The Guardian/22 November 2017

New nuclear power stations in the UK can no longer compete with windfarms on price, according to the boss of a German energy company’s green power arm.

Hans Bunting, the chief operating officer of renewables at Innogy SE, part of the company that owns the UK energy supplier npower, said offshore windfarms had become mainstream and were destined to become even cheaper because of new, bigger turbines.

Asked whether nuclear groups that want to build new reactors in the UK could compete with windfarms on cost, even when their intermittency was taken into account, Bunting replied: “Obviously they can’t.”

His comments came after MPs criticised the £30bn cost to consumers for EDF Energy’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, and said ministers should revisit the case for new nuclear before proceeding with more projects.

Innogy recently secured a subsidy of £74.75 per megawatt hour of power to build a windfarm off the Lincolnshire coast, which is £17.75 cheaper than Hinkley and should be completed about three years earlier.

“What we see now [with prices] is with today’s technology. It’s not about tomorrow’s technology, which is about [to come in] 2025, 2027, when Hinkley will most likely come to the grid … and then it [windfarms] will be even cheaper.”

While the company is planning to use the most powerful turbines in the world today for the Lincolnshire windfarm, Bunting said even bigger ones in development would drive costs down further.

“A few years ago everyone thought 10MW [turbines] was the maximum, now we’re talking about 15[MW]. It seems the sky is the limit,” he said. “[It] means less turbines for the same capacity, less steel in the ground, less cables, even bigger rotors catching more wind, so it will become cheaper.”

However, EDF argued that nuclear was also on a path to lower costs.

“Early offshore wind projects started at around £150 per MW/h and developers have shown they can offer lower prices by repeating projects with an established supply chain – the same is true for nuclear,” an EDF spokesman said.

“EDF Energy’s follow-on nuclear projects at Sizewell and Bradwell will remain competitive with other low-carbon options and we are confident they can be developed at a significantly lower price than Hinkley Point C.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Bunting said Innogy was strongly committed to the UK despite its subsidiary npower merging with the big-six supplier SSE. A third of the group’s staff are based in the UK.

“The npower and SSE merger does not for us mean we are going to leave the UK. No way. We’re going to stay here, and grow here,” he said.

He argued the new supplier would be good for billpayers, contrary to consumer groups’ fears. “There is an industrial logic in it. I think at the end of the day it will help competition because then you have two large players on the market, and they will be more efficient.”

Bunting said he would like to build onshore windfarms in the UK too, if the government rethought its ban on subsidies for them.

He said the political argument against them – public opposition in Tory shires – no longer stood because potential windfarms in Scotland and Wales were more likely to win subsidies.

“England shouldn’t worry because England doesn’t have such good wind conditions … in an auction [for subsidies] the English sites would anyway struggle to qualify against Welsh and Scottish sites.”

Innogy would also take a close interest in building large solar power plants, if ministers reopened support for them, he added.

Bunting rejected the idea that the subsidy costs of paying for clean power should be shifted off energy bills and into general taxation, as British Gas’s boss has argued for.

Such a change would make the cost of clean power less transparent and deter households and businesses from taking steps to save energy, he said. “If part of the energy [costs] is tax-financed it will become completely intransparent,” he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said: “We need a diverse energy mix to ensure that demand for energy can always be met, and both nuclear and renewables will play an important role in this for many years to come.”

News Source: The Guardian

Reuters/22 November 2017

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German energy group Uniper (UN01.DE), which is trying to fend off a takeover bid, has already cut more than two thirds of the 2,000 jobs it was planning to shed by 2018, its chief financial officer said.

CFO Christopher Delbrueck gave details of progress after regional newspaper Rheinische Post earlier reported the figure of 2,000 job losses. The group has agreed the cuts with labor bosses via natural attrition, semi-retirement and severance packages.

“One thousand four hundred of those positions are already not filled today any more,” Delbrueck said, adding that agreements had also been made for the 600 remaining jobs.

Most of the cuts will be made in Germany, the group said.

Uniper, the power plant and energy trading unit spun off by German utility E.ON (EONGn.DE), said last year it planned to save 400 million euros ($470 million) by the end of 2018 compared to 2015 by cutting jobs and spending as it fights a crisis at its generation business.

The company, which on Tuesday rejected a 8.05 billion euro takeover bid from Finnish peer Fortum (FORTUM.HE), had not previously said how many jobs would go.

Uniper now has about 13,300 employees, of whom 4,700 are in Germany. ($1 = 0.8512 euros)

News Source: Reuters

Reuters/22 November 2017

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A gauge of global equity performance scaled fresh record highs on Wednesday, propelled by bullish growth and company earnings outlooks, while crude oil rose to the highest prices in more than two years.

