The Guardian/5 September 2017

Energy regulators want to create a new strategic reserve mechanism to ensure there is enough dispatchable power available for emergencies, like heatwaves and storms – and are proposing a reverse auction system to bring sufficient back-up power into the grid.

The recommendations are contained in a new report from the Australian EnergyMarket Operator to the Turnbull government, which suggests that an additional gigawatt of incremental dispatchable power will be needed in the system when the ageing coal-fired Liddell power station closes in 2022.

After a week or more of speculation, the Turnbull government confirmed publicly on Tuesday that it was in talks with AGL to extend the operating life of Liddell. Malcolm Turnbull spoke to the AGL chief, Andy Vesey, on Tuesday.

But despite the conversation between the prime minister and the energy boss, AGL has shown absolutely no interest in extending the life of the New South Wales plant. In a statement, AGL insisted its plan was to close the power station in 2022.

A statement issued by a spokesperson said: “AGL has committed to the closure of the Liddell power station in 2022, which is the end of its operating life.

“AGL has provided this advance notice to avoid the volatility created by the sudden exit of other coal-fired power stations. AGL is actively assessing what capacity will be needed post-2022 and we, along with other market participants, will consider Aemo’s report in light of these plans.”

When quizzed on Wednesday evening about the company’s obvious show of defiance, Turnbull told reporters Vesey had signalled AGL was “prepared to sell [Liddell] to a responsible party, and that’s what we’re talking about”.

Turnbull was then asked whether the government would buy the power station. He left that option open.

“I think it’s better that the private sector owns generators like that but I want to say that the vitally important thing for me is to ensure that Australians have affordable and reliable energy,” he said.

The prime minister said Vesey had told him he was “prepared to discuss selling to a responsible party who would be able to keep the power station going for a period”.

“I’ve suggested at least five years because we need to make sure that we maintain affordable and reliable electricity.”

AGL has been conveying a message to government for weeks that it is not interested in prolonging the life of the NSW plant, including during a meetingbetween energy retailers and the government in early August.

The company has a national marketing strategy predicated on exiting coal from 2022.

The government has been waiting on the Aemo assessment before pressing ahead with a number of internal deliberations to settle its energy policy after the Finkel review of the national electricity market.

It has also grabbed the report in an effort to apply public pressure to AGL over the future of Liddell, using the data in the report to tie the closure of the plant to the overall stability of the electricity grid.

Turnbull attempted to turn up the heat on AGL. “Now Liddell going out in 2022 will leave, as Aemo has identified, a very big hole. About a gigawatt, about a thousand megawatts.”

He said the government had options to make up the shortfall other than prolonging the life of the Liddell plant “but one option clearly, that I responsibly as prime minister have to explore, is keeping Liddell going”.

Aemo, in the new advice to government, says it has a plan in place for the coming summer to ensure grid stability but it wants the new strategic reserve system in place for the summer of 2018-19 and 2020-21, until “a more wide-ranging and considered solution can be designed and implemented”.

It recommends a strategic reserve auction system be implemented to bring back-up power into the grid, such as electricity from gas peaking plants, or diesel generators.

It is unclear who would bear the costs of the proposed system, or how the mechanism would work, but officials said Aemo’s current energy reserve activities run on a cost-recovery basis. The report says energy customers would be willing to pay an additional $25m-$50m per year in order to avoid blackouts and supply disruptions.

The proposed auction system would work alongside a clean energy target, or whatever long-term policy mechanism the Turnbull government ultimately adopts in response to the Finkel review.

Aemo’s clear preference in the new report is to extend the life of existing coal plants to deal with the current problem rather than bringing on new investment, noting “investment in new power plants with uncertain long-term business viability” is problematic.

After Turnbull’s conversation with Vesey on Tuesday, the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, told reporters the Aemo report “was a serious signal of our intent that we will do everything we can to keep sufficient base load in the system”.

While the regulators have given the government a policy roadmap on dispatchability, the Coalition’s internal fight over the clean energy target still looms.

