Fossil Fuel Giants Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan Slowly Going Green

WILL THEY BEAT ALBERTA?
By Bruce Pannier February 08, 2020

A solar power station in the city of Saran in Kazakhstan's Karaganda region

Long beholden to fossil fuels for all of their energy, the two most populous countries in Central Asia seem to finally be tapping into their abundant renewable resources.

Kazakhstan boasted early this year about some impressive renewable energy figures, while its southern neighbor, Uzbekistan, is planning to construct several projects as it moves to increase its usage of "green energy."

Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry released figures on January 9 that showed an increase in output during 2019 from three renewable energy sources: hydro, wind, and solar power.

The ministry said these green power sources added 504.5 megawatts (MW) to the country’s electricity grid last year.

And the ministry said 18 more renewable power sources are due to come online in 2020. Once they do, the total output from renewable sources will be some 1,655 MW, an increase of more than 600 MW from current production of 1,050 MW.

So what exactly do these numbers mean?

According to the Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company's website, at the start of 2019 the country had 18,894.9 MW of available capacity, which is the amount they actually generate. So 504 MW looks like a drop in the bucket.

But it is, actually, a relatively significant amount of energy.

To compare, the Kyrgyz and Tajik capitals, Bishkek and Dushanbe, respectively, have large thermal power plants (TPP) providing those cities with electricity and heat.

Chinese company Tebian Electric Apparatus (TBEA) built the Dushanbe-2 TPP and renovated the Bishkek TPP. According to the TBEA website, the total installed capacity of Dushanbe's coal-fired TPP is 400 MW. And the Chinese company replaced four 50-year-old units with two new 150 MW units at the Bishkek heat and power plant which, when added to existing units still in operation, boosted the TPP’s capacity to some 812 MW.

So, comparatively, 504 MW of electricity is not an insignificant amount of energy.

The Kazakh Energy Ministry also noted great international interest in helping develop the country’s renewable power resources.

It said that in 2018-19 tenders held for future renewable energy projects in the country, 138 companies from 12 countries took part.

Half of those countries were EU states, and part of the EU’s recently released strategy for Central Asia involves EU help and investment in the region's renewable energy capacity.

The Kazakh government wants renewable energy sources to account for some 3 percent of the country’s energy output by the end of 2020 and some 10 percent by 2030.

That might provide some relief to the residents of big cities in eastern Kazakhstan who are watching air pollution increase yearly as coal-fired TPPs continue to provide much of the electricity and heat that is used.

Tashkent Trying To Catch Up

Uzbekistan is behind Kazakhstan in developing its renewable energy sources but is also moving toward the use of more green-energy resources.

When Shavkat Mirziyoev came to power after President Islam Karimov’s death in 2016, he changed a lot of policies and put an emphasis on the development of the country's renewable power resources.

Qishloq Ovozi has looked at Uzbekistan’s hydropower ambitions, which aim for water-generated power to account for nearly 16 percent of the country’s energy balance by 2030.

Uzbekistan is also planning to tap other renewable energy sources.

There were reports in September that Chinese company Lioaning Lide was building a wind farm in the Gijduvan district of Uzbekistan’s Bukhara Province that will produce some 200 MW by autumn 2020 and eventually some 1,500 MW when the project is complete.

Aleksei Likhachev, the chief of Russian state nuclear power company Rosatom

Spanish company Siemens Gamesa is building a 100 MW wind farm in Uzbekistan’s Navoi Province and Turkish company ETKO CO Enerji A.S. is building a 600 MW wind farm in the Baysun district of Surhandarya Province.

In October 2019, the Uzbek Energy Ministry announced that U.A.E. firm Masdar was awarded a contract to build a solar park with 100 MW of capacity in Navoi Province, which is also part of the World Bank’s Scaling Solar program.

There is already a 130 MW solar park in Namangan Province, and French company Total Eren has built a 100 MW photovoltaic power station in the Nurabad district of Samarkand Province.

Uzbek Deputy Minister of Investment and Foreign Trade Shukhrat Vafaev said in October that the country would soon announce tenders for the construction of a solar park with a 400 MW capacity and another that could produce 500 MW annually.

In January, Viktor Vekselberg, the head of Russia’s Renova Group, met in Tashkent with Uzbek Energy Minister Alisher Sultanov and expressed his company’s interest in assisting to build solar parks in Uzbekistan. He also offered to form a joint venture to produce solar panels.

Uzbekistan is planning on increasing renewable energy resources so that they would make up 25 percent of the country's total power needs by 2030.

Completion of just the wind farm and solar park projects listed above would give Uzbekistan more than 3,000 MW of additional energy, which helps power a country that the Energy Ministry forecasts will consume twice as much energy in 2030 as it currently does.

