Owner of luxury of 21-story apartment building that collapsed in Nigeria found dead in rubble

Rebecca Cohen

Fri, November 5, 2021

Hopes fade of finding survivors of Nigeria high-rise collapse as toll rises Reuters

• The owner of a Nigerian high-rise that collapsed Monday was found dead in the rubble.

• Rescue crews pulled nine survivors out of the wreckage as of Tuesday, but the collapse has killed dozens.

• The building in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city, had been under construction for three years.

The owner of a Nigerian luxury apartment building that collapsed earlier this week was found dead in the rubble Thursday, local authorities told the Washington Post.

The tower collapsed Monday, and rescue crews pulled nine survivors out of the wreckage by Tuesday and have found at least 43 bodies, the National Emergency Management Agency of Nigeria told The Post.

Olufemi Osibona, the managing director of the Nigerian development firm Fourscore Homes, was inside the building at the time of the collapse, and local authorities found his body on Thursday.

The collapse took place in Lagos, Nigeria's largest city.

The building had been under construction for almost three years before its collapse, and it had temporarily stopped construction from July to November of this year, according to local media.

"Our agency came in to do a structural test and saw some anomalies and shut it down and said those things should be corrected," Obafemi Hamzat, Lagos State's deputy governor, said. He did not say why construction had resumed.

Investigations into the collapse to determine the cause are underway.

GAI/UBI
Column: A veteran of guaranteed income, she has some advice for L.A.'s new recipients


Erika D. Smith
Fri, November 5, 2021

Georgia Horton, taking in the view at Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, is a participant in the Compton Pledge guaranteed income program. (Erika D. Smith / Los Angeles Times)

Georgia Horton grabbed the hem of her dark blue dress and awkwardly threw one leg and then the other over a concrete bench at the top of Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area.

"This is where I take all the reporters," she said, flashing a sarcastic smile while getting comfortable at the picnic table. "It's peaceful, right?"

I had to laugh.

In the months since I wrote about Horton during the darkest days of the pandemic, she said she has met with a parade of reporters, all wanting to know about her participation in the Compton Pledge guaranteed income program.

And she keeps telling her story.

How she grew up poor in Bakersfield and was abused as a child. How she spent decades in prison, found religion and became an evangelist. How she moved to Compton after being released and struggled to make ends meet when the economy shut down over COVID-19.

And how the few hundred dollars that she now receives every month — no strings attached — has taken her from the brink of eviction to a budding career as a motivational speaker with her own nonprofit.

With each telling, Horton has further embraced her role as a spokeswoman for guaranteed income. "A poster child," she likes to joke.

But she knows it's not just her story. It's that in the months she has been telling it, several mayors have been making a big show of launching publicly funded guaranteed income programs in their own cities.

Los Angeles is just the latest, with Mayor Eric Garcetti last week announcing more details for the Basic Income Guaranteed: L.A. Economic Assistance Pilot, or BIG: LEAP. Some 3,200 low-income households will get $1,000 a month for one year. Applications are being accepted now.

Also last week, Chicago announced that it would start distributing monthly payments to low-income residents, too, with Mayor Lori Lightfoot bragging that her city will have "the largest pilot program in the country."

Indeed, each successive announcement seems designed to one-up the last, with cities clearly competing with one another to be seen as giving out the most money to the most people.

Yes, it's shameless virtue signaling. But it's also testament to how what started in 2019 as a controversial experiment in Stockton under then-Mayor Michael Tubbs has quickly morphed into one of the most politically popular — and effective — tools for managing the economic upheaval of the pandemic. That's why mayors like to talk about it.

What mayors talk about less is how their frenzy over guaranteed income has spawned a new industry — from nonprofit leaders and consultants who tout best practices at symposiums to organizations that help cities select recipients, run their programs and collect data.

For example, there's the Fund for Guaranteed Income. Led by Nika Soon-Shiong, the daughter of Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, it's the charity behind the donor-funded Compton Pledge and has been tapped by Chicago to help manage its program.

There's also the academic Center for Guaranteed Income Research, which is working with Los Angeles and many other cities that have started programs under Tubbs' Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.

