28th June 2020 – Mulling a Covid Afterlife
28th June 2020 – Mulling a Covid Afterlife
Many think that the next challenge for mankind is going to be coping with the ravages of climate change. As part of their recovery planning, concerned governments are planning to use the funds and manpower required for green projects – renewable energy, electric vehicles, more bicycles, sea dykes and more – as a key part of their post-Covid economic stimulus. The pandemic has drawn attention to rising inequality and some form of ongoing basic income could also be added to the recovery mix.
Of course, some seem to think that it will be business as in the past once lockdown ends. They could be in for a nasty shock. Australia, Indonesia, Colombia, South Africa and other coal exporting nations could well find that markets, such as India, have shrunk as coal fired power stations remain closed. The oil and gas industry is certainly going to be a very different animal once this is all over.
People Change:
750 million genetically modified mosquitoes are being released in Florida in an attempt to cut the numbers of mosquitoes responsible for malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases.
Climate Change and the Environment:
The European Union has unveiled a comprehensive, € 750 billion plan for a climate-led economic recovery from Covid-19 which prioritizes investment in renewable energy, clean transport, smart energy and emissions reduction.
Germany’s coalition government has agreed on a two-year € 130 billion euros coronavirus economic recovery programme which includes measures to boost the country’s energy transition, including a focus on green hydrogen and a doubling the subsidies for electric vehicles.
Russia, and particularly Siberia, has experienced record high temperatures in 2020, with the average temperature from January to May 5.3C above the 1951-1980 average. Russia’s arctic regions are currently experiencing a heatwave with temperatures, some as high as 38C, some 10C above long term averages.
According to the European Environment Agency, greenhouse gas emissions in the EU continued their fall in 2018, falling by 2.1% compared with 2017, to a level 23% lower than in 1990. If the United Kingdom is excluded, the decline since 1990 was 20.7%. Electricity generation showing the biggest decline as coal was phased out and renewable power increased.
Chevron Australia and its partners will be forced to account for almost all of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the Gorgon gas project to date. The company might have to pay more than $A 100 million for carbon offsets.
A recent study published in Science concludes that the south-western US is in the grip of a 20-year megadrought which is stoking fires, depleting reservoirs and putting a strain on water supplies.
Amazon announced a $US 2 billion climate mitigation fund.
Food and Water:
America’s Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy has calculated that the thirteen biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the United Kingdom.
The Netherlands SolarEcoPlus project is investigating which designs of ground based solar create the best eco systems on the ground below the solar panels.
Units developed by American company, Zero Mass Water, use solar energy to condense and mineralise water vapour. On first ready about them I thought they would be perfect for deployment in Africa. However, having read the recent articles in the Guardian about the quality and cost of potable water in the USA, perhaps there is more need for these in the home market.
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
The bottom line of this section is that renewables are getting cheaper by the day, gradually pushing coal into an immediate decline.
Adani Green Energy has been awarded the world’s single largest solar development bid to date, and will develop 8 GW of solar projects over the next five years for the Solar Energy Corporation of India.
New South Wales’ plan for its first Renewable Energy Zone attracted 113 registrations of interest for projects producing a total of 27 GW, valued at $US 38 billion. Austrom Hydrogen is planning a 3.6 GW solar hydrogen project near the Port of Gladstone in central Queensland.
The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment report, jointly published by BloombergNEF, the Frankfurt School and the United Nations Environment Program, estimates that a record 184 GW of new renewable energy capacity, excluding hydro, was added worldwide in 2019, a 12% annual increase. Although the investment in the sector was lower, at $US 282.2 billion, the rapidly falling costs of technologies like wind and solar allowed more renewables to be installed for the same level of investment.
According to the EIA, America’s annual energy consumption from renewable sources in 2019 exceeded that from coal for the first time since before 1885. Compared with 2018, coal consumption in the United States decreased by nearly 15% to the lowest level since 1964, while total renewable energy consumption grew by 1%. Natural gas power consumption has also significantly increased.