Uzbekistan is a country that endures severe power shortages at different times of the year.​ At least one Uzbek website reported that the country imported 33 percent more electricity than usual in 2019.

Also Going Nuclear?

Along with renewables, Uzbekistan has plans to add another source of alternative energy to its energy balance: nuclear power.

Aleksei Likhachev, the chief of Russian state nuclear power company Rosatom, said on January 15 that negotiations on the construction of a nuclear power plant (NPP) would conclude before the end of March and actual construction would start in 2022.

Construction of an NPP will undoubtedly be a topic of conversation when Mirziyoev meets with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in a meeting reportedly set to take place later in February.

The NPP will have two VVER-1200 units, so it will add another 2,400 MW, which will probably be welcome news to those residents of Uzbekistan who are coming out of a winter that saw power shortages and blackouts hit areas all around the country.

But long-term it seems Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are moving toward more eco-friendly sources of energy and -- along with the other countries of Central Asia -- they can count on outside help from the European Union, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Asian Development Bank, and others.

Energy-wise, the future in Central Asia appears to be looking brighter -- and greener.


Bruce Pannier writes the Qishloq Ovozi blog and appears regularly on the Majlis podcast for RFE/RL.

Fitch: Solar Projects Much More Reliable Performers Than Wind Farms

Many wind farms are underperforming initial expectations, according to Fitch Ratings. Solar is a very different story. 

KARL-ERIK STROMSTA FEBRUARY 10, 2020

Solar plants have demonstrated "rock-solid performance," Fitch says.

 (Credit: Equinor)

It might be obvious to anyone in the renewable energy business, but a growing body of data collected by Fitch Ratings backs it up: Solar projects are a safer bet than wind farms when it comes to kicking out the expected amount of power.

Many wind farms significantly underperform expectations, according to a recent Fitch analysis. On the other hand, solar arrays are proving so reliable over time that developers are finding themselves able to secure financing on more favorable terms — an important long-term tailwind for the market.


Remarkably, the biggest threat to the credit ratings of some California solar projects these days is not the plants themselves but rather questions around the future viability of their utility offtakers.

"Rock-solid" solar performance

When renewable developers approach banks for project finance, they are often asked to provide what are called "P50 probabilities," which estimate how much power will be generated on an annual basis.

Taking a range of factors into account, from long-term weather assessments to how similar equipment has performed in the past, a P50 forecast puts a number on how much a project is expected to generate in a given year; half the time it should crank out more power than its P50 forecast and half the time less.

It turns out that many wind farms are generating less electricity than expected, and in some cases significantly less, Fitch said in a recent research note. That’s happening despite ongoing advancements in wind turbine technology and improvements in resource analysis.

Looking at a group of around 70 renewable energy projects globally, Fitch found that 86 percent of the time solar projects performed right around their P50 forecast — or better. Only 7 percent of the time did solar plants perform “significantly” (more than 10 percent) below their P50.

Solar plants, by and large, have demonstrated a “really rock-solid performance,” said Andrew Joynt, a senior director at Fitch Ratings focused on project finance. There are important implications for developers, with the market growing comfortable with “slightly more aggressive financing terms for solar projects,” Joynt told GTM.

“A solar developer trying to finance the development of a project can go out and borrow more money than it otherwise would have and doesn’t have to put quite as much equity into the project as it otherwise would have,” Joynt said.
Wind, on the other hand…

Compared to solar’s stability, wind “does not measure up,” Fitch said in its research note. Nearly 90 percent of the time, the wind farms Fitch looked at failed to reach their P50 forecast. And more than half the time they fell “significantly” below their P50.

Of the 70 global renewable projects Fitch looked at, two-thirds are wind farms (almost all onshore), and the bulk are in North America or Latin America.

A range of factors could contribute to wind’s underperformance, starting with the obvious fact that the wind is inherently less predictable than the sun, making estimates more difficult. For the purposes of project finance, such estimates are typically provided by independent consultants. Fitch did not look at whether assessments have improved over time.

“What we’ve certainly seen is that when projects have resource forecasts based on actual operations…they’re much better than ones done prior to completion,” Joynt said.

Despite wind’s shortcomings, most wind farms have held up in terms of their overall credit quality.

“What we’ve found is that even though wind projects have largely underperformed expectations, the way the financings are structured, there’s enough cushion there; there’s enough resilience built into these financing structures that we haven’t had a wide swath of downgrades or projects actually defaulting,” Joynt said.

Similarly, solar projects are not necessarily seeing their credit ratings upgraded. While the industry’s growing track record of reliability might yield higher ratings on projects at a given amount of leverage, developers are in many cases simply adding more leverage.