The chairman of the government’s backbench committee on climate and energy, Craig Kelly, told Guardian Australia he thought it would be best to dump the Finkel recommendation and rework the policy in light of the advice from Aemo.

Kelly said the government should consider building a clean energy mechanism into the auction system proposed by the regulator, leave the existing renewable energy target in place until 2030 and mothball the Finkel proposal.

He said the dispatchable power problem was clearly urgent but the resolution of the clean energy target was not.

Kelly said he had also heard that AGL would need “hundreds of millions” to refurbish the Liddell power plant and he predicted the company would “drive a hard bargain” with the Turnbull government in considering the future of the coal plant.

News Source: The Guardian

CNBC/4 September 2017

China is poised to further tighten rules on virtual currencies after regulators on Monday banned virtual coin fundraising schemes, Chinese financial news outlet Yicai reported, citing sources.

China banned and deemed illegal the practice of raising funds through launches of token-based digital currencies, targeting so-called initial coin offerings (ICO) in a market that has exploded since the start of the year.

Yicai’s report late Monday cited a source close to decision-makers as saying the announcement on the ban was just the start of further follow-up regulations of virtual currencies.

In total, $2.32 billion has been raised through ICOs globally, with $2.16 billion of that being raised since the start of 2017, according to cryptocurrency analysis website
Cryptocompare.

Bitcoin rival ethereum, which token-issuers usually ask to be paid in and which has seen dramatic growth this year, fell sharply on the news. It was down almost 20 percent on Monday at
$283, according to trade publication Coindesk.

Bitcoin was also down 8 percent, while the total value of all cryptocurrencies was down around 10 percent after China’s ban was announced, according to industry website Coinmarketcap.com.

News Source: CNBC

CNBC/3 September 2017

Benchmark global oil prices fell on Monday after a powerful North Korean nuclear test triggered a shift away from crude markets to assets perceived to be safer, such as gold.

Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were down 68 cents, or 1.3 percent, at $52.07 a barrel by 0808 GMT.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were more stable, down 8 cents at $47.21 barrel, as several refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast restarted 10 days after Hurricane Harvey struck the region, boosting the outlook for demand in the world’s top oil consumer.

Traders were nervously eyeing developments in North Korea, where the military conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test over the weekend.

Pyongyang said it had tested an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile, prompting the threat of a “massive” military response from the United States if it or its allies were threatened.

That put downward pressure on crude as traders moved money out of oil – seen as high-risk markets – into gold futures, traditionally viewed as a safe haven for investors. Spot gold prices rose for a third day, gaining 0.9 percent on Monday.

Overall trading activity in oil futures market is expected to be low on Monday due to the U.S. Labor Day public holiday.

Benchmark U.S. gasoline futures fell around 3.5 percent amid signs that the damage from Hurricane Harvey to the Gulf Coast energy infrastructure was not as bad as initially feared.

A number of major refineries, which convert crude oil into refined products such as gasoline and jet fuel, as well as distribution pipelines were gradually resuming operations.

“The disruptions from Hurricane Harvey in the U.S. Gulf Coast are gradually clearing. In the broader scheme of things, it appears that so far the energy industry was spared major damages to assets and infrastructure,” analysts at Vienna-based JBC Energy said in a note.

“However, some Houston area refineries will likely remain offline for some time longer.”

Still, about 5.5 percent of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico’s oil production, or 96,000 barrels of daily output, remained shut on Sunday, the Federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott estimated damage at $150 billion to $180 billion, calling it more costly than Hurricanes Katrina or Sandy, which hit New Orleans in 2005 and New York in 2012.

Storm Harvey made landfall along the Gulf coast of Texas and Louisiana last week, knocking out almost a quarter of the entire U.S. refining capacity, causing a price spike and supply gap for fuels like gasoline, which traders around the world have been scrambling to fill.

News Source: CNBC

CNBC/2 September 2017

Cost efficiency for renewable energy storage capacity will take a number of years, Enel CEO Francesco Starace told CNBC.

