Group items tagged

Schools and sustainability? Must try harder, seems to be the report card from watchdog Ofsted. If they carry on at this rate, they'll have to go and stand in the naughty corner.

But the new technologies-which could help consumers cope with these prices-are unlikely to arrive in large numbers in time for the next oil spike. According to the authors of "The Impact of Plug-in Hybrids on U.S. Oil Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions," a chapter in the new book Plug-in Electric Vehicles: What Role for Washington, published by the Brookings Institution, cars are durable goods that last well over a decade. "The transformation of the light-vehicle fleet to new internal combustion technologies or to hybrid and plug-in hybrid technologies will take decades from the time such vehicles are widely available at competitive prices," according to the authors, Alan Madian, Lisa Walsh and Kim Simpkins, researchers at consulting firm LECG. They believe it could take another decade from now until the new technologies compete on a price basis, and begin the process of replacing current fleets.

Annual copper mine output will grow at a slower-than-expected average annual rate of...

IF YOU want to save money, cut the cord. In these difficult times ever more Americans are heeding this advice and dropping their telephone landlines in favour of mobile phones (see article). Despite some of the flakiest mobile-network coverage in the developed world, one in four households has now gone mobile-only. At current rates the last landline in America will be disconnected sometime in 2025.

Economic Growth, The Financial Crisis, and Peak Oil For several years, a swelling subculture of commentators (which includes the present author) has been forecasting a financial crash, basing this prognosis on the assessment that global oil production was about to peak. (2) Our reasoning went like this: Continual increases in population and consumption cannot continue forever on a finite planet. This is an axiomatic observation with which everyone familiar with the mathematics of compounded arithmetic growth must agree, even if they hedge their agreement with vague references to "substitutability" and "demographic transitions." (3) This axiomatic limit to growth means that the rapid expansion in both population and per-capita consumption of resources that has occurred over the past century or two must cease at some particular time. But when is this likely to occur? The unfairly maligned Limits to Growth studies, published first in 1972 with periodic updates since, have attempted to answer the question with analysis of resource availability and depletion, and multiple scenarios for future population growth and consumption rates. The most pessimistic scenario in 1972 suggested an end of world economic growth around 2015. (4)

ICSG 1 Feb 09 - Based on existing facilities and announced project developments, annual mine production capacity in the period 2009-2013 is expected to grow at an average rate of around 4.3% per year (%/yr) to reach 23.1 Mt in 2013, an increase of around 3.6 Mt (19%) from that in 2009. Of the total increase, copper in concentrate capacity is expected to increase by 2.7Mt (4.3%/yr) to reach 17.9 Mt and solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW) production by 820,000t (4.4%/yr) to reach 5.2 Mt. Most of the new mine projects and expansions are located in Brazil, Chile, Congo, Mongolia, Peru, the United States and Zambia, which together account for around 2.6 Mt (73%) of the projected mine capacity increase during this period. Annual smelter capacity is projected to grow by an average of 2.6%/yr to reach 20.2 Mt in 2013, an increase of 2 Mt (11%) from that in 2009. Asia will be the leading contributor to growth (1.8 Mt), with expansions and new projects expected mostly in China, but also in India, Indonesia and Iran. Africa is the second leading contributor owing to developments in Zambia. North American smelting capacity will fall by 12% (250kt) due to closures of plants in Canada. The ICSG tabulations indicate that world refinery capacity will reach 26.6 Mt in 2013, an increase of 3.2 Mt (13%) from that in 2009. About 2.3 Mt of the expansion is expected to come from electrolytic refineries and 820,000t from electrowinning capacity. Electrolytic refinery capacity growth is projected to average 3.1%/yr, exceeding the projected growth in smelter capacity, and electrowinning capacity growth (at the refinery level) is expected to average 4.3%/yr. About one half (1.5 Mt) of the world refinery capacity increase during this period is expected to come from electrolytic refineries in China; about 25% (830,000 t) from electrolytic capacity increases in India, Indonesia and Iran; and about 20% (600,000 t) from electrowinning capacity increases in Congo, Peru and Zambia.

