Thursday, April 21, 2022

TYPE 1 CIVILIZATION, YES PLEASE

Scientists Predict that Humanity Could Harness Earth's Energy by 2371

When will humans harness all Earth's available energy? In about 300 years, according to a new study.

By Becky Ferreira
21.4.22

Over the course of thousands of years, humans have harnessed increasingly bigger energy yields, starting with ancient campfires and domesticated animals and progressing to modern sources, such as fossil fuels, nuclear power, and renewables such as wind, hydro, and solar.

That said, we are still a long way from producing the amount of energy that Earth naturally receives from the Sun, a feat that would officially distinguish us as a Type I civilization, according to the Kardashev scale, a metric that ranks the advancement of a civilization based on its power-generating capabilities.

Now, a team led by Jonathan Jiang, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has produced a new estimate for when humans might attain this Type I status: the year 2371, or thereafter. The researchers reached this conclusion by analyzing “the consumption and energy supply of the three most important energy sources”—fossil fuels, nuclear energy, and renewable energy—while factoring in our likelihood of wiping ourselves out with these power sources, a concept known as the Great Filter, according to a study published on the preprint server arXiv.

Named after its inventor, the Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, the Kardashev scale starts with the planetary level category, Type I, then imagines a Type II civilization that could access all the energy of its star, before concluding with a Type III civilization that could tap into the power of an entire galaxy. Jiang and his colleagues also invoke the “K formula,” developed by the American astronomer Carl Sagan, which expresses the Kardashev scale as gradient, rather than as three distinct stages.

“In its early formulation, the Kardashev Type I civilization was based on the overall consumption of energy of a given civilization,” said Jiang in an email. “However, it should also encompass that civilization’s stewardship of their home world.”

“Therefore in this study, when we analyze the consumption and energy supply of the three most important energy sources (fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewable energy) based on Carl Sagan’s K formula, we are inspired to also consider environmental limitations suggested by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency,” he added.

Humans are likely to be thousands of years away from becoming Type II or Type III civilizations, assuming such enormous energy yields are even attainable at all. Though we are already an impressive 73 percent of the way toward cinching Type I status, that progress has come at an unsustainable price. Fossil fuels primarily power the world, but they are also causing rapid climate change, a trend that is amplifying deadly phenomena such as natural disasters and pollution, all of which threatens to leave us on the wrong end of the Great Filter.

“Development is an eternal theme for human society. But in the process of development, we can't just develop for the sake of development,” said Fuyang Feng, an astronomer at Beijing Normal University who co-authored the study, in an email. “More importantly, we can understand some truths in the process of development, so that we can reflect on past history, what shortcomings we have made, and it can give us more inspiration for our future development. Only in this way can we develop sustainably and have the ability and possibility to understand the nature of the world better.”

Feng added that if humans fail to find the right balance between our major energy sources, then our “biggest problem is not how many years we will take in reaching Type I civilization, but whether we will survive until we reach Type I civilization and succeed in avoiding the Big Filter.”

For this reason, the new study assumes that humans must rapidly abandon our consumption of fossil fuels within the next three decades just to survive, let alone become a Type I civilization. Beyond that horizon, alternate energy sources—such as nuclear, solar, hydro, and wind power—must swiftly increase their yields to meet, and ultimately exceed, the power demands of global society. That said, the study also isolates nuclear power as another form of energy that could place humanity at risk if its hazardous byproducts are not properly handled.

“Another major and inevitable concern with the increasing development of nuclear energy are the dangers to all life on Earth posed by such a powerful resource, while trying to successfully avoid the Great Filter,” the team said. “Thus, in concert with significantly increasing the growth rate of nuclear energy generation,” they added, we must adopt “improved technology for even more secure disposal radioactive wastes, all while transitioning to cleaner forms of energy.”

Jiang and his colleagues cite another similar study that estimated when humans might reach Type I status, which came up with the year 2347 as a possible tipping point. But the new study is slightly more conservative in its estimation of the growth rate of clean technologies, as it factors in the role of policy changes involving energy use and other complex factors, resulting in a date a few decades later.

Taken together, the research suggests that if humans are able to switch to renewables within the next few decades, we might expect to earn our Type I stripes sometime in the 24th century. Working toward this goal is not just some aspirational futurist goal, it may be essential to ensuring our species evades extinction, according to co-author Philip Rosen, a retired energy expert.

“Stagnation, or worse, backsliding into decline are simply not options for the long-term survival of humanity,” Rosen said in an email. “While continued technological development, and the associated increasing energy demand, certainly poses risks, those genies cannot be stuffed back into their bottles.”

While the researchers acknowledge the difficulties of making predictions about an outcome riddled with so many inherent uncertainties, they suggest that the exercise has value as a means to consider the awesome responsibility of humans to safeguard our planet and all its inhabitants.

“The key difference that separates humanity from other species on this Earth is that we have the power to imagine the future!” said Prithwis Das, a student at Vivekananda Mission High School in India and a co-author of the study, in an email. “We are the race of explorers and we are here to rewrite history every-time we make a breakthrough finding.”