The latest monthly statistics published by the IEA found that in OECD countries electricity generation from coal fell 21.6% in March 2020 compared to March 2019. By contrast, the share of electricity generated from solar grew 15.6% and from wind 4%. The drop in coal production is much higher than the 3.6% overall fall in total electricity consumption.
Solar project developers, long-term owners, and other industry participants surveyed by Berkeley Lab expect utility-scale solar plants to have a useful life of 32.5 years, up from 21.5 years in 2007, when the surveys began. The levelized, lifetime operational expenditure will be $US 17/kWDC per year, down from $US 35/kWDC per year for projects built in 2007.
The International Renewable Energy Agency’s Renewable Power Generation Costs 2019 report estimates that a decision to replace 500 GW of old coal plant with new renewables would deliver annual savings of $US 23 billion and cut emissions by 1.8 gigatonnes, 5% of last year’s total. The report notes that the cost of solar has fallen by 82% over the past decade and onshore wind by 39%. The levelized cost of energy generated by large scale solar plants is around $0.068/kWh, compared to $0.378 ten years ago. Solar plants under construction now and due to be completed in 2021 will deliver even further cost reductions
Goldman Sachs Group predicts that renewable energy investment in 2021 will be higher than that in oil and gas in 2021 for the first time in history. Goldman Sachs expects clean technology to drive as much as $US 1-2 trillion per annum in infrastructure investments and create between 15 and 20 million jobs worldwide through public-private collaboration.
The International Energy Agency predicts that 2020 will see the largest ever drop globally in both investment and consumer spending on energy as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The crisis is accelerating the shutdown of older fossil-fuelled power plants and oil refineries. Electrical power revenues are expected to fall by $US 180 billion, but oil and gas spending will drop by at least $US 1 trillion.
According to Global Trends, governments and companies around the world have committed to adding some 826 GW of new non-hydro renewable power capacity in the decade to 2030, at a likely cost of around $US 1 trillion. Those commitments fall far short of what would be needed to limit world temperature increases to less than 2 degrees Celsius and are much lower than the $US 2.7 trillion invested during the past decade.
New research by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Energy Market Operator show that the construction cost of small modular nuclear reactors is A$ 16,304 per kilowatt, far, far higher than the cost of solar or wind.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
American data storage and mining companies, particularly Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon, are coming under increasing scrutiny from legislators around the world concerned at their misuse of information and evasion of international taxes.
US lawmakers have introduced a bill which would ban the use of facial recognition technology by federal law enforcement agencies. It would also require state and local law enforcement to bring in similar bans in order to receive federal funding. Microsoft announced that it would stop selling its system to police departments until the law is in place. IBM has discontinued development of face recognition technology. Amazon has placed a one-year moratorium on police use of its face recognition software Rekognition.
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Google claiming Google Chrome tracks users’ activities even when they operate in incognito mode.
The European Commission has opened two antitrust investigations into Apple’s App Store and Apple Pay practices claiming Apple gives preference to its own products over those of competitors.
And if you thought you were safe from prying eyes, researchers found that the tiny vibrations of a standard light bulb in response to sound can be discerned by high powered telescopes and reconverted to sound.
In Australia Facebook is involved in a lawsuit claiming the company should be paying news companies for the news items it publishes on its website.
Automation Based Unemployment:
Microsoft is laying off dozens of journalists, editors, and other data workers in its news divisions, instead using news scanning AI software to find and publish relevant news items.
Autonomous Electric Vehicles:
Jato Dynamics reported that, despite the Covid pandemic, European April 2020 sales of electric and hybrid cars accounted for 17% of car sales compared to 7% in April 2019. Total car sales, including petrol and diesel models, fell from 1.34 million units in April 2019 to 292,600 vehicles in April 2020, the lowest level since the 1970s.
