Apparently, a Dr. Gideon Boako, who is said to be an aide to the vice-president, Dr. Bawumia, says that Ghana has not gone for a loan from China - but is rather in a U.S.$19 billion joint-venture bauxite mining partnership with that nation.
Fair enough - but is that not a classic case of fuzzy thinking, one wonders?
The question there is: If the U.S.$19 billion is going to fund election campaign promises such as the 1-district-1-factory and northern 1-village-1-dam initiatives, and the joint-venture partnership's bauxite mining isn't going to start tomorrow, is China not going to have to advance that U.S. $19 billion on the strength of profits accruing to it from its 'gifted' stake in our bauxite deposits (whenever that particular project gets underway at some indeterminate future date)?
And, for as long as that U.S$19 billion for the implemenation of some of the 2016 election campaign promises made by the New Patriotic Party (NPP), is not coming directly from the profits China expects to make from the exploitation of those bauxite deposits, is the plain truth not simply that no matter how it is dressed up that money is a loan in all but name?
The Gideon Boakos of our country must be very careful when addressing such issues. The NPP was elected to govern Ghana because a majority of voters wanted better leadership for their nation. Full stop. No one in the NPP should overlook that vital factor in enabling them win the 2016 presidential and parliamentary elections and returning to power again on 7th January, 2017.
A far better deal would have been to persuade the Chinese authorities to agree to fund Chinese private-sector entities, and that nation's best state-owned companies, to build infrastructure projects here - such as a network of tolled concrete motorways connecting all the regional capitals to Accra - which they will own, operate and maintain for between 25-30 years without paying any taxes on their profits during that entire period.
In any case, for the information of the Gideon Boakos in our midst, last year (2016), Thailand made U.S.$71 billion from a total of 31 million visitors. Food for thought for our ruling elites - who sadly think only of GDP growth without ever examining what actually constitutes that growth on the ground in the real world.
Surely, as a people, if we preserve the Atewa Range, we can use it to anchor an ecotourism industry centred on the proposed Atewa National Park, which will create wealth that stays in Ghana and jobs galore for Akyem Abuakwa's younger generations - making trillions of cedis in sustainable fashion from it over time?
As stated elsewhere above, a far better deal would have been to grant rights to Chinese investors to do joint-venture deals with Ghanaian entrepreneurs to self-finance (with concessionary long-term loans from solid, state-owned Chinese banks) the building of infrastructure, such as railway lines from Accra to all the regional capitals, which they will own, operate and maintain for 25-30 years - in exchange for not paying any taxes on their profits during that period.
Will that not create a modern railway network for the nation, for example, without government lumbering hapless Ghanaian taxpayers with yet more debt (and it is debt no matter how it is dressed up as) that will destroy the future of our younger generations?
Ditto provide other modern infrastructure for Mother Ghana - without mortgaging our future in such crass fashion: which the nonsensical notion of tearing down the Atewa Range just to mine poor quality bauxite represents: particularly at a time when global climate change is impacting all of Akyem Abuakwa so negatively? Ebeeii.
With the greatest respect, we expect creative thinking, not fuzzy thinking, from our nation's new leaders - whom we want to provide our nation with imaginative leadership: and implement policy initiatives that will impact the lives of our people more positively. They must never forget that. Ever.
Okyenman, yen enma, ensei da!
Thursday, 29 June 2017
BOST Contaminated Fuel Sale Scandal: The Protection Of The Interests Of Vehicle Owners Is Vital
As a consumer protection issue, the alleged sale of contaminated fuel to unregistered entities by the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST), is a very serious and alarming matter.
Indeed, that is the real issue at the very heart of what is a major scandal - that ought not to be swept under the carpet under any circumstances. At all costs the system in our country must protect vehicle owners in Ghana from being sold contaminated fuel.
That is a basic function of the industry's relatively well-resourced regulator, the National Petroleum Authority (NPA).
It is therefore vital that both the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), ensure that the grave matter of the sale of as much as over 5 million litres of contaminated fuel by the state-owned BOST, is not turned into political football by party propagandists.
For the sake of the real victims of this apparently crooked deal by greedy businesspeople and dishonest public officials - vehicle owners across the nation - this scandal ought to be seen by our political class as an opportunity to tweak and reimagine Ghana's fuel value-chain to rid the sector of corruption and enable the system to better protect vehicle owners in Ghana from being sold substandard fuel at the forecourts of petrol filling stations across our homeland Ghana.
For years, some of us have written to warn against the dangers of the disgraceful trade in the importation for sale in Ghana of sub-standard and contaminated fuel - all to no avail because parts of hard-of-hearing officialdom obviously benefit from that abominable business.
Clearly, aside from possible investigations by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, and, perhaps, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), to ensure that this matter is not swept under the carpet, there ought to be a public enquiry by the relevant parliamentary committee, as well as an open and independent enquiry into the matter led by a well-respected retired senior judge. Justice Emile Short comes readily to mind.
The object of all the public enquiries, ought to be to provide recommendations that will ensure that the nationwide system of fuel distribution supervised by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), has fail-safe mechanisms in place to ensure that under no circumstances can contaminated fuel possibly end up in the underground tanks of petrol filling stations, for sale to vehicle owners in Ghana.
The NDC's parliamentary caucus definitely deserves praise for taking up the matter. As does the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP). Answers are needed to all the questions they have both posed in this matter - and ought to be forthcoming from the industry's regulator, the NPA, above all.
On its part, the regime of President Akufo-Addo needs to adopt the attitude that all public-sector appointees of the president have a moral obligation to ensure that the entities they head are underpinned by an ethical ethos, at all material times, during their tenures in office - and that they themselves must set the example by their personal conduct whiles in office.
That way, no one in either the government or the NPP, will feel the need to shield errant appointees of the president, who engage in acts of corruption.
Finally, this blog is of the humble view that in getting to the bottom of this egregious scandal, it is vital that the system ensures that the interests of vehicle owners in Ghana are placed at the heart of any resolution of the issues raised by the sale of contaminated fuel by BOST.
For the benefit of this blog's many readers we have copied the NDC's press statement on the matter below for their perusal and understanding of the issues involved in this outrageous scandal - if all the allegations against BOST, are true, that is.
