Alaska labor commissioner cancels proposed $450,000 fine for seafood processor over health and safety problems

James Brooks, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Fri, March 5, 2021

Mar. 5—The commissioner of the Alaska Department of Labor personally intervened earlier this year to reject a proposed $450,000 fine against Copper River Seafoods despite an investigation that concluded the company disregarded health and safety regulations.

The investigation was prompted by a COVID-19 outbreak last year that sickened more than three-quarters of the workers at an Anchorage processing plant and sent two people to the hospital. Investigators said Copper River acted negligently with its COVID-19 response and, beyond that issue, accused it of failing to fix known safety problems, including one that caused a man in Naknek to lose his arm during a gruesome conveyor belt accident in 2018.

In a memo issued Jan. 18 and first published by KTOO-FM public media, Commissioner Tamika Ledbetter said she was "denying the request to move forward" with the suggested fines because of concerns "with the way in which the citations were acquired and presented for my review" and problems with the documentation behind some allegations.

Joseph Knowles, director of the Labor Department's standards and safety division, said there were "missteps" in the way his division handled the complaint and that it "fumbled this administratively."

In a written statement Thursday afternoon, the company said, "Press accounts have incorrectly made the inference that CRS did something wrong and escaped responsibility corruptly. This is entirely false."

State law says an employer can only be cited within 180 days of a violation, and Ledbetter's decision came before an early-February deadline.

When asked why Ledbetter acted earlier than the deadline, Deputy Commissioner Cathy Munoz answered on her behalf in an email, saying, "by mid-January the Commissioner had the information needed to make a determination."

Critics said that if there were problems on the administrative end, she had time to work those out.

John Stallone was chief of enforcement for Alaska's Division of Occupational Safety and Health until 2006. Now retired, he said Ledbetter's intervention is extraordinary. In his decade of work with the department, he never saw a commissioner completely nullify the work of investigators.

"She could have said, 'OK, I think the COVID (fine) is a little high. Let's reduce it.' ... She could have done that with just a stroke of the pen. She didn't do that. She sat on it for 180 days, so the entire investigation went out the window. They don't have to fix one damn thing now," he said, referring to Copper River Seafoods.

Some current members of the Department of Labor have accused the commissioner of wrongdoing and have filed a whistleblower complaint with the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

A preliminary response last month from OSHA said "there is insufficient evidence to conclude that the commissioner or deputy commissioner engaged in any wrongful act," but the federal agency will examine whether the state followed policies and procedures during the Copper River Seafoods investigation and a similar case involving a different seafood-processing company in Juneau.

Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage, said he plans to hold a legislative hearing on the issue next week.

"I don't know why she did this thing, which is unprecedented and completely inappropriate, and frankly, dangerous," he said.

In its statement, Copper River Seafoods suggested that investigators may have provided documents to members of the media and the Legislature because of "disappointment or disagreement" with the decision to not issue a fine.

The state's investigation began in late July, after the Department of Health and Social Services asked the Department of Labor to investigate conditions at Copper River Seafoods' Anchorage plant. It was the first time health officials had made that kind of request because of COVID-19.

According to a Nov. 12 memo, health officials were investigating a COVID-19 outbreak that went on to infect 77% of the plant's employees. After interviewing employees and inspecting the plant on Aug. 7, Department of Labor investigators concluded "(Copper River Seafoods) has repeatedly displayed a plain indifference for the health and safety of its own employees" by failing to provide hand sanitizer, failing to keep employees adequately separated and failing to set up physical barriers between employees.

When employees became ill, Copper River management "dismissed this as being 'a normal type of sickness' at the time of the outbreak within the plant," investigators wrote. When the plant reopened after a two-week closure, "(regulators) documented with photographs, the same deficient workplace protections that contributed to the initial outbreak."

According to a case file obtained through a public records request, investigators also found "serious" problems with electrical safety, sprinkler systems, forklifts and procedures used to lock down equipment for maintenance. Copper River had been warned about so-called "lockout/tagout" issues before, after a worker's arm became caught in a conveyor belt at a plant in 2018 and had to be amputated.

"CRS was not ever cited, and so was unable to contest charges that had not been made," the company said in its written statement. "No government agency is able to assess a fine without a hearing or an opportunity to be heard and present evidence."

According to case documents, company employees signed a document acknowledging inspectors' findings, but regulations allow a challenge period only after a company is actually cited and presented with proposed fines. That never happened in this case because Ledbetter rejected the citations before they were issued.

