19th April, 2020 – More stimulants for lockdown contemplation
19th April, 2020 – More stimulants for lockdown contemplation
Just in case you are short of reading and thought stimulation material, here’s another load of Musings to distract you from what is happening – or not happening – around you.
The Corona virus pandemic came as a surprise shock to everyone, even those who include black swan events in their planning. Many are now suggesting that the ravages of climate change are the next event for which we should be prepared, even if it doesn’t happen in such a sudden fashion as the pandemic. However, it remains to be seen if the powers that be will be better prepared for the next devastating event whatever it is.
As a check on this, I briefly skimmed through intelligence outlooks published by the American government – they are so concerned about China, Russia, Iran, cyber-security and space that they don’t even hint at the possibility of a pandemic or an even bigger Hurricane Katrina. Let’s hope other countries are more on the ball and have governments that can understand planning and data and listen to experts.
Interestingly, back in 2006 Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in medical supplies and mobile hospitals to deal with earthquakes, fires and particularly pandemics. According to the Los Angeles Times, emergency response teams would have access to a stockpile including “50,000 N95 respirators, 2,400 portable ventilators and kits to set up 21,000 additional patient beds wherever they were needed”. Sadly, his successor canned the project as part of a cost saving exercise.
Those of you with keen eyes will have noted in my last Musing that I listed 2013 as the year before the start of WWI, not 1913. My apologies for that slip up.
People Change:
A recent study from the study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that Americans with COVID-19 who live in regions with high levels of PM2.5 air pollution are more likely to die from the disease than people who live in less polluted areas.
Climate Change and the Environment:
A paper in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal argues that the capacity of oceans to absorb CO2 have been overestimated in many climate change models. And new Australian research, has found that the growth of trees in mature forests is not enhanced by higher CO2 levels. It just shows we can’t take too much for granted.
An analysis published in Nature Magazine calculates that the odds of extreme flooding double approximately every 5 years into the future and the present-day 50-year extreme water level (i.e., 2% annual chance of exceedance, based on historical records) will be exceeded annually before 2050 for some 70% of the coastal regions in the United States.
A record-size hole in the ozone layer above the Arctic is result of low temperatures in the atmosphere and is expected to disappear.
The Korea Youth Climate Action Group has filed suit with the Korean Constitutional Court charging that the country’s greenhouse emission targets and its weak enforcement of environmental laws violate the Constitution because the current scheme unduly favours the interests of the current generation over future generations. The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change reports that similar climate change lawsuits had been brought in at least 28 countries.
A paper in Nature described how scientists have created a mutant bacterial enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, that breaks down plastic bottles to basic chemical building blocks in hours.
While most companies have seen a downturn as a result of the Covid pandemic, the plastics industry has seen an upturn as demand for plastic products from the healthcare and food retailing sectors shot up.
Food and Water:
The EU’s European Food Safety Authority is expected to endorse whole or ground mealworms, lesser mealworms, locusts, crickets and grasshoppers as being safe for human consumption.
Researchers from Columbia University have concluded that the drought in southwestern North America that lasted from 2000 to 2018 is among the most severe to strike the region in the last 1,200 years.
An unexpected consequence of the global lockdown is that bee keepers in many places are not able to move their hives to fertilize fruit and nut trees as they come into blossom. Maybe we should be planning for a shortage of both later in the year!
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
To put some of the numbers in this section in perspective, I recommend you do a quick search to see what the electrical power capacity of your country is. For South Africa it is about 50 GW.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, total installed renewable energy capacity at the end of 2019 was 2,563.8 GW, with hydropower remaining the dominant source at 1,310.9 GW, followed by wind at 622.7 GW. Global renewable energy capacity additions accounted for nearly three-quarters of all new power expansion in 2019, with solar and wind accounting for 90% of all new renewable energy capacity. Global grid-connected solar capacity increased to 580.1 GW in 2019, along with 3.4 GW of off grid PV. Asia accounted for 54% of new renewable energy capacity additions.
GCL System Integration announced plans for the world’s biggest solar module factory in the Chinese province of Anhui. Iberdrola’s 500 MW Núñez de Balboa solar park in Spain, Europe’s largest, has started commercial operations, following the completion of construction in December 2019. Neoen and Mondo are planning a massive 600MW Victoria big battery near Geelong, Australia.