Shorn of its obvious political-advantage-seeking undertones, for national interest reasons, this blog agrees with all the corporate good governance enhancing sentiments underpinning the statement issued by the Minority in Parliament, for, at the end of the day, they are seeking to protect vehicle owners and the public purse - which after all is their constitutional duty.
Please read on:
"MINORITY IN PARLIAMENT CALLS FOR FULL SCALE INVESTIGATION INTO BLATANT CORRUPTION AT BOST LTD.
The minority in Parliament has noted with grave concern the sale of contaminated fuel product to the tune of five million litres to a company known as Movenpiina by the MD of the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Limited under very dubious and bizarre circumstances in another clear example of escalating corruption in the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia Government.
Even more disturbing is the explanation offered by BOST to justify the sale of this contaminated product as well as the circumstances surrounding the sale which clearly lacks transparency and integrity.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, it must be mentioned that under proper regulatory and supervisory protocols, under no circumstance should the BOST Co. Ltd experience such high levels of contamination as we are witnessing.
The question to ask is what led to the contamination of these products in the first instance. Why was the particular tank in question not properly discharged and cleaned before the intake of the fresh fuel which led to the contamination? Was it due to negligence, lack of supervision or a deliberate plot by some self-seeking individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of the state and the Ghanaian tax payer?
The justification by BOST that the contaminated products were sold for use by manufacturing companies is untenable. The norm and practice is that when such contaminations occur, corrective treatment of these products are undertaken by the Tema Oil Refinery through blending. Why did BOST not arrange with TOR for the treatment of this particular fuel? Available information indicates that BOST failed to exhaust all means to ensure TOR blends this contaminated fuel. The argument by BOST that the blending couldn’t be done at TOR because the CDU is down is most untenable.
These so-called off-spec products are not the slops that are usually sold by BOST, we also wish to state that SLOPS are usually in small quantities. SLOPS are sediments of fuels in a Tank and are usually in small quantities and cannot be compared with 5 million liters of contaminated fuel.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press, the claim by BOST that this contaminated product was sold at a competitive ex-depot price is false and cannot be justified.
When was the competitive bidding process initiated and who were the companies that participated? Incontrovertible evidence available confirms that Movenpiina Company was the only company BOST dealt with in the sale of this contaminated product in a sole sourced transaction. It is therefore erroneous to suggest that the sale was done under a competitive process.
Further information available to us indicates that Movenpiina Co. Lt. put in a proposal to purchase the fuel on the 19th of May 2017. Interestingly, checks from the Registrar Generals Department suggest the company was incorporated to trade and transport fuel on the 29th of May 2017. This clearly suggest collusion on the part of the actors. Information available before us indicates the Managing Director took a decision to grant to Movenpiina Co. an Open-Credit sales arrangement against all the advice from his own staff. This means that the company bought the products without paying for it and in turn sold the products to a third-party Company Zupoil at 30% higher. This smacks of high level corruption.
We further wish to know what culminated in the interdiction of General Manager of Terminals, Mr. Fred Adarkwa and the Trading Department Manager Mr. Nana Obeng all of BOST. Was it because they strongly kicked against the clandestine process of selling these products. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have received information that these contaminated fuels which were originally meant for industrial usage by the steel, garment, petrol chemical as claimed by BOST by companies to run their machinery and certainly not for the running of vehicle engines has ended up in the open market against the NPA’s directive not to do so. The resultant effect will mean damage to vehicle engines and its accompanying side effects to the innocent Ghanaian consumer. Furthermore, our checks reveal that the contact number on Movenpiina is the same number of the BOST MD’s private office in Airport Residential Area.
The Gentleman who registered the Company, one Nana Poku Agyemang a generator dealer with a Company General Power is a close associate of the MD and they have been doing business together before the MD was appointed to BOST.
The Minority has also noted with trepidation the revelation that the said Movenpiina Company is currently a Bulk Oil Transporter at BOST carrying huge petroleum products across the Country when they are not registered. This is not only illegal, it is also extremely risky because when those products are lost, it will be at the cost of the tax payer as there’s no insurance covering the said contract.
The Minority will want to place on record that further checks reveal that, BOST has never sold any contaminated products before. They always blend the products to correct it to meet industry specifications as outlined by NPA and Ghana Standard Authority. What BOST has sold in the past is slop and not contaminated products. As we speak BOST imported a full cargo declared by NPA as off Spec. The Company that brought in the product is called Morco Energy. That product is currently being blended at TOR to correct it. We wonder why the 5million litres didn’t go through the same process to correct it.
Ladies and gentlemen, the blatant corruption by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government cannot be allowed to continue.
We demand the following:
1) The immediate interdiction of the BOST MD – Mr. Alfred Obeng Boateng
2) Full scale investigation by the regulatory authorities
3) The immediate withdrawal of the contaminated product from the market to protect consumers and assurances that this will not recur.
4) That the financial loss estimated at GHS 14.25 million be retrieved by surcharging the offending officials at BOST in line with the recent Supreme Court decision. We thank you for your attention."
End of the public statement issued by the Minority in Parliament at their press conference addressing the matter of the BOST contaminated fuel sale scandal.
Indeed, that is the real issue at the very heart of what is a major scandal - that ought not to be swept under the carpet under any circumstances. At all costs the system in our country must protect vehicle owners in Ghana from being sold contaminated fuel.
That is a basic function of the industry's relatively well-resourced regulator, the National Petroleum Authority (NPA).
It is therefore vital that both the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), ensure that the grave matter of the sale of as much as over 5 million litres of contaminated fuel by the state-owned BOST, is not turned into political football by party propagandists.
For the sake of the real victims of this apparently crooked deal by greedy businesspeople and dishonest public officials - vehicle owners across the nation - this scandal ought to be seen by our political class as an opportunity to tweak and reimagine Ghana's fuel value-chain to rid the sector of corruption and enable the system to better protect vehicle owners in Ghana from being sold substandard fuel at the forecourts of petrol filling stations across our homeland Ghana.
For years, some of us have written to warn against the dangers of the disgraceful trade in the importation for sale in Ghana of sub-standard and contaminated fuel - all to no avail because parts of hard-of-hearing officialdom obviously benefit from that abominable business.