“Reaching the Type 1 civilization and beyond will not only make us the next generation of human race but also will successfully help us keep aside the question concerned with the very existence of mankind,” concluded Das. “And for us to upgrade ourselves, analysis of energy consumption/supply of the three major energy sources is a critical step since we cannot progress a single step without harnessing energy. This was the motivation for our team to conduct this study."

Big Electric Cars Officially Aren't That Green. Are E-Fuels The Answer?

Findings from independent car tester Green NCAP highlight the issues with EVs

The first round of Green NCAP’s trials, designed to test the eco-friendliness of cars, suggests that large, powerful electric vehicles have a far more significant environmental impact compared to smaller ones. The findings also suggest that EVs in general may have a similar or sometimes even higher energy demand than conventional petrol or diesel cars.

Green NCAP - an offshoot of Euro NCAP - has tested 61 cars to date, with the electric Fiat 500 currently holding the title for the car with the smallest whole-life CO2 footprint. However, the test results, which take into consideration a variety of factors such as lifetime emissions, the availability of energy and fuels in different countries and different driving styles, suggest that many large or powerful EVs have a more significant environmental impact than the manufacturers let on.

Green NCAP stated that “while compact and mid-sized BEV show slightly less life cycle GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions than conventional powertrain cars in the context of the European average electricity mix, big and powerful BEVs may be in the same range as most diesel or petrol vehicles”. Larger EVs produce more greenhouse gas emissions as a result of “the production of a heavier chassis, bigger high voltage batteries and the manufacturing of more electric components, like cables and power circuits”, according to Green NCAP.

In an interview with AutoExpress, Green NCAP Technical Manager Aleksandar Damyanov highlighted the issues with powerful, heavy EVs such as the Ford Mustang Mach-E: “A 2.2-tonne electric vehicle with 300 kilowatts (400bhp) is not nature friendly,” he says. “Of course, you can charge it with a hundred per cent renewable electricity, and this will be better, but in reality who is doing that?”

“The optimal solution means leaving all possibilities open, so the target should not be to put electric vehicles on the market, but to reduce CO2. If a vehicle is emitting nothing in England, but is produced with dirty energy in China, how does that help?” he said.

Damyanov suggested that there should be a greater focus on e-Fuels in the future, synthesised from renewable or nuclear energy. “The internal combustion engine has a very bad image, but it is not the engine, it is the fuel that we put in it. If we fill it with dinosaurs, that is our problem. It will burn what it has to burn.”

“If you see a commercial for a big electric SUV, and it says ‘save the planet’, is it really doing that? The manufacturer will say yes, of course, and others will provide arguments from the other side. Our role is to inform the best way we can, in a very neutral manner.”

So, what do you think of Green NCAP’s findings? Do you think EVs are still the way forward, or should we focus on developing green, renewable fuels for existing engines instead? Let us know your thoughts.

Analysis-Peru's Castillo hardens stance on mining protests as economy stumbles

By Marcelo Rochabrun -
© Reuters/ANGELA PONCE

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru's leftist President Pedro Castillo has signaled a tougher stance on protests against mining companies that are roiling the Andean nation, the world's second largest copper producer, mobilizing the army in a sharp tactical shift from a previous conciliatory approach.

Mining activity has been halted at Southern Copper Corp's Cuajone since late February as protesters from the mostly indigenous surrounding communities demand financial compensation and a share of future profits.

The government on Wednesday announced a state of emergency at the Cuajone mine, saying it would send military forces and suspend the right to protest at the mine that has been shuttered for over 50 days.

That's a significant pivot by Castillo, a former teacher who rode into office last year backed by voters in poor mining districts hoping for a greater share of Peru's mineral wealth. He has avoided clashing with protesters despite a series of blockades that have hit the country's main export sector.

"The problem has to be solved now," Peru's Prime Minister Anibal Torres said on Wednesday, citing "irrational" community demands at Cuajone, including asking for $5 billion in payments. "That has led us to declare a state of emergency."

Meanwhile, last week residents of the indigenous Fuerabamba community pitched tents just feet away from Chinese-owned MMG Ltd's huge Las Bambas open pit copper deposit.

The protests have taken a combined 20% of Peru's copper production offline at a time when the Andean country is battling slower growth amid high global inflation.

"Under this administration there are a greater number of mining protests and they are more serious," said Pablo O'Brien, a mining expert who worked as an adviser to several mining ministers, including under Castillo.

"The protests last longer than they ever did and they have spread to regions where you didn't see social conflicts before."

'WE COULD STAY FOR YEARS'

Protests have also hit other mines in Peru since Castillo came to office last July, including the Anglo-Swiss Glencore's Antapaccay, and Canada-based Hudbay Minerals Inc's Constancia and Antamina mines, co-owned by Glencore and the Anglo-Australian miner BHP.

In neighboring Chile, the No. 1 global copper producer, BHP is also facing road blockades that have disrupted operations at its major Escondida mine, forcing it to cut its annual copper production outlook this week.

But the pinch has been felt harder in Peru, where Cuajone and Las Bambas put together add up to 1.5% of the country's gross domestic product. Shares of Southern Copper and MMG have plummeted over 5 and 8% respectively in the past week.

