Rosneft Begins Arctic Oil Terminal Construction

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jul 26, 2022

Russia’s oil giant Rosneft on Tuesday said it had launched construction works on an oil terminal for its Vostok Oil project in the Arctic, expecting the port to become the country’s biggest oil terminal by the end of this decade.

Vostok Oil, in Russia’s Far East, comprises several groups of oil fields holding an estimated 44 billion barrels of oil. Initial work on the project began in January 2021. The total cost of its development has been estimated at $170 billion over the lifetime of the fields. The Vostok Oil project in Russia’s Far North is close to the Northern Sea Route that Rosneft wants to use to ship oil to Asia.

Rosneft has also started drilling at the Payyakhskoye field, part of the massive Vostok Oil, the project’s chief executive Vladimir Chernov told Russian media on Tuesday. Rosneft expects oil to start flowing from the field in 2024, and the project Vostok Oil to deliver crude via the Northern Sea Route by 2027, Chernov was quoted as saying.  

Western analysts, however, doubt that Rosneft will be able to keep the timeline for the massive project’s development as Western sanctions are depriving Russia and its state-owned oil and gas firms of access to capital and technology.

Last year, Rosneft was looking to attract some of the world’s largest oil trading houses to the Vostok Oil project, offering them to become investors in exchange for oil supply contracts.

This year, investors are abandoning Russian projects after Putin invaded Ukraine. One of those major traders, Trafigura, said earlier this month that it had exited its 10-percent non-operational passive shareholding in Vostok Oil, selling the stake to a Hong Kong-registered trading company for an undisclosed price. 

The Western sanctions, which ban exports of technology for oil and gas to Russia, will also affect the timeline of the Vostok Oil development, analysts say.

The Payyakhskoye field, at which Rosneft started drilling today, could see first production by 2029 instead of in 2024, the Russian giant says, according to research firm Rystad Energy.

“Any delays in one part of the huge supply chain involved in the project will lead to the delay of the whole project,” Daria Melnik, senior analyst at Rystad Energy, told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Trade Unions Extend Strike At Shell's Prelude LNG

By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jul 26, 2022

Trade unions in Australia have extended until August 11 their strike over a pay dispute at the Prelude LNG platform offshore northwestern Australia, extending the period in which the operator Shell would not be able to ship LNG from the facility.

The Offshore Alliance union and the Electrical Trades Union demand more pay in an industrial action that began in June. Shell was exporting LNG from Prelude last month, but production was taking place at reduced rates to match storage capacity amid the disruption of the tanker berthing process for vessels to pick LNG.  

Earlier this month, Shell said it was shutting down production at the LNG facility. Shell had already warned at the end of June that shipments out of Prelude would be disrupted due to the industrial action. The floating LNG production facility offshore northwestern Australia has an annual capacity of 3.6 million tons.

Prelude LNG remains shut down as the pay dispute escalates, and the trade unions on Tuesday extended bans for their workers that keep them from performing tasks such as the transfer and supply of hydrocarbons from the platform. 

Shell, for its part, declines to resume talks with unions until they call off the work stoppages, Reuters reports, citing a letter from Monday it has seen.

The disruption of LNG shipments from Prelude comes amid high LNG demand, especially in Europe, which is driving spot LNG prices and benchmark natural gas prices higher.

Europe is scrambling to secure more LNG as Russia slashed gas supply via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany. Russia is further reducing flows via Nord Stream this week, to just 20% of the pipeline’s capacity, days after restarting the link at 40% capacity after regular maintenance. Russia’s reasons: another turbine at a compressor station is up for maintenance and repairs.

In addition, the Freeport LNG facility in the United States is shut down after a fire in early June and is not expected to resume full operations for another few months.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Carbon Emissions On Track To Reach An All-Time High

By Robert Rapier - Jul 23, 2022, 

• As the world moved past Covid-19, global emissions increased by 5.6% between 2020-2021.
• Emissions are on a trajectory to reach a new all-time high this year.
• There is a huge disparity between carbon dioxide emissions of developed countries and those of developing countries.

Earlier this month the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2022 was released, covering energy data through 2021. Previously, I provided a summary of the data.

Today, I want to focus on the trends in global carbon dioxide emissions.

A year ago, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, BP reported a 6% decline in global carbon dioxide from 2019 to 2021. This was the largest such decline since World War II. It was widely expected that emissions would bounce back in 2021, and they did.

