industryterm:renewable energy

  • Beyond the Hype of Lab-Grown Diamonds
    https://earther.gizmodo.com/beyond-the-hype-of-lab-grown-diamonds-1834890351

    Billions of years ago when the world was still young, treasure began forming deep underground. As the edges of Earth’s tectonic plates plunged down into the upper mantle, bits of carbon, some likely hailing from long-dead life forms were melted and compressed into rigid lattices. Over millions of years, those lattices grew into the most durable, dazzling gems the planet had ever cooked up. And every so often, for reasons scientists still don’t fully understand, an eruption would send a stash of these stones rocketing to the surface inside a bubbly magma known as kimberlite.

    There, the diamonds would remain, nestled in the kimberlite volcanoes that delivered them from their fiery home, until humans evolved, learned of their existence, and began to dig them up.

    The epic origin of Earth’s diamonds has helped fuel a powerful marketing mythology around them: that they are objects of otherworldly strength and beauty; fitting symbols of eternal love. But while “diamonds are forever” may be the catchiest advertising slogan ever to bear some geologic truth, the supply of these stones in the Earth’s crust, in places we can readily reach them, is far from everlasting. And the scars we’ve inflicted on the land and ourselves in order to mine diamonds has cast a shadow that still lingers over the industry.

    Some diamond seekers, however, say we don’t need to scour the Earth any longer, because science now offers an alternative: diamonds grown in labs. These gems aren’t simulants or synthetic substitutes; they are optically, chemically, and physically identical to their Earth-mined counterparts. They’re also cheaper, and in theory, limitless. The arrival of lab-grown diamonds has rocked the jewelry world to its core and prompted fierce pushback from diamond miners. Claims abound on both sides.

    Growers often say that their diamonds are sustainable and ethical; miners and their industry allies counter that only gems plucked from the Earth can be considered “real” or “precious.” Some of these assertions are subjective, others are supported only by sparse, self-reported, or industry-backed data. But that’s not stopping everyone from making them.

    This is a fight over image, and when it comes to diamonds, image is everything.
    A variety of cut, polished Ada Diamonds created in a lab, including smaller melee stones and large center stones. 22.94 carats total. (2.60 ct. pear, 2.01 ct. asscher, 2.23 ct. cushion, 3.01 ct. radiant, 1.74 ct. princess, 2.11 ct. emerald, 3.11 ct. heart, 3.00 ct. oval, 3.13 ct. round.)
    Image: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    Same, but different

    The dream of lab-grown diamond dates back over a century. In 1911, science fiction author H.G. Wells described what would essentially become one of the key methods for making diamond—recreating the conditions inside Earth’s mantle on its surface—in his short story The Diamond Maker. As the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) notes, there were a handful of dubious attempts to create diamonds in labs in the late 19th and early 20th century, but the first commercial diamond production wouldn’t emerge until the mid-1950s, when scientists with General Electric worked out a method for creating small, brown stones. Others, including De Beers, soon developed their own methods for synthesizing the gems, and use of the lab-created diamond in industrial applications, from cutting tools to high power electronics, took off.

    According to the GIA’s James Shigley, the first experimental production of gem-quality diamond occurred in 1970. Yet by the early 2000s, gem-quality stones were still small, and often tinted yellow with impurities. It was only in the last five or so years that methods for growing diamonds advanced to the point that producers began churning out large, colorless stones consistently. That’s when the jewelry sector began to take a real interest.

    Today, that sector is taking off. The International Grown Diamond Association (IGDA), a trade group formed in 2016 by a dozen lab diamond growers and sellers, now has about 50 members, according to IGDA secretary general Dick Garard. When the IGDA first formed, lab-grown diamonds were estimated to represent about 1 percent of a $14 billion rough diamond market. This year, industry analyst Paul Zimnisky estimates they account for 2-3 percent of the market.

    He expects that share will only continue to grow as factories in China that already produce millions of carats a year for industrial purposes start to see an opportunity in jewelry.
    “I have a real problem with people claiming one is ethical and another is not.”

    “This year some [factories] will come up from 100,000 gem-quality diamonds to one to two million,” Zimnisky said. “They already have the infrastructure and equipment in place” and are in the process of upgrading it. (About 150 million carats of diamonds were mined last year, according to a global analysis of the industry conducted by Bain & Company.)

    Production ramp-up aside, 2018 saw some other major developments across the industry. In the summer, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reversed decades of guidance when it expanded the definition of a diamond to include those created in labs and dropped ‘synthetic’ as a recommended descriptor for lab-grown stones. The decision came on the heels of the world’s top diamond producer, De Beers, announcing the launch of its own lab-grown diamond line, Lightbox, after having once vowed never to sell man-made stones as jewelry.

    “I would say shock,” Lightbox Chief Marketing Officer Sally Morrison told Earther when asked how the jewelry world responded to the company’s launch.

    While the majority of lab-grown diamonds on the market today are what’s known as melee (less than 0.18 carats), the tech for producing the biggest, most dazzling diamonds continues to improve. In 2016, lab-grown diamond company MiaDonna announced its partners had grown a 6.28 carat gem-quality diamond, claimed to be the largest created in the U.S. to that point. In 2017, a lab in Augsburg University, Germany that grows diamonds for industrial and scientific research applications produced what is thought to be the largest lab-grown diamond ever—a 155 carat behemoth that stretches nearly 4 inches across. Not gem quality, perhaps, but still impressive.

    “If you compare it with the Queen’s diamond, hers is four times heavier, it’s clearer” physicist Matthias Schreck, who leads the group that grew that beast of a jewel, told me. “But in area, our diamond is bigger. We were very proud of this.”

    Diamonds can be created in one of two ways: Similar to how they form inside the Earth, or similar to how scientists speculate they might form in outer space.

    The older, Earth-inspired method is known as “high temperature high pressure” (HPHT), and that’s exactly what it sounds like. A carbon source, like graphite, is placed in a giant, mechanical press where, in the presence of a catalyst, it’s subjected to temperatures of around 1,600 degrees Celsius and pressures of 5-6 Gigapascals in order to form diamond. (If you’re curious what that sort of pressure feels like, the GIA describes it as similar to the force exerted if you tried to balance a commercial jet on your fingertip.)

    The newer method, called chemical vapor deposition (CVD), is more akin to how diamonds might form in interstellar gas clouds (for which we have indirect, spectroscopic evidence, according to Shigley). A hydrocarbon gas, like methane, is pumped into a low-pressure reactor vessel alongside hydrogen. While maintaining near-vacuum conditions, the gases are heated very hot—typically 3,000 to 4,000 degrees Celsius, according to Lightbox CEO Steve Coe—causing carbon atoms to break free of their molecular bonds. Under the right conditions, those liberated bits of carbon will settle out onto a substrate—typically a flat, square plate of a synthetic diamond produced with the HPHT method—forming layer upon layer of diamond.

    “It’s like snow falling on a table on your back porch,” Jason Payne, the founder and CEO of lab-grown diamond jewelry company Ada Diamonds, told me.

    Scientists have been forging gem-quality diamonds with HPHT for longer, but today, CVD has become the method of choice for those selling larger bridal stones. That’s in part because it’s easier to control impurities and make diamonds with very high clarity, according to Coe. Still, each method has its advantages—Payne said that HPHT is faster and the diamonds typically have better color (which is to say, less of it)—and some companies, like Ada, purchase stones grown in both ways.

    However they’re made, lab-grown diamonds have the same exceptional hardness, stiffness, and thermal conductivity as their Earth-mined counterparts. Cut, they can dazzle with the same brilliance and fire—a technical term to describe how well the diamond scatters light like a prism. The GIA even grades them according to the same 4Cs—cut, clarity, color, and carat—that gemologists use to assess diamonds formed in the Earth, although it uses a slightly different terminology to report the color and clarity grades for lab-grown stones.

    They’re so similar, in fact, that lab-grown diamond entering the larger diamond supply without any disclosures has become a major concern across the jewelry industry, particularly when it comes to melee stones from Asia. It’s something major retailers are now investing thousands of dollars in sophisticated detection equipment to suss out by searching for minute differences in, say, their crystal shape or for impurities like nitrogen (much less common in lab-grown diamond, according to Shigley).

    Those differences may be a lifeline for retailers hoping to weed out lab-grown diamonds, but for companies focused on them, they can become another selling point. The lack of nitrogen in diamonds produced with the CVD method, for instance, gives them an exceptional chemical purity that allows them to be classified as type IIa; a rare and coveted breed that accounts for just 2 percent of those found in nature. Meanwhile, the ability to control everything about the growth process allows companies like Lightbox to adjust the formula and produce incredibly rare blue and pink diamonds as part of their standard product line. (In fact, these colored gemstones have made up over half of the company’s sales since launch, according to Coe.)