Asia again led gains in global stock markets as Hong Kong’s main Hang Seng index .HSI closed above 30,000 for the first time in a decade. China’s H-shares index .HSCE and Japan’s Nikkei share average .N225 also rose.

Shares in Europe were mixed, with Britain’s main index .FTSErising fractionally as Germany’s benchmark DAX .GDAXI index and other indexes fell. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading regional shares .FTEU3 closed down 0.25 percent.

But MSCI’s all-country world index .MIWD00000PUS of stock performance in 47 countries rose 0.31 percent as it set a new all-time high driven by investor enthusiasm for tech stocks.

Apple (AAPL.O), Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Verizon (VZ.N) pushed the global benchmark higher.

Emerging markets also rose, with MSCI’s main equity benchmark climbing 0.70 percent to set a fresh six-year high .MSCIEF.

Wall Street traded mixed on subdued trading volumes before Thursday’s U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 64.65 points, or 0.27 percent, to 23,526.18. The S&P 500 .SPX lost 1.95 points, or 0.08 percent, to 2,597.08 but the Nasdaq Composite .IXICadded 4.88 points, or 0.07 percent, to 6,867.36.

The S&P technology index .SPLRCT fell 0.26 percent after two days of gains, pulled lower by a 7.2-percent drop in Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE.N) after Meg Whitman said she would leave as chief executive in February.

The decision by Whitman, a high-profile U.S. executive, took Wall Street by surprise but the tech-heavy Nasdaq still edged higher.

The U.S. equity market is poised for “smooth sailing” through year-end even as the ebullient mood on Wall Street signals trouble later in 2018, said Doug Ramsey, chief investment officer at The Leuthold Group LLC in Minneapolis.

However, the broad equity advance, with few lagging sectors, suggests the bull market still has room to run, Ramsey said.

“The odds that we’ll be at higher highs three to four months from now are very high, though it doesn’t rule out some short-term setback,” he said. “I have never seen a major bull market top that looks like anything where we stand today, even compared to 1987.”

Oil retreated slightly from a more than two-year high after U.S. crude stockpiles fell less than an industry group had suggested on Tuesday.

Still, U.S. crude prices remained elevated near $58 a barrel after sources familiar with the matter said the Keystone pipeline will cut deliveries by 85 percent or more through the end of November.

U.S. crude CLcv1 rose $1.19 percent to settle at $58.02 a barrel. Brent LCOcv1 settled up 75 cents at $63.32.

The dollar fell, touching its lowest in more than a month against the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc, after the release of weaker-than-expected U.S. data and inflation expectations.

New orders for U.S.-made capital goods unexpectedly fell in October after three straight months of strong gains and a measure of goods orders that strips out volatile components had its biggest drop since September 2016.

The dollar index .DXY fell 0.74 percent, with the euro EUR= up 0.71 percent at $1.182. The Japanese yen strengthened 1.09 percent versus the greenback at 111.24 per dollar JPY=.

The euro EUR= rose to a session high against the dollar of $1.1796.

The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment report showed a decline in expectations for long-term inflation.

U.S. Treasury prices gained after the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s latest meeting affirmed market expectations that the U.S. central bank will hike interest rates in December.

However, some voting policymakers expressed concern over the inflation outlook, according to the minutes. These policymakers said they would be looking at upcoming economic data before deciding the timing of future rate rises.

Benchmark 10-year notes US10YT=RR last rose 11/32 in price to push yields down to 2.3223 percent.

U.S. gold futures for December delivery GCcv1 settled up $10.50 an ounce at $1,292.20 per ounce.

News Source: Reuters

INC Asean/22 November 2017

According to Gallup research, an astounding 70 percent of U.S. employees are not showing up to work fully committed to deliver their best performance. Adding insult to injury, 52 percent of those workers are basically sleepwalking through their day, and 18 percent of them are busy acting out their unhappiness.

So what gives? Gallup has been preaching for two decades that in order to reverse this crisis, great managers (like Google’s own) that understand human nature and how to motivate and inspire diverging needs of people, need to be put into management roles at every level of the organization.

When a company raises employee engagement levels across every business unit through great management of people, it leads to higher profitability, productivity, and lower turnover.

The Problem

And therein lies the problem. To remedy the 70% crisis, you first have to findthose managers. Gallup reports that companies fail to choose the candidate with the right management talent for the job a staggering 82% of the time.

On top of that, managers that actually possess the talent to lead are far and few; about one in 10 have what it takes to make an impact and improve a company’s performance. Failing to identify the right talent costs companies billions of dollars annually.

