HSBC publishes its “sustainability risk policies” (a public version of them anyway). They are fairly general, but what I find interesting is that they follow various international conventions from the UN, World Bank, and others in making lending decisions. Examples include the Paris convention and the Ramsar wetland convention. So even if politicians in certain countries deride these international bodies and conventions as being a lot of hot air, they can in fact have a large impact when adopted widely by public and private actors around the world.
Category Archives: Web Article Review
big banks divesting from dirtiest fossil fuels
A number of banks have stopped funding new coal and tar sand projects due to climate risk, including HSBC.
Europe’s largest bank HSBC said on Friday it would mostly stop funding new coal power plants, oil sands and arctic drilling, becoming the latest in a long line of investors to shun the fossil fuels.
Other large banks such as ING and BNP Paribas have made similar pledges in recent months as investors have mounted pressure to make sure bank’s actions align with the Paris Agreement, a global pact to limit greenhouse gas emissions and curb rising temperatures.
I might like to believe that the finance industry has become socially responsible, but I don’t. It is completely amoral. Still, that means that when it thinks there is a significant risk to investment returns and takes action as a result, we can assume the risk is real.
Impossible Foods
Impossible Foods is a synthetic meat company.
The ingredient, made from soybean roots and genetically engineered yeast, goes into vegetarian Impossible Burgers, which are available in a growing number of restaurants — even fast-food stalwart White Castle…
It contains heme (pronounced HEEM), a key part of red meat and a source of iron, which humans can’t live without. Think of Brown’s discovery as plant-based blood. Brown, 63, says it makes the Impossible Burger sizzle, smell and taste like real red meat…
Fake meat will be one of the year’s hottest food trends. An increasing number of flexitarians — people not looking to eat meat at every meal — are helping to drive interest, according to Rabobank. Sales of alternative proteins are dwarfed by the $49 billion red meat and chicken market, but they’re expected to grow about 17 percent a year to $863 million in 2021, according to a CoBank estimate.
Apparently the company is having some trouble with the FDA, which it voluntarily sought approval from.
San Francisco area earthquake forecast
USGS reminds us that a big earthquake in the San Francisco area is eventually coming.
In the 50 years prior to 1906, there were 13 earthquakes with a magnitude between 6 and 7, but only 6 earthquakes of similar magnitude in the 110 years since 1906. The rate of large earthquakes is expected to increase from this low level as tectonic plate movements continue to increase the stress on the faults in the region…
Smaller earthquakes occur more frequently than larger earthquakes. The probability that an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 or larger will occur before 2043 is 98 percent. The probability of at least one earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or larger in the San Francisco Bay region is 72 percent, and for at least one earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or larger it is 51 percent. These probabilities include earthquakes on the major faults, lesser-known faults, and unknown faults.
water tunnels
As tunneling technology continues to advance, this article says that transportation tunnels get all the press but water tunnels are also becoming much more numerous and common.
Most of the attention in other cities may go to the multibillion-dollar transportation tunnel projects, like the Second Avenue Subway in New York City or the Gateway tunnel between New York and New Jersey. But the sheer number of water tunnels being built or planned exceeds the sexier transportation tunnels. “There are more water tunnels than transportation tunnels,” says Mike Schultz, technical strategy leader for the geotechnical-structural group at CDM Smith.
Egger at Black & Veatch estimates there are about 200 miles of water tunneling in various stages of planning and design in North America, 50 miles of which directly involve Black & Veatch. Jacobs alone is involved in the development of more 150 miles of water, wastewater and CSO tunnels around the world.
Technology has reduced the price of tunnels enough so that mid-size cities like Fort Wayne and Alexandria, Va., can use a tunnel option to handle their excess water. Technology also has made tunneling a viable option in some cities with soft ground, such as Houston, which couldn’t have considered building tunnels just a decade ago.
Full disclosure: This is the business I am in and I have a business relationship with one of the firms above. Well, not the tunneling business specifically but the water management business. I would much rather see water managed using green infrastructure and ecosystem-based solutions as much as possible, but a backbone of hard infrastructure certainly has its place in urban areas.
“coal plant chicken”
No, coal plant chicken is not grilling chicken using waste heat from a coal plant, although that is not a terrible idea. It’s the idea that coal-fired utilities are competing for slices of a shrinking pie, and they are going to blink out of existence one by one.
Zindler, BNEF’s head of Americas, said about half of all U.S. coal plants lose money on any given day as cheap gas, along with wind and solar farms, push electricity prices lower. Meanwhile, demand for power is flat. The result, Zindler said, is coal plants wrestle to outlast one another, fighting for a bigger piece of the pie. “Every day across multiple regional transmission operating systems, we see power plants staring across at each other and saying ‘Who is going to go first?’ ” Zindler said. “It’s only a matter of time as these plants try to outlast each other.”
Elsewhere in the same article, coal-fired utility executives say this is not true because coal and nuclear are currently the only two cost-effective ways to generate a constant base load. I don’t have the expertise to agree or disagree, but I know that nuclear technology is advancing, and battery technology which can be used to smooth out intermittent loads is also advancing.
farm robots
Farm machinery is getting more high-tech and more automated all the time, due in part ot climate change.
Technological improvements from boosting crop yields to data-tracking systems will be required in coming decades as companies adapt to shifts in weather patterns, according to BMI Research. That may increasingly push agribusiness companies, especially grain handlers and input firms, into acquiring agritech startups.
“The rise of agtech use and ‘precision agriculture’ will benefit or disrupt a number of operations and businesses in the process,” the company said in a report Tuesday.
Farmers and businesses around the world are poised to feel the impact of climate change as supplies get disrupted and farmland and yields come under pressure. At the same time, agriculture, one of the largest sources of gas emissions, will face action from regulators targeting livestock and soil management.
more on small modular nuclear reactors
From Bloomberg:
The type of reactor NuScale is targeting would be cheaper to build than current designs and more capable of operating intermittently to back up wind and solar power, Chris Gadomski, a BNEF analyst, said Tuesday on a panel at the summit. NuScale is aiming for commercial operations in 2026 for a plant in Utah comprised of a dozen 50-megawatt reactors. It is the only company with small-reactor design certification pending before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Exxon vs. climate
Exxon is getting in trouble in Massachusetts:
Exxon Mobil Corp. suffered another legal defeat in its attempt to dodge state investigations into whether the company’s public comments about climate change misled investors for years.
Massachusetts’ top court on Friday affirmed a judge’s decision that Exxon must hand over documents dating back to 1976 to Attorney General Maura Healey. The court also agreed that Exxon’s 300 Mobil-branded franchise service stations in the state give Healey jurisdiction over the Texas-based company.
Weighing in on the overall environmental threat at the heart of the dispute, the court wrote that Healey’s investigation concerns climate change “caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions — a distinctly modern threat that grows more serious with time, and the effects of which are already being felt in Massachusetts.”
Exxon on oil demand
Exxon says oil demand could be down 20% by 2040 if the Paris accords are implemented. Or…it could be up if they are not.