Energy storage cost efficiency to come over next 5-10 years: Enel CEO from CNBC.

News Source: CNBC

The Guardian/1 September 2017

Long before the storm dropped barrels of rain over one of the world’s largest industrial corridors, the area was rife with potentially dangerous chemicals

It was 2am Texas time on Thursday when the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby caught fire and exploded. Flooded by Hurricane Harvey’s torrential rains, the plant lost power and refrigeration, and soon thereafter lost control of highly flammable organic peroxides it produces for use in paints and polystyrenes. The explosion cast a 30ft plume of toxic smoke over an evacuated Crosby.

But the explosion of Arkema, as dramatic as it was, is hardly the only source of chemicals potentially dangerous to Texans.

“Houston would be the largest hub of petrochemical and refining production capacity in all of North and South America,” said Trey Hamblet, the vice-president of global research for chemical processing at Industrial Info Resources Inc, a company that tracks chemical manufacturing worldwide.

The Texas-Louisiana border is home to a melange of 840 petrochemical, refining and power plants operated by some of the world’s largest companies, according to Industrial Info. Valero, ExxonMobil and Shell Oil all operate plants here. The area is arguably one of the largest industrial corridors on earth.

Most shut down safely before and during the storm, but the contamination they cast over the area existed long before Harvey dropped barrels of rain over the low-lying area.

“In many ways Harvey is unprecedented – with the level of rain – but the difference is we had all of the information,” said Charise Johnson, a researcher for the Union of Concerned Scientists who has worked with neighborhoods in Houston that are surrounded by the same chemical plants. “We had it all. We knew how to prepare the communities. We knew how to prepare infrastructure. But that didn’t happen.”

Neighborhoods like Manchester, on Houston’s east side, reportedly stank of gas for days after the storm without explanation. Many assumed it was because a tank spilled an “unspecified” amount of its 6.3m gallon capacity.

Tightly framed by bayous, freeways and a huge refinery, Manchester has notoriously bad air quality, even by Houston’s standards. Several residents there said they did not flood and added that the air quality on Thursday was not noticeably worse than normal.

But the Texas commission on environmental quality received dozens of reports of compromised infrastructure in Harvey’s wake

The second largest oil refinery in the country, a Baytown facility belonging to ExxonMobil, had a roof collapse and released pollutants into the air. Shell reported similar incidents due to heavy rains. Two tanks holding crude oil burst into flames near a wildlife preserve outside of Port Arthur after lightning struck the Karbuhn Oil Co.

About 20 miles east of Manchester along the Texas Independence Highway, where storage tanks are decorated with murals of the Battle of San Jacinto, there was a faint acrid smell in Baytown, a city of over 75,000 people.

Waiting for his order at the Taqueria Margarita taco truck, Marco Paz, a 21-year-old student, said that for the first time, some members of his family “were having trouble breathing and [getting] headaches” that lasted about two days at the height of the flooding.

Nearby, in the almost-deserted Town Square park, Canaan McKiernan strummed his guitar while his friend, Toby Smith, played with a wooden catch-ball toy.

“The chemical plants are… a mile or two away and the whole time during the hurricane you could see the flames [flaring] from way far, even in the rain; but it’s not the only time it does that, it does that kind of regularly,” McKiernan said. “I’ve lived here my whole life so you get used to it.”

Smith, 17, recently moved back to the area and said the air quality is “horrible”, especially given the heat and humidity of south Texas. “I feel like sometimes it just gets like harder to breathe, especially if you’re running or exercising sometimes. It’s just like, I’m more out of breath than I was up in Indiana,” he said.

“There are so many people in this town that work for them,” McKiernan, a 19-year-old student, said. “Unfortunately in the state that we live in and the area we live in it’s kind of a necessary evil. I mean, if Exxon wasn’t there then this whole town would be shit.”

Environmental worries did not stop when Harvey’s record-breaking rains abated.