As the world recovered from the first Covid-19 wave, global carbon dioxide emissions increased by 5.6% from 2020 to 2021. That was the fastest growth rate in nearly 50 years. Emissions were only 0.8% short of the all-time high set in 2018. They are on a trajectory to reach a new all-time high this year unless a recession curbs global energy demand in the second half of the year.

There is a huge disparity between carbon dioxide emissions of developed countries and those of developing countries. The 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are high-income countries generally regarded as developed countries. Carbon dioxide emissions in these countries have been in decline for 15 years, and are at approximately the same level they were at 35 years ago.

Non-OECD countries, on the other hand, have seen an explosion in the growth of carbon dioxide emissions. There are two primary reasons for this disparity.

First, coal played an important role in the early development of OECD countries, but it is now being phased out. The non-OECD countries are going through a similar development phase by using coal, and that is driving up their carbon dioxide emissions.

The second major reason is that the majority of the world’s population lives in developing countries. Their standards of living are increasing, and that generally entails an increase in energy consumption. Even though per capita emissions in these countries are low, a large population of people that is slightly increasing per capita emissions is having a large overall impact on global emissions.Related: World’s Top Oilfield Service Provider Raises Earnings Outlook

But this poses a major challenge in controlling the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Around 60% of the world’s population lives in the Asia Pacific region. Per capita fossil fuel consumption is much lower than in the world’s developed countries, but billions of people slowly increasing consumption has been the driving factor behind rising carbon dioxide emissions for decades.

Since 1965, carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. and the EU haven’t changed much. But they have grown steadily in Asia Pacific region, reaching a new record high in 2021. Asia Pacific’s emissions are now over double the combined emissions of the U.S. and the EU.

It’s not just China and India either. Multiple Asia Pacific countries are both among the largest carbon dioxide emitters and are among the leaders in the growth of emissions.

I often encounter people who can’t seem to grasp why we aren’t addressing rising carbon dioxide emissions. These graphics illustrate the challenge.

Although the U.S. has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over time than any other country, China is destined to surpass us. That’s why the U.S. can’t make much of a dent in this problem unilaterally unless we invent new technologies that can efficiently pull carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it.

Global carbon dioxide emissions have been driven by the Asia Pacific region for the past 50 years, and there’s no sign that this is slowing down. The world doesn’t stand a chance of curbing carbon dioxide emissions without figuring out a way to stop emissions growth in these populous developing countries.

By Robert Rapier, Oilprice.com

A Lifetime’s Consumption of Fossil Fuels, Visualized

VISUAL CAPITALIST on July 22, 2022


Visualizing the Fossil Fuels we Consume in a Lifetime

This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email every week.

From burning natural gas to heat our homes to the petroleum-based materials found in everyday products like pharmaceuticals and plastics, we all consume fossil fuels in one form or another.

In 2021, the world consumed nearly 490 exajoules of fossil fuels, an unfathomable figure of epic proportions.

To put fossil fuel consumption into perspective on a more individual basis, this graphic visualizes the average person’s fossil fuel use over a lifetime of 80 years using data from the National Mining Association and Worldometer.
How Many Fossil Fuels a Person Consumes Every Year

On a day-to-day basis, our fossil fuel consumption might seem minimal, however, in just a year the average American consumes more than 23 barrels of petroleum products like gasoline, propane, or jet fuel.

The cube of the average individual’s yearly petroleum product consumption reaches around 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) tall. When you consider varying transportation choices and lifestyles, from public transit to private jets, the yearly cube of petroleum product consumption for some people may easily overtake their height.



To calculate the volume needed to visualize the petroleum products and coal cubes (natural gas figures were already in volume format), we used the densities of bulk bituminous coal (833kg/m3) and petroleum products (800kg/m3) along with the weights of per capita consumption in the U.S. from the National Mining Association.

These figures are averages, and can differ per person depending on a region’s energy mix, transportation choices, and consumption habits, along with other factors.
Global Fossil Fuel Consumption Rebounds Post-Pandemic

When the global economy reopened post-pandemic, energy demand and consumption rebounded past 2019 levels with fossil fuels largely leading the way. While global primary energy demand grew 5.8% in 2021, coal consumption rose by 6% reaching highs not seen since 2014.

In 2021, renewables and hydroelectricity made up nearly 14% of the world’s primary energy use, with fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal) accounting for 82% (down from 83% in 2020), and nuclear energy accounting for the remaining 4%.

Recent demand for fossil fuels has been underpinned by their reliability as generating energy from renewables in Germany has been inconsistent when it’s been needed most.