So if you’re going to point the finger somewhere, who’s at fault? The research is critical of firms that ignore the science behind what makes a great manager, then place the wrong people into those roles. When Gallup asked U.S. managers why they believed they were hired for their current role, the most common response cited was “success in a previous non-managerial role” or their tenure.

In other words, most companies make the huge and costly mistake of promoting people into managerial roles “because they seemingly deserve it, rather than have the talent for it.” That’s a problem.

The Solution

While experience and skills are important, it’s the innate talent in people — the naturally recurring patterns in the ways they think, feel, and behave — that predicts great management performance. As a result, Gallup has observed in their data that exceptional managers possess five key talents:

1. They motivate every single employee to take action and engage employees with a compelling mission and vision.

2. They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.

3. They create a culture of clear accountability.

4. They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency.

5. They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.

While finding managers that can pull off all five of these talents is a rarity, when it happens across all levels of an organization, Gallup states that it can “double the rate of engaged employees” and, additionally, they achieve, on average, “147% higher earnings per share than their competition.”

Potential Management Talent May Be Hiding Inside Your Walls

Regardless of market conditions or the current labor force, Gallup found that, for large companies, “1 in 10 people possess the inherent talent to manage. When you do the math, it’s likely that someone on each team has the talent to lead — but chances are, it’s not the manager. More than likely, it’s an employee with high managerial potential waiting to be discovered,” states their report.

In conclusion, if your organization ever experiences high turnover, consider that the only way to stop the bleeding is to look at whom you have in critical management roles. Gallup CEO Jim Clifton boldly summarized in a succinct sentence the severity of this issue when he stated:

The single biggest decision you make in your job–bigger than all the rest–is who you name manager. When you name the wrong person manager, nothing fixes that bad decision. Not compensation, not benefits–nothing.

News Source: INC Asean

INC Asean/22 November 2017

The moment you met that employee at her interview, you knew she would be a perfect fit for your team. After all, she thinks like you, works like you and even listens to the same bands as you. It’s no wonder that you think of this employee first whenever you need to assign an interesting, challenging project.

But there’s another member of your team you have trouble connecting with. You brought him on board because you knew you needed his particular set of skills, but he’s just . . . different. It’s not so much that he likes heavy metal and Manchester United; it’s just that he always stands apart from everyone else. His work is fine, but you feel like he could do more. And you wonder how to bring him into the fold and motivate him to do his best.

Many managers face the problem of how to manage employees who are different–the employees that psychologists call “outsiders.”

An outsider, explains Ashley P. Lesko, president of Square Peg Solutions, is a person who is in a team, department or organization who does not see himself or herself as part of that group.

“It may be because the outsider has decided he or she doesn’t belong,” explains Lesko, whose firm develops leaders to improve organizational effectiveness. “Or, just as often, actions from the group makes the employee feel like an outsider.

“Either way, having an employee who is outside the team circle can reduce that person’s productivity and engagement,” says Lesko.

When a leader or manager doesn’t know how to manage that outsider, the problem can get worse. “In previous roles, I found myself trying to distance myself from outsiders, because I had to work a bit harder to get them to comply, move forward with a plan or do anything.”

What, then, can a manager do to bring outsiders in and encourage them to do their best? Lesko suggests these 4 strategies:

1. Make a concerted effort to listen. “This may seem easy in concept, but it’s often difficult, especially when the outsider communicates differently and offers divergent ideas than what you’re comfortable with,” says Lesko. To listen productively, schedule one-on-one time with your outsider team member. Plan the discussion in advance, preparing structured questions designed to give your team member specific topics to respond to. And be open to what the employee says.
2. Explore the outsider’s strengths–and seek opportunities to give the team member assignments that play to those strengths. This may mean a lead role on some projects, and a support role on others. In some cases, you might want to carve out a specific task that will allow the team member to shine.
3. Regard differences as a competitive advantage you can leverage. Lesko tells how President Abraham Lincoln appointed several cabinet members based on the fact that they held beliefs that were the opposite of his. “By bringing those opponents into the room, Lincoln heard viewpoints that helped him understand how to manage resistance,” she says. “It’s certainly not easy to listen to people who disagree with you, but it helps you become a better leader.”
4. Encourage the outsider to help your team think outside the box. It’s difficult to be truly innovative when everyone thinks the same way about everything. By creating opportunities to allow everyone on your team to have an equal role in innovation, you’ll come up with better ideas. At my firm, where we have a lot of very verbal people and a few who are less mouthy, we often do brainstorming activities where people can draw or share their ideas in writing, instead of shouting out ideas. (By the way, the best concepts often stem from team members’ subversive thinking.)