Clearly, aside from possible investigations by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service, and, perhaps, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), to ensure that this matter is not swept under the carpet, there ought to be a public enquiry by the relevant parliamentary committee, as well as an open and independent enquiry into the matter led by a well-respected retired senior judge. Justice Emile Short comes readily to mind.
The object of all the public enquiries, ought to be to provide recommendations that will ensure that the nationwide system of fuel distribution supervised by the National Petroleum Authority (NPA), has fail-safe mechanisms in place to ensure that under no circumstances can contaminated fuel possibly end up in the underground tanks of petrol filling stations, for sale to vehicle owners in Ghana.
The NDC's parliamentary caucus definitely deserves praise for taking up the matter. As does the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP). Answers are needed to all the questions they have both posed in this matter - and ought to be forthcoming from the industry's regulator, the NPA, above all.
On its part, the regime of President Akufo-Addo needs to adopt the attitude that all public-sector appointees of the president have a moral obligation to ensure that the entities they head are underpinned by an ethical ethos, at all material times, during their tenures in office - and that they themselves must set the example by their personal conduct whiles in office.
That way, no one in either the government or the NPP, will feel the need to shield errant appointees of the president, who engage in acts of corruption.
Finally, this blog is of the humble view that in getting to the bottom of this egregious scandal, it is vital that the system ensures that the interests of vehicle owners in Ghana are placed at the heart of any resolution of the issues raised by the sale of contaminated fuel by BOST.
For the benefit of this blog's many readers we have copied the NDC's press statement on the matter below for their perusal and understanding of the issues involved in this outrageous scandal - if all the allegations against BOST, are true, that is.
Shorn of its obvious political-advantage-seeking undertones, for national interest reasons, this blog agrees with all the corporate good governance enhancing sentiments underpinning the statement issued by the Minority in Parliament, for, at the end of the day, they are seeking to protect vehicle owners and the public purse - which after all is their constitutional duty.
Please read on:
"MINORITY IN PARLIAMENT CALLS FOR FULL SCALE INVESTIGATION INTO BLATANT CORRUPTION AT BOST LTD.
The minority in Parliament has noted with grave concern the sale of contaminated fuel product to the tune of five million litres to a company known as Movenpiina by the MD of the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Limited under very dubious and bizarre circumstances in another clear example of escalating corruption in the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia Government.
Even more disturbing is the explanation offered by BOST to justify the sale of this contaminated product as well as the circumstances surrounding the sale which clearly lacks transparency and integrity.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, it must be mentioned that under proper regulatory and supervisory protocols, under no circumstance should the BOST Co. Ltd experience such high levels of contamination as we are witnessing.
The question to ask is what led to the contamination of these products in the first instance. Why was the particular tank in question not properly discharged and cleaned before the intake of the fresh fuel which led to the contamination? Was it due to negligence, lack of supervision or a deliberate plot by some self-seeking individuals to enrich themselves at the expense of the state and the Ghanaian tax payer?
The justification by BOST that the contaminated products were sold for use by manufacturing companies is untenable. The norm and practice is that when such contaminations occur, corrective treatment of these products are undertaken by the Tema Oil Refinery through blending. Why did BOST not arrange with TOR for the treatment of this particular fuel? Available information indicates that BOST failed to exhaust all means to ensure TOR blends this contaminated fuel. The argument by BOST that the blending couldn’t be done at TOR because the CDU is down is most untenable.
These so-called off-spec products are not the slops that are usually sold by BOST, we also wish to state that SLOPS are usually in small quantities. SLOPS are sediments of fuels in a Tank and are usually in small quantities and cannot be compared with 5 million liters of contaminated fuel.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Press, the claim by BOST that this contaminated product was sold at a competitive ex-depot price is false and cannot be justified.
When was the competitive bidding process initiated and who were the companies that participated? Incontrovertible evidence available confirms that Movenpiina Company was the only company BOST dealt with in the sale of this contaminated product in a sole sourced transaction. It is therefore erroneous to suggest that the sale was done under a competitive process.
Further information available to us indicates that Movenpiina Co. Lt. put in a proposal to purchase the fuel on the 19th of May 2017. Interestingly, checks from the Registrar Generals Department suggest the company was incorporated to trade and transport fuel on the 29th of May 2017. This clearly suggest collusion on the part of the actors. Information available before us indicates the Managing Director took a decision to grant to Movenpiina Co. an Open-Credit sales arrangement against all the advice from his own staff. This means that the company bought the products without paying for it and in turn sold the products to a third-party Company Zupoil at 30% higher. This smacks of high level corruption.
We further wish to know what culminated in the interdiction of General Manager of Terminals, Mr. Fred Adarkwa and the Trading Department Manager Mr. Nana Obeng all of BOST. Was it because they strongly kicked against the clandestine process of selling these products. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have received information that these contaminated fuels which were originally meant for industrial usage by the steel, garment, petrol chemical as claimed by BOST by companies to run their machinery and certainly not for the running of vehicle engines has ended up in the open market against the NPA’s directive not to do so. The resultant effect will mean damage to vehicle engines and its accompanying side effects to the innocent Ghanaian consumer. Furthermore, our checks reveal that the contact number on Movenpiina is the same number of the BOST MD’s private office in Airport Residential Area.
The Gentleman who registered the Company, one Nana Poku Agyemang a generator dealer with a Company General Power is a close associate of the MD and they have been doing business together before the MD was appointed to BOST.
The Minority has also noted with trepidation the revelation that the said Movenpiina Company is currently a Bulk Oil Transporter at BOST carrying huge petroleum products across the Country when they are not registered. This is not only illegal, it is also extremely risky because when those products are lost, it will be at the cost of the tax payer as there’s no insurance covering the said contract.
The Minority will want to place on record that further checks reveal that, BOST has never sold any contaminated products before. They always blend the products to correct it to meet industry specifications as outlined by NPA and Ghana Standard Authority. What BOST has sold in the past is slop and not contaminated products. As we speak BOST imported a full cargo declared by NPA as off Spec. The Company that brought in the product is called Morco Energy. That product is currently being blended at TOR to correct it. We wonder why the 5million litres didn’t go through the same process to correct it.
Ladies and gentlemen, the blatant corruption by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government cannot be allowed to continue.