Now the country grapples with energy rations as it restarts coal-fired power plants in response to its overdependence on Russian fossil fuel energy as the potential permanence of the Nord Stream 1 natural gas pipeline shutdown looms.
Growing Green Energy Amidst Geopolitical Instability

Domestic energy and material supply chain independence quickly became a top priority for many nations amidst Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western trade sanctions, and increasingly unpredictable COVID-19 lockdowns in China.

Trade and energy dependence risks still remain a major concern as many nations transition towards renewable energy. For example, essential rare earth mineral production, and solar PV manufacturing supply chains remain dominated by China.

Despite looming storm clouds over global energy and materials trade, renewable energy’s green linings are growing on the global scale. The world’s renewable primary energy consumption reached an annual growth rate of 15%, outgrowing all other energy fuels as wind and solar provided a milestone 10% of global electricity in 2021.

If the global energy mix continues to get greener fast enough, the cubes of our personal fossil fuel consumption may manage to get smaller in the future.

SCIENCE FICTION;FUSION

Science Made Simple: Fusion Nuclear Science and Technology

By U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY JULY 25, 2022

The Central Solenoid is a five-story, 1,000-ton magnet, in the center of the ITER. It consists of 22 miles of superconducting cables and will drive 15 million amperes of electrical current (millions of times more than in a house) in ITER’s plasma. Credit: General Atomic

Fusion nuclear science and technology specializes in investigating the extreme nuclear fusion environment. This environment has very high temperatures, particle fluxes, neutron irradiation, and other harsh conditions.

Fusion science and technology research includes the examination of designs and materials for future fusion power devices. It also includes new technologies and integrated systems for generating electricity from fusion reactions, breeding tritium (the fuel needed for the fusion reaction), engineering high-temperature superconducting magnets, and exhausting the extremely hot gases that are released during fusion.

Additionally, fusion nuclear science addresses challenges related to the safety and security of fusion energy. For example, fusion nuclear science is studying how to ensure the supply of tritium fuel and how to build fusion power plants that can be operated safely despite their exceptionally high heat and pressure conditions.

Fusion Nuclear Science and Technology Quick Facts

• ITER’s magnets use cables of a superconducting material, niobium tin, that combined measure more than 100,000 kilometers (60,000 miles) long. That’s enough to stretch around Earth’s equator twice.
• The United States is developing key fusion nuclear technologies including methods of using magnets to contain fusion and specialized materials that can withstand long exposure to extreme fusion conditions.

DOE Office of Science & Fusion Nuclear Science and Technology

In the Office of Science, fusion nuclear science and technology is funded within the Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program since R&D in these areas support the development of fusion as an energy source.  The program supports multiple research areas including the U.S. Fusion Blanket and Tritium Fuel Cycle program.  Research focuses on methods of extracting the fuel from the blanket, which requires expertise from national laboratories, universities, and private industry.

Within the FES program, researchers develop essential technologies for the ITER project, including the central solenoid, one of the world’s largest and most powerful superconducting magnets. Other activities supported within FES include fusion safety and system studies. Fusion energy system studies look at long-term areas, such as a future fusion power plant, and determine gaps in fusion nuclear science and technology. Identifying these gaps help programs prioritize research efforts over time. 

CFS, UKAEA to collaborate on fusion research

26 July 2022

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and the USA's Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) have signed a five-year Collaboration Framework Agreement aimed at advancing commercial fusion energy.

Inside the JET fusion training facility (Image: UKAEA)

The agreement establishes the terms under which a series of work projects between CFS (a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spinout company) and UKAEA will support the development of fusion energy and related technologies.

In a joint statement CFS and UKAEA said the scope of the collaboration could include: operations teams sharing and learning best practices from fusion experiments; access to fusion-adjacent technology facilities, including robotics; collaboration on fuel cycle technologies, neutronics modelling, systems integration models, advanced manufacturing, diagnostics, remote handling and remote maintenance; and collaborative work to identify and answer emerging plasma physics questions.

"This agreement is the result of a shared mission of both organisations to leverage innovative research and the speed of the private sector to support the fastest path to low-carbon commercial fusion energy - based on the same processes that power the sun and stars," they said.

"Achieving our shared missions to deliver low-carbon and sustainable fusion energy involves working at the forefront of science, engineering, and technology," said UKAEA CEO Ian Chapman. "This new collaboration agreement with CFS will help push these developments and capabilities, drive innovation and accelerate progress.

"Fusion presents an exciting opportunity for the UK and we're proud our ground-breaking work here continues to support economic growth and attracts such leading international partners."