Once you learn to manage outsiders, says Lesko, you can tap into the power of their valuable talent. “By doing so, you’ll get better performance from every member of your team.”

News Source: INC Asean

The Guardian/19 November 2017

Australia’s power grid can reach penetrations of 50% renewable energy without a significant requirement for storage to support reliability, according to a new report commissioned by Australia’s chief scientist, Alan Finkel.

While the Turnbull government has made much of the need for storage to increase security and reliability in the national power grid, the new report from the Australian Council of Learned Academies (Acola) says at an aggregated national level, 50% renewables is possible without major investments in storage for reliability purposes.

But the report also points out that the requirement to shore-up network security as power systems decarbonise in accordance with international climate policy commitments is an ongoing task, and that transition means energy storage is now a major global growth industry.

It notes that new energy security requirements create opportunities to expand energy storage capacity for reliability at a lower marginal cost than would otherwise be the case.

It also warns that Australia risks missing out on the benefits of participating in global supply chains because of ongoing uncertainty over energy policy.

The report notes that Australia possesses abundant raw mineral resources for batteries, but could derive greater benefits through value-adding

As well as focussing on building local manufacturing capacity, the report says Australia’s research and development performance in energy storage technologies is world class, “but would benefit from strategic focus and enhanced collaboration.”

The report points out that Australian energy storage start-ups face challenges, including access to venture capital, which are related to continuing uncertainty over energy and climate policy.

While energy policy has taken a backseat in recent weeks, with the Turnbull government overwhelmed by the dual-citizenship debacle and the so-called “citizenship seven” ruling, and then focussed on the implications of the yes vote on same-sex marriage, the Coalition’s proposed policy fix will be back on the political agenda this week.

Last month, the Turnbull government dumped Finkel’s recommendation for a clean energy target and went with a policy which imposes new reliability and emissions reduction guarantees on energy retailers and large energy users from 2020 – a policy which will encourage new investment in storage.

The energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, is due to meet with his state counterparts later this week to consider whether or not consensus can be reached on the national energy guarantee – but going in to the discussions, some of the Labor states have resisted the proposal on the basis it isn’t sufficiently friendly to renewables.

The federal government needs buy-in from the states, because the new system requires jurisdictions to pass complimentary legislation to set up the national energy guarantee.

The new report by Acola , which assessed various energy storage technologies, also probed public attitudes, with focus groups in two capital cities and with a national survey of 1,015 respondents.

The research suggests Australians favour a more ambitious renewable mix by 2030, particularly solar and wind, with significant energy storage deployed to manage grid security.

It also notes that Australians are deeply concerned by the sharp rise in electricity prices and affordability, and they “hold governments and energy providers directly responsible for the perceived lack of affordability.”

The report by Acola also puts safety standards squarely on the energy policy agenda.

While noting that pumped hydro is, presently, the cheapest way to meet a reliability requirement in the national grid, the report says that a high uptake of battery storage has a potential for significant safety, environmental and social impacts.

Referencing hazards which emerged under Labor’s so-called “pink batts” program in the late 2000’s, which encouraged the uptake of household insulation – the report says the development of safety standards is required given anticipated rapid household uptake of batteries.

“Although a battery storage installation standard is currently being developed, there are concerns that an early incident may have serious ramifications for household deployment, with many referring to the home-insulation program failure,” the report says.

The research also notes that batteries present a future waste management challenge unless the current transition is “planned for and managed appropriately”.

Bruce Godfrey, chair of Acola working group, says the new report “clearly shows the two sides of the coin – that energy storage is an enormous opportunity for Australia but there is work to be done to build consumer confidence”.

Finkel, the chief scientist, and the man who led the review of the national electricity grid, says Australia should grab a major new export industry by developing our technical capacity.

“Given our natural resources and our technical expertise, energy storage could represent a major new export industry for our nation,” Finkel says.

“Energy storage is an opportunity to capitalise on our research strengths, culture of innovation and abundant natural resources.

“We have great advantages in the rapidly expanding field of lithium production and the emerging field of renewable hydrogen with export opportunities to Asia.”

News Source: The Guardian

The Guardian/18 November 2017

Polluting coal power stations in Britain have been profiting from the woes of the low-carbon French nuclear industry this month, according to analysis of energy generation data for the Guardian.

Tricastin, one of France’s biggest nuclear power stations, was closed by the French regulator in September so that works could be undertaken to address a flood risk.