Horton shakes her head in amazement at how complicated guaranteed income has become and how removed it has become from people. Though grateful for the steady stream of cash through the Compton Pledge, she is worried about what comes next for those who have come — and will come — to depend on it.

"Y'all are bragging about how much you're giving," she said, talking about the mayors and their speeches. "But what's going to happen when it's over?"

::

The question of sustainability is one that critics often pose about guaranteed income, even though early research has shown that such programs can help lift Americans out of poverty for good.

Still, some cities aren't taking any chances.

In L.A., for example, those selected for BIG: LEAP will be referred to agencies that provide financial coaching. Other guaranteed income programs, including in the Bay Area, are offering the same. Participation is optional.

Horton admits she did many things the hard way, including figuring out on her own how to start her nonprofit, Georgia Horton Ministries.

But once she filed the paperwork — using money saved from her monthly Compton Pledge stipend — it led to a slew of new speaking engagements, including from the Word Network and T.D. Jakes Ministries. She also has written a book, which tells her story of overcoming trauma.

"With that transition came a whole lot of different responsibilities," she explained. "But it came with a whole different mindset, too."

It's that new mindset that Horton hopes L.A.'s coming class of guaranteed income recipients will adopt sooner rather than later. Ever the evangelist, she ticked off the lessons that she has learned.

First, start a savings account to fight the urge for instant gratification.

"There's never going to be a good time to save in your mind — in that poverty mindset — because need is always going to be present," Horton said. "If you're waiting to save absent of need, you'll never save. So now you have to decide: If I have lived without this for so much time, then why can you not live without this now?"

Second, keep your old friends, but make new ones.

"Bring in somebody that is thinking on the level of where you want to go. Because what's gonna happen is, while you're bringing in somebody that's thinking on that level, then when you're conversing with them, you're getting new ideas."

And third, don't forget about self-care, both mental and physical, to avoid impulse buying.

"In the midst of this pandemic, to help you make better decisions with your funding, do some inner self-care to change how you feel in a healthy way," she said. "If you don't, then you're going to find some kind of outer something to bring in to try to feel better."

That is Horton's story and, as long as people keep asking, she'll keep telling it.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Zuckerberg's metaverse: Lessons from Second Life

Joe Tidy - Cyber reporter

BBC
Fri, November 5, 2021

Second Life image of man and woman in a house

This week, I travelled back in time to visit the future.

It has been about 10 years since I first entered the virtual world of Second Life, arguably the internet's first attempt at what every tech giant is now racing to build: the so-called metaverse.

The term metaverse was coined in the 1990s in a science-fiction novel, Snow Crash, where it served as a virtual-reality successor to the internet, where people live large portions of their lives in virtual environments.

Second Life peaked in the late 2000s with millions of users and hundreds of excitable headlines about people devoting hours of their daily lives to live digitally.

Since then, I assumed it had died a slow and quiet death. But how wrong I was.

The platform seems to have a small, loyal and potentially growing community of "residents", as they call themselves, logging on to experience what our metaverse future could look like.

So for this week's Tech Tent podcast, I dipped back in.

Podcast available now
Listen to the latestTech Tent podcast on BBC Sounds

In terms of visuals, it is far from groundbreaking.

It is more akin to the blocky and pixelated world of Roblox than a blockbuster game built around gorgeous immersive environments.

But the difference here, of course, is that, like Mark Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse, Second Life is not a game. There are no gaming challenges or quests or storylines. It is just a place to hang out.
Meeting virtual Rei

One resident I met was Rei.

Our avatars bumped into each other after teleporting to a seaside world modelled on a strange rundown 1960s Scottish fishing village. He told me he had been spending time in Second Life for about four months after "getting curious about all this metaverse stuff".

I met Rei in a user-built zone in Second life

Rei is not a fan of Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse.

"They'll want to control everything. But I think the people should be in charge and it should be fully open," he told me.


Apparently, it's the next big thing. What is the metaverse?


