals and even nap pods. Many treat workers to unlimited vacation, embrace flexible hours and foster more relaxed environments, where staff feel they can experiment.

"Sometimes in more traditional industries, you're told to think within the box," Snobar said. "There's too much bureaucracy and too much red tape and nobody wants to go back to that."

That's part of why Jermaine L. Murray, who was laid off from Toronto finance company Wealthsimple in July, is still focused on helping people find jobs at tech companies like Meta, TikTok, Shopify and Microsoft.

The radio-host-turned-recruiter took a job at the Toronto finance company because its leadership team supported diversity plans others might think were too bold.

"I said, 'My goal is to double the amount of Black people that work here. Are you going to get in my way or are you going to help me?'" he recalled.

"They said, 'tell us what we can do to help' and that's when I knew this is where I want to be."

He was later laid off, but it felt like "a breath of fresh air" because he realized he could build out Jupiter HR, his career coaching and recruitment business that places workers at tech companies including Wealthsimple.

It's common for tech workers to build companies during downturns, said Snobar. Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Uber and Airbnb all started during recessions and went on to be wildly successful.

Stella Alexandrova is hoping to repeat the pattern.

She got her "dream job" at Shopify Inc. in 2019, before COVID-19 lockdowns and a corresponding spike in e-commerce sales facilitated by the software giant soared.

Hiring was constant during that time and work was so "hectic" the growth lead was in "shock" a little over three years later, when she was laid off alongside some 1,000 colleagues.

"It was very sudden. We didn't even see it coming ... because I was so deep in my work," said Alexandrova, who lost her job in July.

"You kind of feel like this big part of your life is just over."

She logged off for the day to process the news that 13 per cent of the Ottawa company was out of work and as CEO Tobi Lutke admitted he had misjudged the growth of e-commerce.

Two days later, she decided to treat the cut as an opportunity. She started her own tech company, Mave, a trip planning app she long dreamt of building.

"I thought, 'I'm going to start running and then I'm not looking back,'" said Alexandrova.

"The layoffs were in the past and I was moving forward."

Canada's slumping housing market weighs on Home Capital's loans

Despite the market turmoil, Home Capital’s borrowers have continued to make payments on their mortgages. 


Kevin Orland, Bloomberg News
Nov 8, 2022

The Close Not shopping around for a better mortgage rate is a mistake: John Shmuel

John Shmuel, managing editor at RATESDOTCA, joins BNN Bloomberg to talk how many Canadians are concerned about renewing their mortgage in the current interest rate environment. He says some Canadians are saying they have no choice but to take on debt or use their line of credit to make rising monthly payments.

The tumult in Canada’s housing market is starting to take its toll on lenders, with Home Capital Group Inc. reporting a plunge in third-quarter originations.

Home Capital, which lends largely to borrowers considered somewhat riskier than prime customers, said Tuesday that single-family mortgage originations plummeted 28 per cent from a year earlier. The lender’s so-called Alt-A borrowers include self-employed workers or those who are new to Canada and don’t have extensive credit histories. Total mortgage originations fell 23 per cent to $1.85 billion (US$1.38 billion), missing the $2.5 billion estimate of Royal Bank of Canada analyst Geoffrey Kwan. Sign up to get breaking news email alerts sent directly to your inbox

Sales activity in Canada’s housing market has slowed, with transactions down 32 per cent in September from a year earlier, as the Bank of Canada’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign ratchets up mortgage costs. Prices have fallen for seven straight months, and are down almost 9 per cent from their peak.



The market spiral had yet to make its way to lenders’ results, with Canada’s biggest banks all reporting growth in their mortgage books in their most recent earnings. Home Capital’s results provide a window into a segment of borrowers who are considered riskier than those the big banks typically take on, and therefore pay more to borrow.

“The housing market is currently in a period of transition as buyers and sellers adjust to a higher-interest-rate environment,” Home Capital Chief Executive Officer Yousry Bissada said in a statement, adding that the Toronto-based company expects “softer market conditions to persist in the near term.”

