CAPITALI$M IS CRISIS
Toshiba changes board nominees as two step down in deepening crisis

Makiko Yamazaki
Sun, June 13, 2021


The logo of Toshiba Corp. is seen next to a traffic signal atop of a building in Tokyo

By Makiko Yamazaki

TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp, facing a deepening crisis over corporate governance, said on Sunday it will change its board director nominees for an upcoming shareholder meeting, as two are stepping down.

The shake-up follows an investigation that found the company had colluded with the Japanese government to pressure foreign investors, a revelation that its second-largest shareholder called the greatest corporate governance scandal in the world in the last decade.


The report was commissioned by shareholders, who voted in March for an independent investigation into allegations investors had come under pressure from the company.

Audit committee chair Junji Ota and audit committee member Takashi Yamauchi will retire as board directors, the company said in a statement, following a four-hour long emergency board meeting.

Toshiba's audit committee has come under scrutiny as the investigation alleged the committee failed to take any action even when it became aware of Toshiba's attempt to prevent shareholders from exercising their rights.

Toshiba also said two executives, Masayasu Toyohara and Masaharu Kamo, will leave this month. The report alleged these two reached out to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) for support ahead of Toshiba's annual general meeting last July.

In the statement, Toshiba said it "will take action to identify the root cause without delay, in an objective and transparent manner, including the participation of third parties."

The board, particularly chairman Osamu Nagayama, is likely to continue to face repercussions from the report in the run-up to the annual shareholders meeting on June 25.

Earlier on Sunday, 3D Investment Partners, Toshiba's second-biggest shareholder, wrote in a letter to the chairman and the three audit committee members calling for their immediate resignations.

3D's letter, seen by Reuters, describes Nagayama as "ultimately responsible for Toshiba's recent governance failures, including the flawed internal investigation and the board's determination to oppose an outside, independent investigation."

Quiddity Advisors analyst Travis Lundy, who writes on online commentary platform Smartkarma, also questioned the responsibilities of Nagayama, who also serves as nomination committee chairman.

"The problem with a board, and most particularly an audit committee is that someone is supposed to watch the watcher. That is Nagayama-san's job," he said.

Shareholder advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services Inc has recommended that shareholders should vote against the re-appointment of Nagayama, saying that he should be held responsible for the re-appointments of audit committee members.

A Toshiba spokeswoman said such criticism should be mitigated as the two audit committee members are now leaving. Toshiba declined to make the chairman or executives Toyohara and Kamo available for comment.

Four independent directors, who on Friday called for a shake-up of Toshiba's management and board, released a statement welcoming the announced changes.

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Editing by David Dolan and Jane Merriman)

GREEN CAPITALI$M  ESG/CSR

Threatened Caribbean coral reefs get a new ally: insurance

The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the world's second largest, will soon be covered by two insurance policies

Fish swim at a coral reef garden in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia on May 28, 2021. (REUTERS)

By Reuters
LAST UPDATED 12.06.2021 

As climate change threatens coral reefs around the world, conservation experts in Latin America have enlisted an unlikely ally to try to preserve them: the insurance industry

The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System - the world's second largest which runs from southern Mexico to Honduras - will soon be covered by two insurance policies that will pay out after hurricanes to fund repairs and debris cleaning.

A decade after experts first discussed the idea of reef insurance, Mexico's Quintana Roo state government in 2019 took out what was likely the world's first policy, covering areas near the tourist resorts of Cancun.

Also read: Unique Red Sea coral reefs are 'under threat' from an oil deal

The nonprofit MAR Fund will soon take out a second, covering sites in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras, paid for with grant money from the InsuResilience Solutions Fund, backed by the German government.

"How important is this from 0 to 10? I'd say 10," said Claudia Ruiz, Reef Rescue Initiative coordinator at MAR Fund, which works on the conservation and sustainable use of the Mesoamerican reef.

"You're not only helping the biodiversity of the reef but also the coastal communities that depend on the reef."

Pariama Hutasoit, a 52-year-old coral reef conservationist, along with volunteers, pick up corals from a nursery to be planted using Reef Star, a steel rod structure coated with sand at a coral reef garden in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, May 28, 2021. (REUTERS)

Coral reefs are essential for protecting aquatic life and shielding coastlines from storms, but they are under threat from pollution and warmer oceans due to climate change.