The plant’s reactors make up four of 19 currently offline in the French nuclear power industry, which experienced even worse outages last winter due to regulatory safety checks.

The operators of Britain’s eight remaining coal power stations appear to have stepped in to exploit higher French prices, exporting power across the channel as temperatures have plunged. UK coal power generation has declined rapidly in recent years under the carbon tax.

Most of the time, France sends electricity to the UK through 43-mile-long cables between Folkestone and a site near Calais, but in November there have been more hours when power has flowed in the other direction.

On Friday, power through the interconnector was almost entirely flowing at maximum capacity towards France.

“We are now exporting to France through the interconnector which is unusual. Normally we are a net importer from France but yet again towards the end of the year we are exporting,” said Andrew Crossland, who runs MyGridGB, a site that monitors power generation data.

“Essentially this means that France is importing higher carbon electricity than it can produce at home,” he added.

Data compiled by Crossland shows coal power has continued to decline in the UK this year after dramatically falling two-thirds in 2016. There have been 583 coal-free hours in 2017 to date – compared with 210 last year – with coal providing just 6.7% of electricity supply so far.

Analysis by Iain Staffell, lecturer in sustainable energy at Imperial College and author of the Electric Insights report, came to a similar conclusion.

“In short, coal usage has shot up in the last two weeks, both because we are now exporting to France and because demand is growing as it gets colder. We are still using less coal than we did this time last year though,” he said.

Uniper, the German energy company that runs Ratcliffe coal power station in Nottinghamshire, said the higher usage was a response to the situation in France and colder temperatures.

“Over the past few weeks, the French power market has seen relatively higher power prices compared to Britain. One of the impacts of this is that flows on the Britain-France interconnector have seen more of a flow to France than to Britain,” the company said in a statement.

British coal power station owners may also be responding to one of Britain’s biggest nuclear reactors, Sizewell B, being offline for servicing until mid-December.

The UK has pledged to phase out the country’s remaining coal power stations by 2025. This week it led the launch of an alliance of 19 nations, including New Zealand and Mexico, committed to quitting coal as quickly as possible.

News Source: The Guardian

CNBC/16 November 2017

Artificial intelligence (AI) poses the greatest threat to the oil and gas industry over the next five to 10 years, according to Microsoft‘s oil and gas director for the Middle East and Africa.

Speaking at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition Conference (ADIPEC) on Wednesday, Omar Saleh said technology disruptions over the past three years had been a “wake-up call” for all oil and gas firms.

He said AI would be of “massive importance” to the industry over the coming years, but added that it would also pose the greatest risk to the oil and gas sector overall.

The U.S. shale revolution paved the way for a three-year oil price downturn that sent crude spiraling from more than $100 a barrel in 2014 to about $60 today. That has piled pressure on the oil-dependent economies of OPEC nations and forced a round of production cuts this year.

On Tuesday, Baker Hughes GE CEO Lorenzo Simonelli said “continuous disruption” in the oil and gas industry should be viewed positively.

News Source: CNBC

The Guardian/15 November 2017

A growing number of insurance companies increasingly affected by the consequences of climate change are selling holdings in coal companies and refusing to underwrite their operations.

About £15bn has been divested in the past two years, according to a new reportthat rates the world’s leading insurers’ efforts to distance themselves from the fossil fuel industry that is most responsible for carbon emissions.

Fifteen companies – almost all based in Europe – have fully or partially cut financial ties, says the study by the Unfriend Coal campaign, which represents a coalition of a dozen environmental groups including Greenpeace, 350.org and the Sierra Club.

Zurich, the world’s seventh biggest insurer, is the latest to shift away from coal, announcing this week that it is pulling out of coal to contribute to broader efforts to achieve the Paris accord goal of keeping global warming below 2C.

Allianz, Aviva and Axa have previously made similar moves. Lloyd’s and Swiss Re are expected to follow in the coming months.

The campaign has a long way to go. The early movers represent only 13% of all global insurance assets. None of the major US insurers such as Berkshire Hathaway, AIG and Liberty Mutual have taken action, according to the study.

Despite this, the authors say the shift of assets and coverage since 2015 is gaining momentum.

“Coal needs to become uninsurable,” said Peter Bosshard, the coordinator of Unfriend Coal. “If insurers cease to cover the numerous natural, technical, commercial and political risks of coal projects, then new coalmines and power plants cannot be built and existing operations will have to be shut down.”

Such financial pressure is crucial if global warming is to be kept in check.

The International Energy Agency says 99% of coal generation needs to be phased out by 2050 if even the upper goal is be reached, but coal production continues to rise and governments have shown insufficient commitment to reining it back.