Facebook's metaverse plans labelled 'dystopian'


Facebook to hire 10,000 in EU to work on metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of the newly renamed company Meta, addressed these concerns when he announced his grand plans.

"It's a future that is beyond any one company. That will be made by all of us," he said in his Facebook Connect keynote.

Other large corporations, including Microsoft, Epic Games, Roblox and even Nike have announced plans to enter the metaverse in some form.

Rei's concern about a metaverse monopoly is one shared by many, including Anya Kanevsky, vice-president of product management at Linden Lab - the company running Second Life.

Anya has watched with interest as several tech giants have started to talk about the new idea of a life online. Second Life has been going since 2003.

Second Life residents host events

"I'm a little bit concerned about the dystopian nature that the conversation seems to be taking on right now," she says.

"The entry of a slightly oversized and outsized player into the space seems to signal to people that they are not the owners of it, that someone else is going to be setting the rules and kind of running the show and they will just be the consumers."

Second Life, then, is much like Roblox - a place where users build environments and invite others to play - although it has far fewer participants.

Roblox's record for concurrent players is estimated to be around 5.5m compared with Second Life's 90,000.

Mark Zuckerberg says he, too, wants to put a community of users at the heart of his metaverse but he does not have any residents yet.

Instead, he has pledged to take on 10,000 employees across Europe to build his worlds.

Some argue that it's not even about allowing users more control: a metaverse should be built entirely by communities.

John Carmack, the consulting chief technology officer of Oculus, Meta's virtual-reality headset division, believes that setting out to build a metaverse "is not actually the best way to wind up with the metaverse".

As reported by Ars Technica, he said: "I doubt a single application will get to that level of taking over everything. I just don't believe that one player - one company - winds up making all the right decisions for this."

It's not hard to find events and zones aimed at adult audiences in Second Life

Second Life's story also has more lessons to teach Mr Zuckerberg and others.

At its peak, the site attracted negative headlines after high-profile virtual riots, Ponzi schemes based on the in-game currency and even issues around child grooming.

Even in my short exploration this week, I caught glimpses of the moderation challenges that Second Life faces. Those would be amplified if a metaverse went mainstream.

Searching for events or places with certain keywords such as "porn" or "drugs" is blocked.

However, searching for "sex" took me to virtual strip clubs where I was offered digital lap dances in exchange for in-world money.

"The approach to governance in a virtual world is complex," says Ms Kanevsky.

"Some of it can be automated away but a lot of it must have the human touch. It's not all just escapist behaviour and pretty dresses and gorgeous avatars."

Back in Second Life, I asked Rei one last question before I logged off: why does he keep coming back?

He answered: "I like to dream with my eyes".

END THE DEATH PENALTY
Japan death row inmates sue over 'inhumane' same-day notification

Elaine Lies
Thu, November 4, 2021

TOKYO (Reuters) - Two death row inmates in Japan are suing the country over how prisoners are notified only hours before the death penalty is carried out, demanding change and seeking compensation for the impact of the "inhumane" practice, their lawyer said on Friday.

Capital punishment in Japan is conducted by hanging, and the practice of not informing inmates of the timing until shortly before execution has long been decried by international human rights organisations for the stress it places on prisoners, for whom any day could be their last.

On Thursday, in what is believed to be a first, two prisoners sentenced to death filed a suit in a district court in the western city of Osaka saying the practice was illegal because it did not allow prisoners time to file an objection, demanding the practice be changed and asking for 22 million yen ($193,594) in compensation, lawyer Yutaka Ueda said.

"Death row prisoners live in fear every morning that that day will be their last. It's extremely inhumane," he added.

"Japan is really behind the international community on this."

The United States and Japan are the only industrialised democracies that still carry out the death penalty, and human rights groups such as Amnesty International have demanded change for decades.

Ueda said there is no law mandating that prisoners can only be told of their execution hours before it takes place, and that the practice actually goes against Japan's criminal code.

"The central government has said this is meant to keep prisoners from suffering before their execution, but that's no explanation and a big problem, and we really need to see how they respond to the suit," he added.