That stress has led to their bleaching - in which ailing coral expel the colorful algae living on them - which increases the likelihood the coral will die.

"The reefs are in a really bad state," said Fernando Secaira, the climate risk and resilience lead for Mexico at the environmental charity The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

"We've lost 80% of the coral here in the Mexican Caribbean."

Though healthy reefs can recover from hurricanes, climate change has made that harder, scientists say. Quick payouts to help remove debris after storms and stick broken corals back together can help, reef experts say.

Fast cash

Around the world, insurers are increasingly offering policies to cover climate change-related threats, from flooding to wildfires.

The policies pay out if a pre-determined trigger is passed, such as the size of a hurricane or flood, rather than according to the actual damage, allowing for quicker delivery of needed recovery cash.

"Days and a few weeks make a big difference and so having that funding very, very quickly ...(is) really valuable," said Simon Young, senior director in the climate and resilience hub at insurance firm Willis Towers Watson, the broker working with MAR Fund. "The traditional conservation funding model does not allow for that," he added.

A school of fish swim above a staghorn coral colony as it grows on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Cairns, Australia October 25, 2019. (REUTERS)

But some environmentalists have doubts about the new approach.

Jorge Herrera, a marine biologist and coastal ecosystems specialist at CINVESTAV, a Mexican science and technology institute, said hurricanes aren't the main problem facing the region's beleaguered reefs.

He added that conservation efforts in the region focus too much on coral and not enough on mangroves, seagrasses and other less flashy but essential parts of coastal ecosystems.

"The insurance should include the whole system, not (just) the reef," Herrera said.

Those involved in the new insurance push said it was a first step and work was underway on similar insurance for mangroves, which absorb climate-changing emissions, serve as fish nurseries and protect coasts from storm surges.

Secaira, whose organization designed the training for the post-hurricane reef response brigades, said that after a storm coral fragments could be recovered and used in repairs, making it a cost-effective way of restoring the reef.

Brigades in Puerto Morelos, in Quintana Roo, repaired 15,000 coral colonies in the 40 days after Hurricanes Delta and Zeta slammed into the coast within weeks of each other in 2020, Secaira said.

Young said it was relatively simple to quantify the risks from various categories of hurricanes, making it easier to work out insurance at a good price.

"I don't think insurance at any cost is necessarily a good value proposition but at the right cost it definitely can be."

(Reporting by Christine Murray; Editing by Laurie Goering for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly)

Also read: Scientists are on a quest to save a climate ally: seagrasses

3D-Printed Human Tissue Wins Impressive NASA Challenge

WE CAN'T PRINT ORGANS JUST YET BUT THIS BREAKTHROUGH GETS US CLOSER

 

I

MAGE CREDIT: HELLORF ZCOOL/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM


By Dr Alfredo Carpineti

11 JUN 2021

We are probably many decades away from being able to build organs in the lab from scratch. A major hurdle is the fact that what we can produce doesn’t have the vascularization – blood vessels – we get in naturally grown organs. Without that, you can’t feed the cells if you make the tissue realistically thick.

To entice more research in the area, NASA put forward a $500,000 prize back in 2016 for the first three teams that could create “thick, metabolically-functional human vascularized organ tissue” in the lab. Five years later, there are two winners.

Both winners alight from the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) in Winston-Salem and were competing as Team Winston and Team WFIRM. They won, respectively, first place and second place. Third place, and the final $100,000, is currently being fought over by two other teams.

The teams demonstrated that their 3D-printed human tissues are capable of perfusion – the process in an organism that brings nutrients to cells and removes metabolic waste. They designed a thick tissue through which nutrients and oxygen can flow. It used gel-like molds over which the tissue is grown. The mold is then dissolved leaving the fake blood vessels in place

.
Team Winston's printed tissue in the chamber where it can perform perfusion.

Image Credit: Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine

“I cannot overstate what an impressive accomplishment this is. When NASA started this challenge in 2016, we weren’t sure there would be a winner,” Jim Reuter, NASA associate administrator for space technology, said in a statement. “It will be exceptional to hear about the first artificial organ transplant one day and think this novel NASA challenge might have played a small role in making it happen.”

