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Nato defence spending falls despite promises to reverse cuts - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/world-31619553 defence spending
shared by Gene Ellis on 03 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Nato defence spending falls despite promises to reverse cuts
  • Europe's failure to pay its way in Nato is seriously worrying the US, which already provides 75% of all Nato defence expenditure (the US spends 3.8% of its GDP on defence).
  • Without any of its own maritime patrol aircraft, the UK recently had to request the help of Nato allies to search for suspected Russian submarines off the west coast of Scotland. In Germany there have been reports of serious malfunctions in military equipment.
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  • These figures are in line with earlier research carried out by the Royal United Services Institute which projected that UK defence spending could fall to about 1.7% of GDP by the end of the decade.
  • Nato has already set a target that member states should each spend a minimum of 2% of their national income or GDP on defence.
  • Contrast that with Russia's defence spending, which is rising from 3.4% of its GDP this year to 4.2% next year ($81bn or £52.2bn). Russia is also stepping up its military activity. A separate report by Ian Brzezinski for the Atlantic Council says there is also an "exercise gap" between Russia and Nato. Since 2013 Russia has conducted at least six military exercises involving 65,000-160,000 troops.
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Companies Quietly Apply Biofuel Tools to Household Products - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...pplied-to-household-soaps.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 01 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Companies Quietly Apply Biofuel Tools to Household Products
  • A liquid laundry detergent made by Ecover, a Belgian company that makes “green” household products including the Method line, contains an oil produced by algae whose genetic code was altered using synthetic biology. The algae’s DNA sequence was changed in a lab, according to Tom Domen, the company’s manager for long-term innovation.
  • Unilever recently announced that it was using algae oil made by a company called Solazyme in Lux, a popular soap
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  • An ingredient crucial to malaria drugs, artemisinin, is already being produced from a yeast altered through synthetic biology. Specific brands have not been disclosed.
  • Solazyme points to substances like rennet, a key processing aid in cheese-making that requires an enzyme called chymosin to promote clotting. Traditionally, calves’ stomachs were used to provide that enzyme to curdle milk for cheese. But since the late 1990s, rennet has been generated by a microbe whose genetic code was altered with the insertion of a single bovine gene, and that process is the one most widely in use now in the United States.
  • Solazyme describes the organism that produces the oil as “an optimized strain” of single-cell algae “that have been in existence longer than we have.”
  • Ecover buys the ingredient, algal oil from Solazyme, which used to describe itself as a synthetic biology company but has taken the term off its website.
  • Solazyme pointed to the environmental benefits of its processes and noted that the World Wildlife Fund, Rainforest Alliance and other environmental groups support its work. “We use molecular biology and standard industrial fermentation to produce renewable, sustainable algal oils that help alleviate pressures on the fragile ecosystems around the Equator that are frequently subject to deforestation and habitat destruction,”
  • The groups acknowledge that the Solazyme oil itself — in the Ecover detergent — does not contain genetically engineered ingredients in the conventional meaning of the term. Rather, the organism producing the oil has been genetically altered.
  • Some of the same companies are now busily churning out vanillin, resveratrol and citrus flavorings from yeast and other microorganisms that are a product of synthetic biology for use in foods.
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How Putin Forged a Pipeline Deal That Derailed - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...eline-deal-that-derailed-.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • How Putin Forged a Pipeline Deal That Derailed
  • The pipeline, known as South Stream, was Mr. Putin’s most important European project, a tool of economic and geopolitical power critical to twin goals: keeping Europe hooked on Russian gas, and further entrenching Russian influence in fragile former Soviet satellite states as part of a broader effort to undermine European unity.
  • The bill that Parliament took up on April 4 was arcane. But it swept aside a host of European regulations — rules that Mr. Putin did not want to abide by — for a pipeline that would deliver gas throughout southern Europe. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage In Diplomatic Defeat, Putin Diverts Pipeline to TurkeyDEC. 1, 2014
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  • In France, the leader of the far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen, recently acknowledged that her party had received a loan for 9 million euros, or about $11 million, from a Kremlin-linked bank.
  • Faced with punishing sanctions, a petro-economy pushed to the brink by plunging oil prices and the wildly gyrating value of the ruble, Mr. Putin this month halted the project.
  • Geological surveys suggested that Bulgaria could be sitting atop an underground ocean of natural gas, enough to be self-sufficient for years, enough to eclipse the advantages of South Stream.
  • On April 4, 2014, soon after Mr. Putin annexed Crimea, Bulgaria’s Parliament gave initial passage to a bill that effectively exempted South Stream from a number of European Union regulations, most important, the one that would have forced Gazprom to allow non-Russian gas to flow through the pipeline.
  • “If I hear one more word about competition, I’m going to freeze your you-know-whats off,” Mr. Putin reportedly shouted.
  • The anti-fracking movement became so broad that in January 2012, Parliament banned not only the extraction of shale gas, but even exploration that would quantify the country’s reserves.
  • When the Bulgarian government refused, the European Union cut off tens of millions of euros in regional development funds.
  • In desperate need of the European funds, the prime minister announced the next day that South Stream would be halted until it had full European Union approval.