We demand the following:
1) The immediate interdiction of the BOST MD – Mr. Alfred Obeng Boateng
2) Full scale investigation by the regulatory authorities
3) The immediate withdrawal of the contaminated product from the market to protect consumers and assurances that this will not recur.
4) That the financial loss estimated at GHS 14.25 million be retrieved by surcharging the offending officials at BOST in line with the recent Supreme Court decision. We thank you for your attention."
End of the public statement issued by the Minority in Parliament at their press conference addressing the matter of the BOST contaminated fuel sale scandal.
Wednesday, 28 June 2017
TechCrunch/Josh Constine: Facebook now has 2 billion monthly users… and responsibility
TechCrunch
Facebook now has 2 billion monthly users… and responsibility
Posted yesterday by Josh Constine (@joshconstine)
"We are getting to a size where it’s worth really taking a careful look at what are all the things that we can do to make social media the most positive force for good possible,” Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox told TechCrunch about the company’s new milestone. Thirteen years after launching and less than five years after hitting 1 billion, Facebook now has 2 billion monthly active users.
Facebook wants people to celebrate with a personalized “Good Adds Up” video they can make and share here. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg played it cool with this brief announcement message.
Two billion makes Facebook the largest social app in terms of logged-in users, above YouTube’s 1.5 billion, WeChat’s 889 million, Twitter’s 328 million and Snapchat’s estimated 255 million (extrapolated from its December 2015 ratio when it had 110 million daily and 170 million monthly users). Beyond YouTube, only Facebook’s other apps have more than 1 billion, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, with 1.2 billion each. Instagram might soon join that club as it recently rocketed past 700 million.
Facebook’s growth the last half decade has been fueled by the developing world. The company has relentlessly optimized its app for cheap Android smartphones and low-bandwidth connections. It’s added 746 million users in Asia and the Rest of World region since hitting 1 billion users total. Meanwhile, it only added 41 million in the U.S. and Canada.
Despite Facebook’s size and age, at 17 percent its user count is growing as fast or faster than any year since 2012. And people aren’t using it less either. In fact, 66 percent of Facebook’s monthly users return each day now compared to 55 percent when it hit 1 billion. If the teenaged social network isn’t as cool to teenagers any more, it’s not showing in the big metrics.
But neither does the colossal impact Facebook has had on society, which it’s now trying to bend toward positivity with its new mission statement to “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
“There’s definitely a deep sense of responsibility in every part of the company,” Cox told TechCrunch. “We’re getting to the scale where we have to get much better about understanding how the product has been used.” That’s why he’s been traveling around the world doing user research. And it’s why Mark Zuckerberg has been crisscrossing the country on a listening tour that many people cynically assume is the start to a run for president, despite the CEO’s denials.
Perhaps stewarding a 2-billion-person community is responsibility enough to get out of Silicon Valley and figure out how Facebook impacts people’s lives.
There are the big, newsy things like suicides on Facebook Live and fears that fake news got Donald Trump elected. But deeper down, there are even more complex ramifications of a near ubiquitous social network. It can propel internet addiction that alienates people, and facilitate the filter bubbles that polarize society by reinforcing our opinions. Facebook has largely conquered its competitors, giving it the slack to finally address the modern sociological challenges that stem from its popularity.
Cox says an important pattern Facebook is adopting is “When you think about very complex systems that are affecting humanity, just being open about what’s happening. And then for example in the case of something like suicide or bullying, going and working with subject matter experts, getting the research on what’s the best possible thing that we can do, and then talking to the world about it.” To make the discussion about these tragic moments as accessible and productive as possible, Facebook has taken to publishing transparency reports and explainers about its policies and procedures.
“I live with the constant goal of understanding, for every single thing that we do, how do we maximize all that goodness, and curtail any way that it can be misused or turned into something sad” Cox solemnly concludes.
If getting to 1 billion was about building a product, and getting to 2 billion was about building a user base, Facebook’s responsibility is to build empathy between us as it reaches for 3 billion.
Facebook
Founded
2004
Overview
Facebook is an online social networking service that allows its users to connect with friends and family as well as make new connections. It provides its users with the ability to create a profile, update information, add images, send friend requests, and accept requests from other users. Its features include status update, photo tagging and sharing, and more. Facebook’s profile structure includes …
Location
Menlo Park, CA
Categories
Social Media, Social Network, Social
Website
http://www.facebook.com
Full profile for Facebook
© 2013-2017 Oath Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy About Our Ads Anti Harassment Policy Terms of Service Powered by WordPress.com VIP
Fonts by <Webtype>
TechCrunch: an Oath Brand
Facebook now has 2 billion monthly users… and responsibility
Posted yesterday by Josh Constine (@joshconstine)
"We are getting to a size where it’s worth really taking a careful look at what are all the things that we can do to make social media the most positive force for good possible,” Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox told TechCrunch about the company’s new milestone. Thirteen years after launching and less than five years after hitting 1 billion, Facebook now has 2 billion monthly active users.
Facebook wants people to celebrate with a personalized “Good Adds Up” video they can make and share here. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg played it cool with this brief announcement message.
Two billion makes Facebook the largest social app in terms of logged-in users, above YouTube’s 1.5 billion, WeChat’s 889 million, Twitter’s 328 million and Snapchat’s estimated 255 million (extrapolated from its December 2015 ratio when it had 110 million daily and 170 million monthly users). Beyond YouTube, only Facebook’s other apps have more than 1 billion, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, with 1.2 billion each. Instagram might soon join that club as it recently rocketed past 700 million.
Facebook’s growth the last half decade has been fueled by the developing world. The company has relentlessly optimized its app for cheap Android smartphones and low-bandwidth connections. It’s added 746 million users in Asia and the Rest of World region since hitting 1 billion users total. Meanwhile, it only added 41 million in the U.S. and Canada.
Despite Facebook’s size and age, at 17 percent its user count is growing as fast or faster than any year since 2012. And people aren’t using it less either. In fact, 66 percent of Facebook’s monthly users return each day now compared to 55 percent when it hit 1 billion. If the teenaged social network isn’t as cool to teenagers any more, it’s not showing in the big metrics.
But neither does the colossal impact Facebook has had on society, which it’s now trying to bend toward positivity with its new mission statement to “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.”