Team Winston will now have the opportunity to send such an experiment to the International Space Station. There it could be used to study the effect of cosmic radiation or microgravity on human tissues, and maybe lead ways to counteract that.

"The value of an artificial tissue depends entirely on how well it mimics what happens in the body,” said Lynn Harper, challenge administrator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. “The requirements are precise and vary from organ to organ, making the task extremely exacting and complex. The research resulting from this NASA challenge represents a benchmark, a well-documented foundation to build the next advance upon.”

Space might also be crucial to future designs into vascularized tissues. Thanks to the microgravity environment, it could be easier to 3D print human tissues in space.

SPACE RACE 2.0

NASA'S MARS ROVER SHARES NEW 2.4 BILLION-PIXEL, 360-DEGREE PANORAMIC IMAGE FROM JEZERO

Credit: NASA/JPL
Jun 12, 2021, 

Since gently dropping down onto the Red Planet's surface on Feb. 18, NASA's amazing Perseverance Mars rover has been quite busy, trundling around Jezero Crater, deploying a little drone helicopter, making microphone recordings, and capturing more than 75,000 images of the surrounding terrain.

Now NASA has released the rover's latest photographic impressions of our neighboring planet in the form of an impressive 360-degree panorama pieced together using 992 separate images snapped by its Mastcam-Z stereo imaging system.

MORE MARS

Humans could someday be living underground on Mars, which is the best SPF of all

Perseverance Mars rover obtained these photos as it sat idle out at the “Van Zyl Overlook” inside the Jezero Crater while its accompanying Ingenuity Mars helicopter finished up its initial flights between April 15 and 26.

Hold your breath and have a look around...

Stitched together into a single mosaic, these images represent 2.4 billion pixels of Mars' barren world. The rover shot in this panorama was taken on Mar. 20, 2021 and added to deliver a more accurate sense of scale and perspective.

Imaging coverage of the sky has been digitally smoothed over based on the true observed sky color. The video's accompanying audio recording was created on Feb. 22, 2021 and contributes an eerie mood while you explore the landscape.

Per NASA, Perseverance is about to kick off its new science phase this month as it exits the “Octavia E. Butler” landing site.

““We are putting the rover’s commissioning phase as well as the landing site in our rearview mirror and hitting the road. Over the next several months, Perseverance will be exploring a 1.5-square-mile patch of crater floor,” said Jennifer Trosper, Perseverance project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a statement. “It is from this location that the first samples from another planet will be collected for return to Earth by a future mission

JUNE 10 2021 ECLIPSE PHOTOS

          ECLIPSE,  CALGARY ALBERTA

ECLIPSE IN RUSSIA FROM THE MOSCOW TIMES

YOU CAN SEE THE MOON REFLECTION IN THE CLOUDS TO THE LEFT

‘Eclipse Season’ Is Over. The Next One Will Bring A 97% ‘Blood Moon’ And A Total Solar Eclipse

Jamie Carter
Senior Contributor

FORBES
Science
I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky

Discover the celestial mechanics behind eclipses and why they come in seasons.

NASA'S SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION STUDIO

Eclipse season is done. Thursday’s annular solar eclipse—mostly seen as a partial “bite” out of the Sun by the Moon, though to some as a “ring of fire”—was the second and final eclipse of the current season.

Wait. Eclipses come in seasons? Yes—and the next one beginning on November 19, 2021 is going to be way more spectacular than the one Earth just experienced.

Here’s everything you need to know—and the dates for your diary—of 2021’s second eclipse season, and the celestial mechanics behind these dramatic periods:
What is an ‘eclipse season’ and why do two eclipses follow each other?

Every 173 days an eclipse season begins. They last between 31 and 37 days and occur when the Moon is lined-up perfectly to intersect the ecliptic—the apparent path of the Sun through our daytime sky and the plane of Earth’s orbit of the Sun.

The Moon’s orbit of Earth is tilted by 5º to the ecliptic, so it must cross the ecliptic twice each month, but that tilt means it usually doesn’t align with the Sun and the Earth.

However, when it does align to cause a solar or lunar eclipse, it’s still precise enough a couple of weeks later to cause the other type of eclipse.

When is the next eclipse season?