Department of Labor investigators advanced their allegations in two batches: One was related to COVID-19 issues, and the other was related to safety issues. The COVID-19 allegations were sent to Ledbetter for review on Dec. 29 because they represented a "novel enforcement issue," according to the field operations manual used by health and safety inspectors.

It was the first time the state had considered fining a company for COVID-19 safety issues. Because the Department of Labor had no specific written standards for COVID-19 safety, investigators based their violations on a federal law that says companies have a "general duty" to keep employees safe from harm and cited recommended best practices.

The safety-related complaints not related to COVID-19 weren't sent to Ledbetter until "on or about January 12," Knowles said, because of a critical mistake. Officials had believed they didn't require commissioner approval because they were more typical of the department's work and the recommended fines were below a $250,000 benchmark. But because both the safety inspection and the COVID-19 inspection took place at the same time, the two batches of fines should have been considered together, not separately.

"We failed internally to follow our own procedures and submit to her both inspections in a single memorandum," Knowles said.

Ledbetter cited that mistake as part of the reason for rejecting the proposed fines.

"Well, shame on them. That was their mess-up," said Stallone, the retired safety expert. "But still, there was plenty of time."

He and several current employees assert that the commissioner had weeks to resolve that problem before the statute of limitations expired. Those employees declined to speak on the record, citing fear of retaliation, but speculated in a whistleblower letter to OSHA that Copper River Seafoods could have received special treatment from the commissioner.

"We are now in a situation where we have observed and documented hazards to employees, but we cannot require the employer to abate these hazards," the letter stated in part. "In this way, the commissioner is knowingly allowing employees to be exposed to workplace hazards and preventing them from being corrected."

In its statement, Copper River Seafoods rejected the whistleblowers' allegations: " Contrary to inferences made in these reports, CRS did not interfere or contact the Department of Labor nor any other member of the administration whatsoever in any attempt to influence its decisions. Any statement that CRS had anything to do with Department of Labor decisions made in this case is false."

The issue may extend beyond Copper River Seafoods.

Soon after investigating the Anchorage plant, Department of Labor officials performed similar inspections at an Alaska Glacier Seafoods Processing plant in Juneau. That case has not yet been closed, and Knowles declined to discuss it, citing ongoing work. But according to a memo dated Feb. 18, Ledbetter is preparing to dismiss fines related to COVID-19 safety failures at that plant as well.

Correction: Earlier versions of the story incorrectly described the nature of the recommended action against the company. The fines were proposed, not levied. An earlier version also incorrectly said what year John Stallone retired. He retired in 2006, not 2009.

INSIGHT-EV rollout will require huge investments in strained U.S. power grids

Nichola Groom and Tina Bellon
Fri, March 5, 2021, 

March 5 (Reuters) - During several days of brutal cold in Texas, the city of Austin saw its fleet of 12 new electric buses rendered inoperative by a statewide power outage. That problem will be magnified next year, when officials plan to start purchasing electric-powered vehicles exclusively.

The city's transit agency has budgeted $650 million over 20 years for electric buses and a charging facility for 187 such vehicles. But officials are still trying to solve the dilemma of power interruptions like the Texas freeze.

"Redundancy and resiliency when it comes to power is something we have long understood will be an issue," said Capitol Metro spokeswoman Jenna Maxfield.

Austin's predicament highlights the challenges facing governments, utilities and auto manufacturers as they respond to climate change. More electric cars will require both charging infrastructure and much greater electric-grid capacity. Utilities and power generators will have to invest billions of dollars creating that additional capacity while also facing the challenge of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.

Extreme weather events add additional layers of difficulty.

"Reliability keeps you awake," California Energy Commission member Siva Gunda said in an interview.

Rolling blackouts during a California heat wave last year prompted the state to direct its utilities to procure emergency generating capacity for this summer and to reform its planning for reserve power.

The state plans an aggressive phase-out of sales of gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks by 2035 - which, if achieved, would require vast increases in electric grid capacity. (For a graphic on the extra power that will be needed for electric cars, click https://tmsnrt.rs/3rhyX4S )

The power and transport sectors combined make up more than half of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Their simultaneous greening is considered critical for the United States - the world's second-largest emitter behind China - to meet its obligations under an international accord to address global warming. (For a graphic on the energy sources that fuel U.S. transportation now, click https://tmsnrt.rs/387haFR )

The goal is to power electric cars with renewable energy rather than the coal and natural gas that currently dominate the U.S. power supply. To realize that vision, electricity from intermittent sources like wind and solar will need to be stored, probably through battery technology, so that cars can charge overnight or at other times when supply outstrips demand.