During the first quarter of 2020, renewables provided more electrical power to Great Britain than from any other major power source, generating 45% of all electricity generation.
The United Kingdom’s Crown Estate has officially launched the fourth round of leasing seabed rights to develop offshore wind projects with between 7GW and 8.5GW on offer. The United Kingdom is already home to the largest amount of offshore wind in the world, with 9.3GW already operational, another 4.4GW currently under construction, and a further 20GW of projects in various stages of development. There is also another 2.8GW of approved extension projects, putting the UK on track to deliver over 30GW by 2030.
Austria has closed its last coal fired power station.
S&P Global Market Intelligence has revealed that US coal production through the first quarter of 2020 fell to its lowest level since 1981, with production estimates suggesting only 151 million tonnes of coal were produced.
Morgan Stanley published two reports on the American electrical power industry in which they predict that between 70 GW and 190 GW of coal-fired generation is "economically at risk" from the deployment of a "second wave of renewables". These projections exclude about 24 GW of coal generation already scheduled to be shut down.
The Egyptian government has cancelled plans for a Chinese-Egyptian consortium to build the Hamrawein cola fired power station, which would have been the second largest in the world. Previously Chinese sponsored coal fired power projects in Kenya and Bengladesh were also put on hold. Chinese companies are developing renewable power projects in Uganda, Guinea Bissau and Tanzania, where a 600 MW wind plant will be Africa’s largest.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
As mentioned in my last Musing, governments and IT companies everywhere are rushing to implement systems to monitor the movements of Corona patients. The latest are normal rivals Google and Apple, who are combining forces to build surveillance into their cell phone operating systems. Google’s track record in this technology is not good as they were able to monitor the location of phones even with location options switched off.
All the surveillance systems raise challenges which need to be addressed by global, not local, legislators. Who owns the location data? Who has access to the data? Will the spying stop once the pandemic is over or will it be expanded to other applications? Will Google and Apple simply ignore all local restrictions, adhering only to American – and probably – EU legislation?
Automation Based Unemployment:
Everywhere countries are seeing jobs lost as companies close their facilities in the face of the Corovid pandemic. The expectation is that these companies will rehire staff once the lockdown is over and the economy returns to normal. However, if experiences in previous downturns are anything to go by, innovative managers are going to redesign their organisations, including structures and job descriptions, so they can finally harvest the productivity gains predicated in past investments in information technology. The net result will be productivity gains as companies produce more with fewer employees. There will probably also be more outsourcing to temporary workers.
We’re hearing how everyone – except those working at Amazon – is losing their jobs, so here’s an interesting story. Back in the 1960’s I remember learning how to program in Cobol, then state of the art software for IBM mainframe computers. It seems that the unemployment benefits systems of many American states, including California, home of Silicon Valley, were written back in the heyday of Cobol which has long gone out of fashion. Now the systems can’t cope with the flood of applicants and the states are desperate to find grey beards with Cobol skills to upgrade their systems to cope! Maybe I should apply?
Autonomous Electric Vehicles:
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, sales of electric cars in Europe have boomed in the first quarter of 2020 with some countries showing a 100% increase on first quarter 2019.
A new battery that uses glass as a key component has been patented by a team headed by John Goodenough, the part winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work as co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery. The new glass battery could accelerate the shift away from internal combustion engines because it will deliver triple the storage capacity of equivalent lithium-ion technology.
Pony.ai has teamed up with Los Angeles-based e-commerce site Yamibuy to deliver packages and groceries in Irvine, California, using driverless vehicles.
ABB, Ballard and French hydrogen technologies specialist Hydrogène de France plan to jointly manufacture megawatt-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems for ocean-going vessels. The global shipping industry currently accounts for 2.5% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The fuel cell uses proton exchange membrane fuel cells to convert the chemical energy from hydrogen into electricity, and involves no combustion. ABB and Ballard are already developing a zero-emission river boat to push river barges, planned for deployment in France in 2021.
