industryterm:electricity generation

  • Chinese Surveillance Complex Advancing in Latin America

    In February, 2019, in a story that went almost unnoticed in Washington, the small South American nation of #Uruguay began installing the first of 2,100 surveillance cameras, donated by the People’s Republic of China to improve control of its borders with neighboring Argentina and Brazil.

    The move highlights the significant deepening of the Uruguay-PRC relationship over the last decade, including their establishment of a “Strategic Partnership” in October 2016, and the signing of a memorandum of understanding in August 2018 for Uruguay to join China’s Belt and Road initiative (despite being about as far from the PRC as is geographically possible).

    Beyond Uruguay, the development also highlights a little-discussed but important dimension of China’s advance: its expanding global sales of surveillance and control technologies. Although the press and U.S. political leadership have given significant attention to the risks of employing Chinese telecommunications companies such as Huawei the equally serious but newer issue of expanding sales of Chinese surveillance systems has been less discussed.

    The installation of Chinese surveillance systems, acquired through PRC government donations or commercial contracts, is a growing phenomenon in Latin America and elsewhere.

    Such systems began to appear in the region more than a decade ago, including in 2007, when then mayor of Mexico City (now Mexican Foreign Minister) Miguel Ebrard returned from a trip to the PRC with a deal to install thousands of Chinese cameras to combat crime in the Mexican capital. More recent examples include ECU-911 in Ecuador, a China-built national system of surveillance and communication initially agreed to by the administration of anti-U.S. populist president Rafael Correa. The system, which has expanded to currently include 4,300 cameras and a command center manned by thousands of Ecuadorans, has been built almost completely from Chinese equipment, designed for a range of otherwise noble purposes from emergency response and combatting crime, to monitoring volcanoes. Bolivia boasts a similar Chinese built system, albeit more limited in scope, BOL-110, in addition to hundreds of surveillance cameras donated by the PRC to at least four of Bolivia’s principal cities.

    In Panama, which abandoned Taiwan to establish relations with the PRC in 2017, the government of Juan Carlos Varela has agreed to allow Huawei to install a system of cameras in the crime-ridden city of Colon and the associated free trade zone. Not by coincidence, in July 2019, Hikivision, China’s largest producer of surveillance cameras, announced plans to set up a major distribution center in Colon to support sales of its products throughout the Americas.

    In northern Argentina, near where the Chinese are developing a lithium mining operation and constructing the hemisphere’s largest array of photovoltaic cells for electricity generation, the Chinese company ZTE is installing another “911” style emergency response system with 1,200 cameras.

    In Venezuela, although not a surveillance system per se, the Chinese company ZTE has helped the regime of Nicholas Maduro implement a “fatherland identity card” linking different kinds of data on individuals through an identity card which allows the state to confer privileges (such as rationing food) as a tool for social control.

    As with sectors such as computers and telecommunications, the PRC arguably wishes to support the global export of such systems by its companies to advance technologies it recognizes as strategic for the Chinese nation, per its own official policy documents such as Made In China 2025.

    The risks arising from spreading use of Chinese surveillance equipment and architectures are multiple and significant, involving: (1) the sensitivity of the data collected on specific persons and activities, particularly when processed through technologies such as facial recognition, integrated with other data, and analyzed through artificial intelligence (AI) and other sophisticated algorithms, (2) the potential ability to surreptitiously obtain access to that data, not only through the collection devices, but at any number of points as it is communicated, stored, and analyzed, and (3) the long-term potential for such systems to contribute to the sustainment of authoritarian regimes (such as those in Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and formerly Ecuador) whose corrupt elites provide strategic access and commercial benefits to the Chinese state.

    The risk posed by such Chinese architectures is underestimated by simply focusing on the cameras and sensors themselves.

    Facial and other recognition technologies, and the ability to integrate data from different sensors and other sources such as smartphones enables those with access to the technology to follow the movement of individual human beings and events, with frightening implications. It includes the ability to potentially track key political and business elites, dissidents, or other persons of interest, flagging possible meetings between two or more, and the associated implications involving political or business meetings and the events that they may produce. Flows of goods or other activities around government buildings, factories, or other sites of interest may provide other types of information for political or commercial advantage, from winning bids to blackmailing compromised persons.

    While some may take assurance that the cameras and other components are safely guarded by benevolent governments or companies, the dispersed nature of the architectures, passing information, instructions, and analysis across great distances, means that the greatest risk is not physical access to the cameras, but the diversion of information throughout the process, particularly by those who built the components, databases and communication systems, and by those who wrote the algorithms (increasingly Chinese across the board).