DOUBLING POWER CAPACITY

A model utility with two to three million customers would need to invest between $1,700 and $5,800 in grid upgrades per EV through 2030, according to Boston Consulting Group. Assuming 40 million EVs on the road, that investment could reach $200 billion.

So far, investor-owned companies have plans approved for just $2.6 billion in charging programs and projects, according to trade group Edison Electric Institute.

"The electrification of the transportation sector will catch most utilities a little bit off guard," said Ben Kroposki, director of the Power Systems Engineering Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

The organization estimates that, by 2050, the electrification of transportation and other sectors will require a doubling of U.S. generation capacity.

If not managed carefully, the needed investments could saddle consumers with higher energy bills, according to a report last month by California’s utility regulator. Another challenge: lower-income customers often can't afford to make the upfront investment in electric cars, home batteries and rooftop solar systems that could save them money in the long term.

'CHICKEN AND EGG' PROBLEMS

Utilities are embracing EV sales growth as both a promising new source of revenue and an opportunity to use excess wind and solar power generated at very windy or sunny times when supply exceeds demand.

Investments in both the grid and charging infrastructure that are recovered from ratepayers could add between $3 billion and $10 billion in cumulative cash flow to the average utility through 2030, according to Boston Consulting Group. The forecast also includes potential revenues from new products outside of utilities' regulated businesses, such as customer fleet routing or charging station maintenance.

The revenue opportunity is still nascent, however, with EVs making up less than 2% of all vehicles registered in the United States. And utilities must invest in infrastructure now for consumers to feel secure in their purchase of an EV, said Emily Fisher, general counsel of utility trade group Edison Electric Institute.

"There is definitely a chicken-and-egg situation with charging infrastructure," she said.

AUTOMAKERS BET BIG ON EVs

Major U.S. automakers General Motors and Ford have announced large investments in EV development to keep pace with electric-car pioneer Tesla Inc and to prepare for the prospect of tougher emissions regulations. EV share could grow to 15% by 2030, according to U.S. Department of Energy forecasts.

The electricity to power all those cars is expected to come primarily from renewable energy sources and natural gas, according to NREL. Even if natural gas generation increases to support electrified transportation, overall emissions are projected to decline, the organization said.

Large new investments may pose difficulties for utilities already experiencing weather-related problems. In Texas, many of the companies that would be making those investments face a financial crisis stemming from last month’s cold snap. Utilities and power marketers face billions of dollars in blackout-related charges, and several have filed for bankruptcy.

CHARGING UP

Daimler Trucks, the world's biggest maker of heavy-duty haulers, plans to sell electric vehicles in Europe, North America and Japan by next year. But the company is grappling with how to charge what will one day become hundreds of thousands of battery-powered trucks, said Daimler Trucks chairman Martin Daum.

The need for massive investments in grid infrastructure and charging stations "cannot be underestimated," Daum said.

Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley last week called on U.S. government leaders to support EV sales with favorable regulation and subsidies for the production of batteries and charging infrastructure.

But Robert Barrosa, senior director at Volkswagen AG's Electrify America, which is building out fast-charging stations throughout the nation, said the gradual pace of EV adoption will allow utilities to adapt.

"We're not in a doom-and-gloom situation," Barrosa said. "We're not going to 80% battery electric sales overnight...it will be a natural transition."

Barrosa said U.S. energy consumption decreases over the last 20 years, due to efficiency gains in appliances and the transportation sector, mean that the U.S. power system has enough established capacity to support EV growth without the immediate need for big investments. (For a graphic on U.S. power generation and consumption, click https://tmsnrt.rs/3e5f6SH) Utility Xcel Energy said EV adoption would likely not require capacity additions until after 2030, and that near-term investments would mainly be in distribution systems. The company is planning to accommodate 1.5 million electric vehicles in its Midwest and Western service territories by 2030, about 30 times more than its current capability.

The utility in December received approval to spend $110 million on electric vehicle charging infrastructure in Colorado, which passed a law in 2019 requiring utilities to develop plans for widespread transportation electrification. The plan is expected to add 65 cents a month to residential customer bills.

Electric vehicles - especially commercial ones with large batteries - can help stabilize the grid in the long run by feeding power back into the system during times of peak demand, using chargers that allow electricity to flow in both directions. Passenger cars that sit idle most of the day could one day earn money by feeding power back into the grid with the help of bi-directional chargers, utilities predict.