The drop in originations contributed to Home Capital’s net income falling 43 per cent to $31 million, or 77 cents a share. Excluding some items, profit was 95 cents a share, matching analysts’ estimates.

Home Capital’s shares fell 4.8 per cent to $25.23 at 10:32 a.m. in Toronto, bringing their decline this year to 35 per cent. That’s the fourth-worst performance in the 29-company S&P/TSX Financials Index.

Despite the market turmoil, Home Capital’s borrowers have continued to make payments on their mortgages. Net non-performing loans accounted for 0.16 per cent of gross loans last quarter. That compares with 0.15 per cent a year earlier and 0.47 per cent in the same period in 2020.

Scientists dig for answers inside mineral-rich meteorites

Staff Writer | November 13, 2022 | 

Meteorite GRA 06100 depicts overlay of X-ray and neutron imaging. Red denotes iron-rich compounds; blue denotes hydrogenated compounds, including water. 

(Image courtesy of the National Institute of Standards and Technology).

US-based researchers have combined two complementary techniques—X-ray imaging and neutron imaging—to peer inside crevices and mineral-rich deposits inside meteorites.


The goal is to analyze the minerals, metals and water the rocky bodies deliver to our planet and, thus, uncover new clues on the early history of planet formation and how the young earth acquired the ingredients essential for life.

According to the scientists, neutron imaging is ideal for searching for water and other hydrogen-bearing compounds because neutrons readily ricochet off hydrogen. In contrast, X-ray imaging is best for finding deposits of heavy elements, such as iron and nickel, because X-rays are primarily scattered by the large number of electrons in heavy-weight atoms.

Neither imaging technique significantly harms or alters meteorites, unlike other methods of analyzing the chemical composition of the rocks, which require cutting thin slices of the meteorites. Although each imaging method has been used separately in the past, the team is among the first to use the two techniques simultaneously to create X-ray and neutron-beam snapshots.

In the pilot study, the group examined two meteorites whose mineral and water contents were already well known so that they could assess the accuracy of the combined imaging methods. One of the rocks, dubbed EET 87503, is a fragment from the surface of the large asteroid Vesta but also contains material from a different, water-rich variety of asteroid.


Movie of the meteorite EET 87503 depicts overlay of X-ray and neutron imaging. Purple and orange denote two different classes of iron-rich minerals; green denotes minerals that contain water in their structure. (Video courtesy of NIST).

The other meteorite, GRA 06100, rich in iron and nickel, is classified as a chondrite—a rock that has not been altered by melting or other processes since the early days of the solar system. It also has a significant amount of hydrogen-bearing silicates formed by past exposure to water.

To create three-dimensional views of the meteorites, the researchers used the X-ray and neutron beams to image cross-sections of the rocks. Individual images of different cross sections were then combined to create a 3D image, a technique known as tomography, or CT scan.

The imaging methods accurately revealed the locations of metal-rich minerals, silicate minerals, water and other hydrogenated compounds in the two meteorites. Neutron imaging pinpointed and characterized the chondrite grains within GRA 06100, which could then be extracted for further study. The 3D imaging can test theories of how water entered the rock and what pathway the liquid took to alter the composition of minerals and become bound in the sample.

Although water accounts for 70% of earth’s surface, exactly how the substance arrived on our planet remains the subject of a longstanding debate. Some planetary scientists suggest that meteorites and comets—icy relics from the frigid, outer solar system—delivered the water, along with the building blocks of proteins essential for life, after our planet’s core had formed. Others suggest that earth acquired the water during its formation 4.5 billion years ago from bits of gas and dust that swaddled the infant sun and fused together to form our planet.

Water comes in two forms: ordinary water, consisting of hydrogen and oxygen, and heavy water, consisting of deuterium (hydrogen with an added neutron) and oxygen. One way to determine if meteorites were a primary source of terrestrial water is to compare the relative abundance of these two types in the rocks to the relative abundance of the water on and beneath the earth’s surface. Planetary scientists have measured the abundance in some meteorites but need to examine a larger number.