"Overseas, prisoners are given time to contemplate the end of their lives and mentally prepare. It's as if Japan is trying as hard as possible not to let anybody know."

There are currently 112 people sentenced to death in Japan, the Justice Ministry said, though none have been executed for nearly two years. Public opinion polls regularly show a vast majority of the population in favour of capital punishment, which is usually imposed in connection with murders.

Ueda said he hopes the lawsuit could spark discussion in Japan about the issue, though this is not its main goal.

"This system is badly mistaken - and we would like the public to turn their eyes to the issue," he added.

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Michael Perry)

VW ID.Buzz previewed as the modern-day electric hippie Bus

It will make its debut in 2022

RONAN GLON

Nov 4th 2021 

Volkswagen is gradually revealing more details about the production version of the ID.Buzz concept. We saw it as a heavily-camouflaged autonomous shuttle in September 2021, and the latest picture released by the German automaker shows the electric van with far less cladding.

While multi-colored camouflage fully covers the model, whose production name hasn't been published yet, what you see in the image above is what dealers across the United States are scheduled to receive starting in 2023. It looks a lot like the design study presented in 2017 in the sense that it's big, relatively boxy, and very clearly inspired by the rear-engined Bus that spent decades zig-zagging across the United States. Some styling cues have changed, however: the lower part of the front bumper has been redesigned, the futuristic-looking headlights were ditched for more realistic units, and the backlit Volkswagen emblem is gone from the front end. It also gains mirrors and door handles.

Overall, it looks like not much has been lost in the transition from a concept car to a production model, though we'll wait until we see the Buzz in the metal to make a final judgment. And, like the concept, the production model will land with an electric powertrain. It's built on the modular MEB platform that underpins a growing number of EVs, including the ID.4 crossover and the recently-unveiled ID.5, so Volkswagen will be able to offer rear- and all-wheel-drive variants. Short- and long-wheelbase versions will be available globally, but an earlier report claims that only the latter will be offered in the United States, where the van will be positioned as an upscale adventure-mobile.

Similarly, the same report claims the commercial version of the Buzz shown as a concept in 2018 will not make its way to our shores. Additional details, like driving range and pricing information, will be announced closer to the EV's unveiling in 2022.

Even if we only get long-wheelbase people-hauling versions, what's certain is that, after several false starts, the Volkswagen van will roam American roads again.

Related video:

‘I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis’: The energy crunch has made fertilizer too expensive to produce, says Yara CEO



Katherine Dunn
Thu, November 4, 2021

The world is facing the prospect of a dramatic shortfall in food production as rising energy prices cascade through global agriculture, the CEO of Norwegian fertilizer giant Yara International says.

"I want to say this loud and clear right now, that we risk a very low crop in the next harvest," said Svein Tore Holsether, the CEO and president of the Oslo-based company. "I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis."

Speaking to Fortune on the sidelines of the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Holsether said that the sharp rise in energy prices this summer and autumn had already resulted in fertilizer prices roughly tripling.

In Europe, the natural-gas benchmark hit an all-time high in September, with the price more than tripling from June to October alone. Yara is a major producer of ammonia, a key ingredient in synthetic fertilizer, which increases crop yields. The process of creating ammonia currently relies on hydropower or natural gas.

"To produce a ton of ammonia last summer was $110," said Holsether. "And now it's $1,000. So it's just incredible."

Food prices have also risen, meaning some farmers can afford more expensive fertilizer. But Holsether argues many smallholder farmers can't afford the higher costs, which will reduce what they can produce and diminish crop sizes. That in turn will hurt food security in vulnerable regions at a time when access to food is already under threat from the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, including widespread drought.

The company, whose largest shareholder is the Norwegian government, has donated $25 million worth of fertilizer to vulnerable farmers, Holsether said. But Yara isn't able to eat the costs of such a dramatic rise in energy prices, he says. Since September, it has been curtailing its ammonia production by as much as 40% due to energy costs. Other major producers have done the same. Reducing ammonia production will decrease the supply of fertilizer and make it more expensive, undermining food production.

The delayed effects of the energy crisis on food security could mimic the chip shortage crisis, Holsether said.