CFS CEO Bob Mumgaard added: "CFS and UKAEA have a mutual interest and strong belief that public-private collaborations such as this represent a way to accelerate advances in commercial fusion energy technology and support CFS' plans to deliver commercial fusion as quickly as possible.

"UKAEA is a leader in fusion energy research and CFS plans to establish a UK presence as we leverage the combined skills and talents of both organisations to develop the fastest path to commercial fusion power on the grid."

CFS is collaborating with MIT to leverage decades of research combined with new groundbreaking high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology. These magnets will enable compact fusion power plants that can be constructed faster and at lower cost.

In May, MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) signed a new five-year agreement with CFS to expand its fusion energy research and education activities.

CFS is working to build the SPARC prototype fusion machine which it says will pave the way for a first commercially viable fusion power plant called ARC. SPARC is described by PSFC as a compact, high-field, net fusion energy device which would be the size of existing mid-sized fusion devices, but with a much stronger magnetic field. It is predicted to produce 50-100 MW of fusion power, achieving fusion gain greater than 10.

The UKAEA conducts out fusion energy research on behalf of the UK government. It oversees the UK's fusion programme, headed by the MAST Upgrade (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak) experiment. It also hosts the world's largest fusion research facility, JET (Joint European Torus), which it operates for scientists from around Europe.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

The law professor who set out to dismantle Tunisia’s democracy

By Siobhán O'Grady and Mohamed Bliwa
Updated July 25, 2022

TUNIS — Soon after he was elected president of Tunisia in late 2019, Kais Saied strolled into his usual coffee shop in the capital as if nothing had changed.

Farouk Chihaoui, who serves shisha, or tobacco water pipes, at the cafe, could not believe his eyes. Here was the man who until recently taught university law courses, always parked outside in an old Peugeot, paid off his tabs, and “looked exactly like the people.”
Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia's war in Ukraine.

Except now, accompanied by security and greeted by a swarming crowd, he was their president. “I took a selfie like a friend would have. Frankly, it was pretty special.”

For Chihaoui, that encounter bolstered his belief, one shared among many of the president’s supporters, that Saied is one of them. He will vote “yes” Monday in a controversial referendum on a new constitution that Saied insists will lead Tunisia to a more prosperous future.

Resistance builds in Tunisia as populist leader seeks more power

Many other Tunisians believe the opposite will come true. They say Saied has spent the past year executing a drawn-out power grab and that his proposed constitution, published just weeks ago, was conceived through an illegitimate process. They say the referendum will only further cement his one-man rule and destroy the progress made since the country’s 2011 revolution overthrew dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and kicked off the Arab Spring across the Middle East.

With no minimum participation rate required and many of Saied’s opponents boycotting the process to avoid lending it credence, the referendum measure is widely expected to pass. His opponents criticized his decision to speak publicly about the referendum Monday in what they decried as a blatant violation of election silence rules. By late Monday night, election officials said turnout surpassed 27 percent, a higher showing than what many observers expected.

The vote comes one year to the day since Saied dismissed parliament and fired his prime minister, suddenly dividing the country between those who celebrated his decision as necessary to end an ongoing political crisis and those who decried it as a coup that threatened the survival of the only democracy to have come out of the Arab Spring.

The move, which came amid a deadly surge of coronavirus cases and political deadlock between the president and a divided parliament, was initially widely celebrated in Tunisia and threw Saied, a man who once seemed an unlikely candidate to wield such immense political power, into the spotlight.

His stilted manner of speech and insistence on using formal Arabic rather than the Tunisian dialect have earned him the nickname “RoboCop.” Even some of his supporters, including Chihaoui, acknowledge he lacks the typical charisma and gregariousness that so often accompanies a successful political figure.

Still, he ran for president at a moment when Tunisians, tired of a decade of failure to improve the economy and politicians who did not deliver on their promises, welcomed his status as a relative outsider in the political system and a perception of his trustworthiness. He won 73 percent of the vote.

He became immensely popular last summer with those who saw his drastic moves to suspend parliament as necessary to weed out corrupt or ineffectual officials, including in the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, once a dominant force in the government.

But for some of those supporters, the popularity was short-lived. Now the country, submerged in a worsening economic crisis and facing widespread political division, is grappling with what many of his onetime supporters see as the consequences of their earlier misconception.

Tunisia among nations with economic fallout from war in Ukraine

“He passed right under everyone’s nose,” said Abderraouf Betbaieb, a retired diplomat who has known Saied for decades and was part of his inner circle before quitting in 2020. “He plunged the country into crisis.”