The neutron and X-ray images can assist in these studies. By pinpointing the location of mineral, metal and water deposits locked inside meteorites, the images could guide researchers on how to best slice sections of the rocks so they can measure these abundances as well as the composition of other compounds.

Following this initial trial, the team now plans to use its dual imaging technique to study less familiar meteorites so that their water and mineral content can be mapped in detail for the first time.

South African efforts to clear coal railway derailment disrupted by violence
Bloomberg News | November 13, 2022 | 

Transnet train. (Reference image by Transnet SOC).

South Africa’s Transnet SOC Ltd. said extortion and violent acts significantly disrupted efforts to clear a train derailment on a coal export line as the country increasingly sends more of the fuel to Europe.


The state-owned company has declared force majeure on the North Corridor route that runs to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal. After the derailment occurred on Nov. 8, the company planned to meet with community leaders to diffuse tensions with what it described as disgruntled parties seeking business opportunities.

Instead, a group known as the Ulundi Business Forum demanded contracts, the company said in a statement late Friday. “Transnet rejected this demand and the Forum resorted to violence, which included assault, blocking access roads and the discharging of a firearm,” it said. “Transnet condemns these acts and will be laying charges of violence, tampering with essential infrastructure and extortion.”

Work has since resumed and once the line is cleared a determination can be made over the return of normal operations, the company said in an emailed update on Saturday.

The incident marks another obstacle for Transnet and South African coal miners who depend on the line. The company declared force majeure due to a wage strike last month as well as events including riots in the KwaZulu-Natal province in July 2021, a cyber attack that incapacitated its container terminal, and a fire that disrupted bulk shipments.

Coal exports to Europe from a consortium of producers that own the Richards Bay Coal Terminal rose eight-fold in the first half of the year from 500,000 tons in 2021, according to Thungela Resources Ltd., the nation’s biggest shipper of thermal coal. “Thungela is engaging with Transnet Freight Rail to understand what the impact may be,” a spokeswoman said in response to emailed questions.

In order to mitigate the impact of the disruption to the North Corridor, Transnet said it will temporarily divert some critical shipments like chemicals, via the mainline between Durban and Gauteng.

(By Paul Burkhardt)

Africa moving very slowly toward clean energy transition — report
Staff Writer | November 13, 2022 | 

Amogdoul wind farm in Essaouira, Morocco. 

(Image by Sqala, Wikimedia Commons.)

Africa’s investments in renewables trail far behind the rest of the continents, accounting for only 0.6% of the $434 billion destined for clean energy worldwide in 2021, a recent report by BloombergNEF shows.


According to the market analyst, despite Africa’s natural resource wealth, rapidly growing electricity demand and improving policy frameworks, only $2.6 billion of capital was deployed for new wind, solar, geothermal or other renewable power-generating projects in 2021, the lowest in 11 years.

The figures are particularly relevant at a time when the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties (COP27) is taking place in Egypt, offering an opportunity to take stock of how far the continent’s energy transition has advanced – and how much work remains to be done.

BNEF’s document states that Africa’s poor results cannot be blamed on any lingering effects of the covid-19 pandemic, particularly when taking into account that while renewables investment globally rose 9% from 2020 to 2021 to reach an all-time high, renewables investment in Africa slipped 35% year-on-year.

“The global transition from fossil fuels to clean energy has the potential to benefit economies and health across Africa,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, UN secretary-general’s special envoy on climate ambition and solutions and founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

“But as this new report details, clean energy investment in Africa is at an alarmingly low level. Changing that requires new levels of collaboration to identify viable clean energy projects and bring more private financing and public support to them – so we can turn Africa’s potential as a global clean energy leader into reality.”
Handful of markets

The study also found that clean energy investment in Africa is highly concentrated in a handful of markets. South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, and Kenya have accounted for nearly three-quarters of all renewable energy asset investment since 2010 with a total of $46 billion. All others have secured just $16 billion over that time.