    And while lab-grown diamonds boast the same sparkle as their Earthly counterparts, they do so at a significant discount. Zimnisky said that today, your typical one carat, medium quality diamond grown in a lab will sell for about $3,600, compared with $6,100 for its Earth-mined counterpart—a discount of about 40 percent. Two years ago, that discount was only 18 percent. And while the price drop has “slightly tapered off” as Zimnisky put it, he expects it will fall further thanks in part to the aforementioned ramp up in Chinese production, as well as technological improvements. (The market is also shifting in response to Lightbox, which De Beers is using to position lab-grown diamonds as mass produced items for fashion jewelry, and which is selling its stones, ungraded, at the controversial low price of $800 per carat—a discount of nearly 90 percent.)

    Zimnisky said that if the price falls too fast, it could devalue lab-grown diamonds in the eyes of consumers. But for now, at least, paying less seems to be a selling point. A 2018 consumer research survey by MVI Marketing found that most of those polled would choose a larger lab-grown diamond over a smaller mined diamond of the same price.

    “The thing [consumers] seem most compelled by is the ability to trade up in size and quality at the same price,” Garard of IGDA said.

    Still, for buyers and sellers alike, price is only part of the story. Many in the lab-grown diamond world market their product as an ethical or eco-friendly alternative to mined diamonds.

    But those sales pitches aren’t without controversy.
    A variety of lab-grown diamond products arrayed on a desk at Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan. The stone in the upper left gets its blue color from boron. Diamonds tinted yellow (top center) usually get their color from small amounts of nitrogen.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    Dazzling promises

    As Anna-Mieke Anderson tells it, she didn’t enter the diamond world to become a corporate tycoon. She did it to try and fix a mistake.

    In 1999, Anderson purchased herself a diamond. Some years later, in 2005, her father asked her where it came from. Nonplussed, she told him it came from the jewelry store. But that wasn’t what he was asking: He wanted to know where it really came from.

    “I actually had no idea,” Anderson told Earther. “That led me to do a mountain of research.”

    That research eventually led Anderson to conclude that she had likely bought a diamond mined under horrific conditions. She couldn’t be sure, because the certificate of purchase included no place of origin. But around the time of her purchase, civil wars funded by diamond mining were raging across Angola, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia, fueling “widespread devastation” as Global Witness put it in 2006. At the height of the diamond wars in the late ‘90s, the watchdog group estimates that as many as 15 percent of diamonds entering the market were conflict diamonds. Even those that weren’t actively fueling a war were often being mined in dirty, hazardous conditions; sometimes by children.

    “I couldn’t believe I’d bought into this,” Anderson said.

    To try and set things right, Anderson began sponsoring a boy living in a Liberian community impacted by the blood diamond trade. The experience was so eye-opening, she says, that she eventually felt compelled to sponsor more children. Selling conflict-free jewelry seemed like a fitting way to raise money to do so, but after a great deal more research, Anderson decided she couldn’t in good faith consider any diamond pulled from the Earth to be truly conflict-free in either the humanitarian or environmental sense. While diamond miners were, by the early 2000s, getting their gems certified “conflict free” according to the UN-backed Kimberley Process, the certification scheme’s definition of a conflict diamond—one sold by rebel groups to finance armed conflicts against governments—felt far too narrow.

    “That [conflict definition] eliminates anything to do with the environment, or eliminates a child mining it, or someone who was a slave, or beaten, or raped,” Anderson said.

    And so she started looking into science, and in 2007, launching MiaDonna as one of the world’s first lab-grown diamond jewelry companies. The business has been activism-oriented from the get-go, with at least five percent of its annual earnings—and more than 20 percent for the last three years—going into The Greener Diamond, Anderson’s charity foundation which has funded a wide range of projects, from training former child soldiers in Sierra Leone to grow food to sponsoring kids orphaned by the West African Ebola outbreak.

    MiaDonna isn’t the only company that positions itself as an ethical alternative to the traditional diamond industry. Brilliant Earth, which sells what it says are carefully-sourced mined and lab-created diamonds, also donates a small portion of its profits to supporting mining communities. Other lab-grown diamond companies market themselves as “ethical,” “conflict-free,” or “world positive.” Payne of Ada Diamonds sees, in lab-grown diamonds, not just shiny baubles, but a potential to improve medicine, clean up pollution, and advance society in countless other ways—and he thinks the growing interest in lab-grown diamond jewelry will help propel us toward that future.

    Others, however, say black-and-white characterizations when it comes to social impact of mined diamonds versus lab-grown stones are unfair. “I have a real problem with people claiming one is ethical and another is not,” Estelle Levin-Nally, founder and CEO of Levin Sources, which advocates for better governance in the mining sector, told Earther. “I think it’s always about your politics. And ethics are subjective.”

    Saleem Ali, an environmental researcher at the University of Delaware who serves on the board of the Diamonds and Development Initiative, agrees. He says the mining industry has, on the whole, worked hard to turn itself around since the height of the diamond wars and that governance is “much better today” than it used to be. Human rights watchdog Global Witness also says that “significant progress” has been made to curb the conflict diamond trade, although as Alice Harle, Senior Campaigner with Global Witness told Earther via email, diamonds do still fuel conflict, particularly in the Central African Republic and Zimbabwe.

    Most industry observers seems to agree that the Kimberley Process is outdated and inadequate, and that more work is needed to stamp out other abuses, including child labor and forced labor, in the artisanal and small-scale diamond mining sector. Today, large-scale mining operations don’t tend to see these kinds of problems, according to Julianne Kippenberg, associate director for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch, but she notes that there may be other community impacts surrounding land rights and forced resettlement.

    The flip side, Ali and Levin-Nally say, is that well-regulated mining operations can be an important source of economic development and livelihood. Ali cites Botswana and Russia as prime examples of places where large-scale mining operations have become “major contributors to the economy.” Dmitry Amelkin, head of strategic projects and analytics for Russian diamond mining giant Alrosa, echoed that sentiment in an email to Earther, noting that diamonds transformed Botswana “from one of the poorest [countries] in the world to a middle-income country” with revenues from mining representing almost a third of its GDP.

    In May, a report commissioned by the Diamond Producers Association (DPA), a trade organization representing the world’s largest diamond mining companies, estimated that worldwide, its members generate nearly $4 billion in direct revenue for employees and contractors, along with another $6.8 billion in benefits via “local procurement of goods and services.” DPA CEO Jean-Marc Lieberherr said this was a story diamond miners need to do a better job telling.

    “The industry has undergone such changes since the Blood Diamond movie,” he said, referring to the blockbuster 2006 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio that drew global attention to the problem of conflict diamonds. “And yet people’s’ perceptions haven’t evolved. I think the main reason is we have not had a voice, we haven’t communicated.”

    But conflict and human rights abuses aren’t the only issues that have plagued the diamond industry. There’s also the lasting environmental impact of the mining itself. In the case of large-scale commercial mines, this typically entails using heavy machinery and explosives to bore deep into those kimberlite tubes in search of precious stones.

    Some, like Maya Koplyova, a geologist at the University of British Columbia who studies diamonds and the rocks they’re found in, see this as far better than many other forms of mining. “The environmental footprint is the fThere’s also the question of just how representative the report’s energy consumption estimates for lab-grown diamonds are. While he wouldn’t offer a specific number, Coe said that De Beers’ Group diamond manufacturer Element Six—arguably the most advanced laboratory-grown diamond company in the world—has “substantially lower” per carat energy requirements than the headline figures found inside the new report. When asked why this was not included, Rick Lord, ESG analyst at Trucost, the S&P global group that conducted the analysis, said it chose to focus on energy estimates in the public record, but that after private consultation with Element Six it did not believe their data would “materially alter” the emissions estimates in the study.

    Finally, it’s important to consider the source of the carbon emissions. While the new report states that about 40 percent of the emissions associated with mining a diamond come from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and equipment, emissions associated with growing a diamond come mainly from electric power. Today, about 68 percent of lab-grown diamonds hail from China, Singapore, and India combined according to Zimnisky, where the power is drawn from largely fossil fuel-powered grids. But there is, at least, an opportunity to switch to renewables and drive that carbon footprint way down.
    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption.”

    And some companies do seem to be trying to do that. Anderson of MiaDonna says the company only sources its diamonds from facilities in the U.S., and that it’s increasingly trying to work with producers that use renewable energy. Lab-grown diamond company Diamond Foundry grows its stones inside plasma reactors running “as hot as the outer layer of the sun,” per its website, and while it wouldn’t offer any specific numbers, that presumably uses more energy than your typical operation running at lower temperatures. However, company spokesperson Ye-Hui Goldenson said its Washington State ‘megacarat factory’ was cited near a well-maintained hydropower source so that the diamonds could be produced with renewable energy. The company offsets other fossil fuel-driven parts of its operation by purchasing carbon credits.

    Lightbox’s diamonds currently come from Element Six’s UK-based facilities. The company is, however, building a $94-million facility near Portland, Oregon, that’s expected to come online by 2020. Coe said he estimates about 45 percent of its power will come from renewable sources.