The French government has announced an €8 billion plan to boost sales of electric vehicles by increasing subsidies for private and commercial vehicle owners.
Tesla’s new Chinese battery partner CATL claims it can now make batteries that can last more than a million miles of driving (obviously they have to be recharged regularly along the way).
Amazon purchased aspirant self-driving vehicle company Zoox (in the process incurring the wrath of Tesla’s Elon Musk).
Dutch electric vehicle start-up, Lightyear, is producing prototype solar roofs featuring interdigitated back contact solar cells made by SunPower and backsheets DSM in order to extend the range of its Lightyear One solar car.
The world’s largest all-electric aircraft, the nine passenger Cessna Caravan, has taken to the air for test flights. Other companies are also developing electric and hybrid aircraft. In June 2019, Ampaire flew an aircraft powered by a hybrid electric-fossil fuel engine over California. Zunum Aero is building a 27-seat plane with a 680-mile range, while Rolls-Royce aims to produce the fastest all-electric plane to date. Germany’s Lilium is working on a five-seater jet-powered electric air taxi.
BP announced a $US17.5 billion write-down of its production and exploration assets.
Africa:
Algeria’s government approved a 4GW, five-year solar plan costing $US3.2 billion to $US3.6 billion. The government of Zimbabwe, where effective total power capacity is currently under 1,000MW, has invited bids for 500MW of solar capacity across several locations. Zambia’s state-owned electricity company Zesco announced that it had signed contracts totalling $US548 million with PowerChina for the development of 600MW of solar power plants. Tunisia’s latest 70 MW PV tender attracted a lowest bid of $US0.044/kWh.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s cash strapped government, instead of embracing a green recovery as other nations are doing, is wasting money on a study to determine the feasibility of nuclear power. While the countries, to which South Africa exports coal and cars with internal combustion engines, are accelerating their moves to renewable energy and electric vehicles, exports of coal and cars are seen as the mainstays of a Covid recovery lasting forever and a day.
Many think that the next challenge for mankind is going to be coping with the ravages of climate change. As part of their recovery planning, concerned governments are planning to use the funds and manpower required for green projects – renewable energy, electric vehicles, more bicycles, sea dykes and more – as a key part of their post-Covid economic stimulus. The pandemic has drawn attention to rising inequality and some form of ongoing basic income could also be added to the recovery mix.
Of course, some seem to think that it will be business as in the past once lockdown ends. They could be in for a nasty shock. Australia, Indonesia, Colombia, South Africa and other coal exporting nations could well find that markets, such as India, have shrunk as coal fired power stations remain closed. The oil and gas industry is certainly going to be a very different animal once this is all over.
People Change:
750 million genetically modified mosquitoes are being released in Florida in an attempt to cut the numbers of mosquitoes responsible for malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases.
Climate Change and the Environment:
The European Union has unveiled a comprehensive, € 750 billion plan for a climate-led economic recovery from Covid-19 which prioritizes investment in renewable energy, clean transport, smart energy and emissions reduction.
Germany’s coalition government has agreed on a two-year € 130 billion euros coronavirus economic recovery programme which includes measures to boost the country’s energy transition, including a focus on green hydrogen and a doubling the subsidies for electric vehicles.
Russia, and particularly Siberia, has experienced record high temperatures in 2020, with the average temperature from January to May 5.3C above the 1951-1980 average. Russia’s arctic regions are currently experiencing a heatwave with temperatures, some as high as 38C, some 10C above long term averages.
According to the European Environment Agency, greenhouse gas emissions in the EU continued their fall in 2018, falling by 2.1% compared with 2017, to a level 23% lower than in 1990. If the United Kingdom is excluded, the decline since 1990 was 20.7%. Electricity generation showing the biggest decline as coal was phased out and renewable power increased.
Chevron Australia and its partners will be forced to account for almost all of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the Gorgon gas project to date. The company might have to pay more than $A 100 million for carbon offsets.