“Our biggest concern is now that the flood water has receded is the flood water carried… a number of chemicals in the homes,” said Yvette Arellano, a researcher for Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, better known as “Tejas”. “Our major priority we’re focusing on [is] cleanup.”

“We don’t even know what the complex mixtures are at this point,” said Garrett Sansom, an environmental scientist at Texas A&M University, who works in Manchester. “They’ve been dealing with areas of poor environmental conditions with the air and standing water, with heavy metals, polycyclic hydrocarbons,” he said, mentioning chemicals that come off of burnt materials.

For example, within one mile of Manchester, there are 11 generators of hazardous waste, nine major air polluters, eight stormwater discharge facilities and four factories that treat, store or dispose of hazardous waste, according to one of Samson’s studies.

Tests of surface water in the area found the heavy metal barium in every sample. Arsenic, barium, chromium, lead and mercury were found in water two blocks from a public park.

In another study, the Union of Concerned Scientists found significantly higher cancer risks and respiratory hazards in Manchester than in other areas of Houston. Yet another study found benzene, a known carcinogen, belching out of pipelines below the ship channel near Manchester.

However, where water might have carried chemicals and metals since the neighborhood was inundated is unclear. Sansom is bringing his team to Manchester to collect samples on Friday afternoon.

“It’s usually a pretty complex mixture of chemicals that were already present in the environment and sewage and wildlife, like snakes,” said Samson about flood waters.
Others, like Johnson, hoped the loss of life and property might bring something else – hope.

“Doing environmental work in a place like Texas – where officials deny climate change is even happening – is extremely difficult. It’s a tough road, and they’ve been fighting this fight for a long time,” she said. “All I hope now is after this tragedy maybe people will start to listen, maybe they’ll take action”.

News Source: The Guardian

The Guardian/1 September 2017

It’s a common grumble: lured in by a big energy supplier offering a low tariff, you find your bills skyrocketing a year later when the agreement expires and the standard variable rate kicks in.

For one couple, David Pike and Karin Sode, the irritation became so great that they decided to start their own energy company.

People’s Energy, which started supplying households this week after crowdfunding nearly £500,000, aims to break the dominance of the big six energy suppliers – including British Gas, EDF and E.ON – with a model it says offers customers greater fairness and transparency.

While the company will source its energy from the same wholesale market as the established suppliers, Pike and Sode say their offer to consumers is different: customers will automatically get shares in the company, as well as a portion of its earnings – the couple promises to redistribute 75% of profits as an annual rebate.

They will also give customers representation on the board of directors and publish key data such as salaries and wholesale energy costs, says Pike, who previously worked as a consultant in the power industry. The standard variable rate will be around £129 cheaper than the big six average, he adds.

“We were fed up with our own energy supplier and it prompted us to think there really must be a better, fairer and simpler way of supplying energy to people that’s based on trust, not distrust,” says Pike. “The cynical business model which most suppliers operate on – get them in cheap, hope they’ll forget, and then make lots of money on the variable tariff – just seems inherently unfair and unjust.”

People’s Energy, which has committed to getting all of its electricity from renewable sources, is the latest in a string of new entrants into the UK energy market. Bulb, Octopus Energy and French power company Engie are among the companies to launch in the UK since 2011, riding a wave of ill-feeling towards established suppliers. A 2015 Guardian survey found the energy giants were more disliked even than banks, while a 2014 Ofgem report (pdf) suggested 43% of consumers did not trust energy suppliers to be open or transparent.

For Max Wakefield, director at campaign group Demand Energy Equality, greater competition in the sector is hugely welcome, for the environment as well as consumers. The energy giants have shown “absolutely no interest” in helping people understand how to reduce their energy usage, he says. And, since the big six remain heavily invested in existing energy infrastructure, their hold over the sector has slowed the shift towards renewables and smart tech, he adds.

“The quicker we can reduce their dominance over the energy sector as a whole, the quicker we can move towards a cleaner, more decentralised energy system that doesn’t involve huge amounts of money being sucked upwards and gobbled up by relatively few shareholders,” says Wakefield.