Their thinking, Joynt said, is: “I still get that low investment-grade rating, and I actually just get to borrow more — and that increases the equity returns.”
Utility PPAs not what they used to be

Having a huge American utility as an offtaker is typically a good thing for a renewable project’s credit rating. But that’s no longer a given in California, where PG&E is struggling to climb out of bankruptcy and the state's other two big utilities face challenging questions about their own futures.

Some U.S. solar projects now carry a credit rating equivalent to that of their utility offtakers, Joynt said. "That's pretty remarkable."

“It’s basically saying that the operating risk itself is not viewed as something that constrains the project; it’s really just how likely you are to get paid by the utility.”

“That wasn’t really seen as a very big risk until these wildfire liabilities popped up," Joynt said. “Obviously, the biggest issue is with PG&E, but even [Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric] have had their issues and had some erosion of credit quality.”

Inside the Wet’suwet’en Anti-Pipeline Camp That Police Are Blockading

Indigenous land defenders are keeping a close eye on cops as the standoff enters its fourth week.

By Jesse Winter Jan 28 2020


RCMP TURN AWAY A WET'SUWET'EN CAMP SUPPORTER AT A POLICE ROADBLOCK. ALL PHOTOS BY JESSE WINTER


A set of headlights came peering out of the darkness, accompanied by a rattling diesel engine.

Rising from beside a warming fire at a watch camp inside an RCMP roadblock, Sabina Dennis rushed to the road.

“Cops!” she shouted as the first RCMP officer’s boot hit the snowy ground. “Someone get a camera.” More people scrambled from the fire to join Dennis as a second officer got out of the truck. Someone started filming the interaction with a cellphone. Now that a standoff between RCMP and Wet’suwet’en First Nation land defenders who oppose a pipeline has entered a fourth week, the mood behind police lines is understandably tense.


“Hello, how’s everyone doing tonight?” the first officer asked gamely, walking forward with his arms at his sides, palms facing forward. “Everyone good? Anything you guys need?”

“Yeah, you off our territory,” said Cody Merriman, joining Dennis in the roadway.




“I can understand that,” the officer replied with a wry smile, as though his colleagues weren’t—at that moment—manning a roadblock limiting access to this very camp.

“No, like all the way out of our territory,” Merriman said, not laughing. The officers stopped approaching. After a few more words, they got back in their pickup truck and reversed slowly back down the road into the night.

"ALL THE WAY OUT OF OUR TERRITORY," CODY MERRIMAN TOLD TWO RCMP OFFICERS.

The watch camp where Dennis and Merriman are stationed was set up to monitor police movements along a roadway leading to more established Wet’suwet’en camps. The new roadblocks and checkpoints have become a sort of slow-moving chess game in a pipeline controversy that goes back nearly a decade.

Last January, militarized RCMP raided a blockade set up by the Gidimt’en clan of the Wet’suwet’en nation to prevent Coastal GasLink from building a natural gas pipeline through their traditional territory.

The company has agreements for access with all the First Nations band councils along the pipeline route, including those within the Wet’suwet’en Nation. But the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs say the band councils do not have jurisdiction over the traditional territory outside the reserve boundaries and should not have agreed to the project.

During last year’s raid, police deployed tactical officers armed with assault and sniper rifles, at one point brandishing a chainsaw. The officers forced their way over barbed wire and a reinforced gate, amid the screams of land defenders, some of whom had chained themselves to the gate itself.
MOLLY WICKHAM AND HER PARTNER CODY MERRIMAN STAY WARM BY A FIRE AT A WET'SUWET'EN WATCH CAMP.

As the police left the watch camp Friday night, Dennis, Merriman, and the others returned to the fire and huddled around a cellphone, watching video from the aftermath of last year’s raid.

Among them was Gidimt’en clan spokesperson Sleydo, a.k.a. Molly Wickham. Together she and Dennis became the faces of last year’s police violence. Wickham herself was arrested.

Watching the year-old video in the flickering firelight, Wickham’s face is set hard. Dennis dashed tears from her eyes. Just over a year later, and it seems little has changed.

“It’s a weird feeling,” Wickham said, of seeing the video. Last year “I was still in this traumatic bubble of trying to regain my footing and make sure all of our people were safe.”

“I think we’re definitely more prepared this year, mentally, emotionally for what might happen,” she said. “It’s a good reminder of how much caution we have to take, and how much risk we are at in this position.”