2021’s second eclipse season begins with the full Moon of November 19, 2021 with a partial lunar eclipse that’s so nearly a total lunar eclipse. It will be visible in North America.

It will be followed on the next New Moon—December 4, 2021—with that most dramatic kind of eclipse of all, a total solar eclipse.



A full blood moon is seen during a partial eclipse in Taipei on May 26, 2021 as stargazers across ... [+] AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

What will the ‘Frosty Half-Blood Moon Eclipse’ look like?

November 19, 2021’s full Moon—known colloquially as the “Frosty Moon” is technically a partial lunar eclipse since the whole of the Moon won’t enter Earth’s shadow in space. But it will be so close! In fact, 97% will turn red as seen from North and South America, Australia and Asia.

Lunar eclipses can only occur at full Moon, when the Earth is between the Moon and the Sun.

Will it look at good as May’s “Super Flower Blood Moon,” which lasted for just 15 minutes? Probably not quite, but it’s going to be an awesome sight.

The diamond ring effect occurs with Baily's Beads at the end of totality during The Great American 

What will December’s total solar eclipse look like?

Occurring low in the sky above the floating icebergs of the Wedell Sea on December 4, 2021, this total solar eclipse in Antarctica won’t be witnessed by many, though over 20 cruise ships are planning to be in the area.

Solar eclipses can only occur at New Moon, when the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun.

They’ll feel the Moon’s shadow rush towards them and the temperature drop while the light plunges to twilight. With naked eyes in clear skies they’ll see the last ray of sunlight form a beautiful “diamond ring” around the Moon before the big reveal of the Sun’s delicate ice-white corona spraying into space.

Disclaimed: I am the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.


Jamie Carter
I'm an experienced science, technology and travel journalist and stargazer writing about exploring the night sky, solar and lunar eclipses, moon-gazing, astro-travel, astronomy and space exploration. I'm the editor of WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com and the author of "A Stargazing Program for Beginners: A Pocket Field Guide" (Springer, 2015), as well as many eclipse-chasing guides.

Is The North Pole On Fire? Watch Last Week’s Eclipse Do Something No Other Will This Century

Jamie Carter
Senior Contributor

FORBES
Science
I inspire people to go stargazing, watch the Moon, enjoy the night sky

Jun 12, 2021


The Moon's shadow from yesterday's eclipse is easily visible on top of the Earth in this image from ... [+] NASA

If you glimpsed the solar eclipse last week you were witness to something really special—an eclipse that made the

In these incredible images from NASA’s EPIC satellite—taken during the solar eclipse on Thursday, June 10, 2021—it’s possible to see the Moon’s shadow as it passes across the Earth’s surface.

Although most of the world saw a partial solar eclipse, a narrow stretch of the surface experienced a “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse during which a dark shadow crossed from Canada to Russia.

This article’s main image, above, shows the shadow over the North Pole.

It was the only solar eclipse of the 21st century to do such a thing.

It was also the only one whose shadow across Earth first traveled north across Canada and Greenland, then south into Siberia.

Here’s another shot of Earth, taken minutes earlier by EPIC, of the start of the annular solar eclipse:



The Moon's shadow from yesterday's eclipse is visible on top left of the Earth in this image from ... [+] NASA

And another as the shadow moved into Siberia, eastern Russia:


The Moon's shadow from yesterday's eclipse is visible on top right of the Earth in this image from ... [+] NASA

The next solar eclipse (in the next “eclipse season”) is a total solar eclipse in Antarctica, whose shadow will get very close to—but not actually pass across—the South Pole.

That will occur on December 4, 2021

It will be see low in the sky above the floating icebergs of the Wedell Sea on December 4, 2021, with over 20 cruise ships planning to be in the area.

North America will see its next total solar eclipse in 2024.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

SPACE RACE 3.0


Venus Wins Stunning Third New Mission, This Time from Europe

EnVision will follow NASA’s DAVINCI+ and VERITAS

By Meghan Bartels, SPACE.com on June 12, 2021

An artist's depiction of Earth, Venus and ESA's EnVision spacecraft. 

Credit: European Space Agency, Paris Observatory and VR2Planets

Venus scientists have long complained that the planet wasn’t getting its due in robotic investigators. But those days are over: space agencies have announced three new missions to Earth’s mysterious twin in just over a week.