    With respect to the political impact of such systems, while democratic governments may install them for noble purposes such as crimefighting and emergency response, and with limitations that respect individual privacy, authoritarian regimes who contract the Chinese for such technologies are not so limited, and have every incentive to use the technology to combat dissent and sustain themselves in power.

    The PRC, which continues to perfect it against its own population in places like Xinjiang (against the Uighur Muslims there), not only benefits commercially from selling the technology, but also benefits when allied dictatorships provide a testing ground for product development, and by using it to combat the opposition, keeping friends like Maduro in power, continuing to deliver the goods and access to Beijing.

    As with the debate over Huawei, whether or not Chinese companies are currently exploiting the surveillance and control systems they are deploying across Latin America to benefit the Chinese state, Chinese law (under which they operate) requires them to do so, if the PRC government so demands.

    The PRC record of systematic espionage, forced technology transfer, and other bad behavior should leave no one in Latin America comfortable that the PRC will not, at some point in the future, exploit such an enormous opportunity.

    https://www.newsmax.com/evanellis/china-surveillance-latin-america-cameras/2019/04/12/id/911484

    #Amérique_latine #Chine #surveillance #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #Argentine #Brésil
    ping @reka

  • World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2018 (HTML) - World Nuclear Industry Status Report

    https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2018-HTML.html

    #nucléaire #nuclaire_civil et bravo @odilon !

    China Still Dominates Developments

    Nuclear power generation in the world increased by 1% due to an 18% increase in China.
    Global nuclear power generation excluding China declined for the third year in a row.
    Four reactors started up in 2017 of which three were in China and one in Pakistan (built by a Chinese company).
    Five units started up in the first half of 2018, of which three were in China—including the world’s first EPR and AP1000—and two in Russia.
    Five construction starts in the world in 2017, of which a demonstration fast reactor project in China.
    No start of construction of any commercial reactors in China since December 2016.
    The number of units under construction globally declined for the fifth year in a row, from 68 reactors at the end of 2013 to 50 by mid-2018, of which 16 are in China.
    China spent a record US$126 billion on renewables in 2017.

    Operational Status and Construction Delays

    The nuclear share of global electricity generation remained roughly stable over the past five years (-0.5 percentage points), with a long-term declining trend, from 17.5 percent in 1996 to 10.3 in 2017.
    Seven years after the Fukushima events, Japan had restarted five units by the end of 2017—generating still only 3.6% of the power in the country in 2017—and nine by mid-2018.
    As of mid-2018, 32 reactors—including 26 in Japan—are in Long-Term Outage (LTO).
    At least 33 of the 50 units under construction are behind schedule, mostly by several years. China is no exception, at least half of 16 units under construction are delayed.
    Of the 33 delayed construction projects, 15 have reported increased delays over the past year.
    Only a quarter of the 16 units scheduled for startup in 2017 were actually connected to the grid.
    New-build plans have been cancelled including in Jordan, Malaysia and the U.S. or postponed such as in Argentina, Indonesia, Kazakhstan.

    Decommissioning Status Report

    As of mid-2018, 115 units are undergoing decommissioning—70 percent of the 173 permanently shut-down reactors in the world.
    Only 19 units have been fully decommissioned: 13 in the U.S., five in Germany, and one in Japan. Of these, only 10 have been returned to greenfield sites.

    Interdependencies Between Civil and Military Infrastructures

    Nuclear weapon states remain the main proponents of nuclear power programs. A first look into the question whether military interests serve as one of the drivers for plant-life extension and new-build.

    Renewables Accelerate Take-Over

    Globally, wind power output grew by 17% in 2017, solar by 35%, nuclear by 1%. Non-hydro renewables generate over 3,000 TWh more power than a decade ago, while nuclear produces less.
    Auctions resulted in record low prices for onshore wind (<US$20/MWh) offshore wind (<US$45/MWh) and solar (<US$25/MWh). This compares with the “strike price” for the Hinkley Point C Project in the U.K. (US$120/MWh).
    Nine of the 31 nuclear countries—Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom (U.K.)—generated more electricity in 2017 from non-hydro renewables than from nuclear power.

  • Greece’s Energean reportedly in talks to develop Gaza’s natural gas fields
    Sources say bringing Gaza Marine into production would benefit Israel, too
    Ora Coren - Jun 25, 2018 10:25 AM - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/greece-s-energean-reportedly-in-talks-to-develop-gaza-s-gas-1.6201931

    Energean, the Green energy company that is developing Israel’s offshore Karish and Tanin oil fields, is negotiating with the Palestinian Authority to develop fields offshore the Gaza Strip, sources in the local energy industry told TheMarker on Sunday.