Looking specifically at solar energy, Africa is now home to just 1.3% of global solar capacity. The existing capacity is 13GW or 5.5% of Africa’s total. South Africa, Egypt and Morocco account for two-thirds of the solar capacity.

Yet, in 2021, as many as 24 countries installed at least 1MW of solar – a new high following five years of stagnation. Solar was also the top technology for new capacity added in 11 countries in the region in 2021, a development attributed to the modular nature of photovoltaics, along with steep equipment price declines over a decade.

(Graph by BloombergNEF).

In the dark

Despite the additional installed capacity, Africa continues to lag far behind the rest of the world in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7 of having clean, affordable energy for all its citizens.

Among all those lacking access to electricity globally, 77% or 564 million people reside in sub-Saharan Africa, the report points out, citing World Bank sources.

The same data sources show that the rate of new electricity-generating projects added to Africa’s grids has slowed since 2018, with year-on-year installed capacity growth averaging 6.6% annually from 2011 to 2018, but only 3.8% over the 2019-2021 period.
Privileged position

In the view of BNEF’s experts, Africa is in a privileged position to take advantage of lowering prices when it comes to clean energy infrastructure, particularly due to its wealth of natural resources. Their research shows that such resources have the potential to be transformative in expanding power-generating capacity and access to electricity on the continent.

“Nevertheless, 75% of Africa’s power needs are met today by coal- and natural gas-fired generation. Hydro continues to play an important role, accounting for 18% of output. Wind and solar are a combined 5%,” the report reads. “Africa’s dependence on gas- and coal-fired electricity puts the continent at risk of economic shock when commodity prices fluctuate. At least 28 countries meet at least half of their power demand with fossil fuels, of which 16 rely on fossils for 80% or more of their power.”

(Graph courtesy of BloombergNEF).

Notwithstanding their fossil fuel dependence, countries in the region are praised for having made noteworthy strides to improve their policy regimes with an eye toward attracting funding for clean energy projects. Among the 42 African nations BNEF surveyed for its study, 86% now have long-term clean power targets in force, up from 57% in 2019.

Another positive development noted by the research firm is that net metering policies, which allow owners of distributed solar systems to be compensated for excess generation they feed back into the grid, are in place in 29% of African nations.

Back to the not-so-positive side, BNEF believes that countries have done far less to implement concrete programs to ensure that they meet their long-term clean energy targets. While half the nations surveyed have policies in place to hold reverse auctions for clean power delivery contracts, far fewer have held tenders. Even fewer have successfully brought projects online under such auctions.

“The ingredients are there for Africa to be a major market for clean energy growth, including outstanding natural resources and massive demand,” Luiza Demôro, head of energy transition research at BNEF, said. “But incomplete policy regimes and reluctant investors continue to keep investment levels below where they could and really should be.”

Protestors invade Hochschild’s largest mine in Peru
Staff Writer | November 13, 2022 |

Hochschild Mining’s Inmaculada mine in Peru. (Image by Hochschild Mining).

A couple of weeks after protestors burned infrastructure at Hochschild Mining Plc’s (LON: HOC) Inmaculada mine in south-central Peru, residents of the nearby Huancute Annex have invaded the mine and have built picket lines placing women and cattle at the forefront to avoid being forcefully removed by police.


In a media statement, Hochschild Mining and its affiliated company Minera Ares said that early on Friday, Huancute residents cut the metal mesh that surrounds the operation and gained access to Inmaculada.

“A group of invaders threw rocks at the dump trucks that were moving around the mine, thus endangering workers’ safety and disrupting mine operations,” the release reads. “These acts constitute the crimes of aggravated usurpation, aggravated material damage to private property, violation of domicile and rioting.”

According to the companies, about 1700 workers are working in fear at Inmaculada, as they see people from nearby communities illegally accessing the mine. Hochschild and Ares have, thus, filed legal complaints before the National Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police and demanded immediate intervention from Peruvian authorities.

