18 September 2012
East-West Center
Dr. Alicia Campi
Last week, noted Mongolist Dr. Alicia Campi gave a lecture on her research into Mongolia’s new mineral development and its effects on surrounding north Asian countries. For this post, I will focus only on her discussion of China:
China’s neighbor to the north, Mongolia, is in the midst of a very exciting time: the country’s economy is growing by leaps and bounds, and most of this growth is directly attributable to Mongolia’s extensive mineral reserves. Mongolia is home to vast deposits of coal, gold, uranium, copper and rare earth minerals. In 2011 alone, coal mining increased 23%!
What does this mean for China?
China is currently Mongolia’s largest trading partner and foreign investor. As both a geographically enormous country and a coal-based economy, China has the onerous task of transporting coal all over the nation to fuel industry. This ties up the railways! So naturally, China is very interested in Mongolian copper and coal for its factories in the north, closer to the border.
However, China could have other motives for buying Mongolian coal. According to a Peking University professor, China only invests in Mongolia for “political reasons.” He was referring to China’s national security goal of encouraging the Mongolian government not to support Inner Mongolian “terrorists.” Given that the Chinese government has forwarded huge sums of money to Mongolia in exchange for minerals it won't receive for years, this claim seems legitimate.
As I was listening to Dr. Campi’s lecture, two things struck me as significant:
1. Mongolia’s plan for the future is to diversify their foreign investors (meaning, not let China invest so much more than any other country)
2. Russia is interested in monopolizing Mongolian coal in order to keep it out of China’s hands
These two points indicate that it might be more difficult for China to obtain Mongolian coal in the near future. Could this cause China to make more of an effort to shift its economy towards a renewable energy base? Or will China just find other ways to keep fueling its growth using coal? Only time will tell!
-Hannah Chen
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Empower and Thrive: Creating New Pathways for Development and Conservation
Hello everyone! My name is Hannah, and I am the new intern at IFCE. I’ve been here for a couple of weeks now, and I am enjoying every minute of it. I was especially excited to have the opportunity to attend a summit last Tuesday called "Empower and Thrive: Creating New Pathways for Development and Conservation," which was jointly hosted by the World Wildlife Foundation and Care.
What an amazing group of speakers! Twelve experts were divided into three panels, and each lecture had its own distinct approach to global development and environmental conservation.
The discussions from the first and third panels varied widely in topic, everything from the green economy to environmental policies in Mozambique. The second panel was more focused on a single issue: food security. Here are a few main points from the lectures:
-Green Growth is the way of the future! If businesses integrate the idea of the value of natural capital into their models and work towards putting a price on carbon, they can save money and have more environmentally-friendly business practices!
-Women are still at the bottom of the financial food chain, but they can play a large role in combating climate change. It is essential to promote education, job training, and reproductive health services for women, and to include women in decision-making processes at local government levels
-Global food security is a major concern for the future. We will have to double the world food supply by 2050, but if we can maximize the yield of cropland and slow deforestation, we might be able to do it! We must also breed food that delivers better nutrition and uses less water and fewer chemicals
The above are just a few examples of the topics we learned about, but I felt that there was an overall theme included (either explicitly or implicitly) in each of the lectures: partnership. Whether the speakers advocated partnership between state and local governments, between the public and private sector, between women and men, or between the World Wildlife Foundation and Care (two organizations with seemingly very different goals), the message was clear: climate change and environmental problems are everybody’s problems, and we must work together to solve them--even where we do not agree.
What an amazing group of speakers! Twelve experts were divided into three panels, and each lecture had its own distinct approach to global development and environmental conservation.
The discussions from the first and third panels varied widely in topic, everything from the green economy to environmental policies in Mozambique. The second panel was more focused on a single issue: food security. Here are a few main points from the lectures:
-Green Growth is the way of the future! If businesses integrate the idea of the value of natural capital into their models and work towards putting a price on carbon, they can save money and have more environmentally-friendly business practices!
-Women are still at the bottom of the financial food chain, but they can play a large role in combating climate change. It is essential to promote education, job training, and reproductive health services for women, and to include women in decision-making processes at local government levels
-Global food security is a major concern for the future. We will have to double the world food supply by 2050, but if we can maximize the yield of cropland and slow deforestation, we might be able to do it! We must also breed food that delivers better nutrition and uses less water and fewer chemicals
The above are just a few examples of the topics we learned about, but I felt that there was an overall theme included (either explicitly or implicitly) in each of the lectures: partnership. Whether the speakers advocated partnership between state and local governments, between the public and private sector, between women and men, or between the World Wildlife Foundation and Care (two organizations with seemingly very different goals), the message was clear: climate change and environmental problems are everybody’s problems, and we must work together to solve them--even where we do not agree.
The Role of Renewables in the U.S. and World Energy Mix
July 10, 2012 – 3:00 p.m.
Atlantic Council, Washington, D.C.
Speakers:
Katrina Landis
Chief Executive Officer, BP Alternative Energy Ltd.
John Lyman
Director, Energy and Environment Program, Atlantic Council
Katrina Landis - British Petroleum’s (BP) Alternative Energy (AE) Ltd. division was launched in 2005 with global assets in the United States, Brazil and Europe. BP AE’s aim is to create new businesses, which will facilitate BP’s transition to a low-carbon future. With four core businesses in biofuels, US wind, solar and hydrogen power & carbon capture and storage, BP AE has invested about $7 billion, where $4 billion of that has been invested in the US. BP AE has invested approximately $4 billion in U.S. biofuels, including wind, solar and hydrogen power, as well as carbon capture and storage. Ms. Landis spoke about two of the businesses within BP AE--biofuels and wind energy-- and mentioned that BP AE plans to let go of their solar business due to competition. Unfortunately, BP AE’s carbon capture and storage business is at a standstill, as the progress is not moving at the expected pace.