“There’s definitely a deep sense of responsibility in every part of the company,” Cox told TechCrunch. “We’re getting to the scale where we have to get much better about understanding how the product has been used.” That’s why he’s been traveling around the world doing user research. And it’s why Mark Zuckerberg has been crisscrossing the country on a listening tour that many people cynically assume is the start to a run for president, despite the CEO’s denials.
Perhaps stewarding a 2-billion-person community is responsibility enough to get out of Silicon Valley and figure out how Facebook impacts people’s lives.
There are the big, newsy things like suicides on Facebook Live and fears that fake news got Donald Trump elected. But deeper down, there are even more complex ramifications of a near ubiquitous social network. It can propel internet addiction that alienates people, and facilitate the filter bubbles that polarize society by reinforcing our opinions. Facebook has largely conquered its competitors, giving it the slack to finally address the modern sociological challenges that stem from its popularity.
Cox says an important pattern Facebook is adopting is “When you think about very complex systems that are affecting humanity, just being open about what’s happening. And then for example in the case of something like suicide or bullying, going and working with subject matter experts, getting the research on what’s the best possible thing that we can do, and then talking to the world about it.” To make the discussion about these tragic moments as accessible and productive as possible, Facebook has taken to publishing transparency reports and explainers about its policies and procedures.
“I live with the constant goal of understanding, for every single thing that we do, how do we maximize all that goodness, and curtail any way that it can be misused or turned into something sad” Cox solemnly concludes.
If getting to 1 billion was about building a product, and getting to 2 billion was about building a user base, Facebook’s responsibility is to build empathy between us as it reaches for 3 billion.
Founded
2004
Overview
Facebook is an online social networking service that allows its users to connect with friends and family as well as make new connections. It provides its users with the ability to create a profile, update information, add images, send friend requests, and accept requests from other users. Its features include status update, photo tagging and sharing, and more. Facebook’s profile structure includes …
Location
Menlo Park, CA
Categories
Social Media, Social Network, Social
Website
http://www.facebook.com
Full profile for Facebook
© 2013-2017 Oath Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy About Our Ads Anti Harassment Policy Terms of Service Powered by WordPress.com VIP
Fonts by <Webtype>
TechCrunch: an Oath Brand
McKinsey & Company/Jayaram, Kassiri and Yuan Sun: The closest look yet at Chinese economic engagement in Africa
McKinsey & Company Home
Report - June 2017
The closest look yet at Chinese economic engagement in Africa
By Kartik Jayaram, Omid Kassiri, and Irene Yuan Sun
Full Report (PDF–3MB)
Field interviews with more than 1,000 Chinese companies provide new insights into Africa–China business relationships.
In two decades, China has become Africa’s most important economic partner. Across trade, investment, infrastructure financing, and aid, no other country has such depth and breadth of engagement in Africa. Chinese “dragons”—firms of all sizes and sectors—are bringing capital investment, management know-how, and entrepreneurial energy to every corner of the continent. In doing so they are helping to accelerate the progress of Africa’s economies.
Yet to date it has been challenging to understand the true extent of the Africa–China economic relationship due to a paucity of data. Our new report, Dance of the lions and dragons: How are Africa and China engaging, and how will the partnership evolve?, provides a comprehensive, fact-based picture of the Africa–China economic relationship based on a new large-scale data set. This includes on-site interviews with more than 100 senior African business and government leaders, as well as the owners or managers of more than 1,000 Chinese firms spread across eight African countries1 that together make up approximately two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP.
Africa’s largest economic partner
In the past two decades, China has catapulted from being a relatively small investor in the continent to becoming Africa’s largest economic partner. And since the turn of the millennium, Africa–China trade has been growing at approximately 20 percent per year. Foreign direct investment has grown even faster over the past decade, with a breakneck annual growth rate of 40 percent.2 Yet even this number understates the true picture: we found that China’s financial flows to Africa are around 15 percent larger than official figures when nontraditional flows are included. China is also a large and fast-growing source of aid and the largest source of construction financing; these contributions have supported many of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure developments in recent years.
We evaluated Africa’s economic partnerships with the rest of the world across five dimensions: trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure financing, and aid. China is among the top four partners for Africa across all these dimensions (Exhibit 1). No other country matches this depth and breadth of engagement.
Exhibit 1
Africa’s economic partners, including China, India, France, the United States, and Germany, based on goods trade, foreign direct investment, aid, and infrastructure financing
Chinese firms in Africa
Behind these macro numbers are thousands of previously uncounted Chinese firms operating across Africa. In the eight African countries on which we focused, the number of Chinese-owned firms we identified was between two and nine times the number registered by China’s Ministry of Commerce, until now the largest database of Chinese firms in Africa. Extrapolated across the continent, our findings suggest there are more than 10,000 Chinese-owned firms operating in Africa today (Exhibit 2).
Exhibit 2
Employment of local labor in Africa by Chinese firms and share of managers who are local, broken down by company ownership and sector
Around 90 percent of these firms are privately owned—calling into question the notion of a monolithic, state-coordinated investment drive by “China, Inc.” Although state-owned enterprises tend to be bigger, particularly in specific sectors such as energy and infrastructure, the sheer number of private Chinese firms working toward their own profit motives suggests that Chinese investment in Africa is a more market-driven phenomenon than is commonly understood.
Chinese firms operate across many sectors of the African economy. Nearly a third are involved in manufacturing, a quarter in services, and around a fifth each in trade and in construction and real estate. In manufacturing, we estimate that 12 percent of Africa’s industrial production—valued at some $500 billion a year in total—is already handled by Chinese firms. In infrastructure, Chinese firms’ dominance is even more pronounced, and they claim nearly 50 percent of Africa’s internationally contracted construction market.
The Chinese firms we talked to are mostly profitable. Nearly one-third reported 2015 profit margins of more than 20 percent. They are also agile and quick to adapt to new opportunities. Except in a few countries such as Ethiopia, they are primarily focused on serving the needs of Africa’s fast-growing markets rather than on exports. An overwhelming 74 percent said they feel optimistic about the future. Reflecting this, most Chinese firms have made investments that represent a long-term commitment to Africa rather than trading or contracting activities.
Slideshow
Impact in African economies
At the Chinese companies we talked to, 89 percent of employees were African, adding up to nearly 300,000 jobs for African workers. Scaled up across all 10,000 Chinese firms in Africa, this suggests that Chinese-owned business employ several million Africans. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of Chinese employers provided some kind of skills training. In companies engaged in construction and manufacturing, where skilled labor is a necessity, half offer apprenticeship training.