    The sources said that the discussions have revolved around the commercial aspects of Energean’s taking over development of the fields after Royal Dutch Shell said in March it was giving up its stake in the undeveloped license.

    Energean declined to comment. “Developing Karish and exploring the blocks adjacent to it are our highest priorities. We avoid commenting on rumors concerning our operations and when there is something to announce we will do so officially,” the company said.

    Located about 30 kilometers off the Gaza coast, Gaza Marine has long been seen as a golden opportunity for the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to join the Mediterranean gas bonanza, providing a major source of income to reduce its reliance on foreign aid.

    However, no work advanced on the field amid repeated wars with Israel, the blockade and ongoing rivalry between Hamas and the PA over control of Gaza. Shell had been struggling to find a buyer for its 55% stake in Gaza Marine, which it took over as part of its acquisition of BG Group in 2016.

    With Shell’s exit, the Palestine Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund, remains the sole shareholder. The field is estimated to hold over 30 to 35 billion cubic meters of natural gas, the equivalent of Spain’s consumption in 2016.

    Israel’s Energy Ministry has reportedly been kept abreast of the talks, but refused on Sunday to comment on them. Any development of the field would require Israel’s approval, but at least one official said that Israel would benefit economically from it.

    “The matter has been under discussion in the government for a long time. If they develop the Palestinian reservoir and it’s connected to Israel it would create competition for Tamar,” said one source, referring to Israel’s single gas field now in operation, a monopoly that has been the source of chronic controversy.

    “It would also reduce the burden on Israel Electric Corporation, which today is supplying power to Gaza,” said the source, who asked not to be named. “It’s a small field, but the Gaza power plant has minimal needs. So whoever develops [Gaza Marine] will also want to sell Gaza gas to Israel.”

    The source said that converting electricity generation to clean natural gas would also reduce air pollution in Gaza and ensure a more reliable energy supply to the enclave, which now gets only a few hours of power daily.

    The only problem – and the source said it could be a fatal one – is that the PA would be entitled to royalties from the gas.

    Although Gaza Marine is small, the gas doesn’t lie deep beneath the seabed and development could probably be completed within three years.

    With reporting by Reuters.

    #GazàGaza

  • U.S electricity generation by source: Natural gas vs coal - Washington Post
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants

    President Trump signed in March orders to reverse the previous administration’s energy policies, a move that he framed as “an end to the war on coal” and that comes amid a drop in the fuel’s use. Natural gas surpassed coal last year as the most common source for electricity generation in the United States, according to a Post analysis of preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration.

    #états-unis #énergie #électricité

  • Wishful thinking and real problems : Small modular reactors, planning constraints, and nuclear power in Jordan
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301136
    Une critique technique du projet jordanien de centrale nucléaire

    Jordan plans to import two conventional gigawatt scale nuclear reactors from Russia that are expensive and too large for Jordan’s current electricity grid. Jordan efforts to establish nuclear power might become easier in some ways if the country were to construct Small Modular Reactors, which might be better suited to Jordan’s financial capabilities and its smaller electrical grid capacity. But, the SMR option raises new problems, including locating sites for multiple reactors, finding water to cool these reactors, and the higher cost of electricity generation. Jordan’s decision has important implications for its energy planning as well as for the market for SMRs.

  • Decoupling of global emissions and economic growth confirmed
    http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2016/march/decoupling-of-global-emissions-and-economic-growth-confirmed.html

    Global emissions of carbon dioxide stood at 32.1 billion tonnes in 2015, having remained essentially flat since 2013. The IEA preliminary data suggest that electricity generated by renewables played a critical role, having accounted for around 90% of new electricity generation in 2015; wind alone produced more than half of new electricity generation. In parallel, the global economy continued to grow by more than 3%, offering further evidence that the link between economic growth and emissions growth is weakening.

    #climat

  • Elon Musk Saves the World? | Jacobin
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/05/tesla-powerwall-elon-musk-climate-change

    Powerwall is like the automobile of electricity.

    (...) Tesla is proposing a similar transformation — the privatization of electricity generation.

    (...) what happens to the millions of people who cannot afford the “cheap” $3,500 Powerwall (not to mention the solar panels needed to get individuals off the grid)? In a city like mine (Syracuse, NY), people without access to an automobile are forced to rely upon an underinvested and decrepit public bus system. In a future where households are powered by individual battery walls, will poor communities who can’t afford them be stuck with an outmoded and underinvested grid?