Lawyer and politician Samia Abbou was never enthralled by Saied but was among those who applauded his unconventional intervention last July, hoping it would mark a fresh start for the country’s democracy.

But by September, when Saied announced an extension of the state of emergency and a further expansion of his powers, she felt he had veered too far off-script. Then, in December, he proclaimed that parliament would remain suspended until after a July referendum. Finally in March, he said parliament had been dissolved and has since replaced the members of the independent electoral commission with his appointees.

Now, she said, she feels certain the new constitution is just laying the groundwork for a “dictatorship.” “I cannot regret something that needed to happen,” she said of her support for his initial decision last July. But what came next “was done in bad faith. It was not honest.”

“He succeeded in dividing the people in two,” she said. “We have never lived through this, even under the regime of Ben Ali,” referring to the dictator ousted in 2011. “We have become fanatics, either for or against. People no longer smile together, even in a single family.”

Even the expert whom Saied tasked with writing the new constitution is among those now publicly decrying the president and boycotting the Monday vote, saying it would be an ethical “betrayal” for him to participate.

Sadok Belaid, the former dean of Tunis University’s law school who taught Saied as a young man, agreed this spring to lead the consultative commission responsible for crafting the new legal document. He had known Saied for decades, he said, and described him as having been “very affable, very nice, very modest.”

For weeks, Belaid recalled, he worked tirelessly on the project. The day after he submitted his completed version of the new constitution, he said, he checked into the hospital for an operation he had postponed to write the document.

Later that day, in his hospital bed and still under the effects of anesthesia, he said Saied visited him and handed him a pile of papers he described as a modified version of his work.

It was not until the president left that Belaid, who is in his 80s, realized he was holding an entirely different version of the constitution, one that Saied appeared to have largely written himself. The new version hands Saied further powers and reduces the influence of parliament, among other changes widely condemned by his opponents.

Tunisians attend a protest against the referendum on a new constitution. (Mohamed Messara/Shutterstock)

“It is a true comedy” that “ends badly,” Belaid said. “The reality is that the president used this prestige he has in the eyes of the population to pass a text that does not respond to the needs or demands of the people but to his own intentions.”

Back at the cafe, Chihaoui, said it was indeed Saied’s reputation as someone “cultivated” that drew him toward his candidacy. Still, in a Tunisia racked by political infighting, “I thought it was a dream.” He said, “A man of the people becoming president? It was not too logical.” Now that Saied is in power, he said, he supports any decision the president may make. “Everything he does is for the people.”

Just outside the cafe, Sami bin Mohamed, 42, a salesman, expressed a much less optimistic opinion. Smoking a cigarette, he bemoaned the worsening economic situation and said he will boycott the referendum. “Any president works for his own good,” he said. In poorer neighborhoods, he added, “everyone is planning to leave illegally. I don’t think it is possible to fix stuff around here.”

Downtown on Saturday, a small crowd gathered to protest the referendum and voice their support for the Ennahda party. “We are here because Mr. Kais Saied is doing a coup in Tunisia,” said Fathia Azaiz, 63. “He is changing everything,” she said. “The president is isolating himself and not being democratic.”

Nearby, Kawthar Guettiti, 36, a graphic designer, was walking with her 6-year-old daughter, who held a small Tunisian flag. She will be voting “yes” on Monday, she said, because she trusts that Saied intends to put the country on a sturdier path for her daughter’s future. “He has a background in law. He knows very well what he is doing. He won’t be a dictator any more than the others,” she said.



By Siobhán O'GradySiobhán O’Grady is The Washington Post's Cairo bureau chief, covering North Africa and Yemen. Twitter

'Impossible to track' climate action of Canada's $2T pension industry: study

Jeff Lagerquist
Fri, July 22, 2022 

The Ontario-based think tanks say Canadians are increasingly concerned about how climate risk is being managed by those overseeing their pensions.

Climate progress at Canada's largest pension funds is "impossible to track," according to a new study calling for greater transparency from an industry that manages more than $2 trillion in assets on behalf of millions of Canadians.

Many of the largest funds have committed to making their portfolios greener, and adopted net-zero targets in response to mounting pressure to address climate change. However, the Smart Prosperity Institute and The Global Risk Institute in Financial Services note in their study that there is no binding requirement to track these voluntary commitments, and no standardized climate-related disclosure for pension funds.