On June 2, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency would pursue two new Venus missions dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, aiming to launch the spacecraft between 2028 and 2030. Today (June 10), the European Space Agency (ESA) joined the rush to Venus, announcing that it would launch a mission dubbed EnVision to the planet in the early 2030s.

“A new era in the exploration of our closest, yet wildly different, Solar System neighbour awaits us,” Günther Hasinger, ESA’s director of science, said in a statement. “Together with the newly announced NASA-led Venus missions, we will have an extremely comprehensive science programme at this enigmatic planet well into the next decade.”

The mission was chosen over an astrophysics project called Theseus, which would have studied very distant gamma-ray bursts and other transient events, with the goal of understanding the life cycle of the very first stars, according to ESA.

The new mission won’t be Europe’s first visit to our neighboring world: ESA’s Venus Express spacecraft orbited the world from 2005 to 2014, studying the planet’s thick atmosphere, which is rich in carbon dioxide.

EnVision will also orbit Venus, but its instruments will be able to get a deeper look at the planet than those onboard Venus Express did. The spacecraft’s tools will include a sounder to investigate layers within the planet, spectrometers to analyze gases in Venus’ atmosphere and compounds on its surface, a radar instrument to map the planet’s surface, and a radio science experiment that will probe the planet’s structure and gravity field, according to ESA.

Although the project is led by ESA, the spacecraft’s radar instrument will come from NASA. “EnVision’s VenSAR will provide a unique perspective with its targeted studies of the Venus surface, enriching the roadmap of Venus exploration,” Adriana Ocampo, EnVision program scientist at NASA, said in a NASA statement.

Meanwhile, NASA’s VERITAS mission (short for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy) will generate a global map of the topography of Venus. The data will be a vital upgrade compared to what we have from NASA’s Magellan mission, which used a much older version of the technology to map Venus between 1989 and 1994.

DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging) will be the only one of these new missions to venture through Venus’ atmosphere. The spacecraft includes a main orbiter plus a probe that will travel all the way down through the planet’s atmosphere to its surface, gathering measurements of how the atmosphere changes with depth.

EnVision will launch after the two NASA projects, with ESA officials evaluating Ariane 6 launch windows in 2031, 2032 and 2033. The spacecraft will then take 15 months to reach Venus and another 16 months to reach its final orbit.

Taken together, the three new missions will be a powerful tool for scientists looking to better understand how Earth and Venus started out so similar but became such different worlds, Tom Wagner, NASA’s Discovery Program scientist, said in the NASA statement.

“The combined results of EnVision and our Discovery missions will tell us how the forces of volcanism, tectonics and chemical weathering joined together to create and sustain Venus’ runaway hothouse climate.”

Copyright 2021 Space.com, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Meghan Bartels is a science journalist based in New York City.

SPACE
NASA Just Broke the 'Venus Curse': Here's What It Took

June 2, 2021 — Robin George Andrews

SPACE
NASA Picks Two Missions to Explore Venus, the First in Decades

June 3, 2021 — Robin George Andrews

 Quirks & Quarks·Analysis

Europe and NASA to send three new spacecraft to Venus

Three missions will be heading to our nearest neighbour to study its atmosphere and geology

Bob McDonald · CBC Radio · Posted: Jun 11, 2021 

The European Space Agency's EnVision mission and NASA's VERITAS and DAVINCI+ missions will explore Venus' geology and atmosphere. (NASA/JAXA/ISAS/DARTS/Damia Bouic/VR2Planets)

The European Space Agency has announced it will be launching its own mission to Venus that will join two American spacecraft announced earlier this month, to explore our sister planet. It is part of a broad effort to solve the mystery of why a world so much like ours turned out so differently.

The European mission, called EnVision, will orbit Venus and probe the surface with radar, looking for signs of volcanic activity both past and present. Volcanoes are believed to be the source of a planet's atmosphere and the atmosphere of Venus is incredibly different from ours and that of Mars.  

If you have felt the intense heat when you open the door of an oven that has been baking at 200 C, that would be considered a cold day on Venus. The temperature on the surface is more than twice that, an unimaginable 464 C — higher than the melting point of lead.