The world’s five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies spent US$ 71.2 billion in dividends and share buybacks in 2019, while generating only US$ 61.0 billion in free cash flow. Their 2020 cash flows are certain to be significantly reduced as a result of much lower prices and demand. According to Wood Mackenzie, the Covid-19 induced drop in oil and gas demand and prices will lead to a drop of between US$ 110 billion and US$ 210 billion in industry capital investment. Already Shell has announced a delay in an investment decision for the Crux offshore gas project in Australia. Some inland fracking sites in America are finding the cost of piping crude oil to refineries is higher than the local oil price.
The major oil producing nations are also likely to be impacted severely. Fiscal break-even for Saudi Arabia is around US$ 80 per barrel; its foreign exchange reserves might sustain rock-bottom oil prices for only two or three years. Russia, with a US$ 40 a barrel fiscal break-even and more diversified economy, can survive low oil prices for a decade, though its oilfields employ inefficient, elderly infrastructure. Current prices are below US$ 30 per barrel.
As part of job creation, the Canadian government is to spend $Can 1.7 billion to clean up orphan oil and gas wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia which have been abandoned by developers who can't be located, have gone bankrupt or don't have the financial means to pay for proper decommissioning. According to Finance Canada, there are about 4,700 orphan wells in Alberta, 600 in Saskatchewan and 350 in British Columbia. There are another 91,000 inactive wells (ones that are no longer productive) in Alberta, 36,000 in Saskatchewan and 12,000 in B.C. Cleanup costs for individual wells can range from $100,000 to several million dollars, depending on the size and complexity of the well.
Increasing Inequality:
American millionaires and billionaires will reap more than 80% of the benefits from a change to the tax law Republicans put in the coronavirus economic relief package, according to a non-partisan congressional committee. Meanwhile the ones suffering most from the virus are the poor, the darker skinned and the homeless.
Southern Africa:
South Africa’s Department of the Environment has agreed to publish emissions recorded by the country’s major polluters.
South Africa’s Absa Bank has followed peers Standard Bank, FirstRand and Investec and will no longer fund coal projects – except those of its existing clients. Not much good when they include some of South Africa’s biggest coal miners and polluters.
Just in case you are short of reading and thought stimulation material, here’s another load of Musings to distract you from what is happening – or not happening – around you.
The Corona virus pandemic came as a surprise shock to everyone, even those who include black swan events in their planning. Many are now suggesting that the ravages of climate change are the next event for which we should be prepared, even if it doesn’t happen in such a sudden fashion as the pandemic. However, it remains to be seen if the powers that be will be better prepared for the next devastating event whatever it is.
As a check on this, I briefly skimmed through intelligence outlooks published by the American government – they are so concerned about China, Russia, Iran, cyber-security and space that they don’t even hint at the possibility of a pandemic or an even bigger Hurricane Katrina. Let’s hope other countries are more on the ball and have governments that can understand planning and data and listen to experts.
Interestingly, back in 2006 Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in medical supplies and mobile hospitals to deal with earthquakes, fires and particularly pandemics. According to the Los Angeles Times, emergency response teams would have access to a stockpile including “50,000 N95 respirators, 2,400 portable ventilators and kits to set up 21,000 additional patient beds wherever they were needed”. Sadly, his successor canned the project as part of a cost saving exercise.
Those of you with keen eyes will have noted in my last Musing that I listed 2013 as the year before the start of WWI, not 1913. My apologies for that slip up.
People Change:
A recent study from the study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health shows that Americans with COVID-19 who live in regions with high levels of PM2.5 air pollution are more likely to die from the disease than people who live in less polluted areas.
Climate Change and the Environment:
A paper in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal argues that the capacity of oceans to absorb CO2 have been overestimated in many climate change models. And new Australian research, has found that the growth of trees in mature forests is not enhanced by higher CO2 levels. It just shows we can’t take too much for granted.
An analysis published in Nature Magazine calculates that the odds of extreme flooding double approximately every 5 years into the future and the present-day 50-year extreme water level (i.e., 2% annual chance of exceedance, based on historical records) will be exceeded annually before 2050 for some 70% of the coastal regions in the United States.
A record-size hole in the ozone layer above the Arctic is result of low temperatures in the atmosphere and is expected to disappear.