A recent study published in Science concludes that the south-western US is in the grip of a 20-year megadrought which is stoking fires, depleting reservoirs and putting a strain on water supplies.
Amazon announced a $US 2 billion climate mitigation fund.
Food and Water:
America’s Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy has calculated that the thirteen biggest dairy companies in the world have the same combined greenhouse gas emissions as the United Kingdom.
The Netherlands SolarEcoPlus project is investigating which designs of ground based solar create the best eco systems on the ground below the solar panels.
Units developed by American company, Zero Mass Water, use solar energy to condense and mineralise water vapour. On first ready about them I thought they would be perfect for deployment in Africa. However, having read the recent articles in the Guardian about the quality and cost of potable water in the USA, perhaps there is more need for these in the home market.
Low Cost Renewable Energy:
The bottom line of this section is that renewables are getting cheaper by the day, gradually pushing coal into an immediate decline.
Adani Green Energy has been awarded the world’s single largest solar development bid to date, and will develop 8 GW of solar projects over the next five years for the Solar Energy Corporation of India.
New South Wales’ plan for its first Renewable Energy Zone attracted 113 registrations of interest for projects producing a total of 27 GW, valued at $US 38 billion. Austrom Hydrogen is planning a 3.6 GW solar hydrogen project near the Port of Gladstone in central Queensland.
The Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment report, jointly published by BloombergNEF, the Frankfurt School and the United Nations Environment Program, estimates that a record 184 GW of new renewable energy capacity, excluding hydro, was added worldwide in 2019, a 12% annual increase. Although the investment in the sector was lower, at $US 282.2 billion, the rapidly falling costs of technologies like wind and solar allowed more renewables to be installed for the same level of investment.
According to the EIA, America’s annual energy consumption from renewable sources in 2019 exceeded that from coal for the first time since before 1885. Compared with 2018, coal consumption in the United States decreased by nearly 15% to the lowest level since 1964, while total renewable energy consumption grew by 1%. Natural gas power consumption has also significantly increased.
The latest monthly statistics published by the IEA found that in OECD countries electricity generation from coal fell 21.6% in March 2020 compared to March 2019. By contrast, the share of electricity generated from solar grew 15.6% and from wind 4%. The drop in coal production is much higher than the 3.6% overall fall in total electricity consumption.
Solar project developers, long-term owners, and other industry participants surveyed by Berkeley Lab expect utility-scale solar plants to have a useful life of 32.5 years, up from 21.5 years in 2007, when the surveys began. The levelized, lifetime operational expenditure will be $US 17/kWDC per year, down from $US 35/kWDC per year for projects built in 2007.
The International Renewable Energy Agency’s Renewable Power Generation Costs 2019 report estimates that a decision to replace 500 GW of old coal plant with new renewables would deliver annual savings of $US 23 billion and cut emissions by 1.8 gigatonnes, 5% of last year’s total. The report notes that the cost of solar has fallen by 82% over the past decade and onshore wind by 39%. The levelized cost of energy generated by large scale solar plants is around $0.068/kWh, compared to $0.378 ten years ago. Solar plants under construction now and due to be completed in 2021 will deliver even further cost reductions
Goldman Sachs Group predicts that renewable energy investment in 2021 will be higher than that in oil and gas in 2021 for the first time in history. Goldman Sachs expects clean technology to drive as much as $US 1-2 trillion per annum in infrastructure investments and create between 15 and 20 million jobs worldwide through public-private collaboration.
The International Energy Agency predicts that 2020 will see the largest ever drop globally in both investment and consumer spending on energy as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The crisis is accelerating the shutdown of older fossil-fuelled power plants and oil refineries. Electrical power revenues are expected to fall by $US 180 billion, but oil and gas spending will drop by at least $US 1 trillion.