But are there risks to such a shake-up? Stephen Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich, says the position of the big six as both generators and sellers of energy gives them the confidence to invest in necessary infrastructure and make sure there is enough capacity to meet demand. In a very fragmented market, security of supply could suffer, he says.

Thomas is also cautious about the rate of change. While the market share of the major suppliers has slipped a little in recent years, it is still over 80%, he says, and people in general have shown themselves “reluctant to go away from the names they know”.

However, Pike and Sode – who had signed up 4,500 customers by this week – say the success of their crowdfunding campaign shows there is appetite for change. It’s a feeling reflected in the wider industry too, according to Pike, who says the company’s set-up costs were significantly reduced thanks to discounts from businesses who believed in their model. The answer to fairer energy, says Pike, is for people “to have more say”.

• This piece was amended on 1 September 2017 to clarify that Engie is a new entrant to the UK market

News Source: The Guardian

The Guardian/31 August 2017

Profit margins at the big six energy providers have hit the highest level on record, according to the regulator, Ofgem, in data that comes just weeks after British Gas raised some prices by 12.5%.

The Ofgem data reveals that the average pre-tax margin among the major power companies rose to 4.48% in 2016, up from 4.15% the year before and just 0.89% in 2009, when the regulator began collecting figures.

The data was first released in July but Ofgem has only been able to present a complete picture now after the inclusion of figures from all of the big six.

Centrica, which owns British Gas, enjoyed consistently the highest margins, running at 7.18% in 2016. SSE and E.ON were the second most profitable, both on a margin of 6.95%.

Centrica provoked uproar this month when it raised prices for 3 million customers, which the chief executive of its consumer business, Mark Hodges, blamed on “an underlying increase in policy and transmission costs”.

The Ofgem data throws doubt on the persistent complaints by the energy companies about shouldering a worsening burden of environmental costs.

The figures show that the cost of environmental and social obligations on the energy companies fell from £109 in the typical dual-fuel bill in 2009 to just £86 in 2015, with a small rise to £91 last year.

Centrica said, while wholesale costs have decreased, they have been offset by rising network and transmission costs, including the rollout of smart meters, and that government mandates and policy costs now represent the most significant part of electricity bills. It added that on a post-tax basis, its profit in 2016 was equal to £52 on the average dual fuel bill of £1,112.

However an earlier analysis of energy company profits by Lazarus Research, looking at all the big six providers except SSE, found that gross margins had expanded from 20.7% to 22.6%, a fourth consecutive annual increase. It singled out gas supply as “particularly profitable”, adding that the figures “highlight why the sector is in the political spotlight”.

The figures are likely to provoke fresh controversy regarding overcharging of consumers. An investigation into the energy market by the Competition and Markets Authority concluded last year that the big six suppliers were overcharging by £1.4bn annually.

During the election campaign, Theresa May pledged to cap bills for 17 million families on the worst-value energy tariffs, but the plan was missing from the Queen’s speech – to the delight of big energy companies.

Instead, the business secretary, Greg Clark, told Ofgem to safeguard “customers on the poorest value tariff”, with policy expected to focus on extending an existing ceiling on bills for 4m households on prepayment meters to a further 2.6 million vulnerable customers.

Ofgem said consumers are also increasingly switching suppliers to find better deals. In the month of June 2017, the number of electricity switches reached 380,000, their highest level since June 2011, while gas switching was at its highest since June 2009.

An Ofgem spokesperson said: “In a competitive market, we expect suppliers to drive down costs and the prices they charge their customers; if they don’t, their customers will switch to rivals who do.” They said the latest data showed the number of customers on standard variable deals had fallen by almost 1 million over the past six months as more people switched.

They added: “We want many more customers who remain on standard variable tariffs in particular to get a better deal and are stepping up our efforts to make sure that competition works for everyone, whilst also putting in place protections for the vulnerable.”