This image made available by NASA shows Venus with data from the Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter. On Wednesday, June 2, 2021, NASA’s new administrator, Bill Nelson, announced two new robotic missions to the solar system's hottest planet, during his first major address to employees. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/The Associated Press)

Any spacecraft we send there has little chance of surviving for long. The only craft to land on Venus were the Russian Venera series. In fact, Venera 3 was the first spacecraft to touch another planet in 1966. However, it was a crash landing, as the spacecraft failed in the atmosphere. 

Several following missions were lost due to the harsh conditions, and even those that landed successfully didn't last for long. Venera 9 operated for a full 53 minutes, but in that time was able to successfully send back the first image of Venus's surface. The Venera 13 mission survived for just a bit over two hours. In 1978, the U.S. sent its Pioneer Venus missions, and while one of the atmospheric probes survived to reach the surface, it succumbed after 45 minutes.

This panorama image, taken by the Venera 13 spacecraft on March 1, 1982, is one of the few images ever taken on the surface of Venus, Earth's nearest neighbour. The planet's thick clouds make its surface impossible for an orbiter to see. (NASA History Office)

Given the conditions, it's highly unlikely a human will ever set foot on Venus.

We have three planets in our solar system, Venus, Earth and Mars, all made of similar rocky materials, all within the habitable zone of the sun, but with three very different environments. One is a super-hot runaway greenhouse, enshrouded in a dense carbon dioxide atmosphere. One is in a permanent ice age with frigid temperatures under an extremely thin carbon dioxide atmosphere, and the other, right in the middle, is just right with nitrogen and oxygen air to breathe and live in.

The intriguing part of this mystery of why the planets are so different is the fact that at one time in the distant past, they were much more alike. There is evidence that billions of years ago Venus was cooler with liquid water on its surface and we're pretty sure that Mars was warmer and wetter as well. That means there could have been a time long, long ago when there were three blue planets.

This radar map from the Magellan spacecraft's visit to Venus in 1990 shows a Venusian mountain and lava fields. Conditions on the planet are incredibly hostile today, but a billion years ago might have been quite pleasant. (NASA)

The reason we explore other planets is to better understand our own. Venus and Mars changed from conditions that might have supported life to dramatically different environments and have remained that way ever since. The Earth on the other hand, is in a constant state of change, with ice ages and warm periods battling for dominance over geological time. 

It's clear that planets are capable of dramatic global transformations. In the past, those changes have been the result of volcanic activity, impact of objects from space or the movement of continents. Now we humans are affecting the climate on a global scale in a very short time, pushing a system that has the ability to transform profoundly. Nobody is suggesting that the Earth is in danger of turning into something like Venus or Mars. But they are a vivid illustration of what can happen to a planet when its climate goes awry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob McDonald

Bob McDonald is the host of CBC Radio's award-winning weekly science program, Quirks & Quarks. He is also a science commentator for CBC News Network and CBC-TV's The National. He has received 12 honorary degrees and is an Officer of the Order of Canada

THE OIL PATCH LOVES BLUE HYDROGEN
Varcoe: A 'watershed event' as energy sector moves on net-zero action, hydrogen complex in Alberta

It’s important that Alberta and the industry make progress as the country has committed to net-zero emissions by 2050

Author of the article: Chris Varcoe • Calgary Herald
Publishing date: Jun 10, 2021 • 3 days ago • 

MEG CEO Derek Evans, photographed in 2015. 

PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA ARCHIVES

Is hydrogen the key to unlocking the climate aspirations of one of the world’s top oil and gas producing countries — and can the lion’s share of Canada’s oilsands production really get to net-zero emissions within three decades?

If Canadians want to see how serious the push is to reach the net-zero mark by 2050 and decarbonize the energy industry, two announcements on Wednesday provided some tangible evidence.

Pennsylvania-based Air Products, which operates in 50 countries and has a market capitalization of US$65 billion, announced it has plans to build a $1.3-billion net-zero hydrogen production and liquefaction complex in northeast Edmonton.

The company’s Alberta operations would produce more than 1,500 tonnes of hydrogen per day and, if built, the hub is expected to begin operating in 2024.

In a separate announcement, five major Canadian oilsands producers have formed a new alliance, pledging to work together to reach net-zero emissions from their operations by 2050.