"That's all linked to factories being shut down in March, April, and May of last year, and we're reaping the consequences of that now," he said. "But if we get the equivalent to the food system…not having food is not annoying, that's a matter of life or death."

Holsether pointed to efforts by the director of the UN World Food Program, David Beasley, the former governor of South Carolina, to raise $6 billion in aid to combat preventable famine by directly targeting outspoken billionaires, including Elon Musk, for donations to the program.

Last week, Beasley called out Musk and Jeff Bezos, who appeared at COP26 on Tuesday, arguing that they could pony up the funds if they wanted to and barely feel the difference. In response, Musk tweeted that he was willing to sell $6 billion in Tesla stock if the World Food Program could explain "exactly" how that money would end world hunger.

Food scarcity is already reaching desperate levels in many regions. On Wednesday, Frédérica Andriamanantena, the World Food Program's Madagascar program manager, appeared on a COP26 panel to describe the severity of the country's drought and resulting famine. Andriamanantena, who is from Madagascar, said drought had this year reduced the harvest to one-third of the average of the past five years. Where families had once had comfortable meals, children are now subsisting on foraged plants and cactus leaves.

"That is where the situation is now," she said.

Race Is On to Frack Shale Fields Before Costs Jump in 2022


David Wethe
Fri, November 5, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Explorers are racing to get frack jobs done in the Permian Basin and other U.S. shale-oil fields before higher prices kick in next year, according to research and analysis firm Lium LLC.

The number of hydraulic-fracturing crews deployed across the U.S. shale patch jumped by 10 in recent weeks to 230, Lium analysts said in a note titled “Permianflation” on Friday. A crew typically consists of 25 to 30 workers who operate a huge array of truck-mounted pumps, storage tanks for fluids and sand, hoses, gauges and safety gear.

“Operators are accelerating completions activity in anticipation of 10-15% higher well costs next year,” according to Lium. “Rising well costs could slow down U.S. oil and gas production growth by putting pressure on maintenance capital scenarios.”

A number of shale explorers including Devon Energy Corp., Diamondback Energy Inc. and ConocoPhillips warned investors this week that inflation could rise 10% to 15% next year as supply-chain snarls make equipment and labor more pricey. Explorers have said they’ve so far been able to manage rising costs through efficiency gains in the field.

Drilling crews, which come in ahead of the frack workers to bore a hole several miles into rock, are also on the rise. The number of rigs drilling for crude in U.S. fields rose by 6 to 450 this week, according to Baker Hughes Co. data released Friday. One of America’s biggest drillers, Occidental Petroleum Corp., said it plans to add a pair of rigs every three months in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico.

Russia gets partial win in $50B case over bankrupt oil giant


Netherlands Yukos - Russian opposition figure and former owner of the Yukos Oil Company Mikhail Khodorkovsky smiles during a news conference after the Vilnius Russia Forum at the "Esperanza" hotel in Paunguriai village, Trakai district west of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania, on Aug. 20, 2021. The Dutch Supreme Court is ruling Friday, Nov. 5, 2021 in a $50 billion legal battle between Russia and former shareholders of the country's bankrupted oil giant Yukos. 

(AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis, File)


MIKE CORDER
Fri, November 5, 2021

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch Supreme Court on Friday handed Russia at least a temporary victory in an appeal of what’s believed to be the world’s largest award in an arbitration case after former shareholders of bankrupted Russian oil giant Yukos accused the Kremlin of taking down the company to silence its CEO, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin.

The decision further extends what already has been a yearslong legal battle between Russia and former Yukos shareholders. It quashed a lower court ruling, effectively setting aside a $50 billion award made to the former shareholders in 2014 and sending the case to another court in Amsterdam to consider Russian claims that the shareholders committed fraud in the original arbitration hearings.

However, the highest Dutch court rejected the rest of Russia's arguments, a move welcomed by the former shareholders, who said in a statement that they “won on all substantive grounds of Russia’s appeal.”