The Korea Youth Climate Action Group has filed suit with the Korean Constitutional Court charging that the country’s greenhouse emission targets and its weak enforcement of environmental laws violate the Constitution because the current scheme unduly favours the interests of the current generation over future generations. The Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change reports that similar climate change lawsuits had been brought in at least 28 countries.
A paper in Nature described how scientists have created a mutant bacterial enzyme, originally discovered in a compost heap of leaves, that breaks down plastic bottles to basic chemical building blocks in hours.
While most companies have seen a downturn as a result of the Covid pandemic, the plastics industry has seen an upturn as demand for plastic products from the healthcare and food retailing sectors shot up.
Food and Water:
The EU’s European Food Safety Authority is expected to endorse whole or ground mealworms, lesser mealworms, locusts, crickets and grasshoppers as being safe for human consumption.
Researchers from Columbia University have concluded that the drought in southwestern North America that lasted from 2000 to 2018 is among the most severe to strike the region in the last 1,200 years.
An unexpected consequence of the global lockdown is that bee keepers in many places are not able to move their hives to fertilize fruit and nut trees as they come into blossom. Maybe we should be planning for a shortage of both later in the year!
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
To put some of the numbers in this section in perspective, I recommend you do a quick search to see what the electrical power capacity of your country is. For South Africa it is about 50 GW.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, total installed renewable energy capacity at the end of 2019 was 2,563.8 GW, with hydropower remaining the dominant source at 1,310.9 GW, followed by wind at 622.7 GW. Global renewable energy capacity additions accounted for nearly three-quarters of all new power expansion in 2019, with solar and wind accounting for 90% of all new renewable energy capacity. Global grid-connected solar capacity increased to 580.1 GW in 2019, along with 3.4 GW of off grid PV. Asia accounted for 54% of new renewable energy capacity additions.
GCL System Integration announced plans for the world’s biggest solar module factory in the Chinese province of Anhui. Iberdrola’s 500 MW Núñez de Balboa solar park in Spain, Europe’s largest, has started commercial operations, following the completion of construction in December 2019. Neoen and Mondo are planning a massive 600MW Victoria big battery near Geelong, Australia.
During the first quarter of 2020, renewables provided more electrical power to Great Britain than from any other major power source, generating 45% of all electricity generation.
The United Kingdom’s Crown Estate has officially launched the fourth round of leasing seabed rights to develop offshore wind projects with between 7GW and 8.5GW on offer. The United Kingdom is already home to the largest amount of offshore wind in the world, with 9.3GW already operational, another 4.4GW currently under construction, and a further 20GW of projects in various stages of development. There is also another 2.8GW of approved extension projects, putting the UK on track to deliver over 30GW by 2030.
Austria has closed its last coal fired power station.
S&P Global Market Intelligence has revealed that US coal production through the first quarter of 2020 fell to its lowest level since 1981, with production estimates suggesting only 151 million tonnes of coal were produced.
Morgan Stanley published two reports on the American electrical power industry in which they predict that between 70 GW and 190 GW of coal-fired generation is "economically at risk" from the deployment of a "second wave of renewables". These projections exclude about 24 GW of coal generation already scheduled to be shut down.
The Egyptian government has cancelled plans for a Chinese-Egyptian consortium to build the Hamrawein cola fired power station, which would have been the second largest in the world. Previously Chinese sponsored coal fired power projects in Kenya and Bengladesh were also put on hold. Chinese companies are developing renewable power projects in Uganda, Guinea Bissau and Tanzania, where a 600 MW wind plant will be Africa’s largest.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
As mentioned in my last Musing, governments and IT companies everywhere are rushing to implement systems to monitor the movements of Corona patients. The latest are normal rivals Google and Apple, who are combining forces to build surveillance into their cell phone operating systems. Google’s track record in this technology is not good as they were able to monitor the location of phones even with location options switched off.
All the surveillance systems raise challenges which need to be addressed by global, not local, legislators. Who owns the location data? Who has access to the data? Will the spying stop once the pandemic is over or will it be expanded to other applications? Will Google and Apple simply ignore all local restrictions, adhering only to American – and probably – EU legislation?