In terms of biofuels, BP AE reexamined their strategy. It was decided that there were four criteria that needed to be satisfied in order to create a viable business. First, biofuels have to be low cost. They have to be capable of competing with hydrocarbon fuel over the short to medium term, with absolutely no form of subsidization. Second, biofuels must be low-carbon from a full cycle greenhouse gas basis. Sugar cane ethanol in Brazil, for example, has 90% less impact on the greenhouse gas basis than does gasoline. Third, biofuels have to be scalable. BP AE is not interested in niche opportunities; they are looking at developing very material businesses. Finally, they must be sustainable from an environmental, social and economic perspective. In an effort to fulfill these criteria, BP AE decided to focus on sugar fermentation as their core conversion methodology. BP AE believes that is the most viable and economic way of producing biofuels across a wide spectrum. Although the three businesses within biofuels act mostly independent, ultimately, the division expects to see the joining of the technologies they are developing with the advantaged businesses that they have on the feedstock basis. Today, they can produce sugar cane ethanol on a volume basis that will compete with hydrocarbons at $50 per barrel and on an energy basis that will compete with hydrocarbons at $60 per barrel, with no subsidization required whatsoever to put ethanol onto the market.
Within the wind business of BP AE, there are 13 operating wind farms with 1000 turbines and nearly 2000 MW of production. Furthermore, there are three facilities being developed this year in Kansas with 470 MW under development, Pennsylvania and Hawaii, which will the first wind facility in that state. In Hawaii, the use of battery storage is required in case the sun is not out or the wind is absent, which makes it the first wind farm to make use of batteries. What is driving BP AE to invest in wind power in the US is the production tax credit (PTC). Essentially, this piece of legislation says that the US government will financially support the development of wind energy. To date, this has meant $3.5 billion of support, which has driven $16 billion of capital investment from the industry. The cost of wind energy between the years of 1990-2010 has come down 55% and in the last three years alone, the cost of wind energy fell 25%. As the prices have come down, the size of wind turbines has increased seven times and the power output has increased fifteen times. Over the next 2-4 years, depending on the price of gas, wind energy will be able to compete with gas without any additional form of subsidization.
Since the year 2007, 35% of the new generation for power has come from wind energy, and BP AE anticipates that biofuels will make up 30% of the gasoline gene pool by 2030.
-by Amy Kuehnert
Atlantic Council, Washington, D.C.
Speakers:
Katrina Landis
Chief Executive Officer, BP Alternative Energy Ltd.
John Lyman
Director, Energy and Environment Program, Atlantic Council
Katrina Landis - British Petroleum’s (BP) Alternative Energy (AE) Ltd. division was launched in 2005 with global assets in the United States, Brazil and Europe. BP AE’s aim is to create new businesses, which will facilitate BP’s transition to a low-carbon future. With four core businesses in biofuels, US wind, solar and hydrogen power & carbon capture and storage, BP AE has invested about $7 billion, where $4 billion of that has been invested in the US. BP AE has invested approximately $4 billion in U.S. biofuels, including wind, solar and hydrogen power, as well as carbon capture and storage. Ms. Landis spoke about two of the businesses within BP AE--biofuels and wind energy-- and mentioned that BP AE plans to let go of their solar business due to competition. Unfortunately, BP AE’s carbon capture and storage business is at a standstill, as the progress is not moving at the expected pace.
In terms of biofuels, BP AE reexamined their strategy. It was decided that there were four criteria that needed to be satisfied in order to create a viable business. First, biofuels have to be low cost. They have to be capable of competing with hydrocarbon fuel over the short to medium term, with absolutely no form of subsidization. Second, biofuels must be low-carbon from a full cycle greenhouse gas basis. Sugar cane ethanol in Brazil, for example, has 90% less impact on the greenhouse gas basis than does gasoline. Third, biofuels have to be scalable. BP AE is not interested in niche opportunities; they are looking at developing very material businesses. Finally, they must be sustainable from an environmental, social and economic perspective. In an effort to fulfill these criteria, BP AE decided to focus on sugar fermentation as their core conversion methodology. BP AE believes that is the most viable and economic way of producing biofuels across a wide spectrum. Although the three businesses within biofuels act mostly independent, ultimately, the division expects to see the joining of the technologies they are developing with the advantaged businesses that they have on the feedstock basis. Today, they can produce sugar cane ethanol on a volume basis that will compete with hydrocarbons at $50 per barrel and on an energy basis that will compete with hydrocarbons at $60 per barrel, with no subsidization required whatsoever to put ethanol onto the market.
Within the wind business of BP AE, there are 13 operating wind farms with 1000 turbines and nearly 2000 MW of production. Furthermore, there are three facilities being developed this year in Kansas with 470 MW under development, Pennsylvania and Hawaii, which will the first wind facility in that state. In Hawaii, the use of battery storage is required in case the sun is not out or the wind is absent, which makes it the first wind farm to make use of batteries. What is driving BP AE to invest in wind power in the US is the production tax credit (PTC). Essentially, this piece of legislation says that the US government will financially support the development of wind energy. To date, this has meant $3.5 billion of support, which has driven $16 billion of capital investment from the industry. The cost of wind energy between the years of 1990-2010 has come down 55% and in the last three years alone, the cost of wind energy fell 25%. As the prices have come down, the size of wind turbines has increased seven times and the power output has increased fifteen times. Over the next 2-4 years, depending on the price of gas, wind energy will be able to compete with gas without any additional form of subsidization.
Since the year 2007, 35% of the new generation for power has come from wind energy, and BP AE anticipates that biofuels will make up 30% of the gasoline gene pool by 2030.
-by Amy Kuehnert
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