    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption,” Coe said. “That’s something we’re focused on in Lightbox.”

    In spite of that, Lightbox is somewhat notable among lab-grown diamond jewelry brands in that, in the words of Morrison, it is “not claiming this to be an eco-friendly product.”

    “While it is true that we don’t dig holes in the ground, the energy consumption is not insignificant,” Morrison told Earther. “And I think we felt very uncomfortable promoting on that.”
    Various diamonds created in a lab, as seen at the Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    The real real

    The fight over how lab-grown diamonds can and should market themselves is still heating up.

    On March 26, the FTC sent letters to eight lab-grown and diamond simulant companies warning them against making unsubstantiated assertions about the environmental benefits of their products—its first real enforcement action after updating its jewelry guides last year. The letters, first obtained by JCK news director Rob Bates under a Freedom of Information Act request, also warned companies that their advertising could falsely imply the products are mined diamonds, illustrating that, even though the agency now says a lab-grown diamond is a diamond, the specific origin remains critically important. A letter to Diamond Foundry, for instance, notes that the company has at times advertised its stones as “above-ground real” without the qualification of “laboratory-made.” It’s easy to see how a consumer might miss the implication.

    But in a sense, that’s what all of this is: A fight over what’s real.
    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in. They are a type of diamond.”

    Another letter, sent to FTC attorney Reenah Kim by the nonprofit trade organization Jewelers Vigilance Committee on April 2, makes it clear that many in the industry still believe that’s a term that should be reserved exclusively for gems formed inside the Earth. The letter, obtained by Earther under FOIA, urges the agency to continue restricting the use of the terms “real,” “genuine,” “natural,” “precious,” and “semi-precious” to Earth-mined diamonds and gemstones. Even the use of such terms in conjunction with “laboratory grown,” the letter argues, “will create even more confusion in an already confused and evolving marketplace.”

    JVC President Tiffany Stevens told Earther that the letter was a response to a footnote in an explanatory document about the FTC’s recent jewelry guide changes, which suggested the agency was considering removing a clause about real, precious, natural and genuine only being acceptable modifiers for gems mined from the Earth.

    “We felt that given the current commercial environment, that we didn’t think it was a good time to take that next step,” Stevens told Earther. As Stevens put it, the changes the FTC recently made, including expanding the definition of diamond and tweaking the descriptors companies can use to label laboratory-grown diamonds as such, have already been “wildly misinterpreted” by some lab-grown diamond sellers that are no longer making the “necessary disclosures.”

    Asked whether the JVC thinks lab-grown diamonds are, in fact, real diamonds, Stevens demurred.

    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in,” she said. “They are a type of diamond.”

    Change is afoot in the diamond world. Mined diamond production may have already peaked, according to the 2018 Bain & Company report. Lab diamonds are here to stay, although where they’re going isn’t entirely clear. Zimnisky expects that in a few years—as Lightbox’s new facility comes online and mass production of lab diamonds continues to ramp up overseas—the price industry-wide will fall to about 80 percent less than a mined diamond. At that point, he wonders whether lab-grown diamonds will start to lose their sparkle.

    Payne isn’t too worried about a price slide, which he says is happening across the diamond industry and which he expects will be “linear, not exponential” on the lab-grown side. He points out that lab-grown diamond market is still limited by supply, and that the largest lab-grown gems remain quite rare. Payne and Zimnisky both see the lab-grown diamond market bifurcating into cheaper, mass-produced gems and premium-quality stones sold by those that can maintain a strong brand. A sense that they’re selling something authentic and, well, real.

    “So much has to do with consumer psychology,” Zimnisky said.

    Some will only ever see diamonds as authentic if they formed inside the Earth. They’re drawn, as Kathryn Money, vice president of strategy and merchandising at Brilliant Earth put it, to “the history and romanticism” of diamonds; to a feeling that’s sparked by holding a piece of our ancient world. To an essence more than a function.

    Others, like Anderson, see lab-grown diamonds as the natural (to use a loaded word) evolution of diamond. “We’re actually running out of [mined] diamonds,” she said. “There is an end in sight.” Payne agreed, describing what he sees as a “looming death spiral” for diamond mining.

    Mined diamonds will never go away. We’ve been digging them up since antiquity, and they never seem to lose their sparkle. But most major mines are being exhausted. And with technology making it easier to grow diamonds just as they are getting more difficult to extract from the Earth, the lab-grown diamond industry’s grandstanding about its future doesn’t feel entirely unreasonable.

    There’s a reason why, as Payne said, “the mining industry as a whole is still quite scared of this product.” ootprint of digging the hole in the ground and crushing [the rock],” Koplyova said, noting that there’s no need to add strong acids or heavy metals like arsenic (used in gold mining) to liberate the gems.

    Still, those holes can be enormous. The Mir Mine, a now-abandoned open pit mine in Eastern Siberia, is so large—reportedly stretching 3,900 feet across and 1,700 feet deep—that the Russian government has declared it a no-fly zone owing to the pit’s ability to create dangerous air currents. It’s visible from space.

    While companies will often rehabilitate other land to offset the impact of mines, kimberlite mining itself typically leaves “a permanent dent in the earth’s surface,” as a 2014 report by market research company Frost & Sullivan put it.

    “It’s a huge impact as far as I’m concerned,” said Kevin Krajick, senior editor for science news at Columbia University’s Earth Institute who wrote a book on the discovery of diamonds in far northern Canada. Krajick noted that in remote mines, like those of the far north, it’s not just the physical hole to consider, but all the development required to reach a previously-untouched area, including roads and airstrips, roaring jets and diesel-powered trucks.

    Diamonds grown in factories clearly have a smaller physical footprint. According to the Frost & Sullivan report, they also use less water and create less waste. It’s for these reasons that Ali thinks diamond mining “will never be able to compete” with lab-grown diamonds from an environmental perspective.

    “The mining industry should not even by trying to do that,” he said.

    Of course, this is capitalism, so try to compete is exactly what the DPA is now doing. That same recent report that touted the mining industry’s economic benefits also asserts that mined diamonds have a carbon footprint three times lower than that of lab-grown diamonds, on average. The numbers behind that conclusion, however, don’t tell the full story.

    Growing diamonds does take considerable energy. The exact amount can vary greatly, however, depending on the specific nature of the growth process. These are details manufacturers are typically loathe to disclose, but Payne of Ada Diamonds says he estimates the most efficient players in the game today use about 250 kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity per cut, polished carat of diamond; roughly what a U.S. household consumes in 9 days. Other estimates run higher. Citing unnamed sources, industry publication JCK Online reported that a modern HPHT run can use up to 700 kWh per carat, while CVD production can clock in north of 1,000 kWh per carat.

    Pulling these and several other public-record estimates, along with information on where in the world today’s lab diamonds are being grown and the energy mix powering the producer nations’ electric grids, the DPA-commissioned study estimated that your typical lab-grown diamond results in some 511 kg of carbon emissions per cut, polished carat. Using information provided by mining companies on fuel and electricity consumption, along with other greenhouse gas sources on the mine site, it found that the average mined carat was responsible for just 160 kg of carbon emissions.

    One limitation here is that the carbon footprint estimate for mining focused only on diamond production, not the years of work entailed in developing a mine. As Ali noted, developing a mine can take a lot of energy, particularly for those sited in remote locales where equipment needs to be hauled long distances by trucks or aircraft.

    There’s also the question of just how representative the report’s energy consumption estimates for lab-grown diamonds are. While he wouldn’t offer a specific number, Coe said that De Beers’ Group diamond manufacturer Element Six—arguably the most advanced laboratory-grown diamond company in the world—has “substantially lower” per carat energy requirements than the headline figures found inside the new report. When asked why this was not included, Rick Lord, ESG analyst at Trucost, the S&P global group that conducted the analysis, said it chose to focus on energy estimates in the public record, but that after private consultation with Element Six it did not believe their data would “materially alter” the emissions estimates in the study.

    Finally, it’s important to consider the source of the carbon emissions. While the new report states that about 40 percent of the emissions associated with mining a diamond come from fossil fuel-powered vehicles and equipment, emissions associated with growing a diamond come mainly from electric power. Today, about 68 percent of lab-grown diamonds hail from China, Singapore, and India combined according to Zimnisky, where the power is drawn from largely fossil fuel-powered grids. But there is, at least, an opportunity to switch to renewables and drive that carbon footprint way down.
    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption.”

    And some companies do seem to be trying to do that. Anderson of MiaDonna says the company only sources its diamonds from facilities in the U.S., and that it’s increasingly trying to work with producers that use renewable energy. Lab-grown diamond company Diamond Foundry grows its stones inside plasma reactors running “as hot as the outer layer of the sun,” per its website, and while it wouldn’t offer any specific numbers, that presumably uses more energy than your typical operation running at lower temperatures. However, company spokesperson Ye-Hui Goldenson said its Washington State ‘megacarat factory’ was cited near a well-maintained hydropower source so that the diamonds could be produced with renewable energy. The company offsets other fossil fuel-driven parts of its operation by purchasing carbon credits.