On December 20, the Guardian published an explosive report alleging that the RCMP officers at the raid had pre-authorization to use snipers and “lethal overwatch.” One RCMP commander reportedly said to “use as much violence as you want” against the Gidimt’en gate.
LAND DEFENDERS SIT AROUND A FIRE KEEPING WATCH FOR POLICE ACTIVITY LATE INTO THE NIGHT.

In the wake of the bombshell story, the hereditary chiefs issued an eviction notice to Coastal GasLink, kicking the company off their land and blockading the road again. They demand meetings with the federal and provincial government decision-makers, triggering the current stalemate.

On Monday, B.C. Premier John Horgan announced the appointment of former Skeena-Bulkely Valley MP Nathan Cullen as an official liaison between the provincial government and the hereditary chiefs.

Wet’suwet’en hereditary Chief Na’Moks, also known as John Ridsdale, said Cullen’s work as the region’s member of parliament gives him more credibility than most politicians. “As you know, we have been wanting to meet with government decision-makers,” Na’Moks told VICE on Monday. “Nathan has lived on our territories. We trust him.”

Na’Moks said while Cullen’s appointment is a positive step forward, ultimately he expects it will only delay the inevitable. The only acceptable outcome for the hereditary chiefs, he said, is for Coastal GasLink to peacefully withdraw from his people’s territory.

That demand means the prospect of a repeat of last year’s raid still hangs over the heads of everyone on the front line.

“It’s unsettling, to be honest,” Merriman said, “but you have to stay steadfast.”
RCMP VEHICLES BLOCK THE ACCESS ROAD LEADING TO WET'SUWET'EN CAMPS.

“In the end, this is what victory looks like,” he said. “You remove the RCMP checkpoint and the CGL workers, and this is it. We govern the territories, and they’re industry-free sovereign zones, with an access point controlled by Indigenous people.”

Since the checkpoint went up, Wickham and Merriman have been doing the lion’s share of logistical work, ferrying supplies through the police lines to the watch camp and making sure everyone is safe. Juggling that while also raising a family together has put a lot of stress on both of them.

The RCMP roadblock isn’t making things easier, Merriman said.

“It’s trapped people back here (at the watch camp) because they’ve threatened to briefly detain anyone who leaves,” Merriman said, adding that anyone who does leave and isn’t on the RCMP’s list of approved travellers will not be allowed back in.

In response to the police checkpoint, Wet’suwet’en supporters are building a second watch camp with an insulated bunkhouse to keep a vigil and monitor police movements. It also serves as a meeting place for the hereditary chiefs, and a place for supporters to gather.

WET'SUWET'EN SUPPORTERS CARRY PRE-FABRICATED WALLS TO BUILD
A BUNKHOUSE NEAR THE RCMP ROADBLOCK.

It sits only a few hundred metres from the RCMP roadblock which—as far as the supporters monitoring the RCMP can tell—appears to be guarded 24 hours a day in rotating 12-hour shifts.

As the stalemate has dragged on, a sort of daily rhythm has developed. Supporters test the RCMP checkpoint every day, probing for inconsistencies in the various reasons police give for turning people away. Every interaction is recorded by legal observers compiling evidence for a legal complaint about the checkpoint infringing the rights of the Wet’suwet’en and anyone wishing to use the otherwise public road.

The RCMP respond with near-daily surveillance flights over the camps—something the force at first denied it was doing, but later recanted after photos emerged of a plane with RCMP logos making repeated circles over each of the land defender camps.

On Friday morning, lawyers Noah Ross and Irina Ceric ran a training session for legal observers, instructing a group of Wet’suwet’en supporters in how best to document and record police actions.

LAWYERS TEACH WET'SUWET'EN SUPPORTERS HOW TO BE LEGAL OBSERVERS.

After the training, Ross, Ceric, and two legal observers tried to get through the police roadblock. They were turned around because they didn’t have a forestry radio or winter tire chains.

The next day, with little change in the road conditions, two minivans full of supplies but without tire chains, radios or even all-wheel drive were allowed through the police roadblock.

While the uncertainty over what comes next hangs in the air, Saturday provided some relief with a community day at the supporter camp outside the police roadblock.

BREAKFAST AT THE WET'SUWET'EN SUPPORTER CAMP OUTSIDE THE POLICE CHECKPOINT.

Smogelgem, the hereditary chief of the Wet’suwet’en’s Laksamshu Clan (who is also known as Warner Naziel), thanked the neighbouring Gitxsan chiefs for their support and time despite the death of a national matriarch over the weekend. He spoke at length to the dozens of people in attendance, some of whom had driven hours to be at the event.

He spoke about the last piece of untouched Wet’suwet’en territory to have a road carved through it, the damage he says that road caused to local wildlife. He described Coastal GasLink as a soulless organization bent on profit alone, and the Kweese War Trail that Unist’ot’en supporters say was bulldozed through last winter.