"There is a significant transparency gap in determining what type of progress is being made, and whether these pledges will ring hollow," the study's authors wrote.

"Beneficiaries, researchers, and other stakeholders . . . will currently find it impossible to track progress on these commitments, given the opaque nature of disclosure on related metrics and lack of mandatory requirements to deliver on the promises."

The Ontario-based think tanks say Canadians are increasingly concerned about how climate risk is being managed by those overseeing their retirement incomes. At the same time, the study highlights the potential for pension funds to shape global markets, and hasten the transition to a lower-emission economy through their massive balance sheets.

Pension funds reached by Yahoo Finance Canada referred to frameworks and disclosure practices currently in place when asked about the study's claim that tracking progress on climate commitments by the general public is "impossible."

"CDPQ is a leader in terms of climate targets and transparency," a spokesperson for Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, manager of nearly $420 billion in assets, told Yahoo Finance Canada in an email on Thursday. "We have been reporting our carbon intensity annually since 2017, and the value of our green assets in our portfolio."

CDPQ says it followed recommendations outlined by the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) in its latest Sustainable Investing Report.

TCFD is a framework developed by the Basel-based Financial Stability Board that's become recognized as the global standard. Its disclosures span board-level responsibility for climate risks, tallies of greenhouse gas emissions, and analysis of business prospects under a range of temperature scenarios. The task force recommends that such climate-related financial disclosures be voluntarily included in public financial filings.

A spokesperson for the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSPIB), a pension investment manager with $230.5 billion in net assets, says it also voluntarily discloses the carbon intensity of its portfolio in its public reports, in accordance with TCFD recommendations. Maria Constantinescu adds that the fund's climate strategy roadmap is designed to be updated with new metrics and data as they become available.

Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health is a group that monitors the fossil fuel and climate-related investments of Canadian pension funds. It called PSPIB's climate strategy a "notable step forward" when it was released in April. However, it raised concerns, including language that could be used to ignore Scope 3 emissions. For example, the pollution from the tailpipes of cars built by an automaker, and the end-of-life treatment of the vehicle.

"The strategy's commitments and implementation plans are lacking in clarity, but it's clear that PSP is listening to the growing concerns of beneficiaries and beginning to recognize the scale and urgency of the climate crisis," Shift Action said in a statement.

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), the country's largest pension plan with more than $539 billion in assets under management, declined to comment on the report's findings. Five other major pension plans did not respond to a request for comment.

In May, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) released draft rules intended to force banks and the other institutions to assess and manage potential weak spots from physical climate risks, as well as those stemming from economic and policy changes. OSFI also intends to roll out mandatory climate-related financial disclosures aligned with the TCFD.

"These disclosures will incentivize improvements in the quality of the institutions' governance and risk management practices related to climate," the regulator stated on May 26. "In doing so, this contributes to public confidence in the Canadian financial system by increasing transparency."

Other countries are moving towards mandatory disclosures for corporations and financial institutions, including the EU, U.K., and the United States.

Among its recommendations, the Smart Prosperity Institute and The Global Risk Institute report calls for "a coordinated approach across federal and provincial bodies—including to ensure that pension funds' disclosure keeps up with the dynamic nature of climate information."

Sport Canada knew of 2018 sexual assault allegations involving hockey players

The Minister of Sport said on Tuesday that Sport Canada can do better. 

An NDP MP says the federal bureaucracy ‘failed to protect victims.’

By Kieran Leavitt

Edmonton Bureau
Tue., July 26,2022

The federal agency in charge of Canadian sports policies knew about the sexual assault allegations involving members of Canada’s 2018 world junior team back but didn’t tell the minister at the time, a parliamentary committee was told on Tuesday.

Michel Ruest, a senior director at Sport Canada, told MPs on the Canadian Heritage standing committee that his organization was made aware of the allegations, connected to a Hockey Canada event in 2018, but did not follow up with the national governing body or tell the minister’s office.

Minister of Sport Pascale St-Onge told MPs later in the day that “procedures absolutely need to be improved so that there can be better monitoring of the cases that are signalled to Sport Canada,” a branch of the federal Department of Canadian Heritage.

The testimony on Tuesday marks the first of two days of hearings being held in the wake of a scandal that has rocked the world of hockey. Hockey Canada’s top officials are to testify before the same all-party committee of MPs on Wednesday.

Members of Canada’s world junior hockey team from 2018 are facing allegations of a group sexual assault and a criminal investigation reopened by police in London, Ont. Meanwhile, reports emerged last week of separate allegations about another group sexual assault involving members of the 2003 world junior team. Halifax police have said they opened an investigation into that incident as well.