    (...) The electricity grid is a profoundly collective #infrastructure. The very nature of the system requires that supply must always be calibrated to the fluctuating demands of society as a whole.

    #énergie #électricité #disruption

  • Electricity, gas prices up by 9 pct, adding more pressure on inflation
    http://www.todayszaman.com/business_electricity-gas-prices-up-by-9-pct-adding-more-pressure-on-inf

    Les raisons invoquées de l’augmentation sont-elles les bonnes ? Les facteurs de la chute de l’hydro du fait de la sécheresse et les taux de changes ne sont-ils pas des éléments conjoncturels aux incidences théoriques faibles sur la structure des prix ? Ces augmentations ne matérialiseraient-elles pas plutôt l’arrêt (provisoire ?) d’une stratégie de subventionnement mise en place depuis l’arrivée de l’AKP au pouvoir ?

    Yıldız said the share of hydroelectricity plants in total electricity generation has fallen to 19 percent this year, much below of its average rate of 25 percent. He noted that the “the difference stemming from the untapped capacity in hydroelectricity power plants due to low rainfall levels is over TL 3 billion [annually],” and that this gap is being closed by imported resources.

    He said the government had no other choice but to raise the prices after 24 months with no increase, as since the last price adjustment the costs have become “unbearable.” The Turkish lira dropped to its eight-month low against the dollar on Monday at 2.2840

    #Énergie
    #Prix
    #Subventionnement
    #Turquie

  • La transition énergétique allemande,

    Germany’s energy mix : Getting out of gas | The Economist
    http://www.economist.com/news/business-and-finance/21620080-germanys-reliance-russian-gas-fallingbut-not-sustainably-going-o

    GERMANY’S Energiewende, or energy transition, is an ambitious policy aiming to move the country’s electricity generation away from both nuclear and fossil-fuel sources. More a slogan than a coherent plan, the term represents the German government’s desire to cut carbon emissions by 70% from 1990 levels by 2040, while switching off all the country’s nuclear-power plants by 2022. In the long term that means generating more energy from renewable sources. But more energy from dirty fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas, will be needed in the meantime. Yet so far this year, it seems that one of the policy’s unintended consequences has been to put cleaner gas-powered plants out of business.

    At first glance, the new policy should have encouraged the use of gas over coal. But the German government’s hasty decision in 2011 to close down eight nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan left a gap in the country’s energy mix that was soon filled by coal. Over the next two years the amount of electricity generated from the sooty fuel increased by 11%; in total, more than 45% of Germany’s electricity supplies are now produced by burning coal.

    At first glance, the new policy should have encouraged the use of gas over coal. But the German government’s hasty decision in 2011 to close down eight nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in Japan left a gap in the country’s energy mix that was soon filled by coal. Over the next two years the amount of electricity generated from the sooty fuel increased by 11%; in total, more than 45% of Germany’s electricity supplies are now produced by burning coal.

    Et donc, comment assurer à long terme la stabilité des approvisionnements nécessaires : gaz russe, GNL états-uniens, hydroélectrique scandinave,…

    (je ne mets pas la suite, sinon tout l’article va y passer…)

  • Lebanon: The summer when everything went wrong - Jean Aziz
    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/lebanon-political-social-economic-crises-summer.html

    As the suicide bombings inflame Lebanon, the warm Lebanese summer is gradually progressing, with temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas of the country. In those circumstances, the chairman of the public works parliamentary committee, MP Mohammad Qabbani, warned of a catastrophic Lebanese summer, with a growing deficit in electricity generation, and a government demand to raise electricity prices to reduce the electricity fiscal deficit. There’s also a water shortage, a first for Lebanon in decades. The amount of rain accumulated throughout the winter season was less than one-third the average, which is between 750 mm and 800 mm (29.5 inches and 31.5 inches) per year.

    The electricity and water shortages are compounded by more than 1 million displaced Syrians in Lebanon, putting pressure on the Lebanese economy, which was already weak, and on the public debt, which stands at more $64 billion. All those factors are posing an existential crisis, according to what Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said at a news conference on July 4.

    Lebanon is mired in crises of the presidency, parliament, government, security and the economy, as well as the issues of employee demands, student exams, electricity, water and hot weather. The only thing missing to complete the apocalyptic scene was a literal earthquake … which just happened. On July 6, shortly after midnight, a magnitude-4.1 earthquake shook southern Lebanon, followed by a few aftershocks. They caused no damage or injuries. But the picture is now complete in the Lebanese satirical impressions: It’s the end of the world. It will be a long and final apocalyptic summer … before either a complete solution or the end.