Las Bambas executives have called on the government to also declare a state of emergency at the mine.

"Las Bambas currently is coordinating with the government, and we hope they can take the same action for Las Bambas," Wei Jianxian, MMG's Executive General Manager for the Americas, said in a call with analysts this week.

A government press representative said they were not aware of any plans for a state of emergency for Las Bambas.

Protesters, however, say they are digging in for the long-run, indicating that disruptions to the mining sector won't be easy to dismantle and that industry will continue to pressure the government to take firmer action.

"We could stay here for years," Edison Vargas, 32, the president of the Fuerabamba community, told Reuters. Vargas and others have set up camp inside Las Bambas and say they are demanding the return of their ancestral lands.

The mine had resettled some 400 Fuerabamba families over a decade ago in a compact urban town dubbed Nueva Fuerabamba to make way for the construction of Las Bambas, one of the world's top copper mines. It paid residents 600 million soles ($161 million) as compensation for the move, mine executives say.

Las Bambas is notorious for mining conflicts and has faced over 450 days of road blockades since the mine opened in 2016.

"If the government wants to turn their backs on us, we are ready," Vargas added. "We prefer to die here in our old lands than back in Nueva Fuerabamba."

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Aurora Ellis)

Sustainable companies combat the carbon footprint of fast fashion

Spring is here and so are new trends.

ByClaire Pedersen,Ashley Riegle,Mary Marsh,Zach Fannin, andHaley Yamada
21 April 2022,

Sustainable companies combat the carbon footprint of fast fashion

Fashion contributes up to 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions

The global fashion industry is fueled by the latest styles, and fast production has helped the industry contribute up to 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

“I don't think it's a secret that the fashion industry is one of the largest polluters on the planet and not just in terms of the material use or material waste, but also in the way that it uses labor and uses human power,” said Jessica Schreiber, founder and CEO of Fabscrap, a Brooklyn-based fabric recycling company.

Much of the carbon footprint of the industry is generated by the production of clothing, which is often made in developing countries and then shipped abroad. Then, once material is thrown out, 85% of those textiles in the United States end up in landfills or are incinerated, according to the EPA.

As climate change becomes a more pressing issue, some companies have recognized that their business model needs to change and that they need to embrace sustainability. Now a few have put it at the core of their brand.

Schreiber has partnered with some big name fashion brands like J Crew, Macy’s, Marc Jacobs to collect, sort and recycle what they can from excess material generated from the design process.

“We're doing what we can where we're at with what we have. So globally, though, I think that's a drop in the bucket and there's a lot of work to be done,” said Schreiber.

At Fabscrap, the mission is to cut down clothing waste and keep fabric from ending up in landfills. Materials like cotton, wool, and polyester are shredded and turned into a product called “shoddy.”

“Every bag is pretty much a surprise. You never know what types of fabrics will be in it,” said Camille Tagle, the co-founder and creative director at Fabscrap.

Shoddy and other materials are put up for resale at the Fabscrap store or online.

In the past two decades, the fashion industry has exponentially grown into a $2.5 trillion industry that employs 75 million people worldwide, according to the United Nations.

The growth is fueled in part by inexpensive, trendy clothing known as “fast fashion.”

“We're making too much stuff,” said Kathleen Talbot. “[Fast fashion brands] mass produce disposable clothing that really is just chasing the trend.”

MORE: Batteries, solar, wind and hydropower: Why renewable energy is essential to curbing climate change

Talbot is the chief sustainability officer at Reformation, a clothing brand dedicated to sustainability.

“We're focused on making limited collections. If you can make smaller, smaller collections and only make more based on the consumer demand, you don't have that end of season waste,” said Talbot.

According to the United Nations, 60% of all new clothing is made with synthetic fibers - derived from fossil fuels.

“For synthetics, it will take over 200 years for it to biodegrade. So just like throwing plastics away, it's the same thing,” said Talbot.

All materials used at Reformation are traceable and the company says it has been 100% carbon-neutral since 2015.

Reformation CEO Hali Bornstein said the company is focused on making the LA-based brand both sustainable and profitable.

“We set out early on to prove out that you can both be a profitable business and be sustainable because, by definition, it’s not sustainable to lose money, right?” said Bornstein.

Bornstein hopes that Reformation can be a model for other brands and push the entire industry toward a more sustainable future.

“I don't think there's a choice anymore,” she said. “I think brands that are going to survive are going to do the right thing and put the investment in.”

EXCLUSIVE | Beijing hydrogen body admits that Chinese electrolysers cannot compete with Western machines — yet

Despite being far cheaper to buy, inferiority of Chinese electrolysers means their levelised cost of H2 would actually be higher, says China Hydrogen Energy & Fuel Cells Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance

An electrolyser system installed in China by Tianjin-based manufacturer CNTHE.

Photo: CNTHE

19 April 2022
By Hack Heyward

Chinese electrolysers are less efficient and reliable than Western machines, and despite being up to four times cheaper to buy, would actually result in a higher levelised cost of hydrogen due to their lower efficiencies and shorter operating lifetimes, according to a Chinese-language report from Beijing-based trade association China Hydrogen Energy & Fuel Cells Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance (CHEFCIISA).