“We will study the Supreme Court ruling, but are confident that the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam will dismiss the baseless allegations raised by the Russian Federation, and the arbitral awards will be upheld,” said Tim Osborne, chief executive of GML, the holding company of former Yukos majority shareholders.

The Russian prosecutor-general’s office welcomed the ruling but said “it is regrettable" the high court didn't dismiss the award outright.

“The Russian Federation expects that the Amsterdam Court of Appeal will interpret the remaining controversial issues in accordance with international law ... and take comprehensive measures to protect the rights and legitimate interests of Russian taxpayers,” the office said in a statement.

An international panel of arbitrators concluded in 2014 that Moscow seized control of Yukos in 2003 by deliberately crippling the company with huge tax claims. The move was seen as an attempt to silence Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a vocal Putin critic.

Khodorkovsky was arrested at gunpoint in 2003 and spent more than a decade in prison as Yukos’ main assets were sold to a state-owned company. Yukos ultimately went bankrupt.

The state launched “a full assault on Yukos and its beneficial owners in order to bankrupt Yukos and appropriate its assets while, at the same time, removing Mr. Khodorkovsky from the political arena,” the arbitrators said in their 2014 ruling.

The original case was handled under the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which is headquartered in The Hague. As a result, Russia appealed the arbitration decision in the Netherlands.

The Dutch Supreme Court ruled Friday that a lower appeals court in The Hague wrongly dismissed — on procedural grounds — Russia’s claim that “shareholders committed fraud in the arbitral proceedings.” Those fraud claims weren't immediately clear.

In April, an independent adviser to the highest Dutch court had recommended that its judges reject Russia’s appeal in full.

Khodorkovsky is not involved in the case, which was brought by former shareholders united in a company called GML Ltd.

Green Trillions Face ‘Acid Test’ After Bankers Toast COP Pledges

Tom Metcalf and Alastair Marsh
Fri, November 5, 2021




(Bloomberg) -- The City of London’s top ambassador was in celebration mode Wednesday night.

Speaking to the 150 climate-summit guests gathered for a nightcap on the banks of the River Clyde in Glasgow, Lord Mayor of London William Russell toasted the finance industry. Its commitment to fighting climate change, he said, had been confirmed that day.

But away from the bamboo business cards and bicycling bankers on display at the COP26 talks in Scotland’s largest city, the gaping question remains whether financiers accustomed to making billions on fossil-fuel deals will have the willpower to stop.

“The acid test for financial institutions around this is: Are they willing to draw back?,” said Catherine Howarth, chief executive officer of ShareAction, a nonprofit that campaigns for responsible investing standards. “That is an enormous pivot for the financial community.”

Banks, investors and insurers representing $130 trillion in assets have now committed to decarbonizing their business by mid-century. Getting that many signatories was the crowning achievement of a campaign driven by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. As co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, Carney has spent the better part of the year wooing bankers across continents in the hope of unveiling an enormous sum at the COP26 summit.

According to the terms of GFANZ, signatories must commit to decarbonize their operations by 2050, use science-based guidelines, and provide 2030 interim goals. Michael R. Bloomberg, the owner and founder of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, is co-chair of GFANZ.

The list of members includes some of the biggest names on Wall Street and in the City of London: JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, BlackRock Inc. and HSBC Holdings Plc. Together, members make up 40% of global financial assets. Absent from the list are the world’s three biggest banks, all of which are Chinese and all of which are major providers of coal finance.

The commitments GFANZ members have agreed to will be hard to police, according to Cynthia Cummis, director of private sector climate mitigation at the World Resources Institute. What’s more, the whole setup is voluntary. But for investors and others keen to track how well banks are living up to their net zero pledges, there are some key numbers to track, she said.

“One important metric to look at is what is the rate of finance invested in fossil fuels versus the capital flows going to climate finance,” Cummis said. “If you look now, the rate of finance going into fossil fuels is more than twice as large as the capital going into climate finance.”

Brown Finance

Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, banks have facilitated almost $4 trillion of fossil-fuel financing and scored $17 billion in fees in the process, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with about $1.5 trillion channeled into green investments over the same period.