AND LET'S NOT FORGET THE PROVINCIALLY FUNDED HEARTLAND REFINERY TO MAKE NATURAL GAS FOR BLUE HYDROGEN, AND PLASTICS IN FORT SASKATCHEWAN

It’s a commitment to collaborate by an oilsands industry that has faced relentless criticism over its greenhouse gas emissions for more than a decade.

“This is a watershed event,” said Derek Evans, CEO of oilsands producer MEG Energy, one of the five group members.

“I am going to be going home tonight and be able to look my kids in the eye and say, finally, we have turned the dial on this. We are going to make this thing happen.”

Those are bold proclamations.

New technology will need to be deployed, investments will be required for carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) projects and other net-zero initiatives.

Yet, if Canada’s oil and gas industry — and the thousands of people who work in it — can solve this conundrum, it provides an opportunity to produce petroleum in a decarbonized world that will still need such resources for decades to come.

“It is significant but at the same time, it’s also inevitable. The world is changing,” said Simon Dyer, deputy executive director of the Pembina Institute.

“Climate risk is an existential risk to these companies. So it represents, finally, an acknowledgment that Canadian oil and gas is going to compete on price and carbon intensity.”

The new alliance includes industry heavyweights Suncor Energy, Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, MEG and Imperial Oil, (EXXON,ESSO) the only member that hasn’t officially set a corporate objective to hit net-zero by 2050.

Together, they represent about 90 per cent of total oilsands output and generate about 68 megatonnes of emissions annually.

Their collective plan is to lower overall emissions by about 22 megatonnes by 2030 and cut another 25 megatonnes a decade later, before reaching net-zero status.

One of the group’s initial ideas is a proposed CO2 trunk line that would connect oilsands operations near Fort McMurray to a carbon sequestration hub in the Cold Lake area.

An aerial view Suncor’s Millennium Mine oilsands operation north of Fort McMurray, Alta. 

PHOTO BY RYAN JACKSON / POSTMEDIA

Evans hopes to see significant involvement by governments on the “enabling infrastructure,” although the group hasn’t made a specific financial request.

“Over the next 30 years, we think it will cost about $2.5 billion a year to get this up and running and achieve that emissions reduction target of 68 million tonnes. It’s not going to happen all at once,” he added.

Other ideas the alliance will examine include the use of clean hydrogen, CCUS projects, more electrification, as well as pivoting into evolving areas such as using small modular  NUCLEAR reactors and direct-air capture initiatives.

The stakes are high.

“The producers with the most technically advanced teams will lead the energy transition over the next several decades,” analyst Travis Wood with National Bank of Canada said in a report.

“We see this announcement as a win for the energy sector.”

It’s important that Alberta and the industry make progress as the country has committed to net-zero emissions by 2050.

The entire oil and gas sector made up 26 per cent of Canada’s total emissions output in 2019, and overall industry emissions have risen since 2005 as oilsands production has increased.

Premier Jason Kenney noted the oilsands has lowered its emissions per barrel by about 30 per cent since 2000, although reductions to overall industry levels — and then getting to net-zero — will require a herculean effort and multiple steps.

“It is audacious and, let’s be honest, there is no easy path to achieving that goal,” Kenney told reporters.

“The application of technology is the solution.”

The hydrogen facility announced by Air Products, which is already operating in Alberta, is particularly significant.

The development has approval from the company’s board, contingent on finalizing agreements with the federal government.

Alberta’s TIER system fund will provide $15 million toward the complex; the project may also be eligible for money through the province’s new petrochemical incentive program.

The company says the project will create about 2,500 construction and engineering jobs.

Premier Jason Kenney announced, in Edmonton on Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2020, a strategy to grow and expand the natural gas sector. PHOTO BY CHRIS SCHWARZ /Government of Alberta

The Alberta facility will capture more than 95 per cent of carbon dioxide emitted from natural gas that’s used to create so-called “blue hydrogen” and inject them deep underground. Hydrogen-fuelled power will offset the remainder, while excess electricity will be exported into the provincial grid.

The project will also produce liquid hydrogen, which can be used for industrial purposes and in the transportation sector.

The era of oilsands megaprojects has waned, but these are the kinds of massive capital investments the energy sector will be making in the future, just as Suncor Energy is building a new $1.4-billion cogeneration project at its oilsands base plant.