During the Texas outages, some Twitter users said they used their electric vehicles to power their homes. But wider applications of such vehicle-to-grid technology would require larger infrastructure changes and utility involvement.

"Planning is going to be more sophisticated," said Ryan Popple, co-founder of Proterra, which produced some of Austin's electric buses. "And as vehicle-to-grid becomes more common with our commercial fleets, it's actually going to make the overall technology even more attractive."

(Reporting by Nichola Groom and Tina Bellon; editing by David Gaffen and Brian Thevenot)

Big Trade in Oshkosh Shares Before Postal Award Spurs Questions

Ari Natter, Todd Shields and Ben Bain
Fri, March 5, 2021


Big Trade in Oshkosh Shares Before Postal Award Spurs Questions

(Bloomberg) -- A lawmaker is calling for an investigation of a $54.2 million, after-hours purchase of Oshkosh Corp. stock the day before the company won a blockbuster contract to build trucks for the U.S. Postal Service.

The transaction of 524,400 shares is bigger than Oshkosh trading volume for some entire days. The block itself amounted to almost 1% of the company’s publicly available shares and 74% of the firm’s 20-day average volume, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Oshkosh shares surged as much as 16% the next day, Feb. 23, and have risen further since. The holdings would be worth $59.6 million at Friday’s closing price of $113.65, or more than $5 million above the purchase price. The parties involved in the trade couldn’t be determined.


“It definitely stinks and needs to be looked into at the highest levels,” Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who is fighting the award to Oshkosh, said in an interview. “If that is not suspicious, I don’t know what is. Somebody clearly knew something.”

Ryan said he will ask the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate. Representatives of the agency didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment after normal business hours.

The Postal Service awarded the Wisconsin-based maker of military trucks a 10-year contract for as many as 165,000 vehicles worth as much as $6 billion.

Ryan is backing the losing bid of Workhorse Group Inc. which has a 10% stake in Lordstown Motors Corp., which makes electric vehicles at a facility in Ryan’s congressional district.

An Oshkosh representative didn’t respond to a voicemail and and email seeking comment.

The move to award Oshkosh the contract stunned Wall Street analysts who had predicted Workhorse’s proposal to make electric trucks would win at least some of the order. Workhorse is considering challenging the award.

Trades outside of normal market hours can have a significant impact on share prices because market activity is thinner.

Ryan, who said he is drafting a letter to the SEC, has joined with Ohio Democrats Marcy Kaptur and Senator Sherrod Brown in calling for the Biden administration to halt and review the Postal Service award to Oshkosh.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Texas Bill Would Require Power Plants to Prepare for Cold

Mark Chediak and Naureen S. Malik
Fri, March 5, 2021, 

(Bloomberg) -- Texas state lawmakers introduced a series of bills designed to address last month’s energy crisis, including one that would require power plants to weatherize and another that would block retailers from exposing consumers to volatile wholesale electricity prices.

Owners of power generators, utilities and cooperatives would be required to make sure their facilities can operate during periods of sub-freezing temperatures and extreme heat, according to a bill filed Friday by State House Representative Chris Paddie.

More than 4 million Texans lost power for days last month during a severe winter storm that knocked out nearly half of the state’s generation capacity. A number of power plants failed during the event because of freezing instruments and valves, the state grid operator said. While the state put in place guidelines for power plants to weatherize after a winter storm in 2011, operators aren’t mandated to follow them.


Meanwhile, State House Representative Ana Hernandez introduced a bill that would ban any retail power provider from charging households and businesses rates that are tied to the wholesale market price for electricity. The measure comes after customers of retail provider Griddy Energy LLC saw their bills skyrocket to thousands of dollars during the extreme cold when prices on the grid surged to the $9,000 a megawatt-hour price cap.

Griddy, which has been found in default by the state’s power grid operator, charged customers a $9.99 monthly fee and then whatever the wholesale index price was for power.

Paddie also introduced a measure that would require all board members of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or Ercot, to be Texas residents after several out-of-state independent directors stepped down last week because of controversy over their residency.

Of those independent directors, three will be appointed by the governor, including one who will represent residential consumer interests, as well as one each by the lieutenant governor and speaker of the House.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

TEXAS

Nearly three dozen power facilities that failed in the 2011 winter storm failed again in 2021, according to an analysis by ABC13.