    Lightbox’s diamonds currently come from Element Six’s UK-based facilities. The company is, however, building a $94-million facility near Portland, Oregon, that’s expected to come online by 2020. Coe said he estimates about 45 percent of its power will come from renewable sources.

    “The reality is both mining and manufacturing consume energy and probably the best thing we could do is focus on reducing energy consumption,” Coe said. “That’s something we’re focused on in Lightbox.”

    In spite of that, Lightbox is somewhat notable among lab-grown diamond jewelry brands in that, in the words of Morrison, it is “not claiming this to be an eco-friendly product.”

    “While it is true that we don’t dig holes in the ground, the energy consumption is not insignificant,” Morrison told Earther. “And I think we felt very uncomfortable promoting on that.”
    Various diamonds created in a lab, as seen at the Ada Diamonds showroom in Manhattan.
    Photo: Sam Cannon (Earther)
    The real real

    The fight over how lab-grown diamonds can and should market themselves is still heating up.

    On March 26, the FTC sent letters to eight lab-grown and diamond simulant companies warning them against making unsubstantiated assertions about the environmental benefits of their products—its first real enforcement action after updating its jewelry guides last year. The letters, first obtained by JCK news director Rob Bates under a Freedom of Information Act request, also warned companies that their advertising could falsely imply the products are mined diamonds, illustrating that, even though the agency now says a lab-grown diamond is a diamond, the specific origin remains critically important. A letter to Diamond Foundry, for instance, notes that the company has at times advertised its stones as “above-ground real” without the qualification of “laboratory-made.” It’s easy to see how a consumer might miss the implication.

    But in a sense, that’s what all of this is: A fight over what’s real.
    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in. They are a type of diamond.”

    Another letter, sent to FTC attorney Reenah Kim by the nonprofit trade organization Jewelers Vigilance Committee on April 2, makes it clear that many in the industry still believe that’s a term that should be reserved exclusively for gems formed inside the Earth. The letter, obtained by Earther under FOIA, urges the agency to continue restricting the use of the terms “real,” “genuine,” “natural,” “precious,” and “semi-precious” to Earth-mined diamonds and gemstones. Even the use of such terms in conjunction with “laboratory grown,” the letter argues, “will create even more confusion in an already confused and evolving marketplace.”

    JVC President Tiffany Stevens told Earther that the letter was a response to a footnote in an explanatory document about the FTC’s recent jewelry guide changes, which suggested the agency was considering removing a clause about real, precious, natural and genuine only being acceptable modifiers for gems mined from the Earth.

    “We felt that given the current commercial environment, that we didn’t think it was a good time to take that next step,” Stevens told Earther. As Stevens put it, the changes the FTC recently made, including expanding the definition of diamond and tweaking the descriptors companies can use to label laboratory-grown diamonds as such, have already been “wildly misinterpreted” by some lab-grown diamond sellers that are no longer making the “necessary disclosures.”

    Asked whether the JVC thinks lab-grown diamonds are, in fact, real diamonds, Stevens demurred.

    “It’s a nuanced reality that we’re in,” she said. “They are a type of diamond.”

    Change is afoot in the diamond world. Mined diamond production may have already peaked, according to the 2018 Bain & Company report. Lab diamonds are here to stay, although where they’re going isn’t entirely clear. Zimnisky expects that in a few years—as Lightbox’s new facility comes online and mass production of lab diamonds continues to ramp up overseas—the price industry-wide will fall to about 80 percent less than a mined diamond. At that point, he wonders whether lab-grown diamonds will start to lose their sparkle.

    Payne isn’t too worried about a price slide, which he says is happening across the diamond industry and which he expects will be “linear, not exponential” on the lab-grown side. He points out that lab-grown diamond market is still limited by supply, and that the largest lab-grown gems remain quite rare. Payne and Zimnisky both see the lab-grown diamond market bifurcating into cheaper, mass-produced gems and premium-quality stones sold by those that can maintain a strong brand. A sense that they’re selling something authentic and, well, real.

    “So much has to do with consumer psychology,” Zimnisky said.

    Some will only ever see diamonds as authentic if they formed inside the Earth. They’re drawn, as Kathryn Money, vice president of strategy and merchandising at Brilliant Earth put it, to “the history and romanticism” of diamonds; to a feeling that’s sparked by holding a piece of our ancient world. To an essence more than a function.

    Others, like Anderson, see lab-grown diamonds as the natural (to use a loaded word) evolution of diamond. “We’re actually running out of [mined] diamonds,” she said. “There is an end in sight.” Payne agreed, describing what he sees as a “looming death spiral” for diamond mining.

    Mined diamonds will never go away. We’ve been digging them up since antiquity, and they never seem to lose their sparkle. But most major mines are being exhausted. And with technology making it easier to grow diamonds just as they are getting more difficult to extract from the Earth, the lab-grown diamond industry’s grandstanding about its future doesn’t feel entirely unreasonable.

    There’s a reason why, as Payne said, “the mining industry as a whole is still quite scared of this product.”

    #dimants #Afrique #technologie #capitalisme

  • #E.P.A. Plans to Get Thousands of #Pollution Deaths Off the Books by Changing Its Math - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/climate/epa-air-pollution-deaths.html

    The Obama administration had sought to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Power Plan by pushing utilities to switch away from coal and instead use natural gas or renewable energy to generate electricity. The Obama plan would also have what is known as a co-benefit: levels of fine particulate matter would fall.

    The Trump administration has moved to repeal the Obama-era plan and replace it with the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which would slightly improve the efficiency of coal plants. It would also allow older coal plants to remain in operation longer and result in an increase of particulate matter.

    #microparticules #santé_publique #intérêts_privés #états-unis #porte_tournante #

  • A Reliable #blockchain Platform for Renewable #energy Sector
    https://hackernoon.com/a-reliable-blockchain-platform-for-renewable-energy-sector-b25a7eecdf5d?

    TerraGreen PurposeThe general thought behind #terragreen is to use blockchain technology and cryptocurrency to make the earth (Terra) a greener place. The focus of TerraGreen is to produce renewable energy that is generated from renewable materials and waste productions instead of using fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas. In the end, TerraGreen’s purpose is to create a truly sustainable and clean community which will allow consumers to directly participate in the renewable energy industry positively.TerraGreen intends to break down the walls between energy producers, investors, consumers, and utilities so that people get involved and influence their energy is produced.TerraGreen Motivation.Environmental stress to earth has induced an urgent quest for innovation in energy (...)

    #ico #climate-change

  • Powering The Revolution
    https://hackernoon.com/powering-the-revolution-cf9be710f986?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    “Eden GeoPower” is looking to shake up the renewable energy sector.Powering cryptocurrency mining operations with Eden GeoPower’s facilities.Eden GeoPower is a clean energy company developing innovative solutions to power #blockchain technology with geothermal resources. Renewal energy is and will continue to be crucial to our ever-evolving society especially as carbon emissions continue to affect climate change. At Eden GeoPower, we aim to not only offset these problems but also to power the technology of the future. Our method allows us to consume electricity on-site by targeting off-grid power consumers such as cryptocurrency miners and large data centers. Geothermal energy is one of the only renewable energy resources capable of providing a 24/7 (baseload) energy supply. Eden’s (...)

    #crypto-mining #bitcoin #climate-change #geothermal-power

  • Trading #energy: Will #blockchain disrupt the energy industry?
    https://hackernoon.com/trading-energy-will-blockchain-disrupt-the-energy-industry-34a6a9e90112?

    By Ledgerback, in collaboration with Joshua SagisiHow the Brooklyn Microgrid is attempting to localize the energy industry by combining blockchain and microgrid technologyThe energy industry is an industry that can reap many benefits from blockchain #technology.In the energy industry, blockchain has many applications such as carbon emissions accounting, peer-to-peer (P2P) energy trading (synonymous with local energy trading), incentivizing renewable energy production (e.g., Solarcoin), and improving “smart” meters [3][4][5] .For this piece, we shall discuss P2P energy trading, the two major technologies that can make it possible, blockchain and microgrids, and the Brooklyn Microgrid, a P2P energy trading microgrid project in Brooklyn, New York.P2P Energy TradingP2P energy trading is just as (...)

    #investing #cryptocurrency

  • How Much Longer Can Our Grid Handle #bitcoin Miners Demands ?
    https://hackernoon.com/how-much-longer-can-our-grid-handle-bitcoin-miners-demands-15b4bd60d9ba?