European machines “are much more advanced in heat reclamation technologies” and manage gas flow better than their Chinese counterparts, thus increasing overall efficiency and economic advantage, says the paper, entitled China Hydrogen Energy & Fuel Cell Industry Development Report 2021.

European control systems are superior, resulting in better balanced loads, and degrade at a slower rate, resulting in longer lifetimes, it adds.

CHEFCIISA explains that Chinese-made electrolysers have thicker separators in the electrolyser stacks — 1mm, compared to less than 0.5mm in the West — resulting in lower current densities and therefore lower efficiencies.

Chinese machines also tend to use inferior core materials compared to European equipment. For example, Chinese electrolyser electrodes tend to be made from porous nickel, while Europe has already progressed to “high-performance nickel-based alloy”, says the report.

“China has a long way to go in terms of hydrogen-generation efficiencies,” CHEFCIISA says.
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The China Hydrogen Alliance — a rival trade body — believes that locally produced machines will be able to achieve operating lifetimes of 100,000 hours by 2030, up from about 60,000 hours today.

Will US and European green hydrogen markets soon be flooded by cheap Chinese electrolysers?Read more

In February, analyst Bloomberg NEF revealed in a report that Chinese electrolyser systems are up to four times cheaper than Western equivalents — $300/kW compared to $1,200/kW — and that Chinese OEMs had begun exporting their machines to the US and Europe.

Similar price discrepancies in the solar industry in the 2010s saw the previously world-leading European solar manufacturing sector collapse in the space of a few years as cheaper Chinese modules flooded the market.

But the CHEFCIISA report suggests that Western electrolyser makers do not have to worry about history repeating — at least, not yet. Chinese OEMs are aware of their products’ shortcomings and working to improve their technology.

For instance, CNTHE, China’s third-largest electrolyser maker is developing a pressurised alkaline machine that would increase the hydrogen output from each MWh of electricity and be more responsive to the ups and downs of wind and solar power than the traditional unpressurised alkaline electrolysers typically made by European manufacturers.

'China should install 100GW of green hydrogen by 2030', says Beijing-supervised body

Beijing also has a number of national-level R&D projects to advance its hydrogen industry, including schemes to increase efficiencies of locally made alkaline and PEM (proton-exchange membrane) electrolysers.

In a bid to encourage the development of electrolysers and the economies of scale that can reduce prices further, several cities and provinces are now offering generous subsidies for green hydrogen production.

For example, the city of Guangzhou and the province of Sichuan are offering cheap electricity for electrolytic hydrogen producers, while the island of Zhoushan, near Shanghai, will both subsidise the power used and pay for 20% of the cost of the electrolyser system.

Hack Heyward is a Mandarin-speaking American economist based in Shenzhen, China. Hack specialises in clean energy and has worked on hydrogen energy and fuel-cell vehicle projects around the world.

Hydrogen-powered ferry prepares to launch in San Francisco Bay

Thu, April 21, 2022,
By Matt McKnight

BELLINGHAM, Wash. (Reuters) - The San Francisco Bay will soon have a new fossil fuel-free ferry floating in its waters, propelled completely by hydrogen fuel cells, and officials hope it heralds change on the high seas.

Aptly named Sea Change, the 70-foot (21-meter), 75-passenger ferry will service multiple stops along San Francisco's waterfront. It was built at All American Marine shipyard in Bellingham, Washington, and was undergoing tests with the U.S. Coast Guard in nearby Puget Sound.

"We're here in the water, under hydrogen fuel cell power and it's the first commercial vessel in the world that's got that propulsion system," said Pace Ralli, chief executive of Switch Maritime, standing on the bow of the ferry in Bellingham Bay.

Sea Change marks another industry exploring fuel cells as clean-energy cars, trucks, trains and pleasure boats are being developed.

Advocates assert hydrogen fuel cells are cleaner than other carbon-cutting methods as they only emit water and heat, but the high cost and bulky fuel cell systems have limited the use of the technology.

Ralli conceived the idea for the fuel cell-powered ferry while living in New York City, trying to find ways to decarbonize the maritime industry.

"There was a project in California that was being sponsored by the California Air Resources Board, and they were working on hydrogen fuel cell as a method for decarbonizing ships, so we joined up with them and funded their project in 2019," Ralli said.

As he spoke, three hydrogen fuel cell stacks whirred in the engine room, helping power two propellers that move the ferry along at a top speed of 20 knots. All American Marine project manager Jeff Sokolik helmed Sea Change, pressing buttons on a touchscreen that engage automated systems communicating with the engine room.

"This is going to be the next standard in fuel-cell driven vessels. They're clean, they're efficient and they make sense economically on scale," said Sokolik, who believes this eco-friendly maritime innovation could be widely adopted as soon as 10 years from now.

As companies move toward a zero-emission world, the desire to hit their sustainability targets has risen.

The International Maritime Organization's Greenhouse Gas Study conducted in 2020 states that greenhouse gas emissions including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased from 977 million tonnes in 2012 to 1,076 million tonnes in 2018, a 9.6% increase in six years.