We've been taking a look at
power plants that went offline
Records show dozens of power plants repeat failures
Sat, March 6, 2021, 

Video Transcript

KEATON FOX: Hi there. I'm ABC 13's data analyst, Keaton Fox. We've been taking a look at power plants that went offline in 2021 versus the power plants that went offline in the 2011 winter storm. 10 years ago where that was the last time before 2021 that we had to see those rolling blackouts. Let me actually show you some of the data here.

All of the red counties are where power plants went offline in 2021. And as you can see, Harris County, very much a bright red county because we had quite a few power generation units go offline. 71 units at 11 different facilities across our area that went offline. We're

Getting this data, by the way, coming to us from ERCOT, who has released some of that data, but not all of the data. Only power plants that agreed to have their names released in this data set actually got released. And we know that there are at least three dozen of those power generation units that were offline in 2011 that went offline again in 2021.

Which would signify that if they would have done some of the things that had been suggested in a 2011 federal report-- There was a FERC Commission, a Federal Energy Commission that went over everything that happened in 2011 when we lost power, including winterization. They said if you go and you winterize these plants, it is a good possibility that we're not going to see this thing happen again. Well as we know, many of those plants, if not all of the plants, did little to nothing to actually winterize.

And then 2021 rolls around and we see everything happening once again. In fact, one of those CEOs, the CEO of Energy Energy, that many of you are very familiar with, admitted that they did nothing. That at least two of their plants were not prepared for the cold and that they had not taken the appropriate steps to make sure that things should have happened. I said it was Energy. It's actually Calpine Energy.

That's their CEO who said that they weren't prepared for that. We heard a lot of that testimony over the last year, but certainly, just again looking sort of at this data that we've gotten our hands on here at ABC 13, and then been able to analyze, we can see the impact. Again, across the state here, looking at all of the counties where there were power plants offline, the widespread nature of the problem. And winterization is at the heart of it, knowing that the cold actually knocked a lot of those pipes offline.

The water pipes froze that supplied those power plants as well. So a lot more on this, obviously. There's an interactive map below this video, if you're looking on ABC13.com.

If you're watching on one of our streaming devices, you can head over to ABC13.com and see all of the different plants that went offline. We're, of course, keeping our eye on all the data here at ABC 13. For now, I'm Keaton Fox, 13 Eyewitness News.

Goldman poised to make $100 million profit off Texas deep freeze - Bloomberg News

Fri, March 5, 2021


FILE PHOTO: A sign is displayed in the reception of Goldman Sachs in Sydney

(Reuters) - Traders at Goldman Sachs Group Inc could earn roughly $100 million in profit from the winter storm last month that left many across Texas and other southern U.S. states without electricity, clean water and heat, Bloomberg News reported on Friday.

The Wall Street bank's earnings from the physical sale of power and natural gas and financial hedges after spot prices jumped, could top $200 million on paper, but they will likely take a significant write down, Bloomberg reported.

Texas's energy market saw extreme volatility in mid-February when a deep freeze reduced supplies, sending the cost of emergency fuel and power sky high. With bills now coming due, many energy companies are expected to file for bankruptcy or seek regulatory or legal remedies to put off payment.

"The polar vortex drove volatility in energy markets, and, as a market-maker and liquidity provider, we were positioned to help our clients manage their risks in that challenging environment," said a Goldman Sachs spokeswoman in an emailed statement.

Bank of America also stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars from trades related to Texas's energy market, the Financial Times reported Friday. That bank said any revenue will be offset by losses and reduced investments that resulted from business the bank has with other energy sources in Texas.

(Reporting by Sohini Podder in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Steve Orlofsky)

Competitive Texas power market hindered winter storm prep - Shell


FILE PHOTO: A neighborhood experiences a power outage after winter weather caused electricity blackouts in San Marcos

Laura Sanicola
Fri, March 5, 2021, 12:50 PM·1 min read




By Laura Sanicola

(Reuters) - Arguments that Texas should have "winterized" its electricity generators in anticipation of rare, inclement weather ignore the competitive nature of the Lone Star State's power system, a Royal Dutch Shell Plc executive said on Friday at an energy conference.

A February winter-storm surge in demand saddled the companies that sell, transmit and generate electricity in the state with about $47 billion in costs, whilst cutting power, heat and water to 4.3 million and causing dozens of deaths.


After a similar weather event in 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recommended generators winterize facilities, but the U.S. energy regulator's recommendations were not adopted.

"It's not that easy, it's not the requirement and it's a very competitive power market," Shell's Integrated Gas & New Energies Director Maarten Wetselaar said at IHS Markit's CERAWeek conference.