    “Eden GeoPower” may have the answer.Image Credit phys.org2018 emerged as an emotional rollercoaster for the crypto market. With Bitcoin prices surging as high as $11,235 and bottoming out at around $3,691, it was a year to remember for investors and miners alike. What remained a constant was crypto’s relentless energy demands. In some cases, the Bitcoin network consumed nearly as much electricity as the nation of Ireland according to a study by Dutch researcher Alex de Vries. De Vries estimates that the Bitcoin network consumes “at least 2.55 gigawatts of electricity currently, and potentially 7.67 gigawatts in the future.” So the question remains, is there a renewable energy solution to offset these extensive costs in the future of crypto mining?A look into what causes Bitcoin #mining to (...)

    #geothermal-power #cryptocurrency #renewable-energy

  • DAVOS-Big Oil is more talk than action on renewables - Iberdrola | Reuters
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/davos-meeting-iberdrola-idUKL3N1ZO3ZT

    The world’s largest wind-power producer, Iberdrola SA, has brushed off Big Oil’s embrace of renewable energy as “more noise” than action.

    Major oil and gas firms have been venturing into renewable power under pressure from climate-change policy, collectively spending around 1 percent of their 2018 budgets on clean energy, according to a recent study by research firm CDP.

    However, Iberdrola Chief Executive Ignacio Galan, who has led the Spanish utility for 17 years, shrugged when asked in a Reuters interview if Big Oil represented a competitive threat.

    It’s good that they have moved in this direction but they make more noise than the reality,” he said on Thursday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

    Galan said returns on oil investment still far exceeded those typical of wind and solar projects and he doubted major oil companies would make a meaningful shift until that changed.

    They like to be enthusiastic but if they had to make a choice between a wonderful oil well and a good wind farm, I feel their heart will move in the traditional direction.
    […]
    He said U.S. states were more influential than Washington in terms of energy investment, and that several were looking to develop America’s first offshore wind farms, from Massachusetts down to North Carolina and New York across to California.

    The states are more and more committed to moving to renewables and the same is true of the cities and towns,” he said, adding that falling generation costs of renewable energy was a big driver of the U.S. adoption of wind and solar power.

  • Huge Solar Farms to ‘Match’ Google Data Center Energy Use in Southeast
    https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/energy/largest-solar-farms-ever-built-google-power-its-southeast-data-

    https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/sites/datacenterknowledge.com/files/solar+array%20las%20vegas%202016%20getty_0.jpg

    As the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable energy, Google has been leading the charge by tech giants to make their data center energy use carbon-neutral. Those efforts have resulted in a massive amount of new renewable generation capacity to be built in the US and Europe, and at least one project in South America.
    Alphabet/Google/Aerial Innovations

    Google data center under construction in Clarksville, Tennessee

    “Last year, we shared our long-term objective to source carbon-free electricity around the clock for each of our data centers,” Amanda Corio, Google’s senior lead for energy and infrastructure, wrote in a blog post announcing the latest solar projects. “These new solar projects will bring us substantially closer to that goal in the Southeastern US.”

    In a deal with the Tennessee Valley Authority, the company has agreed to buy the two new solar farm’s entire output. It didn’t say where the remaining power in the 413MW renewable energy deal would come from. Each of the solar farms described in the blog post is expected to have generation capacity of about 150MW.

    Since it’s not always possible to power a data center directly with renewable energy generated by a specific wind or solar farm, Google’s focus has been on “matching” its energy consumption with renewables. That means that it buys a kilowatt hour of energy from a renewable source built specifically for Google for every kilowatt hour of energy consumed by its data centers, Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior VP of technical infrastructure, explained in a blog post last year:

    We say that we “matched” our energy usage because it’s not yet possible to “power” a company of our scale by 100 percent renewable energy. It’s true that for every kilowatt-hour of energy we consume, we add a matching kilowatt-hour of renewable energy to a power grid somewhere. But that renewable energy may be produced in a different place, or at a different time, from where we’re running our data centers and offices. What’s important to us is that we are adding new clean energy sources to the electrical system, and that we’re buying that renewable energy in the same amount as what we’re consuming, globally and on an annual basis.

    The new solar projects in Hollywood, Alabama, and Yum Yum, Tennessee, will be built by NextEra Energy Resources and Invenergy, which partner with TVA. By buying their output, Google expects to match the energy consumption of its upcoming data centers in the region with renewables “from day one.”

    #Energie #Reouvelable #Google #datacenters

  • Explaining the plummeting cost of solar power | MIT News
    http://news.mit.edu/2018/explaining-dropping-solar-cost-1120

    Researchers uncover the factors that have caused photovoltaic module costs to drop by 99 percent.

    (...) government policy to help grow markets around the world played a critical role in reducing this technology’s costs.

    La France a mis tous ses moyens dans le #nucléaire, dont le prix n’a pas baissé (bien au contraire). Grands stratèges !

    At the device level, the dominant factor was an increase in “conversion efficiency,” or the amount of power generated from a given amount of sunlight.

    #recherche #énergie

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

      Investment. Global reported investment for the construction of the four commercial nuclear reactor projects (excluding the demonstration CFR-600 in China) started in 2017 is nearly US$16 billion for about 4 GW. This compares to US$280 billion renewable energy investment, including over US$100 billion in wind power and US$160 billion in solar photovoltaics (PV). China alone invested US$126 billion, over 40 times as much as in 2004. Mexico and Sweden enter the Top-Ten investors for the first time. A significant boost to renewables investment was also given in Australia (x 1.6) and Mexico (x 9). Global investment decisions on new commercial nuclear power plants of about US$16 billion remain a factor of 8 below the investments in renewables in China alone.

      Installed Capacity. In 2017, the 157 GW of renewables added to the world’s power grids, up from 143 GW added the previous year, represent the largest increase ever. The increase accounted for more than 61 percent of net additions to global power generating capacity. Wind added 52 GW and solar PV a record 97 GW. These numbers compare to a 3.3 GW increase for nuclear power.

      Electricity Generation. Nine of the 31 nuclear countries, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain and U.K.—a list that includes three of the world’s four largest economies—generated more electricity in 2017 from non-hydro renewables than from nuclear power.

      In 2017, annual growth for global generation from solar was over 35 percent, for wind power over 17 percent, and for nuclear power 1 percent, exclusively due to China.

      Compared to 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol on climate change was signed, in 2017 an additional 1,100 TWh of wind power was produced globally and 442 TWh of solar PV electricity, compared to nuclear’s additional 239 TWh.

      In China, as in the previous five years, in 2017, electricity production from wind alone (286 TWh), by far exceeded that from nuclear (233 TWh). The same phenomenon is seen in India, where wind power (53 TWh) outpaced nuclear—stagnating at 35 TWh—for the second year in a row.

  • Climate Finance Increased in 2015–2016 | UNFCCC
    https://unfccc.int/news/climate-finance-increased-in-2015-2016

    However, whilst climate-related finance flows are considerable, they remain relatively small in the context of wider trends in global investment.

    For example, while global investment in renewable energy and renewable energy subsides are rising, global investment in fossil fuel and fossil fuel subsidies remain considerably higher .

    #climat #énergie

  • UK renewable energy capacity surpasses fossil fuels for first time
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/06/uk-renewable-energy-capacity-surpasses-fossil-fuels-for-first-time

    The capacity of renewable energy has overtaken that of fossil fuels in the UK for the first time, in a milestone that experts said would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

    In the past five years, the amount of renewable capacity has tripled while fossil fuels’ has fallen by one-third, as power stations reached the end of their life or became uneconomic.

    The result is that between July and September, the capacity of wind, solar, biomass and hydropower reached 41.9 gigawatts, exceeding the 41.2GW capacity of coal, gas and oil-fired power plants.

    #énergies_renouvelables

    • En creusant un peu, pas tant que ça.
      La source de l’info est là : http://electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/report-2018-q3/overview?_k=lg3kbc
      Certes...

      Low-carbon sources [nuclear included] reached an all-time record by producing over 60% of Britain’s electricity in September. Over the quarter they averaged 57%, also a new record.

      ... mais le charbon est de retour.

      If coal-fired electricity remains cheaper than gas-fired (as analysts predict), we could see the first year-on-year rise in carbon emissions from Britain’s power sector in six years. This highlights the importance of retaining a strong carbon price if we are to ensure the successful decarbonisation of the power system is not reversed.

  • Green Conflict Minerals: Investigating Renewable Energy Supply Chains in Fragile States.
    https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2018/09/green-conflict-minerals-investigating-renewable-energy-supply-chain

    The shift to a low-carbon economy is not only underway, it is accelerating. Last year, Costa Rica generated more than 99 percent of its electricity using renewable sources; Germany expanded its onshore wind power capacity by 5,300 MW, and in the United States, more than 62 percent of new power plants under construction will produce renewable energy. What does this rapid increase mean for the countries that supply the inputs required to build these new facilities—particularly those countries that are struggling with fragility or corruption?

    The technology and infrastructure for the transition—including wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles—depend on significant supplies of certain metals and minerals. For example, the World Bank estimates that demand for the minerals used in solar panels could increase by 300 percent by 2050, should the international community meet the goals established in the Paris Agreement. A new report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), analyzes the supply chains for these metals and minerals–from who, where, and how they are obtained and processed—and the impacts on mineral-rich states. Green Conflict Minerals: The fuels of conflict in the transition to a low-carbon economy finds that significant reserves are located in states perceived to be both fragile and corrupt, and that their increased extraction is linked to local grievances, tensions, and—in the worst cases—violence.

    Conflict Mineral Hotspots

  • Looking for the Enemy – Hunter Cutting – Medium
    https://medium.com/@huntercutting/looking-for-the-enemy-7b0813ff9b0c

    NYT Magazine’s Nathaniel Rich Goes Full Pogo

    According to Jake Silverstein, the editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine, “the August 5 issue of @NYTmag will be dedicated entirely to a single story, a captivating, revelatory history about the decade we almost stopped climate change, but didn’t.”

    And the breathless hype doesn’t stop there, Silverstein lauds the author, Nathaniel Rich, tweeting the piece as: “a remarkable piece of historical journalism that will change the way you think about global warming.”

    Unfortunately the early hints suggest that Rich’s piece will do anything but that.

  • #greeneum Renewable Energy #blockchain
    https://hackernoon.com/greeneum-renewable-energy-blockchain-c686c55a380b?source=rss----3a8144ea

    Crypto Disrupted Episode 21: An interview with the founders of Greeneum.netAn interview with the CEO and COO of Greeneum, a green renewable energy blockchain. In the episode we discuss green energy, blockchain, and AI algorithms for detecting renewable energy.https://medium.com/media/88168aae6ed76ccc469eecdc576e3ff3/hrefAlso available on iTunes.For more episodes of Crypto Disrupted subscribe on YouTube, or subscribe and listen on iTunes.Greeneum Renewable Energy Blockchain was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this (...)

    #renewable-energy #cryptodisrupted #green-energy

  • Evident #proof and Swytch Partner To Capture Energy Production Data on the #blockchain
    https://hackernoon.com/evident-proof-and-swytch-partner-to-capture-energy-production-data-on-th

    ‘Immutable Proof’ service and sustainable energy blockchain will use IoT devices, data aggregators and Open Oracles to drive renewable energy useEvident Proof has partnered with Swytch — the blockchain platform for sustainable and renewable energy — to create a proprietary blockchain that will be used to capture energy production from generation equipment.The blockchain will be connected to IoT devices and data aggregators, so that data can be fed into an Open Oracle to calculate token allocation and convert data into tokens.“The Evident Proof service can be used across markets to turn data into immutable proof and, through this partnership with Swytch, we will demonstrate how capturing energy production data can help drive sustainable and renewable energy use. This is another example of how (...)

    #renewable-energy #blockchain-partnership #sustainable-energy

  • Bitcoin’s energy use got studied, and you libertarian nerds look even worse than usual | Grist
    https://grist.org/article/bitcoins-energy-use-got-studied-and-you-libertarian-nerds-look-even-worse-tha

    It’s expected to double again by the end of the year, according to a new peer-reviewed study out Wednesday. And if that happens, bitcoin would be gobbling up 0.5 percent of the world’s electricity, about as much as the Netherlands.

    That’s a troubling trajectory, especially for a world that should be working overtime to root out energy waste and fight climate change. By late next year, bitcoin could be consuming more electricity than all the world’s solar panels currently produce — about 1.8 percent of global electricity, according to a simple extrapolation of the study’s predictions. That would effectively erase decades of progress on renewable energy.

  • Cuomo Promises a Dunkirk-Style Citizens’ Fleet to Block Drilling - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-04/cuomo-promises-a-dunkirk-style-citizens-fleet-to-block-drilling

    New York Governor Andrew Cuomo vowed to enlist a “citizens fleet” of leisure boats and fishing vessels to block any attempt to construct oil-drilling facilities off the state’s shores, as part of a broad attack on President Donald Trump’s environmental and energy policies.

    I’m going to commission a citizen fleet to stop it just as Winston Churchill did at Dunkirk,” Cuomo said, invoking the former British prime minister’s call for a seaborne operation of fishing boats and leisure vessels to rescue evacuating soldiers from the French shore line. He called Trump’s decision to permit offshore drilling “an unacceptable risk.

    The only way you stop a bully is by standing up and putting your finger in his or her chest,” Cuomo, 60, said during a campaign-style speech in Lower Manhattan’s Battery Park.

    The governor, who’s seeking a third term and faces a Democratic primary challenge from self-described progressive and actress Cynthia Nixon, has also been mentioned as a potential 2020 White House candidate. He used the speech to deliver a broader attack against Trump and the Republican Party’s economic, environmental and social policies.

    They’ve attacked a woman’s right to choose; they’ve attacked immigration policy; they’re against diversity; they’re against the LGBT community; they’re against individual rights,” Cuomo said. “They’re against everything we hold dear.

    Cuomo touted a state-subsidized solar-panel manufacturing plant in Buffalo, which he said would be the largest in the U.S., as an example of economic-development measures to support renewable energy. He mocked Trump’s promises to return to the country’s dependence on coal and fossil fuels.

    We’re going to go back to fossil fuels, we’re going back to coal, we’re going to set up big manufacturing plants again,” Cuomo said. “You don’t politically assuage people’s anxiety by saying ‘don’t worry, I’m bringing back the old days, when you worked in the steel plant and you worked in the aluminum plant.’ The old days are gone; that’s why they’re the old days.

    The Trump administration policy, which would open 90 percent of U.S. offshore oil reserves to private development, has attracted bipartisan opposition from most of the governors of the 22 coastal states it would affect.

  • I cite : This Changes Some Things
    http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2015/03/this-changes-some-things.html
    Jodi Dean : pourquoi l’approche de Naomi Klein ne va pas assez loin.

    How do we imagine the climate changing?

    Some scenarios involve techno-fixes like cloud-seeding or new kinds of carbon sinks. Cool tech, usually backed by even cooler entrepreneurs, saves the day — Iron Man plus Al Gore plus Steve Jobs. In green.

    Other scenarios are apocalyptic: blizzards, floods, tsunamis, and droughts; crashing planes; millions of migrants moving from south to north only to be shot at armed borders. The poor fight and starve; the rich enclave themselves in shining domed cities as they document the extinction of charismatic species and convince themselves they aren’t next.

    And there is climate change as unconscious: the stuff of stress, inconvenience, anxiety, and repression; the relief at not having to manage anymore; the enjoyment of change, destruction, and punishment. There will be a last judgment after all. Here those of us who follow the reports of emissions, temperature increases, and political failure get to enjoy being in the know, being those with access to the truth. We can’t do anything about it, but we can judge everyone else for their blind, consumerist pleasures. We can name our new era, marking our impact as the Anthropocene (hey, we have changed the world after all.) Anticipatory Cassandras, we can watch from within our melancholic “pre-loss,” to use Naomi Klein’s term, comforted at least by the fantasy of our future capacity to say we knew it all along. We told you so.

    The hardest thing is doing something about it. Coming together. Fighting against the multiple centrifugal forces that have produced us as individuals preoccupied with our particular freedoms, preferences, conveniences, and choices. It’s no wonder in this setting that market approaches to climate change have appeared as popular options. They affirm the selves we’ve become and promise to solve the problems all in one new light-bulb or electronic car.

    Some of our present difficulty comes from the challenge of imagining a better future. Does it involve a kind of re-peasantization? The elimination of all industry, of all the advantages accrued to some of us under late capitalism? Or is it closer to what we have now, but with windmills and bicycles, the Dutchification of everything? Or is it really not that big a deal at all, a few tweaks here and there so that society looks pretty much like it did in the 70s (Taxi Driver? New York told to drop dead?).

    Naomi Klein’s bold attempt in This Changes Everything is to take up the challenge of creating an alternative to the grim inequalities of our present trajectory by using climate change as a frame for galvanizing left politics. What the economic crises of the seventies and eighties were for the right (opportunities to deepen and extend neoliberalism), climate change can be for the left (an opportunity to “pull huge swaths of humanity out of poverty”). If the left fails to take this opportunity, that is, if we don’t take advantage of the “existential urgency” that climate change provides to develop a more focused left strategy, we are doomed to “climate-change-fueled disaster capitalism—profiteering disguised as emission reduction, privatized hyper-militarized borders” etc (154). What we need, she tells us, is a People’s Shock.

    Rejecting narrow market-based approaches like cap and trade, Klein argues that climate change

    could be the best argument progressives have ever had to demand the rebuilding and reviving of local economies; to reclaim our democracies from corrosive corporate influence; to block harmful new free trade deal and rewrite old ones; to invest in starving public infrastructure like mass transit and affordable housing; to take back ownership of essential services like energy and water; to remake our sick agricultural system into something much healthier; to open borders to migrants whose displacement is linked to climate impacts; to finally respect Indigenous land rights — all of which would help to end grotesque levels of inequality within our nations and between them. (7)

    Just as Marx and Engels linked communism to the workers movement, making communism the mission of the working class, so does Klein link a vision of a progressive future to the climate movement. If the only way to eliminate the exploitation of the workers is the abolition of capitalism, the only to eliminate the exploitation of the planet is .... multiple, dispersed activities combined within a diffuse policy framework oriented toward long-term planning and inspired by an essentialist, overly romantic vision of locality, indigeneity, and democracy (that is to say, populism).

    Klein’s attempt to make climate change the basis for a stronger left politics is a crucial political move. But she weakens it. She fails to see it through. At the site of this failure is a red hole, a missing communism that distorts her vision. She invokes radical politics, but ultimately pulls back into the formula of the alter-globalization movement: in a movement of movements, multiple communities can solve their problems democratically.

    Klein presents the “core problem” preventing adequate response to climate change as “the stranglehold of market logic” and “unfettered corporate power.” She says that “our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life.” (21) We are in the midst of a battle between capitalism and the planet. If capitalism wins, and at this point it is winning, extremely dangerous warming will lock-in, threatening the habitability of the planet. What is to be done? We have to change everything.

    Everything rides on how we understand “everything.” Klein seems to understand it in terms of neoliberalism, where neoliberalism involves privatization, deregulation of the corporate sphere, lowering of taxes within a broader setting of global trade. By rendering the problem in terms of neoliberalism, she doesn’t have to advocate the abolition of capitalism, even when her arguments tend in that direction. So her solution is a kind of global Green Keynesianism, a step back into the time before neoliberalism dismantled the welfare state. It is hard to say exactly what Klein has in mind, though, since she offers so many options in a giant menu of change. It’s like she thinks “everything” should be on the table and we (each “community”) should be able to pick what we want (perhaps in a truer, more democratic market).

    Klein’s sense of “everything” is limited by the absence of a communist alternative. For example, even as she criticizes market fundamentalism, she sometimes seems fully ensconced in it. She wants to “buy time for clean energy sources to increase their market share and to be seen as more viable alternatives, weakening the power of the fossil fuel lobby” (349). But if we have to change everything, why not just nationalize the fossil fuel industries and undertake a 5-10 year process of dismantling them? Or why not nationally fund clean energy and inject so many taxes and regulations into the carbon economy that it withers away? It’s like Klein feels so fully trapped within the economic system we have that she can’t break free even as she insists we must break free. There has been and still is a name for this break — communism.

    Some of the components of Klein’s new Green Keynesianism would likely include: a carefully planned economy; basic annual income; big public sector expenditures; higher taxes on the rich; and tougher business regulations. The Green justification for the higher taxes on the rich is that they are the ones who need to curb their consumption. The big expenditures would include better public transit, energy efficient housing, and changes in land use to encourage local agriculture. Klein also favors doing a lot with taxes, following the “polluter pays” principle applied to corporations and the rich. It was never clear to me who or what was engaged in the long-term planning she advocates and what sort of force these plans would have. I expect that planning would occur on multiple levels. Given Klein’s insistence on local, decentralized communities, it also isn’t clear to me how the plans would be integrated.

    Klein opposes the nationalization of energy. She advocates instead the model of democratically run, community-based utilities — let a thousand renewable energy providers bloom! She treats this as a project of the commons (her models are Germany and Denmark). Governments provide a national framework within which decentralized, small-scale, local providers supply renewable energy.

    Accompanying the core problem of market fundamentalism is a cultural narrative regarding human domination of the earth. This narrative, Klein argues, underlies much of the left as well as the capitalist right. The former Soviet Union, Mao’s China, and contemporary extractivist left-wing governments in Latin America are clear examples, but so are trade unions fighting for “dirty” jobs instead of clean ones, and so are any left Keynesians who continue to think in developmentalist terms. In place of this narrative of domination, Klein’s Green Keynesianism would emphasize regeneration, “relationships of reciprocity and interconnection with the natural world” (182).

    How, then, can we make the change we want to see? Not with big Green: “the ’market-based’ climate solutions favored by so many foundations and adopted by many greens have provided an invaluable service to the fossil fuel sector as a whole” (199). These include consumer-based solutions (buy Green!) as well as carbon trading schemes, and fracking as a clean energy bridge to renewables. In addition to having done little to nothing to lower emissions over the last twenty years, these approaches, she argues, make the problem worse by failing to challenge the hegemony of the market.

    Klein has more confidence in the “movement of many movements” that she calls “Blockadia.” These include anti-fracking, anti-extractive industry, and pipeline protests all over the world. Klein rightly emphasizes how the contemporary resistance movement is more than a NIMBY struggle. Across multiple sites, activists share the conviction that fossil fuels must remain in the ground. They use local issues (health, safety, livelihood) as instruments for getting at the global problem of climate change.

    The struggles of Blockadia are the flip side of the extreme energy boom going on for the last decade (the one with Sarah Palin’s tagline, “drill, baby, drill!”). In the US and Canada, this boom has made more visible the war that the fossil fuel industry has long tried to hide, namely, that the carbon economy—and the capitalist economy more generally—relies on sacrifice zones. Klein writes:

    for a very long time, sacrifice zones all shared a few elements in common. They were poor places. Out-of-the-way places. Places where residents lacks political power, usually having to do with some combination of race, language, and class (310).

    With the “extreme energy frenzy,” the sacrifice zone has expanded. More people—and more people in the north and west, in areas formerly privileged enough to think they were entitled to turn their heads—are now in the zone of allowable sacrifice. From the vast reach of the Bakken, Marcellus, and Utica shale plays, to the Alberta tar sands, to the continent crossing pipelines, to deep-water oil rigs, to the exploding bomb trains, the intensification of the carbon economy has extended the range of expendable people and places.

    Although Klein doesn’t use these terms, climate change makes clear the scale of expropriation underpinning the carbon economy. The surplus value captured by the top— by the owners, shareholders, and executives of the fossil fuel industry — is expropriated not just from the workers in the industry (which it is), and not just from those living nearby (which it is), but from those living hundreds and thousands of miles away (which is a characteristic also of nuclear power). “Sacrifice zone” has the capacity to be a key concept for knitting together anti-capitalist and climate struggles.

    It’s correlative concept could then be the “commons.” For example, we would want to eliminate sacrifice zones and treat the entire planet as a commons. Having disallowed communism, Klein can’t get us to this point. More specifically, in the place in her argument where Klein could — and should — point to an internationalist egalitarian vision such as that championed by communists she appeals to a vague notion of democracy understood as multiplicity combined with a romantic vision of indigenous people. This combination embeds unresolved tensions in her argument.

    The first problem is the equation of the Blockadia movements with a struggle for democracy. Klein writes: this emergent network of resistance is “driven by a desire for a deeper form of democracy, one that provides communities with real control over those resources that are most critical to collective survival—the health of the water, air, and soil” (295) and “the fight against violent resource extraction and the fight for greater community control, democracy, and sovereignty are two sides of the same coin” (309). Klein displaces particular struggles (pipeline, fracking, climate) into the political field rather than seeing how the struggles themselves change the field by contesting its terms. Most of the time, activist groups aren’t majorities. They are small groups trying to force a position and bring more people over to their side — as well they should!

    Additionally, Klein implies that communities are somehow unified and that they encounter an external force (state or corporation) that is violently extracting resources from them. But division goes all the way through communities. The communities themselves are divided. The deadlocked political system that we have is both a cause and an effect of this division. Marxists refer to this division as class conflict (which works well enough if we have a loose understanding of ’class’). By omitting the constitutive place of division, Klein can suggest that community sovereignty is a goal, again, as if the community were united against fossil fuels — but the fact that we are not united is precisely the problem the book, and the movement, encounters.

    To use a local example, in the battle against the expansion of methane gas storage and LPG storage in the fragile salt caverns adjacent to Seneca Lake, the Town of Reading — where the facility is located — endorses the gas storage plan. Schuyler County — where the facility is located — also supports the plan, although the vote came down to 1 person in their local board and the community is clearly divided. All the other counties surrounding the lake oppose the plan, but most of this opposition came from votes by city or county boards after petitions from activists. The state is considering the issues, and will make a decision. The federal government has already agreed to let the methane storage proceed, but might reconsider. Which level counts as the community? Why? And what sense does this make in a global setting? No one involved has said that the process has not been democratic. This is what democracy looks like. We just don’t think it has yielded the right outcome.

    The second problem is Klein’s association of communities with indigeneity and land. Klein writes, “communities with strong ties to the land have always, and will always, defend themselves against businesses that threaten their ways of life” (309). Here again she denies division, as if everyone in a community agreed on what constituted a threat, as if they were all similarly situated against a threat, as if they were never too deluded, tired, or exploited to defend themselves, as if they could never themselves constitute a threat to themselves. Cities, towns, states, and regions make bad decisions all the time; they stimulate industries that destroy them. Klein, though, has something else in mind, “a ferocious love” that “no amount of money can extinguish.” She associates this love “with an identity, a culture, a beloved place that people are determined to pass on to their grandchildren, and that their ancestors may have paid for with great sacrifice.” She continues, “And though this kind of connection to place is surely strongest in Indigenous communities where the ties to the land go back thousands of years, it is in fact Blockadia’s defining feature” (342).

    Participants in my seminar found this description racist or fascist. Even though this is not Klein’s intent, her rhetoric deploys a set of myths regarding nature, and some people’s relation to nature, that make some people closer to nature (and further from civilization) than others. It also justifies an intense defense of blood and soil on the part of one group’s attachment to a place such that others become foreign, invaders, rightly excluded as threats to our way of life, our cultural identity. Given that climate change is already leading to increased migration and immigration and that the US and Europe are already responding by militarizing borders, a language of cultural defense and ties to the land is exactly what we don’t need in a global movement for climate justice.

    Klein’s argument, though, gets worse as it juxtaposes indigenous people’s love of place with the “extreme rootlessness” of the fossil fuel workforce. These “highly mobile” pipefitters, miners, engineers, and big rig drivers produce a culture of transience, even when they “may stay for decades and raise their kids” in a place. The language of rootless echoes with descriptions of cosmopolitan Jews, intellectuals, and communists. Some are always foreign elements threatening our way of life.

    In contrast, I imagine climate politics as breaking the link between place and identity. To address climate change, we have to treat the world itself as a commons and build institutions adequate to the task of managing it. I don’t have a clear idea as to what these institutions would look like. But the idea that no one is entitled to any place seems better to me as an ethos for a red-green coalition. It requires us to be accountable to every place.

    I should wrap this up. The final tension I want to address comes in Klein’s conclusion, as she emphasizes mass social movements. Invoking the abolition movement, Klein is inspiring, properly crediting Chris Hayes for his influential Nation article linking climate change and the emancipation of the slaves in the US. Nonetheless, her argument is strange. She calls for societal transformation but refuses the term “revolution.” Throughout the book, she has said that we are running out of time to stop a warming trend so severe as to destroy civilization as we know it if not eliminate the human species altogether. She invokes Brad Werner’s famous paper announcing that earth is basically fucked. But she writes:

    And let’s take it for granted that we want to do these radical things democratically and without a bloodbath, so violent, vanguardist revolutions don’t have much to offer in the way of roadmaps (450).

    This lets her completely discount the revolutionary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, as if there is nothing to learn from any of the large scale organizing undertaken by communists, socialists, wobblies, and unionists. Her model for the left thus relies on extracting from the left a central component of our history. Frankly, at the level of tactics alone, this is a bad call: why sign on to a political project premised on the rejection of working class achievements (a move which repeats a ubiquitous gesture of erasure since 1989). Wouldn’t incorporating these achievements be fundamental to any effort to reinvent “the very idea of the collective, the communal, the commons, the civil, and the civic after so many decades of attack and neglect” (460)? Klein is trying to open up a collective desire for collectivity, but without communism.

    It is also without revolution, which Klein dismisses as vanguardist, as if her Blockadians weren’t themselves at the vanguard of climate struggle. But what does it mean to reject revolution? If the movements are mobilized as she suggests, what will stop them? What would block or hinder the people after they are moving? Perhaps the state, since Klein hasn’t said anything about seizing it. Perhaps each other, since she thinks of us as divided into local communities. Perhaps the capitalist system, since she hasn’t called for its abolition. Or perhaps this isn’t the worry, since we are unlikely to be mobilized enough in time at all — and for enough of us in the north, that will be okay, at least for a while.

    #climat #écologie #capitalisme #politique

  • About Us - WindPax
    http://windpax.com/about-us

    WindPax is a small scale wind turbine company that specializes in portable collapsing power generating/power storage wind turbine devices. Stemming from a rich history of research and development in wind turbine technologies, WindPax was started at West Virginia University to provide access to wind power for everyone. We here at WindPax are looking to reach out and provide wind power to those with no grid access. This is a bottom up approach and can be used to help energy poverty in developing areas where it is too costly to implement standard energy grids.

    Our mission is to provide innovative portable wind turbine technologies as renewable energy sources/storage devices to relieve the energy need in remote locations around the world.

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinchambers/windpax-portable-wind-turbines

    WindPax: Portable Wind Turbines > ENGINEERING.com
    https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/7594/WindPax-Portable-Wind-Turbines.aspx?e_src=relart

    WindPax is a vertical turbine with three collapsible fins that use an internal generator to produce power. A battery stick inside the device can be removed to allow users to plug in their USB and mini-USB devices. Devices can also be charged straight from the turbine.

    #camping #électricité

  • World’s First Floating Wind Farm Opens Up Off Scotland – gCaptain
    http://gcaptain.com/hywind-sctoland-worlds-first-floating-wind-farm-opens-up-off-scotland

    The first offshore wind farm to use floating wind turbines has started producing power for the Scottish energy grid in what could be the start of offshore wind’s push into deeper and more favorable waters for renewable energy production.

    Hywind Scotland, the first floating wind farm in the world, was officially opened Wednesday by the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, officially opens the wind farm. The project is operated by Statoil in partnership with Masdar,

    The 30MW pilot wind farm is located in the North Sea about 25 kilometers offshore Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and will power approximately 20,000 households. The park, made up of five Siemens 6MW wind turbines, covers an area of about 4 square kilometers, and is located in water depth ranging from 95-120 meters. The area sees an average wind speed of about 10 meters per second.

  • Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2017 : From World Development Indicators

    https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/26306

    The Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 2017 uses maps, charts and analysis to illustrate, trends, challenges and measurement issues related to each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The Atlas primarily draws on World Development Indicators (WDI) - the World Bank’s compilation of internationally comparable statistics about global development and the quality of people’s lives Given the breadth and scope of the SDGs, the editors have been selective, emphasizing issues considered important by experts in the World Bank’s Global Practices and Cross Cutting Solution Areas. Nevertheless, The Atlas aims to reflect the breadth of the Goals themselves and presents national and regional trends and snapshots of progress towards the UN’s seventeen Sustainable Development Goals: poverty, hunger, health, education, gender, water, energy, jobs, infrastructure, inequalities, cities, consumption, climate, oceans, the environment, peace, institutions, and partnerships. Between 1990 and 2013, nearly one billion people were raised out of extreme poverty. Its elimination is now a realistic prospect, although this will require both sustained growth and reduced inequality. Even then, gender inequalities continue to hold back human potential. Undernourishment and stunting have nearly halved since 1990, despite increasing food loss, while the burden of infectious disease has also declined. Access to water has expanded, but progress on sanitation has been slower. For too many people, access to healthcare and education still depends on personal financial means. To date the environmental cost of growth has been high. Accumulated damage to oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems is considerable. But hopeful signs exist: while greenhouse gas emissions are at record levels, so too is renewable energy investment. While physical infrastructure continues to expand, so too does population, so that urban housing and rural access to roads remain a challenge, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile the institutional infrastructure of development strengthens, with more reliable government budgeting and foreign direct investment recovering from a post-financial crisis decline. Official development assistance, however, continues to fall short of target levels.

    #développement #développement_durable #odd #visualisation

  • How to Run the Economy on the Weather - LOW-TECH MAGAZINE
    http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-the-economy-on-the-weather.html
    http://krisdedecker.typepad.com/.a/6a00e0099229e8883301b8d2acd680970c-700wi

    Before the Industrial Revolution, people adjusted their energy demand to a variable energy supply. Our global trade and transport system — which relied on sail boats — operated only when the wind blew, as did the mills that supplied our food and powered many manufacturing processes.

    The same approach could be very useful today, especially when improved by modern technology. In particular, factories and cargo transportation — such as ships and even trains — could be operated only when renewable energy is available. Adjusting energy demand to supply would make switching to renewable energy much more realistic than it is today.

  • The hidden environmental impacts of ‘platform capitalism’ - The Ecologist
    http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2989189/the_hidden_environmental_impacts_of_platform_capitalism.html

    The environmental impact of platform capitalism is yet to become a major focus. One reason for this is that it remains difficult to understand the environmental impact of using the internet. 
     
    In particular, there is a lack of clarity about the complex supply chains involved. For example, many online services run on Amazon Web Services, meaning it can be difficult to find out whether they are powered by renewable energy or fossil fuels. 
     
    What we do know is that on a smaller scale, it has been estimated that “an average website with 10,000 page views per month could be responsible for emitting up to 4,700 lbs of CO2, equivalent to driving a car for over 5,000 miles”. 
     
    While on a larger scale, server ‘farms’ of 150,000 square metres consume vast amounts of energy to power and cool them. 
     
    The rapid growth in these operations saw them consume three percent of the global electricity supply last year, while producing two percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, meaning they have “the same carbon footprint as the airline industry.”

    #climat #ges #capitalisme #internet