  • While “he overreached, and he underestimated the response” to his intervention in Ukraine, said Mr. Gray, the former American diplomat, the Russian leader has been “quite effective” in countries like Bulgaria.“He won a great deal by getting Nabucco stopped,” Mr. Gray said. “Ultimately, his goal is to keep as much control over the former parts of the Soviet empire as possible.”
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The Insourcing Boom - Charles Fishman - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...2
shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The magic is in that head: GE has put a small heat pump up there, and the GeoSpring pulls ambient heat from the air to help heat water. As a result, the GeoSpring uses some 60 percent less electricity than a typical water heater. (You can also control it using your iPhone.)
  • The GeoSpring is an innovative product in a mature category
  • We really had zero communications into the assembly line there.”
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  • The team eliminated 1 out of every 5 parts. It cut the cost of the materials by 25 percent.
  • the team cut the work hours necessary to assemble the water heater from 10 hours in China to two hours in Louisville.
  • Time-to-market has also improved, greatly.
  • four weeks on the boat from China and one week dockside to clear customs.
  • Total time from factory to warehouse: 30 minutes.
  • there is an inherent understanding that moves out when you move the manufacturing out. And you never get it back.”
  • At the end of the day, they say, ‘If we were doing this for the U.S. market, we should never have gone to China in the first place.’ ”
  • But the logic of onshoring today goes even further—and is driven, in part, by the newfound impatience of the product cycle itself.
  • Just a few years ago, the design of a new range or refrigerator was assumed to last seven years. Now, says Lou Lenzi, GE’s managers figure no model will be good for more than two or three years.
  • Products that once seemed mature—from stoves to greeting cards—are being reinvigorated with cheap computing technology.
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Dubai, Once a Humble Refueling Stop, Is Crossroad to the Globe - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...is-crossroad-to-the-globe.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Dubai, Once a Humble Refueling Stop, Is Crossroad to the Globe
  • Five years ago, the global credit crisis brought Dubai near bankruptcy. But the city has recovered its drive, helped partly by a $10 billion bailout from neighboring Abu Dhabi, and a return of investors from the Middle East and Eastern Europe
  • Dubai’s success has rattled its rivals, particularly airlines in Europe and the United States, which have complained that traffic was being siphoned from their hubs.
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As Panama Canal Expands, West Coast Ports Scramble to Keep Big Cargo Vessels - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...cramble-to-keep-big-ships.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Making Everything Shipshape
  • The ports in Tacoma, Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles, Long Beach and elsewhere offer much shorter sailing times than Gulf Coast and East Coast ports. But for shippers of some goods, the web of logistics, including trucks and railroads, ends up being less expensive if they go through the Panama Canal.
  • While the widened Panama Canal will allow an all-water route for big ships to the East Coast, the project — originally scheduled to open this year — has been plagued with construction delays. And the authorities have yet to announce toll charges for passing ships. In the end, it might be too expensive for some ships to use.
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  • At the same time, sailing patterns may shift as Asian manufacturing continues to move from China to countries to the south, like Singapore and Vietnam, which are actually closer by sea to East Coast ports through the Suez Canal than to West Coast ports across the Pacific.
  • For trade with China, Prince Rupert’s appeal is proximity. Prince Rupert is two to three days closer than the western coast of the United States, helping ships cut fuel costs.
  • While the railways and truck lines in Canada have a history of labor instability, cargo carriers sailing into the country can avoid taxes levied by the United States government.
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Picking Lesser of Two Climate Evils - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...te-methane-global-warming.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 05 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Picking Lesser of Two Climate Evils
  • ound for pound, methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But in stark contrast to CO2, methane breaks down quickly in the atmosphere.
  • He argues, essentially, that the world has yet to mount a serious effort to control carbon dioxide, which will be vastly more harmful in the long run, and that methane and other short-term pollutants should largely be ignored until that bigger problem is fixed.
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  • The methane is like a hangover that you can get over if you stop drinking,” said Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, a climate scientist at the University of Chicago and the author of a textbook on planetary atmospheres. “CO2 is more like lead poisoning — it sticks around, you don’t get rid of it, and it causes irreversible harm.”
  • Aggressively controlling methane, they say, would help slow the warming sharply over the coming decades.
  • By contrast, “our success in controlling CO2 emissions is likely to make very little difference on temperature over the next 40 years,” said Drew Shindell, a longtime NASA climate scientist who is leaving for Duke University.
  • Experts say that, looking at the more distant future, it is hugely important to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere now, even if that requires burning more gas. Dr. Pierrehumbert and Dr. Shindell largely agree on this point, with Dr. Pierrehumbert discounting the gas-is-worse-than-coal argument as “bunkum.”
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Europe's dangerous addiction to Russian gas needs radical cure - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...64-11e3-8b15-00144feabdc0.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Europe’s dangerous addiction to Russian gas needs radical cure
  • “It really boils down to this: no nation should use energy to stymie a people’s aspirations,” Mr Kerry said in Brussels, just as Russia’s Gazprom raised the price it charges Ukraine for gas.
  • Bernstein Research has calculated that to do so, Europe needs to eliminate 15 bcm of residential and industrial gas demand, invest $215bn and incur $37bn of annual costs in the form of higher-priced energy. That works out as $160 for every single person in Europe.