Half of Chinese firms had introduced a new product or service to the local market, and one-third had introduced a new technology. In some cases, Chinese firms had lowered prices for existing products and services by as much as 40 percent through improved technology and efficiencies of scale. African government officials overseeing infrastructure development for their countries cited Chinese firms’ efficient cost structures and speedy delivery as major value adds.
On balance, we believe that China’s growing involvement is strongly positive for Africa’s economies, governments, and workers. However, there are areas for significant improvement:
By value, only 47 percent of the Chinese firms’ sourcing was from local African firms, representing a lost opportunity for local firms to benefit from Chinese investment.
Only 44 percent of local managers at the Chinese-owned companies we surveyed were African, though some Chinese firms have driven their local managerial employment above 80 percent (Exhibit 3). Other firms could follow suit.
There have been instances of labor and environmental violations by Chinese-owned businesses. These range from inhumane working conditions to illegal extraction of natural resources including timber and fish.
Exhibit 3
potential ways of extending the Africa-China economic partnership, with recommendations for African governments, Chinese government, and the private sector
Would you like to learn more about how we help clients in China?
Differences in country engagement
At a national level, we focused on eight large African economies, and identified the following four distinct archetypes of the Africa–China partnership:
Robust partners. Ethiopia and South Africa have a clear strategic posture toward China, along with a high degree of economic engagement in the form of investment, trade, loans, and aid. For example, both countries have translated their national economic-development strategies into specific initiatives related to China, and they have also developed important relationships with Chinese provinces and with Beijing. As a result, China sees these African countries as true partners: reliably engaged and strategic for China’s economic and political interests. These countries have also created a strong platform for continued Chinese engagement through prominent participation in such forums as the Belt and Road initiative (previously known as One Belt, One Road), and they can therefore expect to see ongoing rapid growth in Chinese investment.
Solid partners. Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania do not yet have the same level of engagement with China as Ethiopia and South Africa, but government relations and Chinese business and investment activity are meaningful and growing. These three governments recognize China’s importance, but they have yet to translate this recognition into an explicit China strategy. Each has several hundred Chinese firms across a diverse set of sectors, but this presence has largely been the result of a passive posture relying on large markets or historical ties; much more is possible with true strategic engagement.
Unbalanced partners. In the case of Angola and Zambia, the engagement with China has been quite narrowly focused. For Angola, the government has supplied oil to China in exchange for Chinese financing and construction of major infrastructure projects—but market-driven private investment by Chinese firms has been limited compared with other African countries; only 70 to 75 percent of the Chinese companies in Angola are private, compared with around 90 percent in other countries. Zambia’s case is the opposite: there has been major private-sector investment but not enough oversight from regulatory authorities to avoid labor and corruption scandals.
Nascent partners. Côte d’Ivoire is at the very beginning of developing a partnership with China, and so the partnership model has yet to become clear. The country’s relatively small number of Chinese investors are focused on low-commitment industries such as trade.
The next decade
We interviewed more than 100 senior African business and government leaders, and nearly all of them said the Africa–China opportunity is larger than that presented by any other foreign partner—including Brazil, the European Union, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
But exactly how quickly will the Africa–China relationship grow in the decade ahead? We see two potential scenarios. In the first, the revenues of Chinese firms in Africa grow at a healthy clip to reach around $250 billion in 2025, from $180 billion today. This scenario would simply entail business as usual, with Chinese firms growing in line with the market, holding their current market shares steady as the African economy expands. Under this scenario, the same three industries that dominate Chinese business in Africa today—manufacturing, resources, and infrastructure—would dominate in 2025 as well.
We believe much more is possible: in a second scenario, Chinese firms in Africa could dramatically accelerate their growth. By expanding aggressively in both existing and new sectors, these firms could reach revenues of $440 billion in 2025. In this accelerated-growth scenario, not only do the three established industries of Chinese investment grow faster than the economy, but Chinese firms also make significant forays into five new sectors: agriculture, banking and insurance, housing, information communications technology and telecommunications, and transport and logistics. This expansion could start with Chinese firms moving into sectors related to the ones they currently dominate—for example, from construction into real estate and housing. Another part of this accelerated growth could come from Chinese firms more fully applying their formulas that have proved successful in China to markets in Africa, including business models in consumer technology, agriculture, and digital finance.
There is considerable upside for Africa if Chinese investment and business activity accelerate. At the macroeconomic level, African economies could gain greater capital investment to boost productivity, competitiveness, and technological readiness, and tens of millions more African workers could gain stable employment. At the microeconomic level, however, there will be winners and losers. Particularly in sectors such as manufacturing, where African firms are significantly lagging behind global productivity levels, African incumbents will need to dramatically improve their productivity and efficiency to compete—or partner effectively—with new Chinese companies on their turf.
With continued and likely growing Chinese investment, it will become ever more urgent to address the gaps in the Africa–China partnership, including by strengthening the role of African managers and partners in the growth of Chinese-owned businesses. Moreover, both Chinese and African actors will need to address three major pain points: corruption in some countries, concerns about personal safety, and language and cultural barriers. In five of the eight countries in which we conducted fieldwork, 60 to 87 percent of Chinese firms said they paid a “tip” or bribe to obtain a license. After corruption, the second-largest concern among Chinese firms is personal safety. For their part, our African interviewees described language and cultural barriers that lead to misunderstanding and ignorance of local regulations. If these problems are left unaddressed, the misunderstandings and potentially serious long-term social issues could weaken the overall sustainability of the Africa–China relationship.
Realizing the potential of Africa’s economies Lions on the move II: Realizing the potential of Africa’s economies
Read the report
Everyone—African or Chinese, government or private sector—has a role to play in realizing the promise of the Africa–China partnership. We suggest ten recommendations, consisting of actions to be taken by African and Chinese businesses and governments, to ensure the Africa–China relationship grows sustainably and delivers strong economic and social outcomes (Exhibit 4).
Exhibit 4
We suggest ten recommendations to accelerate the Africa-China partnership
Download Dance of the lions and dragons: How are Africa and China engaging, and how will the partnership evolve? ,the full report on which this article is based—available in both English (PDF–3MB) and Chinese (PDF–5MB).