News Source: The Guardian

The Guardian/30 August 2017

Australian states and territories are powering ahead, developing policies that will meet the federal government’s internationally agreed greenhouse gas emission targets, with South Australia, the ACT and Tasmania leading the race.

Despite being chastised by the federal government for unilateral action, South Australia is leading the race, with the ACT and Tasmania not far behind, according to a report by the Climate Council.

Compared on a series of measures including penetration of renewable energy, the percentage of households with solar, as well as emissions and renewable energy targets, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and New South Wales are at the back of the pack, with Victoria and Queensland in the middle.

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have been rising ever since the Coalition government repealed the carbon tax in 2014. The federal government’s own projections show their policies will cause emissions to continue to rise for decades to come.

But in the midst of the ongoing federal policy vacuum, every state and territory besides Western Australia has “gone it alone” and developed strong renewable energy and emissions reduction policies.

South Australia leads the country with 47% of its electricity sourced from renewable sources, followed by the ACT at 22%. Tasmania sourced 92% of its electricity from renewable sources, but that was dominated by large-scale hydro electricity.

The Northern Territory sourced just 2% of its electricity from renewable sources, sitting behind Western Australia and Queensland at 7%. Victoria sourced 12% from renewables while NSW sat at 17%.

Queensland led the country when it comes to solar households, with 32% of homes having solar panels. That just pipped South Australia, which had 31%.

While both Western Australia and the Northern Territory scored poorly on most measures, there appeared to be grassroots momentum there for solar rooftops, with the biggest increases in solar penetration over the past year happening in those states. Western Australia jumped almost three percentage points to more than 25% penetration, and the Northern Territory jumped 2.7 percentage points to 11.4% – a figure that was still the lowest in the country.

The ACT and Tasmania had the strongest renewable energy targets, with the former aiming to implement a 100% target by 2020 and the latter by 2022. The ACT’s aggressive and bipartisan renewable energy policies delivered the lowest energy costs in the country for consumers.

Every state except Western Australia and the Northern Territory had targets to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.

Those policies, combined with a surge in grassroots activity and market-driven closure of coal power plants, look set to easily cut Australia’s emissions by more 28% below 2005 levels, as Australia committed to following the Paris Agreement in 2015. That was the conclusion of a report by Frontier Economics earlier in the year, which concluded: “The commonwealth government will receive credit for state renewable policies that contribute to meeting the 2030 emissions target, while admonishing them for any energy security issues that may result.

“Every state and territory, with the exception of Western Australia, is taking energy and climate policy into their own hands, with strong renewable energy targets or net zero emissions targets in place,” said Climate Council councillor and energy expert Andrew Stock.

“States and territories previously lagging (NT, NSW and WA), are now stepping up the pace, joining the enormous progress we’re seeing across the nation,” he said.

Climate Council member and former president of BP Australasia, Greg Bourne, said Australians are embracing solar energy in droves, with more than 5.6GW generated on the rooftops of 1.7 million homes.

“Australia is one of the sunniest countries in the world, so it’s no surprise we’ve already rolled out enough solar to power the lights at the MCG every day for 20,000 years,” he said.

States leading the way without federal coordination was described as a “a messy dog’s breakfast” by the Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood, who went on to say the unilateral state action was “understandable with federal ­climate change inaction”.

News Source: The Guardian

The Guardian/29 August 2017

The destruction of Turkey’s 12,000-year-old Hasankeyf settlement and ancient citadel has moved a step closer as authorities have begun to collapse cliff faces around the ruins of the citadel.

The move, linked to the construction of a highly controversial dam about 50 miles downstream, is also expected to damage the rich ecosystem of the Tigris river basin.

Local authorities have announced that the rocks were broken off “for safety reasons” and that 210 caves – a fraction of thousands of manmade caves in the area – would be filled before the town’s inundation in order to prevent erosion.