Canada has the natural resources to capitalize on the low-carbon opportunities ahead, but it will need to attract investment.

Companies will require certainty from policy-makers to do that.

“These are 10-, 20-, 30-year projects and we can’t in the middle change our mind and . . . move it to somewhere else,” said Air Products CEO Seifi Ghasemi.

The news came the same day TC Energy and the provincial government officially terminated the Keystone XL project —

KENNEY AND UCP INVESTED Alberta taxpayers invested $1.3 billion in the pipeline

WITHOUT OUR PERMISSION — after U.S. President Joe Biden revoked its cross-border permits, underscoring the opposition the industry faces today.

Wednesday’s twin announcements represent the flip side to the debate, an opportunity for an energy sector that is trying to map out its future in a net-zero world.

“To me, this is the difference between playing defence and offence,” concluded Evans.

“We are actually going out there to do things, as opposed to defending the status quo.”

Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

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NATURAL GAS IS A FOSSIL FUEL


New hydrogen supply chain model to accelerate shift away from fossil fuels

By George Heyneson Jun 09, 2021

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have released a study on a new hydrogen supply chain that is expected to speed up the transition from fossil fuels to hydrogen.

Shifting the economy away from fossil fuels requires significant adjustments in current supply chains, to counteract this an MIT-led team has developed a new hydrogen supply chain planning model.

As mentioned by Guannan He, a postdoc at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), “We propose flexible scheduling for trucks and pipelines, allowing them to serve as both storage and transmission.

“This is very important to green hydrogen produced from intermittent renewables, because this can provide extra flexibility to meet variability in supply and demand.”

Storage plays a crucial role in the new supply chain model with the trucks used as both a means of fuel transmission and storage since hydrogen can be stored in idled trucks.

This tactic reduces costs in the hydrogen supply chain by about 9% by bringing down the need for other storage solutions.

Read more: GET H2 consortium to launch a complete hydrogen supply chain

The researchers adopted the idea of a central planner interested in minimising system costs and maximising the societal benefit of the hydrogen supply chain.

To achieve this, the researchers looked at the costs associated with the four main steps in the hydrogen supply chain: production, storage, compression and transmission.

The group also included a wide range of hydrogen-related technologies, including SMR with and without carbon capture and storage, hydrogen transport as a gas or liquid and transmission via pipeline and trucks.

The study found that pipelines were less flexible than trucks for transmission and that hydrogen gas is less expensive than trucking hydrogen in liquid form, since liquefaction has much higher energy consumption and capital costs than gas compression.

The team also proposes a flexible scheduling and routing model for hydrogen trucks that would help enable the vehicles to be used as both transmission and storage.

Read more: Consortium to develop hydrogen supply chain between Australia and Japan

After this, the model supply chain was then tested by exploring the future hydrogen infrastructure needs of the US Northeast under various carbon policy and hydrogen demand scenarios.

Annual operations were simulated using 20 representative weeks from seven years of data, this helped to determine the optimal mix of hydrogen infrastructure types given different carbon prices and the capital costs of electrolysers.

Emre Gençer, MITEI research scientist, said, “We showed that steam methane reforming of natural gas with carbon capture will constitute a significant fraction of hydrogen production and production capacity even under very high carbon price scenarios.”

The results indicate that there is real synergy between the use of electrolysis for hydrogen generation and the use of compressed-gas trucks for transmission and storage.

Now that the hydrogen supply chain planning model has been created it is believed that the next step is to provide planners with broad access to the tool.

You can read the study here.

Greening up the global supply chain: Hydrogen-powered, low carbon shipping is on the horizon



The shipping industry is in the spotlight – facing environmental mandates that require a whole new way of thinking about ship propulsion. Incremental goals such as cleaner diesel are a start, but the reality is much more significant.

Monumental shifts are on the horizon, poised to drive new kinds of engines, cleaner fuels such as hydrogen, and modernised ships that reflect a greater level of environmental responsibility. Hydrogen generation on-vessel, on-demand unlocks it all. Guided by mandates from the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a UN body, shipbuilders are tasked with reducing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030 and by at least 50% by 2050. (Note that using a 2008 baseline, the 2050 goal reduces carbon intensity overall by 70 percent.)

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