"We're focused on the shipping industry because that's where we have expertise, but I don't think any industry can really wait at this point," Ralli said.

"We're really paving the regulatory framework that's needed to take this to a larger harbor craft, whether it's tugs and other larger ferries or even ocean-going vessels like container ships and cruise ships and tankers," he adds.

If all goes to plan, Ralli said the boat will be delivered to the Bay Area in late May and serve passengers in June, just in time for San Francisco's summer season.

(Reporting by Matt McKnight in Bellingham, Washington, editing by Ben Klayman in Washington and Richard Chang)

India’s Coal Supply Shock Causes Major Power Outages

By Charles Kennedy - Apr 21, 2022

The Indian states of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh have been forced into blackouts as of Thursday as power supplies are cut off due to a major increase in demand for summer cooling against a backdrop of low coal supplies.

India relies on coal for approximately 70% of its electricity generation and often struggles with power outages and even blackouts; however, this summer experts are expecting a more severe crisis in what is shaping up to be the hottest March in a century, Bloomberg reported.

In the first half of April, power demand in India hit a 38-year high for the month, according to local media reports.

India’s ABP news outlet reports that several Indian states are running out of coal reserves due to intensifying heat waves. India’s Central Electricity Department has stated that a minimum of 100 out of 173 power plants are now facing a coal shortage, with stocks now 25% from their normal levels.

Painting an even more dire picture, Indian electricity authorities have noted that on April 18th, coal stocks were sitting at 22.52 million tonnes, while normally at this time of year they should be nearly 67 million tonnes. In other words, coal stocks are down to one-third their usual levels.

"Thermal plants across the country are grappling with coal shortage as the power demand in states has increased, and many of them are not able to bridge the gap between demand and supply because of insufficient coal stocks at thermal plants," AIPEF Chairman Shailendra Dubey said in a statement carried by ABP.

Suffering from what Bloomberg has called a “persistent shortage of coal”, Nomura Holdings Inc has expressed concern that the country could experience “stagflationary shock” due to pressure on industrial output.

Bloomberg also cited a Mumbai-based partner at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu as warning that the coal shortage could worsen in India, with the monsoon season looming, which typically has a deleterious effect on coal production and distribution.

Congo nun overcomes blackouts with homemade hydroelectric plant

BY DJAFFAR AL KATANTY -20 April 2022 -

Congolese nun and electrical engineer Alfonsine Ciza walks past the alternator at her micro hydropower plant that provides electricity to a convent, schools and a health centre in Miti near Bukavu South Kivu in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on April 12, 2022.
Image: REUTERS/Djaffar Sabiti

Sister Alphonsine Ciza spends most of her day in gum boots, white veil tucked under a builder's hat, manning the micro hydroelectric plant she built to overcome daily electricity cuts in her town of Miti in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

She works around the clock with a team of nuns and engineers, greasing machinery and checking the dials of a generator that is fed from a nearby reservoir and lights up a convent, church, two schools and a clinic free of charge.

Without the plant, residents would only have electricity two or three days a week for a few hours.

“We sisters... cannot function this way because we have to provide a lot of services,” said Ciza, 55, a portable voltage meter slung around her neck in the town of about 300,000 inhabitants near the border with Rwanda.

Blackouts are a daily disruption in the Congo, a vast central African country of around 90 million people that sources most of its electricity from a run-down and mismanaged hydropower system.

The government has worked with foreign partners in an effort to increase the capacity of the mineral-rich nation's ailing grid. Critics say the new projects focus too much on powering mines and exporting electricity to neighbouring countries.

Despite millions of dollars in donor funding, only around 20% of the population has access to electricity, according to the World Bank.

Fed up with relying on candlelight and costly fuel-powered generators, Ciza started raising money in 2015 to build the hydropower plant.

She picked up skills as a young nun, repairing electrical faults around the convent, which convinced superiors to send her to study mechanical engineering.

It took Ciza's convent three years to gather the required $297,000 and build the plant, which generates between 0.05 and 0.1MW.

Thanks to Ciza's efforts, students at Miti's Maendeleo secondary school can now learn computer skills from screens rather than from books.

“Previously, power often only came on at night, when children were no longer in school,” said headmistress Mweze Nsimire Gilberte.

“Having our own turbine has been a great relief.”

Why nuclear power won’t solve the fuel crisis

This is nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to an energy shortage European governments should have seen coming

David Callaway
THE INDEPENDENT UK

Even Japan, victim of the Fukushima disaster a decade ago, is restarting some of its plants.
(AFP via Getty Images)

The global scramble for fuel after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has decidedly ended any debate over whether nuclear energy should be part of the world’s new renewable era.

Governments in Europe, Asia and the US have all recently overridden environmental concerns about radioactive waste and nuclear accidents to recommit to nuclear power plants as a part of any transition away from oil and gas. As the world celebrates Earth Day this weekend, the return of nuclear energy harks back to the 1970s, before the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl scarred its reputation as a safe and cheap alternative to oil and gas.

But the sudden spurt of nuclear optimism from Washington to London is little more than a political feint. By the time most proposed nuclear projects are paid for and developed, in a decade or more, we will be either well into a new chapter of solar and wind energy dependence or dashed against the globally-warmed rocks of fossil fuel hubris.