This year alone lenders have arranged about $460 billion of bonds and loans for the oil, gas and coal sectors, and even those to have signed up to GFANZ have made clear they won’t be abruptly exiting the space.

JPMorgan, which only joined the alliance last month, has made about $985 million in revenue since the end of 2015 arranging debt and lending for the oil, gas and coal industries. That compares with the roughly $310 million it generated in income from green finance.

Another recent signatory, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has also made it clear it won’t stop working with fossil fuels, warning it could fuel inflation.

“We have to balance good public policy with the short-term implications and that’s why it is a transition,” Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said last month. That echoed comments by Standard Chartered Plc CEO Bill Winters, who has criticized “simple edicts like: No more fossil fuels. It’s just not practical.”

$200 Trillion

Even if all GFANZ signatories start to move away from brown financing, there’s plenty of capital waiting in the wings to fill the gap. The 450 firms that have signed up to the alliance are vastly outnumbered by those that have snubbed the network. In fact, almost $200 trillion of financial assets sit outside GFANZ. Aside from China, banks from Russia and India aren’t on the list.

Also absent: the thousands of smaller, closely-held boutique finance firms that don’t have to answer to increasingly green-minded investors or regulators of public markets.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink groused Tuesday about this disconnect, saying “the largest capital-market arbitrage in our lifetimes” was under way, as hydrocarbon assets move from public to private hands. “There’s more movement away from hydrocarbon assets into private hands than anytime, ever,” Fink said. “That does not change the net zero world. That’s window dressing, that’s greenwashing.”

And firms looking to incorporate sustainability into their investing practices may be years away from truly embedding it in their systems. Take hedge funds. Most say investor demand and regulatory pressure mean they expect environmental, social and governance investing to become a vital part of their business going forward. But nearly two-thirds don’t have a dedicated specialist on staff, according to a survey of 100 firms from the Alternative Investment Management Association.

GFANZ Skepticism

And then there are questions as to how GFANZ’s giant headline figure -- $130 trillion -- should be interpreted. It’s not sitting on the sidelines waiting to be deployed but instead is already invested in existing assets, meaning lenders will need to divest existing holdings.

The figure also disguises some double counting, according to a person familiar with how the alliance does its calculations. That’s because GFANZ doesn’t correct for asset values represented by sub-units of parent firms whose holdings have already been counted, said the person, who asked not to be identified revealing internal processes.

In other words, a financial conglomerate that has signed up to more than one sub-alliance will have its assets counted more than once.

Growing Momentum

Despite the caveats, even skeptics agree that $130,000,000,000,000 is too large a figure to ignore. And momentum is building. This year, aggregate financing for green projects topped that of fossil fuels for the first time, Bloomberg data shows.

Demand for sustainable investments from both retail and institutional clients is soaring. More and more investors are avoiding listed companies with negative climate angles, according to Hester White, head of Client Relationship Management and chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Committee at Peel Hunt.

“We have reached a tipping point in finance this week,” said Huw van Steenis, the veteran bank analyst and former Bank of England adviser who is leading UBS Group AG’s push into sustainable finance. “Leaving COP, the focus will be on getting the right data and metrics, and engaging with companies, on financing the transition to clean energy.”

That won’t be easy. Fink said during a COP panel on Wednesday that “deploying that capital is going to be far harder” than securing the commitments.

But after the panel was finished and the sun had set on a day of climate pledges, it was time to celebrate. A kilt-wearing saxophonist was standing in the wings, waiting for his instructions.

“Turn the music back on,” Russell said at the close of his remarks. “Enjoy yourselves.”

Most Read from Blo

The Trillion Dollar Push To Decarbonize Global Shipping


Editor OilPrice.com
Thu, November 4, 2021

Freight ships are huge carbon emitters and if countries and companies hope to meet Paris Agreement targets they must change the way freight shipping is managed, making it greener by using electric batteries or alternative fuels.