"He concludes that standard macroeconomic factors alone (growth, interest rates, global growth, and global financial market volatility) fail to fully explain the recent investment deceleration. He further concludes that while the importance of structural factors in explaining the recent weakening of aggregate investment is not entirely clear, at the micro level, panel data analysis suggests that improving the business environment by reducing costs of doing business, deepening the financial system, and developing infrastructure, could stimulate corporate investment." The IMF's (2013a) recent staff report on India argues that several causes of weaker growth seem to be of a supply-side nature. The following key factors are listed as possible contributors to the recent investment slowdown: Rising policy uncertainty. In particular, high profile tax policy decisions announced in the 2012/13 Budget have reduced foreign investors' interest in India, while the increasing difficulty of obtaining land use and environmental permits have raised regulatory uncertainty for infrastructure and other large-scale projects. Delayed project approvals and implementation. As a reaction to high-profile governance scandals, project approvals, clearances, and implementation have slowed sharply. Supply bottlenecks are particularly pronounced in mining and power, with attendant consequences for the broader economy, especially manufacturing.

"Growth in quarter four was slower than previous quarters, attributed to heightened caution regarding the slowdown in the wider economy. However, the average growth rate for marketing budgets in 2014 was the highest recorded in the survey's 15 year history."

"We hear a lot about counterfeit components-mostly ICs and passives-but we don't see much about the situation with cabling. Yet, it seems to be a serious problem, especially as the cable may work to some extent if not full spec. According to Cabling & Installer, their 2011 article on the subject Counterfeit cable exposed was among their top 10 articles in 2014, three years after publication! (Also see Counterfeit cable is getting ugly.) The result is a cable assembly that doesn't fully meet the operating spec and may sort-of work but only support lower data rates, or a PoE (Power over Ethernet) installation unable to provide the specification's power."

"Six months into operations, company officials said, inmates were assembling wire harnesses at a rate comparable to that at the company's facility in Bawal, Haryana. To meet the company's quality standards, the harnesses are checked twice - in Tihar and Bawal."

"The cables, rated from 300 V to 3600 V, conform to EN and fire performance standards. Nexans FLAMEX® cables are fire resistant and non-toxic."

"Some of Lectromec's conclusions from the data review: One would typically anticipate a high number of failures at the beginning and end of an aircraft's life cycle (component life cycle article here), but incidents for aircraft with less than 10k hours represent only 7% of all reported incidents. Many of the aircraft individually reviewed in the 30 - 40k cycle range were 8 - 10 years old with about 10k cycles. Date of aircraft entering service is not readily available with the data (to be included in future data reviews). If this assumption holds, then most wire incidents around the time of the first aircraft D-check. The most common system to be reported is the emergency path lighting system. Many of the EWIS errors were found during routine service checks. The hazard of these EWIS failures to the aircraft/crew is not easily ascertained from many of the reports. Of the 725 records reviewed: 25 reports identified shorting. 15 reports including detection of smoke - 8 of these were identified as faulty smoke detectors. 5 reports including mention of electrical arcing There were some incidents that were reported to have included smoke/fire. An example of this is the following: "

"The potential for diminished growth varies considerably among countries. In the developed world, Canada and Germany are poised for the biggest drops in GDP growth rates. Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Russia, and Brazil are most at risk in developing countries (Exhibit 1)."

Africa is the world's fastest urbanising continent. In 1950, sub-Saharan Africa had no cities with populations of more than 1m. Today, it has around 50. By 2030, over half of the continent's population will live in cities, up from around a third now. The fastest growing metropolises, such as Nairobi, Kenya's capital, are expanding at rates of more than 4% per year. That is almost twice as fast as Houston, America's fastest-growing metropolis.