Next week, the Biden administration will commit up to $6bn of its infrastructure bill to preserving almost 100 ailing nuclear power plants for future use. Plans to transform closing coal plants – and their workers – into nuclear facilities, are taking shape. Nuclear power currently makes up about 20 per cent of US energy usage, compared to wind (9 per cent) and solar (3 per cent), according to the US Energy Information Administration.

In Europe, harsh condemnation of nuclear power in places such as Germany, the UK and Brussels has given way this spring to the political expediency of siding with countries such as France, which have long supported nuclear power.

Belgium, for example, has changed its mind and recommitted to building new power plants. Poland plans to build new ones. France has doubled down and even the UK’s Boris Johnson has placed new nuclear facilities squarely within his government’s new energy strategy, even at the expense of onshore wind farms. He wants to move Britain’s nuclear mix to 25 per cent by 2030 from 16 per cent.

Even Germany, in the process of closing all its nuclear plants by 2030, is weighing its options now that it faces the potential loss of Russian oil and gas, which make up 40 per cent of its energy usage. China is building several nuclear plants and even Japan, victim of the Fukushima disaster a decade ago, is restarting some of its plants.

Nowhere is the excitement greater than in the US though. While no big new plants are on the horizon, and up to half of the remaining 93 plants are closed or expected to fail from lack of upkeep by 2030, venture capitalists and philanthropists such as Bill Gates are backing smaller, movable mini-reactors.

They argue the new reactors will be safer and be easily transported or exported to places that need them. And if one fails, another one can take over seamlessly, such as jet engines do on planes. One Gates-backed company, TerraPower, is in the forefront of this movement. It says its smaller reactors have safer cooling systems to prevent the type of accidents seen in Fukushima. There are other companies chasing this process as well.

But like all new technologies, these products will take years to develop. And great expense. Restoring existing facilities or building massive new ones will be equally hamstrung by time and expense overrides, with costs running into the tens of billions of dollars for governments cash-strapped by current energy shortages.

In Europe, there is the added danger of placing nuclear facilities too close to NATO’s front line with Russia, underscored by Russia’s dangerous mishandling of Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant when its troops temporarily captured it last month.

The energy crunch caused by Ukraine is an immediate crisis, not one that can be fixed with long-term, expensive solutions. While Europe – and the rest of the world – must think long term to mitigate global heating and stop burning fossil fuels, the decreasing costs of other renewable energies such as wind, solar, and tidal will eventually catch up with expensive alternative plans. Likely faster than we all think, given the reduction in their costs over the past 10 years.

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By some measures it’s heartening to see the nuclear question answered for now. The EU, for example, will include nuclear in its taxonomy for its renewable transition.

But the sudden sprint toward nuclear power by international governments as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is nothing more than another knee-jerk reaction to an energy shortage they should have seen coming years ago.

Defense Department Sets Out to Build Miniature Nuclear Reactor, Again

Changing politics and military goals suggest that this time, mobile nuclear power could go mainstream.

A 1 MW micronuclear reactor concept from Radiant Nuclear RADIANT NUCLEAR

BY PATRICK TUCKER
TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

https://www.defenseone.com
APRIL 15, 2022

Small, deployable nuclear reactors, an idea that the United States military has been experimenting with for decades, will receive new life under a program the Defense Department announced Thursday.

And unlike previous efforts to deploy alternatives to diesel and other fossil-fuel generators, which were stalled by high costs and little political support, this new effort may succeed in helping the military, and eventually commercial energy providers, wean themselves off carbon-intensive power. As one expert explained, while the physics haven’t changed, increasing concerns about the geopolitics of fossil fuels coupled with growing concerns about climate change have made the effort more critical.

Under the new program, the Defense Department will build a 1-5 MegaWatts nuclear microreactor at Idaho National Laboratory for a three-year (minimum) test operational period. It will be “the first electricity-generating Generation IV nuclear reactor built in the United States,” the Defense Department said in a statement. “The first electricity-generating Generation IV nuclear reactor demonstrated in the world was the HTR-PM, a Chinese reactor, which first reached criticality in September 2021.”

The announcement makes clear that it’s not only competition with China that’s pushing a reconsideration, but also growing attention to the Defense Department’s massive carbon footprint.

“The DOD uses approximately 30 terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons of fuel per day—levels that are only expected to increase due to anticipated electrification of the non-tactical vehicle fleet and maturation of future energy-intensive capabilities,” it reads. “A safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address this growing demand with a resilient, carbon-free energy source that would not add to the DOD’s fuel needs, while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments.”

Project Pele, as it’s called, won’t be the first microreactor the U.S. military has produced. In 1954, the joint chiefs of staff launched a program to look at military use of nuclear power. That effort produced three reactors: one that powered an air and missile defense radar station near Sundance, Wyoming, one for Greenland, and another that powered the McMurdo Station in Antarctica for a decade.

In 1963, the effort produced a reactor that could fit on a large truck bed, the ML-1. But the costs were deemed too high at the time, compared to diesel generators, so the program died in 1977.