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  • A new energy corridor has just been sanctioned that will bring Caspian gas being developed by a BP-led consortium into the heart of Europe.
  • Import terminals are being built to receive liquefied natural gas (LNG) from places such as Qatar and Nigeria.
  • And countries such as the UK are moving ahead with developing their substantial reserves of shale gas.
  • There are 20 operational LNG regasification plants in the EU, with a combined import capacity of about 198 bcm of gas per year. A further 30 bcm/y are under construction. But Europe’s terminals are conspicuously underused. Imports of LNG have fallen sharply, partly because of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which prompted Japan to switch to gas-fired generation and diverted LNG cargoes from Europe.
  • The question is: are European customers prepared to pay Japanese prices for LNG?” says one Brussels-based European gas industry official.
  • Arguably a more urgent task is to improve energy security by unifying the EU market – in particular, linking up the countries of eastern Europe.
  • If Europe is serious about reducing its dependence on Russian gas, it will have to take radical measures. Bernstein’s Mr Clint lists some: switching from gas to diesel power, closing gas-intensive industries such as oil refining, reducing gas consumption in heating and adding more coal-fired generation – which would inevitably increase carbon emissions.
  • Added to that, Europe is contractually obliged to continue taking delivery of Russian gas. Bernstein makes the point that Gazprom has about 120 bcm of take-or-pay contracts – with companies such as ENI, Edison and RWE – that require Europe to continue paying about $50bn for Russian gas. Many of these stretch way beyond 2020.
  • Europe accounts for half of Gazprom’s gas revenues, according to the company, and 71 per cent of Russia’s crude oil exports, according to the International Energy Agency.
  • “Gazprom has heard it all before,” said Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies. “For the past 20 years Europe has been trying to diversify away from Russian gas and failed.”
  • A growing share of oil, largely from Rosneft, is flowing directly to China by pipeline. Lukoil last week started commercial production at its enormous West Qurna field in Iraq – much of whose production is likely to be sold in Asian markets, analysts say. And Novatek, together with CNPC of China, is building an LNG terminal that will help shift gas exports towards Asia.
  • Any reduction in imports from Russia thanks to Europe’s diversification strategy “is not a prospect for the next few years,” he said. “And by that time I think Russia will find alternative gas export markets, especially in an environment of strong Asian demand for gas.”
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Daniel Gros calls for a broad array of EU measures to revive output growth and strength... - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...d-strengthen-regional-cohesion
shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Restarting Ukraine’s Economy
  • the price of gas must be increased substantially to reflect its cost,
  • governance of the country’s pipelines, which still earn huge royalties for carrying Russian gas to Western Europe, must be overhauled.
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  • subsidies for domestic coal production must be stopped
  • Ever since these pipelines were effectively handed over to nominally private companies in murky deals, earnings from transit fees have gone missing, along with vast amounts of gas, while little maintenance has been carried out.
  • An energy ministry that decides who can obtain gas at one-fifth of its cost and who cannot is obviously subject to irresistible pressures to distribute its favors to whomever offers the largest bribes or kickbacks. The same applies to coal subsidies, except that the subsidies go to the most inefficient producers.
  • these steps also risk hitting eastern Ukraine, which contains a substantial Russophone minority, particularly hard. Some there might be tempted by the allure of a better life in “Mother Russia,” with its vast resources of cheap energy.
  • And it should open its markets, not only by abolishing its import tariffs on Ukrainian products, which has already been decided, but also by granting a temporary exemption from the need to meet all of the EU’s complicated technical standards and regulations.
  • At the same time, the EU should help to address the cause of extraordinary heating costs: the woeful energy inefficiency of most of the existing housing stock.
  • Experience in Eastern Europe, where energy prices had to be increased substantially in the 1990’s, demonstrated that simple measures – such as better insulation, together with maintenance and repair of the region’s many long-neglected central heating systems – yield a quick and substantial payoff in reducing energy intensity.
  • Even a slight improvement in Ukraine’s energy efficiency would contribute more to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions than the vast sums currently being spent to develop renewable energy sources.
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The Poor Need Cheap Fossil Fuels - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...r-need-cheap-fossil-fuels.html coal gas
shared by Gene Ellis on 09 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • In sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, excluding South Africa, the entire electricity-generating capacity available is only 28 gigawatts — equivalent to Arizona’s — for 860 million people. About 6.5 million people live in Arizona.
  • Over the last 30 years, China moved an estimated 680 million people out of poverty by giving them access to modern energy, mostly powered by coal. Yes, this has resulted in terrible air pollution and a huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions. But it is a trade-off many developing countries would gratefully choose.
  • Today, 81 percent of the planet’s energy needs are met by fossil fuels, and according to the International Energy Agency, that percentage will be almost as high in 2035 under current policies, when consumption will be much greater. The unfortunate fact is that many people feel uncomfortable facing up to the undeniable need for more cheap and reliable power in the developing world.
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  • Because burning natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, this technology has helped the United States reduce carbon dioxide emissions to the lowest level since the mid-1990s
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