According to Global Trends, governments and companies around the world have committed to adding some 826 GW of new non-hydro renewable power capacity in the decade to 2030, at a likely cost of around $US 1 trillion. Those commitments fall far short of what would be needed to limit world temperature increases to less than 2 degrees Celsius and are much lower than the $US 2.7 trillion invested during the past decade.
New research by Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Australian Energy Market Operator show that the construction cost of small modular nuclear reactors is A$ 16,304 per kilowatt, far, far higher than the cost of solar or wind.
Mass Data Mining and Storage:
American data storage and mining companies, particularly Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon, are coming under increasing scrutiny from legislators around the world concerned at their misuse of information and evasion of international taxes.
US lawmakers have introduced a bill which would ban the use of facial recognition technology by federal law enforcement agencies. It would also require state and local law enforcement to bring in similar bans in order to receive federal funding. Microsoft announced that it would stop selling its system to police departments until the law is in place. IBM has discontinued development of face recognition technology. Amazon has placed a one-year moratorium on police use of its face recognition software Rekognition.
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Google claiming Google Chrome tracks users’ activities even when they operate in incognito mode.
The European Commission has opened two antitrust investigations into Apple’s App Store and Apple Pay practices claiming Apple gives preference to its own products over those of competitors.
And if you thought you were safe from prying eyes, researchers found that the tiny vibrations of a standard light bulb in response to sound can be discerned by high powered telescopes and reconverted to sound.
In Australia Facebook is involved in a lawsuit claiming the company should be paying news companies for the news items it publishes on its website.
Automation Based Unemployment:
Microsoft is laying off dozens of journalists, editors, and other data workers in its news divisions, instead using news scanning AI software to find and publish relevant news items.
Autonomous Electric Vehicles:
Jato Dynamics reported that, despite the Covid pandemic, European April 2020 sales of electric and hybrid cars accounted for 17% of car sales compared to 7% in April 2019. Total car sales, including petrol and diesel models, fell from 1.34 million units in April 2019 to 292,600 vehicles in April 2020, the lowest level since the 1970s.
The French government has announced an €8 billion plan to boost sales of electric vehicles by increasing subsidies for private and commercial vehicle owners.
Tesla’s new Chinese battery partner CATL claims it can now make batteries that can last more than a million miles of driving (obviously they have to be recharged regularly along the way).
Amazon purchased aspirant self-driving vehicle company Zoox (in the process incurring the wrath of Tesla’s Elon Musk).
Dutch electric vehicle start-up, Lightyear, is producing prototype solar roofs featuring interdigitated back contact solar cells made by SunPower and backsheets DSM in order to extend the range of its Lightyear One solar car.
The world’s largest all-electric aircraft, the nine passenger Cessna Caravan, has taken to the air for test flights. Other companies are also developing electric and hybrid aircraft. In June 2019, Ampaire flew an aircraft powered by a hybrid electric-fossil fuel engine over California. Zunum Aero is building a 27-seat plane with a 680-mile range, while Rolls-Royce aims to produce the fastest all-electric plane to date. Germany’s Lilium is working on a five-seater jet-powered electric air taxi.
BP announced a $US17.5 billion write-down of its production and exploration assets.
Africa:
Algeria’s government approved a 4GW, five-year solar plan costing $US3.2 billion to $US3.6 billion. The government of Zimbabwe, where effective total power capacity is currently under 1,000MW, has invited bids for 500MW of solar capacity across several locations. Zambia’s state-owned electricity company Zesco announced that it had signed contracts totalling $US548 million with PowerChina for the development of 600MW of solar power plants. Tunisia’s latest 70 MW PV tender attracted a lowest bid of $US0.044/kWh.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s cash strapped government, instead of embracing a green recovery as other nations are doing, is wasting money on a study to determine the feasibility of nuclear power. While the countries, to which South Africa exports coal and cars with internal combustion engines, are accelerating their moves to renewable energy and electric vehicles, exports of coal and cars are seen as the mainstays of a Covid recovery lasting forever and a day.
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