A few decades later, in the early 2000s, the U.S. military looked at the concept again as a means to power remote bases in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, alarmed by the number of troops killed while trying to deliver and retrieve diesel fuel in those environments. DARPA launched a new program in 2011 to consider the costs and benefits of mobile nuclear reactors for remote forward operating bases.

The idea, it turned out, didn’t work well for the types of bases the United States inhabited in Afghanistan and Iraq. As University of Texas professor Alan J. Kuperman argued in an April 2021 paper, “Significant doubt remains about the need, advisability, and plausibility of this initiative. The original rationale—to reduce U.S. casualties from attacks on shipments of diesel fuel for electricity generation on foreign military bases—is a vestige because such casualties have dwindled virtually to zero.”

There are safety concerns as well. Mobile nuclear reactors today shouldn’t be compared to Chernobyl or other big nuclear disasters from decades past. But, in a battlefield context, they could still be dangerous. As Kuperman argued, a missile targeting a mobile microreactor could result in radioactive material getting out. And the reactor can’t be buried, because it needs passive cooling in the event of a temperature buildup.

But the idea has taken on new relevance and is finding renewed support, said Paul Roege, a retired Army colonel who managed a $150 million program for DARPA examining the concept.

There’s a new appreciation in the United States government that small nuclear reactors could help the United States maintain a long-term presence in the Asia- Pacific region, where the military must operate in much greater numbers to deter China from launching an invasion of Taiwan.

“It's quite public that the United States is building some radar systems in Palau. You would need to have some amount of energy, but you know, not tens of megawatts, maybe a few megawatts to one radar systems to run radios, to run the internet,” he said.

The United States is looking to establish a presence in the Asia-Pacific region, and plans to maintain that presence for much longer than the military was in Afghanistan or Iraq. And the longer a nuclear plant is expected to be in operation, the more economically attractive nuclear power becomes, he said. Additionally, if the U.S. military could bring an energy surplus with them, that could help local governments insulate themselves economically from Chinese influence, he said.

And, while nuclear power is not a good choice to power a tank, it could be used to run servers or other technology as the military moves toward information-heavy future operations, he said.

But perhaps the biggest reason Roege believes the concept could have widespread appeal is the significant shift among governments in their willingness to consider new nuclear power, particularly as leaders see how . autocratic states like Russia can energy as a coercion tool.

“Romania has quite a bit of nuclear power. The Czech Republic and a couple others have become quite interested over the last few years because, you know, they want an alternative [to Russian oil and gas],” he said. Those countries are concerned about climate change, “and they're also not convinced that they want to be under the thumb of Russia as an energy source. Last year, a number of the EU countries’ leaders wrote to the leadership of the EU and said ‘We want nuclear to be considered one of the clean energy options.’”

The politics around nuclear power have also changed in the United States and among U.S. leadership. He recalled opposition he encountered during the Obama Administration to the idea. Republican officials during the Trump Administration were more receptive. Among Biden Administration officials, he says that there’s even more interest as the administration looks at ambitious carbon reduction goals particularly for the United States military.

GREENWASHING

Giant global asset managers have $82 billion in coal projects, $468 billion in oil and gas

PUBLISHED WED, APR 20 2022
Catherine Clifford

CNBC

KEY POINTS

Reclaim Finance found that collectively 30 asset managers have $82 billion in companies developing new coal projects and $468 billion in 12 major oil and gas companies.

In a ranking of the asset managers, six received the worst possible score — zero out of 30.

Because of its size and fossil fuel investing records, Vanguard drew particular ire and a collective of 100 organizations wrote an open letter to its CEO calling out the company’s lack of climate action.

A banner reading “Time’s up for fossil fuels” hangs from a bridge in front of the U.S. Capitol the day of President Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington, U.S., April 28, 2021.

Erin Scott | Reuters

Giant global asset managers are still dumping tens of billions of dollars into new coal projects and hundreds of billions of dollars into major oil and gas companies.

That’s according to a report out Wednesday from Reclaim Finance, an organization disclosing financial sector investments in fossil fuels.

The report, titled “The Asset Managers Fueling Climate Chaos,” found that collectively 30 asset managers have $82 billion in companies developing new coal projects and $468 billion in 12 major oil and gas companies.

“Is the asset management industry changing its investment practices in line with climate science, reducing investments in coal, oil, or gas expansion? Unfortunately, the answer is an emphatic ‘no,’” Lara Cuvelier of Reclaim Finance said in a statement released alongside the report. “Leading asset managers are kicking the can down the road without even asking companies to stop worsening the climate crisis.”

The majority of the asset managers — 25 of the 30 — are members of the Net Zero Asset Manager Initiative (NZAM), which is a collective of asset managers with noble climate goals: “committed to supporting the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner, in line with global efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius; and to supporting investing aligned with net zero emissions by 2050 or sooner.”

Yet none of the 30 asset managers surveyed by the report have required companies in their portfolios to quit coal, oil and gas projects, according to Reclaim Finance.

Vanguard was one of six companies to score the worst possible score — zero out of 30 — but it drew specific ire because of its size and lack of meaningful action. More than 100 organizations representing over 6 million people published an open letter to Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley also published on Wednesday.