There is less incentive to winterize equipment if competitors do not do so, he said.

"It was a once-in-a-generation event and clearly Texas infrastructure had not been prepared for it," Wetselaar said.

His comments echoed those made by FERC Chair Richard Glick on Thursday that generators will not voluntarily weatherize their equipment if its competitors do not follow suit.

"It will put them at a disadvantage,” Glick said at the conference.

(Reporting by Laura Sanicola; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Texas regulators will not correct $16 billion in electricity ‘overcharges.’ Why?



Haley Samsel
Fri, March 5, 2021, 12:54 PM·3 min read

At its Friday meeting, the Public Utility Commission of Texas declined to adjust prices that resulted in $16 billion in overcharges to the electricity market during the February winter storm. Those charges were documented in a Thursday letter from the commission’s independent market monitor, Potomac Economics.

The governor-appointed regulatory commission, which oversees the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, met with just two members after the resignation of chairperson DeAnn Walker. Commissioners Arthur D’Andrea and Shelly Botkin addressed the Potomac report, which found that ERCOT kept electricity prices too high for at least 33 hours after most outages ended on late Feb. 17.

D’Andrea, now serving as chair, said repricing was “dangerous” because it could potentially cause new problems for customers and electricity providers who made a series of complex, private transactions outside of the official power market.

“It’s nearly impossible to unscramble this sort of egg, and the results of going down this path are unknowable,” D’Andrea said. “We’ve already set a path, we know who is hurt by that and we can focus on helping the people that were hurt instead of throwing everything up into the air again, creating another huge mess, and then a month from now we’ll have a different set of people who are hurt and we have to focus on helping them.”

At the instruction of the commission, ERCOT raised real-time prices to the maximum limit of $9,000 per megawatt hour on Feb. 15, a more than 10,000% increase from the week before. The decision reflected the scarcity of electricity amid an unprecedented statewide demand for heat, and aimed to incentivize electricity generation at a time of desperate need.

In her letter to the commission, Potomac Economics vice president Carrie Bivens wrote that these pricing interventions will result in higher levels of defaults for electricity providers if not corrected. While the firm agreed with the commission’s original decision to raise prices, the increase lasted for too long and could cause “substantial and unjustified economic harm,” she wrote.

Adopting Potomac’s recommendation would not result in revenue shortfalls for ERCOT since the corrected prices would still cover the costs of generation and reflect the supply and demand during the winter storm, Bivens wrote.

“We recognize that revising the prices retroactively is not ideal,” she wrote.

Retail electric providers and their customers could be left with at least $1.5 billion of the bill, according to the Texas Tribune, and many electricity companies and co-ops are at the brink of folding or declaring bankruptcy. Brazos Electric Power Cooperative, based in Waco with 1.5 million customers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Feb. 26 with the aim of protecting customers from huge bills.

D’Andrea and Botkin said that there is still the possibility that the commission will adjust ancillary service prices, a catch-all term for the functions provided by the electric grid that support the continuous flow of electricity.

For some electric providers, ancillary service costs soared to more than $20,000 per megawatt hour on Feb. 15. In Georgetown, the municipal electricity provider was charged $17.8 million for one week of ancillary services, compared to $710,000 charged for the entirety of 2020. Those costs alone were 25 years worth, according to a city council presentation.

“The ancillary service thing is different, there is no deadline for that,” D’Andrea said. “We can put that on hold, but the energy market is the one that has a deadline today, and I say we don’t act.”

What's your pension invested in?


Howard Mustoe - Business reporter
Sat, March 6, 2021, BBC

beer and cigarette

Perhaps during lockdown, you've been tempted to do some financial spring cleaning and checked in on a private pension. But do you know what companies you're actually investing in?

If you do, you are probably in a minority, according to Simon Harrington, senior policy adviser at the trade body for pension funds, PIMFA.

Part of it is to do with automatic enrolment. Since 2012, workers in most companies have been automatically signed up to a workplace pension without having to lift a finger.

This has swelled the number of people with a workplace pension by about 8.5 million to 19.2 million.

"The whole point of automatic enrolment is that basically, people save up [by] doing nothing at all," says Mr Harrington.

chart

"People will know, in most cases by looking at their pay every month that some money has gone into a pension scheme. But all of the data that we have suggests that they really never log on, check their annual benefit statement, or have any idea of what it is that they're invested in."

This isn't a disaster, he says. The default fund into which their money is placed is generally cheap to manage and receives a lot of attention because of its size.