In their coomuniqué and legal filings, the precious metals miners argue that they are legally occupying the terrains on which Inmaculada sits based on mining easements and contracts signed with the landowners and the Peruvian state, as well as with the farming community of Huallhua. They say that they have also been granted possession rights by members of the Huancute Annex and by the Qatary Huancute Association.

Inmaculada, which produces both gold and silver, is Hochschild Mining’s largest mine in the Andean nation.

The UK-listed company plans to invest $4.4 billion in Inmaculada to extend the mine’s life through 2042.

(With files from Reuters).

21ST CENTURY ALCHEMY
Novel copper-based material key to safely convert heat into electricity
Staff Writer | November 14, 2022 | 6:06 am Energy Europe Copper Manganese

Copper. (Reference image by the US Geological Survey, Flickr.)

A recent study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie presents a new synthetic copper material that acquires a complex structure and microstructure through simple changes in its composition, thereby laying the foundation for converting heat into electricity.


In detail, the novel material is composed of copper, manganese, germanium, and sulphur, and is produced in a relatively simple process.

“The powders are simply mechanically alloyed by ball-milling to form a pre-crystallized phase, which is then densified by 600 degrees Celsius. This process can be easily scaled up,” Emmanuel Guilmeau, corresponding author of the study, said in a media statement.

Thermoelectric materials convert heat to electricity. This is especially useful in industrial processes where waste heat is reused as valuable electric power. The converse approach is the cooling of electronic parts, for example, in smartphones or cars. Materials used in this kind of application have to be not only efficient, but also inexpensive and, above all, safe.

However, thermoelectric devices used to date make use of expensive and toxic elements such as lead and tellurium, which offer the best conversion efficiency.

But Guilmeau and his team were convinced that it is possible to create safer alternatives. This is why they decided to explore derivatives of natural copper-based sulphide minerals. These mineral derivatives are mainly composed of nontoxic and abundant elements, and some of them have thermoelectric properties.

The team succeeded in producing a series of thermoelectric materials showing two crystal structures within the same material.

“We were very surprised at the result. Usually, slightly changing the composition has little effect on the structure in this class of materials,” Guilmeau said.

He and his colleagues found that replacing a small fraction of the manganese with copper produced complex microstructures with interconnected nanodomains, defects, and coherent interfaces, which affected the material’s transport properties for electrons and heat.

Guilmeau pointed out that the novel material is stable up to 400 degrees Celsius, a range well within the waste heat temperature range of most industries. He is convinced that, based on this discovery, novel cheaper and nontoxic thermoelectric materials could be designed to replace more problematic components.

GREENWASHING

Vale, other large companies leading reforestation program in Brazil
Staff Writer | November 14, 2022 | 

Vale and other major corporations have pledged to restore and conserve 4.0 million ha of forests in Brazil. Credit: Vale S.A.

Vale SA (NYSE: VALE) and a number of other large Brazilian companies are creating a new company focused entirely on the restoration, conservation, and preservation of forests in Brazil. Joining Vale are Itaú Unibanco, Marfrig, Rabobank, Santander and Suzano.


The company is initially to be called Biomas. Over the next 20 years, the new enterprise will restore and protect 4.0 million ha of native forests in some of Brazil’s most valuable ecosystems, including the Amazon, Atlantic Forest and Carrado biomes.

Two million degraded hectares will be restored with the planting of two million native trees. Another 2.0 million hectares of existing trees will be preserved. The project is expected to stimulate regional development and strengthen local communities through their involvement in the value chain.

Each partner will initially commit $5 million to support early Biomas activities. The company is underpinned by a sustainable operation and a financially sustainable business model. Each project will be based on the commercialization of carbon credits.

The first stage of the project will consist of identifying areas, creating nurseries for native species, engaging with communities, advocating for public land concessions, and working on carbon credits certification. After successful pilot projects, Biomas will begin rolling out projects on a vast scale in 2025. Efforts will continue until it reaches the 4.0 million ha goal.

The alliance launched at COP27, held earlier this month and sponsored by United Nations Climate Change, is expected to remove the equivalent of 900 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. It will also provide habitat for more than 4,000 species of animals and plants.