About the author(s)
Kartik Jayaram is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Nairobi office, where Omid Kassiri is a partner; Irene Yuan Sun is a consultant in the Washington, DC, office.
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Report - June 2017
The closest look yet at Chinese economic engagement in Africa
By Kartik Jayaram, Omid Kassiri, and Irene Yuan Sun
Full Report (PDF–3MB)
Field interviews with more than 1,000 Chinese companies provide new insights into Africa–China business relationships.
In two decades, China has become Africa’s most important economic partner. Across trade, investment, infrastructure financing, and aid, no other country has such depth and breadth of engagement in Africa. Chinese “dragons”—firms of all sizes and sectors—are bringing capital investment, management know-how, and entrepreneurial energy to every corner of the continent. In doing so they are helping to accelerate the progress of Africa’s economies.
Yet to date it has been challenging to understand the true extent of the Africa–China economic relationship due to a paucity of data. Our new report, Dance of the lions and dragons: How are Africa and China engaging, and how will the partnership evolve?, provides a comprehensive, fact-based picture of the Africa–China economic relationship based on a new large-scale data set. This includes on-site interviews with more than 100 senior African business and government leaders, as well as the owners or managers of more than 1,000 Chinese firms spread across eight African countries1 that together make up approximately two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP.
Africa’s largest economic partner
In the past two decades, China has catapulted from being a relatively small investor in the continent to becoming Africa’s largest economic partner. And since the turn of the millennium, Africa–China trade has been growing at approximately 20 percent per year. Foreign direct investment has grown even faster over the past decade, with a breakneck annual growth rate of 40 percent.2 Yet even this number understates the true picture: we found that China’s financial flows to Africa are around 15 percent larger than official figures when nontraditional flows are included. China is also a large and fast-growing source of aid and the largest source of construction financing; these contributions have supported many of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure developments in recent years.
We evaluated Africa’s economic partnerships with the rest of the world across five dimensions: trade, investment stock, investment growth, infrastructure financing, and aid. China is among the top four partners for Africa across all these dimensions (Exhibit 1). No other country matches this depth and breadth of engagement.
Exhibit 1
Africa’s economic partners, including China, India, France, the United States, and Germany, based on goods trade, foreign direct investment, aid, and infrastructure financing
Chinese firms in Africa
Behind these macro numbers are thousands of previously uncounted Chinese firms operating across Africa. In the eight African countries on which we focused, the number of Chinese-owned firms we identified was between two and nine times the number registered by China’s Ministry of Commerce, until now the largest database of Chinese firms in Africa. Extrapolated across the continent, our findings suggest there are more than 10,000 Chinese-owned firms operating in Africa today (Exhibit 2).
Exhibit 2
Employment of local labor in Africa by Chinese firms and share of managers who are local, broken down by company ownership and sector
Around 90 percent of these firms are privately owned—calling into question the notion of a monolithic, state-coordinated investment drive by “China, Inc.” Although state-owned enterprises tend to be bigger, particularly in specific sectors such as energy and infrastructure, the sheer number of private Chinese firms working toward their own profit motives suggests that Chinese investment in Africa is a more market-driven phenomenon than is commonly understood.
Chinese firms operate across many sectors of the African economy. Nearly a third are involved in manufacturing, a quarter in services, and around a fifth each in trade and in construction and real estate. In manufacturing, we estimate that 12 percent of Africa’s industrial production—valued at some $500 billion a year in total—is already handled by Chinese firms. In infrastructure, Chinese firms’ dominance is even more pronounced, and they claim nearly 50 percent of Africa’s internationally contracted construction market.
The Chinese firms we talked to are mostly profitable. Nearly one-third reported 2015 profit margins of more than 20 percent. They are also agile and quick to adapt to new opportunities. Except in a few countries such as Ethiopia, they are primarily focused on serving the needs of Africa’s fast-growing markets rather than on exports. An overwhelming 74 percent said they feel optimistic about the future. Reflecting this, most Chinese firms have made investments that represent a long-term commitment to Africa rather than trading or contracting activities.
Slideshow
Impact in African economies
At the Chinese companies we talked to, 89 percent of employees were African, adding up to nearly 300,000 jobs for African workers. Scaled up across all 10,000 Chinese firms in Africa, this suggests that Chinese-owned business employ several million Africans. Moreover, nearly two-thirds of Chinese employers provided some kind of skills training. In companies engaged in construction and manufacturing, where skilled labor is a necessity, half offer apprenticeship training.
Half of Chinese firms had introduced a new product or service to the local market, and one-third had introduced a new technology. In some cases, Chinese firms had lowered prices for existing products and services by as much as 40 percent through improved technology and efficiencies of scale. African government officials overseeing infrastructure development for their countries cited Chinese firms’ efficient cost structures and speedy delivery as major value adds.
On balance, we believe that China’s growing involvement is strongly positive for Africa’s economies, governments, and workers. However, there are areas for significant improvement:
By value, only 47 percent of the Chinese firms’ sourcing was from local African firms, representing a lost opportunity for local firms to benefit from Chinese investment.
Only 44 percent of local managers at the Chinese-owned companies we surveyed were African, though some Chinese firms have driven their local managerial employment above 80 percent (Exhibit 3). Other firms could follow suit.
There have been instances of labor and environmental violations by Chinese-owned businesses. These range from inhumane working conditions to illegal extraction of natural resources including timber and fish.
Exhibit 3
potential ways of extending the Africa-China economic partnership, with recommendations for African governments, Chinese government, and the private sector
Would you like to learn more about how we help clients in China?
Differences in country engagement
At a national level, we focused on eight large African economies, and identified the following four distinct archetypes of the Africa–China partnership:
Robust partners. Ethiopia and South Africa have a clear strategic posture toward China, along with a high degree of economic engagement in the form of investment, trade, loans, and aid. For example, both countries have translated their national economic-development strategies into specific initiatives related to China, and they have also developed important relationships with Chinese provinces and with Beijing. As a result, China sees these African countries as true partners: reliably engaged and strategic for China’s economic and political interests. These countries have also created a strong platform for continued Chinese engagement through prominent participation in such forums as the Belt and Road initiative (previously known as One Belt, One Road), and they can therefore expect to see ongoing rapid growth in Chinese investment.