“We are at war again,” he said, again referencing the Guardian article and its allegations of “lethal overwatch,” which has hung like a pall over the movement since it was published.

HEREDITARY CHIEF SMOGELGEM SPEAKS AT A COMMUNITY RALLY.

It’s also sparked protests and demonstrations across the province and the country. There have been highway roadblocks in Ontario, and teen activists arrested in provincial ministers’ offices in Victoria. On Monday, students in Vancouver staged a walkout.

Canada’s former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould recently weighed in with an op-ed parsing the complicated layers of history behind this decade long conflict.

As the afternoon wore on at the newest Wet’suwet’en camp, more supplies and donations were unloaded outside the roadblock, to be ferried up to the watch camp and onwards to the blockade further up the road.

The lines of this conflict are hardening, with no word yet on when—or how—it will end.

WISHFUL THINKING

The Paris Agreement set an unrealistic target for global warming. Now what?

Schroptschop / Getty Images

By Shannon Osaka on Feb 12, 2020

It’s been a rallying cry for activists and a key talking point for diplomats. For decades now, 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of global warming has been viewed as a “do not cross” line in climate policy, a temperature at which cataclysmic and potentially permanent damage to the planet would take hold.

Countries that signed on to the 2015 Paris Agreement vowed to keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius of warming since the Industrial Revolution. National policies and international agreements are evaluated for how well they can help meet this target. There’s a general sense that if the world’s governments work fast enough and hard enough, we can still avoid the worst.

But what if that goal was not as realistic as many have assumed?

“In no way should 2 degrees — from a scientific perspective — be seen as a safe target,” said Peter Frumhoff, chief climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

According to Frumhoff, 15 to 20 years ago climate scientists thought that 2 degrees of warming would avoid catastrophic climate change. “Our understanding of climate risks was that 2 degrees C would be a reasonably safe and achievable target.”

Over time, however, more updated research — most recently the special report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — indicated that 1.5 degrees C is a safer, more scientifically robust, target. (Scary sidenote: We have already warmed by approximately 1 degree Celsius since pre-industrial times. Whoops.)

But even though activists and some governments have pushed for more stringent targets, 2 degrees has stuck. The Paris Agreement commits to “pursue efforts” to hold warming to 1.5 degrees, but 2 degrees has emerged as a kind of middle ground between countries feuding over climate change.

The problem is, neither goal is currently possible without the massive, massive deployment of technologies that don’t exist yet. Yes, we’ll have to improve renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, and build better batteries to store it all. But the possibility of reaching that 2-degree target by reducing emissions alone has shrunk to essentially zero.

At this point, it requires substantial investment into and development of so-called “negative emissions” technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide emissions would need to reach net-zero by mid-century; which means we would need to start developing the technology, er, now.

We only have a limited amount of carbon left to burn, so little that even with extraordinarily steep reductions in energy use and a rapid scale-up of renewables, keeping warming to 2 degrees isn’t possible. Unless there were somehow a way to turn back the clock and undo some of what the largest emitters have done.

That’s where so-called negative emissions come in. In 2014, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a new assessment on the state of the climate. This report included something surprising; scientists and modelers still thought 2 degrees was possible. But they had to introduce a new variable.


The 2014 report included something new — a “huge reliance on bioenergy with carbon capture and storage,” said David Victor, a professor of international relations at University of California San Diego.

Six years later, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage remains relatively untested (though there’s recent cause for optimism). It involves growing crops, burning them for fuel, capturing the subsequent emissions and storing them deep underground. As of last year, there are only five examples of the technology worldwide, none operating at a large scale. The most recent UN report says we would need a lot of it to hit the 2-degree target.

How much? Experts estimate it would take about 500 million hectares of land — an area 1.5 times the size of India.

“From a modeling point of view, the reason we see so much carbon capture and storage is because models see the existing energy system, and they see this incredible heroic goal,” Victor said. “So they move all the chips on the board into these deep reduction technologies: carbon capture and storage, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage … and they do all that because they can’t solve the equation. They literally can’t get there from here.”

Essentially, since reaching the 2-degree limit based on mitigation alone is impossible, modelerss have to assume that we will somehow remove emissions from the atmosphere later.



Some experts have criticized the use of negative emissions in modeling. According to Oliver Geden, head of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, negative emissions technologies have mostly been used to mask failures of international action — the modeling form of kicking the can down the road. Negative emissions, Geden argues that it allow us to imagine that 2 degrees is possible, even as it becomes increasingly out of reach.