Automation Based Unemployment:
Everywhere countries are seeing jobs lost as companies close their facilities in the face of the Corovid pandemic. The expectation is that these companies will rehire staff once the lockdown is over and the economy returns to normal. However, if experiences in previous downturns are anything to go by, innovative managers are going to redesign their organisations, including structures and job descriptions, so they can finally harvest the productivity gains predicated in past investments in information technology. The net result will be productivity gains as companies produce more with fewer employees. There will probably also be more outsourcing to temporary workers.
We’re hearing how everyone – except those working at Amazon – is losing their jobs, so here’s an interesting story. Back in the 1960’s I remember learning how to program in Cobol, then state of the art software for IBM mainframe computers. It seems that the unemployment benefits systems of many American states, including California, home of Silicon Valley, were written back in the heyday of Cobol which has long gone out of fashion. Now the systems can’t cope with the flood of applicants and the states are desperate to find grey beards with Cobol skills to upgrade their systems to cope! Maybe I should apply?
Autonomous Electric Vehicles:
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, sales of electric cars in Europe have boomed in the first quarter of 2020 with some countries showing a 100% increase on first quarter 2019.
A new battery that uses glass as a key component has been patented by a team headed by John Goodenough, the part winner of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work as co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery. The new glass battery could accelerate the shift away from internal combustion engines because it will deliver triple the storage capacity of equivalent lithium-ion technology.
Pony.ai has teamed up with Los Angeles-based e-commerce site Yamibuy to deliver packages and groceries in Irvine, California, using driverless vehicles.
ABB, Ballard and French hydrogen technologies specialist Hydrogène de France plan to jointly manufacture megawatt-scale hydrogen fuel cell systems for ocean-going vessels. The global shipping industry currently accounts for 2.5% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. The fuel cell uses proton exchange membrane fuel cells to convert the chemical energy from hydrogen into electricity, and involves no combustion. ABB and Ballard are already developing a zero-emission river boat to push river barges, planned for deployment in France in 2021.
The world’s five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies spent US$ 71.2 billion in dividends and share buybacks in 2019, while generating only US$ 61.0 billion in free cash flow. Their 2020 cash flows are certain to be significantly reduced as a result of much lower prices and demand. According to Wood Mackenzie, the Covid-19 induced drop in oil and gas demand and prices will lead to a drop of between US$ 110 billion and US$ 210 billion in industry capital investment. Already Shell has announced a delay in an investment decision for the Crux offshore gas project in Australia. Some inland fracking sites in America are finding the cost of piping crude oil to refineries is higher than the local oil price.
The major oil producing nations are also likely to be impacted severely. Fiscal break-even for Saudi Arabia is around US$ 80 per barrel; its foreign exchange reserves might sustain rock-bottom oil prices for only two or three years. Russia, with a US$ 40 a barrel fiscal break-even and more diversified economy, can survive low oil prices for a decade, though its oilfields employ inefficient, elderly infrastructure. Current prices are below US$ 30 per barrel.
As part of job creation, the Canadian government is to spend $Can 1.7 billion to clean up orphan oil and gas wells in Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia which have been abandoned by developers who can't be located, have gone bankrupt or don't have the financial means to pay for proper decommissioning. According to Finance Canada, there are about 4,700 orphan wells in Alberta, 600 in Saskatchewan and 350 in British Columbia. There are another 91,000 inactive wells (ones that are no longer productive) in Alberta, 36,000 in Saskatchewan and 12,000 in B.C. Cleanup costs for individual wells can range from $100,000 to several million dollars, depending on the size and complexity of the well.
Increasing Inequality:
American millionaires and billionaires will reap more than 80% of the benefits from a change to the tax law Republicans put in the coronavirus economic relief package, according to a non-partisan congressional committee. Meanwhile the ones suffering most from the virus are the poor, the darker skinned and the homeless.
Southern Africa:
South Africa’s Department of the Environment has agreed to publish emissions recorded by the country’s major polluters.
South Africa’s Absa Bank has followed peers Standard Bank, FirstRand and Investec and will no longer fund coal projects – except those of its existing clients. Not much good when they include some of South Africa’s biggest coal miners and polluters.
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