But it means that many people are invested in a pot of very disparate interests, which may include tobacco, gambling, firearms, alcohol, oil or other investments that they may personally want to avoid.

Part of that is down to the rules for this large pool of pensions. A default fund - the one your money is invested in if you take no action - can only charge a maximum of 0.75% a year, which means a lot of it will follow stock indexes like London's FTSE 100, FTSE 250 or the S&P 500 in the US - so-called passive investments which will include a vast number of companies.

Ethical funds, which avoid investing in these companies, do exist, though, and they are growing in popularity, albeit from a low base.

Stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown, one of the largest do-it-yourself investment platforms, says the number of ethical funds it offers has almost tripled in the past 12 months, and there's more than 11 times more money in these funds than a year ago.

There are now close to 200 such funds, but that's out of 3,500 funds on the platform overall.

Simon Harrington says more interest in what people are invested in will follow

Pension providers are taking action, though. The biggest by membership is Nest, which has 9.8 million members and oversees £16.5bn of savings. It has already acted and scrubbed its investments of tobacco and uranium. It has a 10-year plan to cut emissions and wants companies it owns shares in to cut out Arctic drilling and coal.

Pension companies insist that there is interest in ethical investments.

The BBC asked some of the UK's largest pension providers how many workplace pension funds they offered and how many were ethical. Of the six that came back to us, we found that on average one ethical fund was offered for every 15 regular funds.

Several insist that all their investments now follow some pattern of green or ethical investing.

Chart

Legal & General Investment Management says all its default investments avoid controversial weapons and companies that purely mine coal.

Aegon says half of pension savings using its default fund will soon be in ethical investments and that it plans to slash carbon emissions in its investments.

Aviva says it has set a target for its default fund to be carbon neutral by 2050. It wants regulators to force its competitors to do the same.

A challenge for savers is that there's no agreed-upon definition for what qualifies for an ethical investment. And switching to an ethical fund may not provide the best financial returns.

Another challenge is finding those cheap funds which track an index, says Hector McNeil, co-chief executive of European investment platform HANetf.

While there are cheap international funds which exclude tobacco, for instance, such funds are harder to come by in the UK.

Much more choice and customisation is likely to be available in the future, he says.

"I think in three years' time we're going to be talking a totally different story," he says. He thinks most products will eventually allow customers to veto certain industries at will.

Hector McNeil says more customisable investments are on the horizon

Mr McNeil's company has grown from managing $50m (£35m) to $2.25bn (£1.6bn) in a little over a year. It designs funds and rose to prominence with a tradable fund investing in gold.

"You're getting more, broader, products," he says.

Many of his funds are based around themes, such as ethical gold or medicinal cannabis, or removing carbon,

If you take a look at the funds in your pension you may find it hard to tell where the money is. Many funds only list their 10 largest investments, leaving the majority of the value unaccounted for. Unless it explicitly promises to avoid a certain investment, it could be lurking in there.

With funds like his, which can be traded on stock exchanges, all investments are listed, he says, making it easy to check where your money is held.

Even then, mistakes are made. In 2019, fund manager Vanguard accidentally invested in gun-maker Sturm Ruger for a month before correcting the mistake.

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Despite the challenges and the inertia of some savers PIMFA's Simon Harrington is upbeat about ethical investing.

"The UK pension saving population is reasonably young," he says.

Before workers were automatically added to workplace schemes, "the number of people actively saving into a pension scheme was very, very small," he says. "And we have to be realistic about the fact that we're at the start of a journey to a more developed saving culture."

The demand for ethical investments in personal savings like individual savings accounts (Isas) is a good indicator for what may be to come, he says.

Varcoe: Once among the country's largest emitters, TransAlta joins journey to carbon neutrality

Chris Varcoe, Calgary Herald 


It wasn’t that long ago that TransAlta Corp. was among the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in Canada, largely because of its fleet of coal-fired power plants

© Provided by Calgary Herald The TransAlta Utilities Sundance Generating Plant near Wabamun Lake on August 13, 2019.

Earlier this week, the Calgary-based company announced its intention to be carbon neutral by 2050, joining a growing group of Canadian energy companies on a similar journey.

As part of its pledge, it will lower company greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by the end of the decade, a sharp drop from 2015 levels.

It will discontinue coal-fired power generation in the country by the end of this year, as it converts existing facilities in Alberta to use natural gas.

The company is also expanding the development of wind and solar projects.