At present, shipping products across the ocean using freight ships creates more greenhouse-gas emissions than the estimated 2 billion U.S. cars and trucks on America’s roads, at around one billion metric tonnes. The shipping industry is thought to produce between 2 and 3 percent of global carbon emissions. Maritime shipping contributes around 10 to 15 percent of all sulfur- and nitrogen-oxide emissions. And, in reality, very little is known about the shipping freight emissions of some of the world’s largest companies as very few report these types of emissions.

But changing the face of freight shipping is not a simple task. First, manufacturers must consider the best renewable energy to use in fuelling these mammoth ships. And then there is the cost. The cost of developing the alternative fuel, of switching to said fuel, and the cost of changing all the mechanics inside the ship to make it run on the new fuel. To this end, the Global Maritime Forum estimates that to meet the International Maritime Organization (IMO) 2050 emissions target by switching to ammonia fuel, it would cost over $1.15 trillion.

But the work has already begun. This June, the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee tightened ship efficiency requirements starting in November 2022, developing upon its 2018 strategy. The IMO has already introduced targets to reduce carbon emissions over the next decade, with the aim of a 40 percent reduction of CO2 emissions from international shipping by 2030 and a 70 percent reduction by 2050, compared to 2008, in line with Paris Agreement targets.

In terms of major individual shipping companies, in 2018, Maersk set the target of zero carbon emissions from operations by 2050. The aim is to have commercially viable carbon-neutral ships available by 2030 to achieve this goal. Søren Toft, Chief Operating Officer of Maersk explained, “The only possible way to achieve the so much needed decarbonisation in our industry is by fully transforming to new carbon-neutral fuels and supply chains.”

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Other companies are looking to change practices in the short term to encourage greater decarbonization until a long-term solution is available. For example, the Swedish/Norwegian shipping company Wallenius Wilhelmsen suggested lengthening transit times, as reducing the speed of its ships could decrease CO2emissions by as much as 20 percent. But this option, unsurprisingly, is not popular among most shipping companies that run to strict timeframes.

Windward, a predictive maritime intelligence company, believes they can help reduce emissions by using artificial intelligence (AI). The company has started using AI systems to measure fuel use and waste to improve carbon management. Instead of using assumptions of fuel use, Windward’s systems accurately track fuel use over time, speed, and location to provide a more detailed breakdown. They are now encouraging the greater uptake of AI systems in shipping through their ‘Data For Decarbonisation’ program.

One cohesive proposal that came out of the 8th Annual World Ocean Summit Virtual Week in June is the potential for a research and development fund to be used to develop new technologies for carbon-neutral shipping. The funding would come from a $2 per tonne of fuel mandatory levy, contributing around $5 billion within a decade.

Now some are speculating that electric batteries may be used in the future of freight shipping. The U.S.-based startup Fleetzero is constructing battery-electric cargo ships, in the hopes of decarbonizing the shipping industry as well as boosting freight potential through greater access to international ports. The co-founders of the company hope to develop the technology to fully convert a small diesel ship by as early as 2022.

This trend was predicted by Elon Musk in 2017, “Everything will go fully electric, apart from (ironically) rockets. Ships are the next easiest to solve after cars.”. Although until recently this seemed like a pipedream.

Fleetzero is testing the use of electric batteries in 20-foot shipping containers in Alabama, which are modified to power smaller ships so they can be swapped out with the container carrier once it enters the port. Co-founder Steven Henderson explains, “Our ships use rapid battery swapping to refuel, and in doing that we’re able to distribute the costs of our batteries over a greater number of shipping containers to a point where we can be competitive with diesel ships.”

Innovative solutions such as these are becoming increasingly necessary if major international companies hope to meet their climate targets, with Amazon, Ikea, and Unilever all pledging net-zero emissions shipping by 2040. This pledge was agreed upon by nine multinationals, but major funding is required to speed up the development of alternative fuels and technologies to be used on a wider scale

While it is clear that companies around the globe want to decarbonize freight shipping over the coming decades, the jury is out on exactly how this will be done. To achieve carbon-cutting pledges in the shipping industry in line with Paris Agreement targets, both state governments and multinational companies must establish a cohesive strategy and fund to speed up the development of new fuels and technologies to be used in shipping.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com