MPs on the heritage committee questioned officials from Sport Canada and Sport Minister Pascale StOnge allegations of sexual assault against members of the 2018 world junior team. Speaking via translator, St-Onge said she hopes Hockey Canada's leadership team will ask itself whether they are the right people to make cultural change. 

Ruest, the senior official from Sport Canada, said that he was notified of the 2018 allegations on June 26 of that year.

“At that time, we did the verifications to find out whether competent authorities had been informed and whether a third party had been made available to the alleged victim,” he said in French through a translator. “Hockey Canada had provided that information, and so that was what we did.”

St-Onge became the minister years after the allegations came into the department.

Peter Julian, an NDP MP on the committee, said that while “it’s true that Hockey Canada failed” it’s “also true that Sport Canada failed to protect victims.

“Sport Canada should have taken action years ago,” he said.

At issue for the minister was funding. Hockey Canada receives cash from the federal government and saw that money suspended in the wake of revelations that they’d settled a lawsuit with a complainant in the 2018 incident. The organization also saw corporate sponsors flee amid the fallout from those reports.

St-Onge said that the organization must show signs it is changing its culture before she restores funding to it. Hockey Canada has announced some steps in the wake of the scandal, including a new complaint process.

“I had to make them understand that they had passed the point of no return,” St-Onge said in French.

Julien asked if the minister had made some inquiries about putting Hockey Canada into a trusteeship and she said she hadn’t done so yet. St-Onge said in French that she would use any tools at her disposal “to change the culture at Hockey Canada.”

Prior to testimony from government officials, the committee heard from lawyer Danielle Robitaille with Henein Hutchison LLP. She carried out an investigation ordered by Hockey Canada back in 2018 into the allegations. Ultimately, Robitaille said, she only spoke with 10 out of the 19 players who were at the London event because she wasn’t able to get the complainant’s version of events; she said she felt it was necessary to have that before interviewing the remaining nine players.

She also said that some of those remaining players now believe the case has been prejudged.

Robitaille told the committee that she was not able to answer some of the MPs’ questions because since the complainant has come forward with their version of events, the investigation continues, and she’s prohibited from speaking on some information due to attorney client privilege.

“I am laser focused on my conduct investigation,” Robitaille told MPs on Tuesday.

The standing committee heard testimony from top Hockey Canada executives in June, but since then more details have emerged regarding how money is used by the organization to settle sexual assault claims, and the Halifax allegations that have emerged.

On Wednesday, executives at Hockey Canada will testify once again, including president Scott Smith, chief financial officer Brian Cairo, chair of the Hockey Canada Foundation Dave Andrews, and retired CEO Tom Renney.

On Monday, Hockey Canada released a plan to address abuse in the sport and “shatter the code of silence and eliminate toxic behaviour in and around Canada’s game,” a news release said.

Former NHLer Sheldon Kennedy, an abuse survivor as well as a member of the world junior team in 1988 and 1989, responded on Tuesday to Hockey Canada’s stated plans by calling for Smith and the board of directors to resign, stating on Twitter, “The same people with a new plan expecting different results is the definition of insanity.”

With files from The Canadian Press

Kieran Leavitt is an Edmonton-based political reporter for the Toronto Star. Follow him on Twitter: @kieranleavitt

Berating climate sceptics isn’t enough – disruptive protest now seems the only way forward

        
The time has come to choose: do you trust the people in suits downplaying this emergency, or the activists lying in roads in an attempt to ward off catastrophe?

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

John Harris
Sun 24 Jul 2022

For the past year or so, I have been repeatedly listening to a critically acclaimed album, Ignorance, released in 2021 by the Canadian band the Weather Station. Its music is graceful, poised and smooth, but it is also an almost conceptual set of songs about the urgency of the climate crisis and the disorientation of living in a culture that still refuses to acknowledge it. According to its chief creator, the singer-songwriter and former actor Tamara Lindeman, many of its songs evoke what happens when “this veneer of ‘everything will be OK’ disappears”. That moment of revelation is perfectly captured in one song I have played over and over again – which is simply called Loss, and finds Lindeman recalling a conversation: “What was it last night she said? At some point you’d have to live as if the truth was true.”