Victor agrees. “We need to grapple with the reality that we’re not going to meet the goals that we’ve talked about,” he said. The 2 degrees goal is probably out of reach; the flip side is, the worst-case climate scenario is probably not in the cards, either.



This doesn’t mean negative emissions shouldn’t be part of the picture. But experts say it does mean that policymakers and negotiators should be more transparent that the goal they have been working toward requires the adoption of technology at a scale that simply doesn’t exist yet.

Nigeria: One Billion Barrel of Crude Oil Discovered in North-East - Minister

Photo: Pixabay

Oil field

12 FEBRUARY 2020

Premium Times (Abuja)

The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Slyva, said that about one billion barrels of crude oil have been discovered in the Northeastern part of Nigeria.

Mr Sylva made the disclosure at a news conference to end the 2020 Nigeria International Petroleum Summit (NIPS), in Abuja on Wednesday.

"The figure we are getting, the jury is not totally out yet but from the evaluation results we are getting the reserve that has been discovered in the northeast is about a billion barrels.

"Those are the kind of figures we are seeing and we are beginning to understand the geological structure of the region," he said.

According to him, a lot of oil is yet to be found in the country.

He added that there was the need for more exploration in the country as more oil would be discovered.

Commenting on passing of the Petroleum Industry Bill ( PIB) by June, he said that he was confident that it would be passed based on cordial relationship between the legislature and the executive.

Hidden away: An enigmatic mammalian brain area revealed in reptiles

by Max Planck Society FEBRUARY 13, 2020

The Australian bearded dragon Pogona vitticeps. 

Credit: Dr. Stephan Junek, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.

Reptiles have a brain area previously suspected to play a role in mammalian higher cognitive processes, and establish its role in controlling brain dynamics in sleep.

The state of unified perception, which is characteristic of a conscious state in humans, appears to require widespread coordination of the forebrain, and thus, the existence of a physical and anatomical substrate for this coordination. The mammalian claustrum, a thin sheet of brain tissue hidden beneath the inner layers of the neocortex, is widely interconnected with the rest of the forebrain (a fact known from classical neuroanatomy). For this reason, the claustrum has been seen as a good candidate for such widespread coordination and hypothesized to mediate functions ranging from decision-making to consciousness. Until now, a claustrum structure had been identified only in the brains of mammals.

The laboratory of Professor Gilles Laurent, director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, studies brain function, dynamics, evolution and sleep. His group works on several animal model systems that now include reptiles (turtles and lizards) and cephalopods (cuttlefish). A few years ago, the Laurent lab provided evidence for the existence of rapid-eye-movement (REM) and non-REM sleep in the Australian bearded dragon pogona vitticeps, suggesting that the two main brain sleep states (REM and non-REM) date back at least to the time when vertebrate animals first colonized the terrestrial landmass over 300 million years ago.

In a paper in the upcoming issue of Nature, the researchers have identified a homolog of the claustrum in the pogona dragon and in a freshwater turtle using single-cell RNA sequencing techniques and viral tracing of brain connectivity. This is the first evidence of the existence of a claustrum in non-mammalian animals. Its discovery was entirely fortuitous; the investigators' attention was initially drawn to this region following functional investigations of brain activity during sleep.

Postdoctoral fellows Hiroaki Norimoto and Lorenz Fenk were recording brain activity in dragons during sleep and observed that events characteristic of non-REM sleep appeared to be initiated in a small and anterior region of the brain, whose exact identity was unknown. "Our initial goal was to study information processing during sleep," explains Norimoto. "Our approach was very explorative to begin with."

At the same time, postdoctoral fellow Maria Antonietta Tosches (now assistant professor at Columbia University in New York) was analyzing cell-molecular data taken from the dragon forebrain and noticed that a small anterior region of the brain, corresponding precisely to where electrophysiological recordings had been made, had a distinct molecular identity. By comparing this identity to published RNA-sequencing data from mice, she identified this area as equivalent to the mammalian claustrum. Fenk and graduate student Hsing-Hsi Li then used viral tracing methods to map the connectivity of this reptilian claustrum to the rest of the brain and found, as is known in mammals, that it is widely interconnected with the rest of the forebrain.

"Interestingly, we found that the claustrum was also connected with areas of the mid- and hindbrain that have been implicated in the regulation of sleep in mammals. This is consistent with the idea that the claustrum may play a role in controlling brain dynamics characteristic of sleep," says Fenk.

Indeed, the Laurent lab then showed that the claustrum underlies the generation of sharp waves during slow-wave sleep. The researchers foudn that uni- or bilateral lesions of the claustrum suppressed sharp-wave ripple production during slow-wave sleep uni- or bilaterally, respectively, but did not affect the regular and rapidly alternating sleep rhythm characteristic of pogona sleep. The claustrum is thus not involved in sleep-rhythm generation itself, but rather in generating a particular dynamic mode during non-REM sleep, which it then broadcasts widely in the forebrain.

"The fact that we find a claustrum homolog in reptiles suggests that the claustrum is an ancient structure, likely present in the brains of the common vertebrate ancestor of reptiles and mammals," says Laurent. "While our results have not answered the question as to whether the claustrum plays a role in consciousness or higher cognitive functions, they indicate that it may play an important role in the control of brain states (such as in sleep), due to ascending input from the mid- and hindbrain, to its widespread projections to the forebrain and to its role in sharp-wave generation during slow-wave sleep," Laurent concludes.

More information: Hiroaki Norimoto et al. A claustrum in reptiles and its role in slow-wave sleep, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-1993-6

Pension funds get tough on climate laggards

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

ImpactAlpha, Jan. 30 – As CO2 levels this week were projected to see their steepest annual rise ever, three large pension funds warned that they would crack down on companies and asset managers who are not doing enough to transition to a low-carbon future.  

The Brunel Pension Partnership, which manages a £30 billion pool of local pension funds in the U.K., issued a stark rebuke to the asset management industry, which it called “not fit for purpose” when it comes to addressing climate change.

“Climate change is a rapidly escalating investment issue. We found that the finance sector is part of the problem, when it could and should be part of the solution for addressing climate change,” said chief investment officer Mark Mansley. “How the sector prices assets, manages risk, and benchmarks performance all need to be challenged.”

Stern warning

As part of an ambitious new climate plan, the partnership said it would size up the efforts of both asset managers and portfolio companies to contain global warming within the benchmarks of the Paris climate agreement.

“Managers that fail to do so face the threat of having their mandates removed,” the statement said. Companies, meanwhile, could face votes against their directors’ re-appointments or divestment.

Burying coal

The New York State Common Retirement Fund put 27 thermal coal mining companies on notice to demonstrate their readiness to transition to a low-carbon environment or be dropped from the $210 billion fund. Ceres’ Mindy Lubber said the move by the country’s third largest state pension system would help it reduce climate risks and “ensure that the Fund invests in transition-ready companies.” Thermal coal mining, she said, “has a dim future in light of the accelerating transition to a sustainable, net-zero emissions economy.”

Passive aggressive

The Church of England Pensions Board has moved £600 million into a new passive index it created with the London Stock Exchange. The FTSE TPI Climate Transition Index is based on Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI), an asset owner-led initiative that tracks whether companies are aligned with Paris goals. In: Shell and Repsol. Out: ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP.

“The message is clear to all publicly listed companies: put in place targets and strategies aligned to Paris and be rewarded with inclusion in the Index, or work against the long term interests of beneficiaries and wider society, and be excluded,” said the pension board’s Adam Matthews.

Real estate risk

PGGM, a €160 billion Dutch pension manager and one of the world’s largest real estate owners, announced it would work with Munich Re to analyze each of the assets in its portfolio, from companies to real estate holdings, to identify those with the most climate risk. 

Cash is hot: 

Investors find new options to put deposits to work for community development

Native American Holy Land, Devil's Tower, Wyoming (photo: Woody Hibbard)

ImpactAlpha, February 12 – Denver-based and Native-owned Native American National Bank serves Native communities, governments and enterprises across the U.S. To boost the bank’s lending power, RSF Social Finance, Candide Group’s Olamina fund and other impact investors have created deposit accounts and CDs at the bank.

“The best way to support our bank is through deposits,” the bank’s Tom Ogaard said on a webinar hosted by Transform Finance.

Such community banks, along with credit unions and community development financial institutions, are increasingly attracting foundations, impact funds and other investors looking for a way to drive impact, even with their idle cash. The capital allows bankers serving low-income and underserved areas that bigger financial institutions pass over to expand their community lending.

Financial intermediaries are innovating on plain-vanilla savings and checking accounts to overcome barriers such lenders have faced in attracting customers, including limits on federal deposit insurance.

Oakland-based CNote’s new Promise Account lets accredited investors divvy up to $3 million into insured deposit accounts across multiple CDFIs and low-income credit-unions, while managing their cash through a single interface on CNote’s platform. It follows the company’s high-yield, uninsured “savings account” for retail investors introduced in 2017. The opportunity is significant, CNote’s Catherine Berman tells ImpactAlpha, especially among foundations, who must have large amounts of cash on hand for grantmaking.

“The culture of impact investing has mostly lent itself to private deals,” says Berman. “But cash is the low hanging fruit.”

Tiedemann Advisors and StoneCastle Cash Management launched a similar cash management solution that allocates cash balances across insured deposit accounts at high-need community banks and credit unions. “It’s funny that there hasn’t been as much conversation over the years about cash,” says Tiedemann’s Brad Harrison. “It’s been overlooked”

Native American National Bank operates in “Indian Country,” the 3% of U.S. land, mostly sparsely populated and overwhelmingly low-income, that is populated by tribal and Alaskan natives. The bank has lent $128 million to support $250 million in projects in the last five years, including for affordable housing, grocery stores and native-owned enterprises. Financing for such projects often requires more complex capital stacks and longer timeframes than conventional banks are willing to underwrite.

For the Olamina fund, which was created last year to address the lack of access to capital in Black and Native American communities, keeping its cash with the bank “is a way for us to say, we see you and want to be able to support the work you are doing,” said the fund’s Lynne Hoey.

GREEN CAPITALISM
After Building SunEdison, Jigar Shah Eyes $1 Trillion Opportunities

Agents of Impact  |  February 12, 2015 

A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real solutions to climate change.

“Impact to me means $1 trillion,” says Jigar Shah, president and co-founder of Generate Capital, a new specialty finance company that works with project developers and technology manufacturers to finance what he calls “the resource revolution.”

Shah knows of what he speaks. As the founder of solar giant SunEdison, Shah cracked the code and laid the foundation for the explosive growth of not only SunEdison, now worth more than $5.5 billion, but also Elon Musk’s SolarCity and others. His no-money-down, pay-as-you-save business model unlocked the hundreds of billions in secondary financing that has driven the quadrupling of installed US solar capacity in the past five years. Last year, solar and wind together accounted for more than half of new U.S. electrical generating capacity. “Impact means people follow you,” Shah adds.

Since he left SunEdison five years ago, Shah has worked through outfits such as Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, where he was the founding CEO, to build the business case for scaling up other clean-tech industries.

At the Carbon War Room, Shah became known as a champion of the “gigaton throwdown,” a 2009 challenge to reduce annual carbon emissions by 17 gigatons (from 36 gigatons today), in order to avoid a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. Shah focused on the 10 or so “wedges” that each have potential for one-gigaton carbon reductions, including energy, water, waste, transportation, and agriculture.

The required changes are massive. Each wedge represents an investment opportunity of $1 trillion or more, according to multiple estimates, in order to bring sustainable infrastructure to billions of people around the world. A one-gigaton reduction in transportation, for example, would require swapping out a billion cars that get 20 miles per gallon for ones that get 40 mpg.

This is what Shah calls “creating climate wealth,” the title of his 2013 book in which he lays out the roadmap for approaches that can more than pay for themselves, but require massive infusions of upfront capital. Though renewables such as solar cost less over time, consumers had a hard time justifying, if even affording, the upfront costs of the equipment and installation.

At SunEdison, Shah helped introduce the 20-year power purchase agreements that bring together customers, investors, clean-tech manufacturers, and government regulators with terms they all can understand. SunEdison would install and service the equipment, ensure it performed as expected and deliver reliable, long-term dividends to investors.

Generate Capital, launched last year by Shah and co-founders Scott Jacobs and Matan Friedman, aims to demonstrate the investment opportunities in other proven approaches in renewable energy, energy storage, and energy efficiency. The firm already has north of $100 million to begin underwriting clean-tech projects. Though some impact-driven family offices are on board, Shah is seeking mainstream investor capital.

In a statement, Generate Capital says, “The goal here is to bring project finance to the hundreds of technologies that cost more upfront but save money over time that are either too confusing or too small for the traditional players to invest in.”

Unlike many investors, Shah is not looking for technology breakthroughs. The key to large-scale deployment, he says, is the availability of proven, battle-tested technologies such as photovoltaic solar panels, developed in the 1950s by Bell Labs.

“We believe that the biggest impacts in sustainability will be found in scaling the adoption of existing technology,” says Greg Neichin, an investor in Generate Capital as director of Ceniarth, LLC a single family office. “While significant capital has flowed to inventing new venture-backed technologies, we believe that the best risk-adjusted returns are available in financing the deployment of proven products and services.”

Shah and his team have already identified nearly a billion dollars worth of project-finance opportunities in the U.S. alone, an amount, the firm says, that is growing every day. Generate targets projects of between $2 million and $20 million, offering short-term asset-based financing, equipment leasing and other forms of project finance.

“Everything we have on the planet is old right now. It all has to get rebuilt. We can either rebuild it the right way or the wrong way,” Shah says. “It’s the largest wealth-creation opportunity of our lifetime.”