“With over $300 billion in fossil fuel exposure, Vanguard has become increasingly isolated as the biggest laggard on climate in the asset management sector,” the open letter states.

“Vanguard is the world’s second largest (and currently fastest growing) asset manager after BlackRock and these two giants are the world’s two largest investors in fossil fuels and companies driving deforestation around the world,” said Myriam Fallon, spokesperson for The Sunrise Project, an environmental organization that endorsed the Reclaim Finance report.

“While BlackRock has been taking steps to address the climate crisis and its contributions to it, Vanguard has done next to nothing,” Fallon said.

Vanguard considers climate change “to be a fundamental risk to many companies and their shareholders’ long-term financial success,” a company spokesperson told CNBC. Furthermore, the spokesperson added, it is Vanguard’s responsibility to make sure investors know of those risks and that portfolio companies “are taking the appropriate steps to manage and mitigate those risks on behalf of their shareholders.”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has been a leader in saying that climate change is a financial issue. “Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects,” Fink wrote in his 2020 annual letter to CEOs. “But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance.”

Even as BlackRock has been a climate catalyst on Wall Street, its investing portfolio still has climate issues, according to Reclaim Finance. “BlackRock most embodies the hypocrisy of too many asset managers: whilst being the biggest member of the NZAM, it still invests in the 11th biggest coal producer worldwide and massive coal expansionist Glencore,” Cuvelier said.

BlackRock did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This story has been updated to include a comment from Vanguard.

Climate Crisis? Fund Managers Are Sticking

With Fossil Fuel

Tim Quinson, Bloomberg News

Larry Fink, chairman and chief executive officer of BlackRock Financial Management Inc., smiles during a panel discussion at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore, on Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018. The New Economy Forum, organized by Bloomberg Media Group, a division of Bloomberg LP, aims to bring together leaders from public and private sectors to find solutions to the world's greatest challenges. Photographer: Justin Chin/Bloomberg , Tim Quinson

(Bloomberg) --

None of the world’s largest asset managers has definitively called on fossil-fuel companies to stop the development of new oil and gas projects.

Surely, one would think, given all the climate-conscious talk coming from Wall Street bigwigs like BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink, that the investment industry would be using all of its muscle to press the world’s worst polluters to reduce their production of dangerous greenhouse gases.Instead, the opposite is true.

Together, 30 of the biggest asset managers have at least $550 billion invested in oil, gas and coal companies that have expansion plans, and even more alarmingly, they continue to provide “fresh cash to companies that are ignoring climate science,” said Lara Cuvelier, sustainable investment campaigner at Reclaim Finance, a nonprofit which published a scorecard Wednesday grading investment firms on their environmental commitments.

In effect, the fund industry is “adding fuel to the fire,” she said.

And this is happening against a backdrop where the world’s leading climate finance experts and economists warn too much money is pouring into fossil fuels, putting the planet on track to blow past its limit to avoid catastrophic global warming. The Reclaim Finance-led report also provides a checkup on an industry that unveiled the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero almost a year ago, when bankers and fund managers exclaimed how they’re committed to helping fight climate change.

Instead, Reclaim Finance found that all 30 of the fund managers’ policies and investment guidelines are “too flawed” for them to align their entire portfolios with a net-zero emissions target. The investment firms included in the survey ranged from BlackRock and Vanguard Group Inc. in the U.S. to Axa Investment Managers and Amundi SA in Europe.

Here are six of the key findings:

Twenty-three of the 30 firms allow investments in companies that are starting new coal projects.
None completely restrict holding shares or bonds of companies that are involved in new oil and gas projects.
And none are calling for companies to “immediately and progressively decrease” their overall fossil-fuel production.
Twenty-five say they’re pushing companies to improve on climate-related issues. However, case studies indicate this engagement work has thus far failed to lead to concrete changes.
Ten of the asset managers have released 2030 decarbonization goals, but the targets only cover a small proportion of their total portfolios and financed emissions.
None apply their existing fossil-fuel restrictions to their index-tracking assets, which is particularly concerning given that “passive” investments keep growing and represent 46% of the assets covered by the report. (Amundi has exclusion policies for oil, gas and coal that cover less than 40% of its passive assets, which is “insufficient,” Cuvelier said.)

The bottom line is “leading asset managers are kicking the can down the road without even asking companies to stop worsening the climate crisis,” Cuvelier said.

Reclaim Finance’s research found that, while none of the 30 firms ranked very well, though Natixis SA’s Ostrum Asset Management and Axa Investment Managers rated the highest. Ostrum was singled out for its coal-exclusion policy and to a lesser extent for its oil and gas policy, and Axa for having a better engagement policy regarding the fossil-fuel sector than other firms, Cuvelier said.

Overall, asset managers aren’t engaging companies on key climate issues to limit global warming Cuvelier said. The report calls on investors to force fossil-fuel companies to end their expansion plans.

“Let’s be clear,” she said. “Drilling a new oil well or opening a new coal mine isn’t a normal thing to do in a widespread climate catastrophe.”

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