If you’re looking for a Canadian example of how the tide is turning in the energy transition debate — with companies setting tough targets as government policies and economics change — TransAlta is a good place to start.

© Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press A TransAlta wind turbine is shown at a wind farm near Pincher Creek, Alta., Wednesday, March 9, 2016.

TransAlta CEO Dawn Farrell, who is retiring at the end of this month, has been working on carbon policy since the late 1980s, before the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

She recalls being put in charge of a $15-million fund back in 1990 to buy carbon offsets for TransAlta’s coal-fired power plants, part of the company’s long journey that led to today’s point.

“Back then, we saw the technology was taking a long time to come to market. We invested in wind in 2000 and even through 2000 to 2015, we saw wind farms and solar being very, very expensive,” Farrell said in an interview.

“I don’t think anybody could have ever foreseen the acceleration of the technological development.”

Costs for developing renewable energy projects have plunged in the past decade.

Could Farrell have imagined in those days seeing a line of sight to TransAlta becoming carbon neutral?

“Absolutely not,” she added.

“But absolutely what we all missed was just how quickly, with the way information moves around, you can just accelerate technological development — and that’s what has changed the game here.”

© Larry MacDougal/The Canadian Press TransAlta Corp. CEO Dawn Farrell speaks during at the company’s annual general meeting in Calgary on Tuesday, April 29, 2014.

It was only a decade ago that TransAlta’s Sundance generating plant was the largest-single source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, according to a report at the time by the Pembina Institute.

This week’s declaration by the company earned praise from some environmental groups. They noted the power generator’s announcement contained something that’s often lacking in corporate net-zero plans: interim steps and an idea of how to get there.

“It shows how far you can go,” said Binnu Jeyakumar, the Pembina Institute’s director of clean energy.

“This is a sign of how change can happen if they’re pushed there by a combination of regulations and economics,” added Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist for Greenpeace Canada.

Alberta has the highest emissions in the country and coal-fired power generation has been a key part of the decarbonization discussion for years.

In late 2015, the former NDP government announced emissions from all coal-fired power generation had to be eliminated by 2030.

Since then, companies such as TransAlta and Edmonton-based Capital Power have been aggressively converting their plants to use natural gas, which generates significantly fewer emissions than coal.

Armed with their new corporate strategies, all coal-fired generation will be phased out by 2023.

With the federal government’s commitment for Canada to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and plans to increase the national carbon price to $170 per tonne by decade’s end, there are mounting monetary and political reasons for companies to chart such a course forward.

According to TransAlta, it has already lowered its total annual emission by 61 per cent in the past 15 years.

TransAlta’s chief operating officer John Kousinioris noted carbon neutrality is an aspirational goal, but stressed the company doesn’t need technical solutions “that are just a twinkle in someone’s eyes” to get there, he said on an earnings call.

Kousinioris, who will become TransAlta’s next CEO, said switching to natural gas will cut emissions per megawatt by almost half.

By 2022, TransAlta’s total emissions will drop to about 10 megatonnes, down from about 41 megatonnes in 2005.

Looking towards the end of the decade, emissions will be “significantly more modest,” although he noted natural gas is still needed and there will likely be more plants built.

But he’s confident in the target

.

© TransAlta.com TransAlta COO, and future CEO, John Kousinioris.

“There comes a tipping point where you can either stand on the sidelines or embrace it. Dawn was a real champion for us in saying this is something we need to embrace,” Kousinioris said in an interview.

Other companies are also setting their sights on such ambitions.

Capital Power has adopted a target of being carbon neutral within three decades. Canadian Natural Resources and Cenovus Energy and pipeline giant Enbridge have already announced plans to be net-zero by 2050.

Canadian Natural said Thursday it has lowered its emissions per barrel by 18 per cent since 2016.

The company is using carbon capture and storage in Alberta, and is running a pilot project that uses solvents in thermal oilsands projects that will cut emissions intensity by up to 50 per cent, said president Tim McKay.

For companies such as TransAlta and Canadian Natural, the push is on.

With the election of U.S. President Joe Biden and his pledge to have an emissions-free electricity sector by 2035, momentum is growing for power companies to embrace net-zero goals, said Sara Hastings-Simon, a research fellow at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

The key for companies is to have a strategy going forward, which includes measuring emissions, setting targets and tying executive compensation to the goal.

“It is really important when companies put forward these goals, they are not just saying we are going to do this, but they have all the pieces in place that make it real,” she added.

“You are seeing a recognition from leaders in these companies that this is where the world is going — and this is what investors and customers are looking for.”

Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.