Amid unprecedented temperatures, fires and the grim pantomime that will eventually end with the selection of our next prime minister, I suspect more people than ever would now understand those words as a matter of direct emotional experience. For millions of us, this summer’s heat is synonymous with an anxiety that is now impossible to shake off, and a renewed awareness of the small transgressions and outright hypocrisies that are required to get through each day. We perform them because of something that Lindeman’s lyrics consummately describe: that very human talent for just about averting our eyes from what is directly in front of us, so as to live a quiet life; and a political culture that just about keeps the “everything will be OK” veneer in place.

These are things evident across the planet, and the UK has its own grim versions of them. One of the two remaining Tory leadership candidates has pledged to retain the current de facto ban on onshore windfarms; the other wants to reconsider some of the key policies built into the government’s milquetoast 2050 net zero target (the positions of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, respectively). The Labour party has one big climate policy – its £28bn-a-year climate investment pledge – but is still not putting global heating anywhere near the centre of its basic message, and is thereby failing to acquire much consent for action on it.

Meanwhile, for a certain kind of media voice, the past week has been all about raging against climate sceptics and deniers and their influence on politics, as if pointing out that they are mendacious and dangerous is an act of bravery. The former BBC presenter Andrew Marr provided a good example in a monologue broadcast on his new show on LBC: “I for one have had enough of being told by pallid, shadowy, old businessmen and lazy ignorant hacks and sleazy lobbyists – who aren’t real scientists, any of them – that the science is wrong and that what is happening isn’t happening,” he said. “Enough!”

The key question of 2022 is not whether those people are wrong, both factually and morally: we know the answer to that. For the moment, I don’t think many people need to be thinking very much about particular parties or politicians. What we surely need to focus on is the deep attachment to fossil fuels still locked into our economy and political system, and how to help the movements that definitely want to end it: Extinction Rebellion (XR), Insulate Britain, Just Stop Oil and the other forces that clearly understand the unspeakable gravity of the moment. This comes down to a question that still does not intrude on politics nearly enough: as these groups take the most direct kind of action, do you support them? And if – or, rather, as – the climate emergency deepens and the awful gap between politics and the sheer scale of what we are faced with only widens, what will you think if their actions take new, ever-more disruptive forms?
 
To some extent, the way our media and politicians fend off the climate crisis accidentally confronts people with exactly those arguments. In one of our most regular national rituals, mainstream politics barely intrudes and instead, a protester fresh from some or other climate action is berated by Piers Morgan, Richard Madeley or one of the presenters from GB News or TalkRadio, and the only real options become clear: meaningful and radical action or nothing at all. An editorial last week in the Sun insisted that “we need a sober debate, free from the extremists’ juvenile panic, on how we inch towards Net Zero in decades to come”, which made panic look like much the more sensible option. In April, the Labour party demanded that the government take legal action to effectively ban climate protests that disrupt traffic and oil production. When he stood to be his party’s leader, Keir Starmer took donations from a former boss of the RAC and AA, and the latter company-cum-lobby group’s former chief financial officer. The people he apparently thinks should be locked up, by contrast, are motivated by a comparatively pure mission to confront the car industry and quickly finish the hydrocarbon era, and thereby avoid catastrophe. So who do you choose?

In some cases – Occupy is a good example here – sustained support for protesters and activists has bumped up against their lack of a coherent agenda. But the modern climate movement is not like that. The basic position shared by the central handful of groups is clear enough: net zero by a much earlier date than 2050. XR and the people backing the climate and ecology bill – including such politicians as the Greens’ Caroline Lucas and Labour’s Clive Lewis – envisage that change being driven by citizens’ assemblies, set up to decide how such an aim will be reached. In the context of Westminster politics, such ideas may seem so unlikely as to be barely worth considering. But remember: Brexit is a madcap, massively disruptive project that defies just about every element of political and economic sense, but was until recently the preserve of cranks and obsessives and only became a reality when David Cameron decided to bypass MPs and ask the rest of us to decide. Less than a decade after it decisively burst into the political foreground, moreover, we are locked into it for keeps, with the support of both main parties. By comparison, is trying to set an example to other countries by doing exactly what the climate demands really so fanciful?

Activism and protest often trigger a kneejerk suspicion that they will alienate people and kill whatever cause they advocate. But experience suggests the exact opposite: just as successive waves of social reformers, the suffragettes and the anti-apartheid movement were stubborn, daring and creative enough to make their demands irresistible, so the people now lying in roads and charging into airports and refineries have conveyed the urgency of climate breakdown more successfully than anyone in a suit. There is a very good reason for that: it is only well outside centres of power that you can find the answer to a question that power and politics are dodging more than ever – how to live as if the truth is actually true.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist