Nuclear Endgame - and a Rogue We Will Miss

Looks as though the nuclear strike-price endgame is in prospect.  EDF had softened us up with mention of £140/MWh for their Hinkley output; I had predicted £119.95: DECC seems to be trying to keep it under the hundred, "whatever that means", as the Inde's writer justly puts it.

Because whatever the notional outcome, bear in mind that (a) it will be index-linked, and the electrons will not be in action until 2021; and more significantly  (b) there are so many valuable concessions EDF can be given under the table by way of capped liabilities etc, the headline figure needs to be very heavily qualified - except we probably won't find out in our lifetimes.  (I remember selling diesel fuel to the old GLC / LTE: they would do anything to keep down the nameplate price - the only thing that was reported to the politicians at County Hall - including offering 12 months' interest-free pre-payment !  Easy when you know how.)

Anyhow, we may be sure it will be trumpeted from the rooftops as a great triumph for all concerned - double (prices) all round !

Marchant: Rogue CEO

With impeccable timing, the industry figure who has done most to highlight the outrageousness of all this has jacked his hand in, and we will miss him greatly.  Ian Marchant, the unlikely CEO of Scottish and Southern - only SSE and Centrica of the Big 6 remain as independent British companies - is calling it quits.  I'm guessing not many readers will have met Fat-boy Marchant, but suffice to say he is not a typical FTSE100 boss. His irreverent, flamboyant speeches, and more importantly his plain-speaking comments on the electricity market 'reforms' in general, and the nuclear nonsense in particular, have been a delight over the years.

Hopefully he will still be around in some capacity or other, and we hope for even more uninhibited outbursts from that ample quarter.  

This post first appeared on Capitalists@Work

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The weather's odd in Africa, too

Wet heads three months early - see World Voices.

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Central African Republic: Rain three months early

Garoua Boulai, Central African Republic - from Google Maps

It's not just in the UK and USA that we've been having unusual weather. Susan from the C.A.R. reported an unexpected tropical downpour on Thursday night - normally the dry season ends in April.

NPR News says experts don't know whether the apparently changing weather patterns are linked to the vagaries of El Niño * or claimed (and disputed) global warming, but reports that "since 1995, 70 percent of hurricane seasons have been busier than normal."

Or, since that makes 17 years so far, perhaps that's the new normal.
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* But a Bermudan insurer has decided it can predict weather events from sea temperatures.

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Cigarette packaging row - my art entry

Following yesterday's challenge, here's my first:

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Monaco - Grim Pix

See World Voices on the fightback against the media, here.

Monaco: Fighting Hollywood and Fleet Street

 

There's a whiff of invidious republicanism in the entertainment and news media, but the Empire fights back...

The Monaco Times reports that the Palace disapproves of the forthcoming film about the late Princess Grace. The Mail on Sunday today depicts it as a tale of imprisonment in the gilded cage of a sham marriage.

On a separate issue, the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times has lost a court case over its defamatory reporting of the wedding in 2011 of Princess Charlene and Prince Albert II, and has agreed to pay £300,000 in damages.

Covering both, and staunchly loyal to the House of Grimaldi, is "The Mad Monarchist" blogger, describing himself as "Unreconstructed reactionary ever plotting counterrevolution and the restoration of the Old Order."

Cigarette packaging: new art competition

Here are some suggestions, but you can extend the concept. Please post on your blog and notify us of your entry by comment below.

The Chinese are facing unemployment, too: Foxconn replacing workers with robots

See this on SingularityHub. Hat-tip to "backwardsevolution" commenting here (comment dateline 23 January at 9:21 am).

Greece: Woodsmoke smog in Athens as locals burn furniture, forests

See Peak Oil blog here.

Also see our Energy Page story on China, coal and last week's smog there.

UK fuel security threatened by privatisation?

An article in the latest edition of Private Eye magazine (online version here) explores some worries about the proposal in the draft Energy Bill to sell off a system that guarantees oil to military bases and airfields.

An old Greek proverb says: There is no borrowing a sword in time of war.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

New economical car: Hybrid Air, from Peugeot

The Daily Mail reports (perhaps a bit unskeptically) claims by Peugeot that their new petrol/compressed air hybrid engine will deliver 117 mpg by 2020.

Brian Wang of nextbigfuture.com gives a more conservative estimate of 81.1 mpg, plus a purchase price / CO2 emission comparison with conventional petrol and alternative hybrid systems. If low CO2 is seen as value (and government incentives - e.g. this - could make it a factor for the car user), then Peugeot's offering looks like value for money, turning green chic into simply practical.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Nick Drew: EDF angling for guaranteed profits from building nuclear power stations

Our expert is caustic about the wily French operator and supine British Government - see the Energy Page.

Nick Drew: EDF angling for guaranteed profits from building nuclear power stations

Our expert is caustic about the wily French operator and supine British Government - see the Energy Page.

Nuclear Stand-off Hotting Up

(c) N Drew 2013

The business pages of the Telegraph are a favourite platform for commercial vested interests. De Rivaz of EDF has used them before to 'frame' the context of the farcical bluffing contest being conducted over what outrageous guaranteed price (and other ultra-valuable concessions) he can screw out of HMG for getting started on just the first of his 4 'promised' new UK nukes. And here he is again, the little Gallic tease - 'framing' for all he is worth. We must assume the 'negotiations' are at a critical juncture.

 "Almost all of the necessary pieces are in place. Our new build project at Hinkley Point is 'shovel ready' and only a few crucial milestones remain to be passed. ... Yet I am still asked – should the UK do it? And if so, do we have the industrial capacity and expertise to pull [it] off?" 

Careful with the 'we', monsieur.

"Just two more pieces need to be put in place. First, we await a final planning decision." 

I think you'll find that's a given, matey: this lot have long since bent over for the shafting. Or do you perhaps want some sort of new environmental indemnity thrown in for good measure ...?

"Secondly, and, most crucially, there must be a balanced, stable and durable agreement on the price of the electricity generated. To be durable, this price needs to be fair and balanced for both our company and the Government." 

'The Government': how sweet. What about the people ?! 

"I believe we can reach an agreement with the Government which will transparently display the economic viability of new nuclear, and which can underpin a robust business case for investors. EDF is now closer than ever to being able to make a decision." 

Ah yes, economic viability. And while we are at it, tell us again will you, about the security of supply for all that uranium you get from, errrr, Niger. Surely, a great age of eco-satire is upon us.


This piece first appeared on Capitalists@Work 


Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Should China stop burning coal?

See the Energy Page here.

Should China stop burning coal?

See the Energy Page here.

China, pollution and the future of coal (Part 1)

A few days ago, there was an unprecedentedly bad smog in China: the two satellite pictures below compare January 3 to the situation 11 days later (htp: Barry Ritholtz):

Beijing and Tianjin: January 3, 2013

 

Beijing and Tianjin: January 14, 2013

It was partly a consequence of the coldest winter in 30 years, prompting rural Chinese to burn more solid fuel (which is no longer permitted in cities). But air pollution has been on the rise generally, because of increased numbers of power plants (many coal-powered) and cars. As well as the hazards of dangerous gases (such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide), airborne particles below 2.5 microns in diameter are small enough to get deep into the lungs (ironically, this also happens to be an issue for eco-minded Westerncities that choose to incinerate waste.)

Geography is another factor. Like London and Los Angeles, Beijing is liable to periodic temperature inversions that trap particulates in a bowl of cold air, lidded by a warmer layer above. This relief map shows the mountains to the north and west that help to hold in the smog, and the January 13 picture above shows the pollution being pushed up and over them by the southern breeze.

China is hardly the only Asian country with that problem, as the Guardian newssite points out, citing the 4,500 pollution-related deaths in Tehran last year. And the West has long had similar experiences itself: the London smog of December 1952 is estimated to have killed 12,000 and harmed a further 100,000, and In the USA, despite Los Angeles officials battling atmospheric pollution since 1947, it was still reported in 2006 to be killing 9,000 Californians annually.

Last week’s foreign reportage offered more criticism than sympathy: the Wall Street Journal turned it into a story about official secretiveness undermined (said ABC News) by a Twitter feed from the US Embassy in Beijing, which has an atmospheric particle monitor on its roof. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos hinted at future civil unrest: “Someday, I’ll write about the political effects of environmental pollution [...] Hungary and Taiwan...” In fact, the Chinese authorities are concerned about the issue: Time magazine has reportedon a study co-sponsored by Peking University that linked 8,500 premature deaths to pollution in four cities.

Perhaps there is an undercurrent of envy in the Western reports: it is almost as though the Chinese are supposed to suffer for their hard-won economic success. If so, the feeling is completely unjustified. What has happened over the past 30 years of international trade is reminiscent of the way that Britain exploited the Indian textile industry in the second half of the eighteenth century, when the East India Company ruled there: the low indigenous labour costs undercut British workers, until such time as technological improvements increased our own productivity. In the same way, the West has exported industrial jobs for decades, and now there is the beginning of a trendtowards “reshoring” – which will not be the job-saver for which Middle America might hope, since part of the process will be the increased use of automation.

If there is to be societal unrest, it is just as likely to occur among us as in the East, for US median real wages have stagnated since the 1970s, and now we face growing unemployment plus severe pressure on debt-saddled personal and public finances. This was foreseen by billionaire venture capitalist Sir James Goldsmith, who warned in 1994 of the consequences of the GATT talks then ongoing. And it’s not even as though all the profits of the trade imbalance have accrued to the Chinese: I was startled to read in James Kynge’s book  that “all of the work done in China – the sourcing, manufacturing, transportation and export – rarely qualifies for a return of more than 10 or 15 per cent from a product’s sales revenue.” The lion’s share of profit has been captured by a relatively small group of Western entrepreneurs and financiers and the resulting increase in inequality is straining social relations.

Increasingly free of restriction, the cash tsunami that roars around the world has upset stability in developing nations, too. China has experienced a speculative construction boom that has left 64 million residential units unoccupied, and has become uncomfortably dependent on its near-bankrupt export customers. Others are worried, too: the 2008 Doha round of GATT was quickly stalled by countries that realised the threat to their domestic agricultural production, and it seems significant that this was the time that the US chose to involve itself in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which until then was a small-scale affair but now looks as though it could be used by the US as an alternative method to force the products of its competitive large-scale agribusiness onto foreign markets.

This is a challenging time for the balance of the world economy, not only for the above reasons but also because of ecological concerns about alleged climate change. However, the USA has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and Canada has withdrawn, so they can hardly criticise China for its emissions.

And China can’t afford to stop its economic development. This study of China’s demographics shows that its population is expected to rise by only another 90 million (or 8% of its 2010 total) by 2030, and then decline. However, the underlying picture is that while not enough children are being born to replace those that die, the people are (thanks to the benefits of modern civilisation) living far longer. Proportionally, there will be fewer people in work, and they will on average be older. Without modern technology, how will they support the country’s dependants?

Coal is vital to China at this stage. The nation has the world’s third largest reserves, but is by far the biggest producer and consumerof coal, and (after Japan) the second biggest importer, too. Such is the rate at which this resource is being exploited in the breakneck pace of development that China is estimated to have used up its reserves in 35 years’ time (others say, half a century to a century).

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Part 2 will look at coal, coal-burning technology and coal's future in China and the West.

Copyright. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Death of a Chinese sage

See World Voices here.

Death of a Chinese sage

See World Voices here.

China: Death of a master

 

Leading Chinese blogger De Day reported the death of Master Nan Huai-Chin in September. Until now, I had never heard of Nan, though he has a following among Western Budhhists.

 

De Day's post (oddly, his last) lists Nan's many writings, most of which have never been translated into English. Yet Nan's school, founded in 2006 when Nan was 89 years old, is influential in both academic and business circles.

 

His scholarship is a fusion of traditions (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism) and offers a balance of spiritual and practical, which is why he is revered in China, a country that is struggling to develop materially without losing its soul. 

 

The blogger comments:

 

大师认为人生的最高境界是佛为心，道为骨，儒为表，大度看世界。技在手，能在身，思在脑，从容过生活。

 

- which Google Translate renders as: *

 

"Gurus believe that the highest state of life to Buddhism for the heart, said as bone, Confucianism for the table, and generosity to see the world. Technology in hand, in the body, thinking brain, calm lived."

 

The English is a little fractured but it is wonderful that we can read Chinese at all, thanks to this program. When the peoples of the world can talk to each other directly, we may find peace easier to achieve.

 

By the way, the billion-plus figure at the bottom left of the picture above is the number of hits on De's blog.

 

UPDATE

 

* I am deeply obliged to commenter Qingyun for the following elegant translation:

 

"Buddha's teachings as one's heart,

Taoist teachings as one's bones,
Confucius' teachings as one's countenance,
Gives one a broad worldview.

Skills in one's hands,
Ability in one's body,
Thoughtfulness in one's mind,
Allows one to live at one's pace."