The Ilisu dam, part of the Southeast Anatolian project (Gap) and one of Turkey’s largest hydroelectric projects to date, has been mired in controversy ever since it was first drafted in 1954. The dam will raise the level of the Tigris at Hasankeyf by 60m, submerging 80% of the ancient city and numerous surrounding villages, including more than 300 historical sites that have still not been explored.

Environmental engineer Ercan Ayboga of the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive warns that close to 80,000 people will be displaced. Many of them will lose their land and their livelihoods. Because of additional debts taken up to purchase new homes, thousands face impoverishment.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland withdrew financial support for the Ilisu dam in July 2009, citing concerns about the social, cultural and environmental impact. The Turkish government, arguing that the dam will help produce much needed energy and irrigation, has secured domestic financing of the €1.1bn (£1.02bn) project and is pushing ahead despite a pending court decision at the European court of human rights.

The Ilisu dam has a life expectancy of less than 100 years, but the destruction of the fragile natural environment will be irreversible.

“The Tigris river basin is one of the last areas where a river runs freely in Turkeywithout having been dammed,” Ayboga says. “The dam will completely destroy the river banks. The microclimate will change due to the dam, a phenomenon we have already seen after the dams on the Euphrates. The biodiversity will suffer; the rich variety of plant and animal life will be severely diminished.”

Numerous vulnerable and endangered species are threatened by the construction of the dam, including the Euphrates softshell turtle, the red‐wattled lapwing, and many other rare birds, bats and mammals. While the environmental impact on Turkey will be severe, the effect on neighbouring Iraq is expected to be catastrophic.

Toon Bijnens, international coordinator for the Save the Tigris and Iraqi Marshes Campaign in Sulaymaniyah, said downstream water levels are expected to decrease by 40%: “This means that the water quality of the Tigris will worsen. There will be increased salt water intrusion, making the water unfit for drinking or irrigation.”

Ilisu, once operational, will also be detrimental to the Mesopotamian marshes, a wetland area in southern Iraq declared a Unesco world heritage site in 2016. “The dam will dry up a considerate part of the marshes,” Bijnens said. The marshes were drained by Saddam Hussein in the 1990s and the community of the Marsh Arabs has only recently returned to their land. Their livelihoods are now again endangered by the Turkish dam.

An official source from the Turkish ministry for Forests and Water Works told the Guardian that “all dammed up water is sent downstream via the turbines”. Because Ilisu was a hydroelectric dam, there would be no decrease of water levels. “The importance of reservoirs as a safe water source in the fight against global warming and drought has increased,” the source said. “For that reason the Ilisu dam has to be seen as an advantage for Iraq, not a threat.”

However, Ankara has not yet ratified the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention, a treaty that seeks to establish a law for governing freshwater resources shared across international borders that entered into force in 2014. Since no formal agreement was signed, the sovereignty over how much water is released downstream rests with Turkey, Bijnens warned.

Ayboga stressed that despite the controversies surrounding the construction of the Ilisu dam, all protests and public meetings were banned under the current state of emergency, declared just over a year ago.

“There has always been a serious lack of transparency and accountability,” he said. “But now the Turkish government uses the conflict in the region and the state of emergency to speed up the project and to silence all opposition. Many locals are scared to protest now.”

Ayboga added that it was very difficult for journalists, both local and international, to access the area. “This makes it easier for the government to push ahead with extremely controversial measures,” he said.

Singapore Business Review/28 August 2017

Semiconductor production reached a new record high.

Singapore’s electronics sector continues to spark higher industrial production (IP) after it reported a 49.1% growth rate in July.

According to Maybank, this was led by growth in the Semiconductors subsector that hit its record high and marked the 17th month of two-digit expansion. It contributed 62% to total Electronics output.

Computer and Peripherals manufacturing grew 18.9%, whilst that of Consumer Electronics rose by 5.1%.

On the downside, Data Storage and Other Electronic Components output contracted by 27.2% and 5.2%, respectively.

Precision engineering production also increased 21.8%. Production of its Machinery & Systems segment grew 25.4%, backed by demand for semiconductor-related equipment.

News Source: Singapore Business Review