Solid partners. Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania do not yet have the same level of engagement with China as Ethiopia and South Africa, but government relations and Chinese business and investment activity are meaningful and growing. These three governments recognize China’s importance, but they have yet to translate this recognition into an explicit China strategy. Each has several hundred Chinese firms across a diverse set of sectors, but this presence has largely been the result of a passive posture relying on large markets or historical ties; much more is possible with true strategic engagement.
Unbalanced partners. In the case of Angola and Zambia, the engagement with China has been quite narrowly focused. For Angola, the government has supplied oil to China in exchange for Chinese financing and construction of major infrastructure projects—but market-driven private investment by Chinese firms has been limited compared with other African countries; only 70 to 75 percent of the Chinese companies in Angola are private, compared with around 90 percent in other countries. Zambia’s case is the opposite: there has been major private-sector investment but not enough oversight from regulatory authorities to avoid labor and corruption scandals.
Nascent partners. Côte d’Ivoire is at the very beginning of developing a partnership with China, and so the partnership model has yet to become clear. The country’s relatively small number of Chinese investors are focused on low-commitment industries such as trade.
The next decade
We interviewed more than 100 senior African business and government leaders, and nearly all of them said the Africa–China opportunity is larger than that presented by any other foreign partner—including Brazil, the European Union, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
But exactly how quickly will the Africa–China relationship grow in the decade ahead? We see two potential scenarios. In the first, the revenues of Chinese firms in Africa grow at a healthy clip to reach around $250 billion in 2025, from $180 billion today. This scenario would simply entail business as usual, with Chinese firms growing in line with the market, holding their current market shares steady as the African economy expands. Under this scenario, the same three industries that dominate Chinese business in Africa today—manufacturing, resources, and infrastructure—would dominate in 2025 as well.
We believe much more is possible: in a second scenario, Chinese firms in Africa could dramatically accelerate their growth. By expanding aggressively in both existing and new sectors, these firms could reach revenues of $440 billion in 2025. In this accelerated-growth scenario, not only do the three established industries of Chinese investment grow faster than the economy, but Chinese firms also make significant forays into five new sectors: agriculture, banking and insurance, housing, information communications technology and telecommunications, and transport and logistics. This expansion could start with Chinese firms moving into sectors related to the ones they currently dominate—for example, from construction into real estate and housing. Another part of this accelerated growth could come from Chinese firms more fully applying their formulas that have proved successful in China to markets in Africa, including business models in consumer technology, agriculture, and digital finance.
There is considerable upside for Africa if Chinese investment and business activity accelerate. At the macroeconomic level, African economies could gain greater capital investment to boost productivity, competitiveness, and technological readiness, and tens of millions more African workers could gain stable employment. At the microeconomic level, however, there will be winners and losers. Particularly in sectors such as manufacturing, where African firms are significantly lagging behind global productivity levels, African incumbents will need to dramatically improve their productivity and efficiency to compete—or partner effectively—with new Chinese companies on their turf.
With continued and likely growing Chinese investment, it will become ever more urgent to address the gaps in the Africa–China partnership, including by strengthening the role of African managers and partners in the growth of Chinese-owned businesses. Moreover, both Chinese and African actors will need to address three major pain points: corruption in some countries, concerns about personal safety, and language and cultural barriers. In five of the eight countries in which we conducted fieldwork, 60 to 87 percent of Chinese firms said they paid a “tip” or bribe to obtain a license. After corruption, the second-largest concern among Chinese firms is personal safety. For their part, our African interviewees described language and cultural barriers that lead to misunderstanding and ignorance of local regulations. If these problems are left unaddressed, the misunderstandings and potentially serious long-term social issues could weaken the overall sustainability of the Africa–China relationship.
Realizing the potential of Africa’s economies Lions on the move II: Realizing the potential of Africa’s economies
Read the report
Everyone—African or Chinese, government or private sector—has a role to play in realizing the promise of the Africa–China partnership. We suggest ten recommendations, consisting of actions to be taken by African and Chinese businesses and governments, to ensure the Africa–China relationship grows sustainably and delivers strong economic and social outcomes (Exhibit 4).
Exhibit 4
We suggest ten recommendations to accelerate the Africa-China partnership
Download Dance of the lions and dragons: How are Africa and China engaging, and how will the partnership evolve? ,the full report on which this article is based—available in both English (PDF–3MB) and Chinese (PDF–5MB).
About the author(s)
Kartik Jayaram is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Nairobi office, where Omid Kassiri is a partner; Irene Yuan Sun is a consultant in the Washington, DC, office.
Article Actions
Share this article on LinkedIn Share this article on Twitter Share this article on Facebook Email this article
More on Middle East and Africa
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Guardian/Adam Vaughan: World's first floating windfarm to take shape off coast of Scotland
Energy industry
World's first floating windfarm to take shape off coast of Scotland
By Adam Vaughan in Stord, Norway
Tuesday 27 June 2017 14.55 BST
Last modified on Tuesday 27 June 2017 22.00 BST
The world’s first floating windfarm has taken to the seas in a sign that a technology once confined to research and development drawing boards is finally ready to unlock expanses of ocean for generating renewable power
After two turbines were floated this week, five now bob gently in the deep waters of a fjord on the western coast of Norway ready to be tugged across the North Sea to their final destination off north-east Scotland.
The £200m Hywind project is unusual not just because of the pioneering technology involved, which uses a 78-metre-tall underwater ballast and three mooring lines that will be attached to the seabed to keep the turbines upright. It is also notable because the developer is not a renewable energy firm but Norway’s Statoil, which is looking to diversify away from carbon-based fuels.
Irene Rummelhoff, head of the oil firm’s low-carbon division, said the technology opened up an enormous new resource of wind power.
“It’s almost unlimited. Currently we are saying [floating windfarms will work in] water depths of between 100 and 700 metres, but I think we can go deeper than that. It opens up ocean that was unavailable,” she said.
Offshore windfarms are springing up across the North Sea for a reason – its waters are uniquely shallow enough to allow turbines to be mounted atop steel poles fixed to the seabed.
However, such fixed-bottom turbines can only be installed at water depths down to 40 metres, making them little use for the steeply shelved coastlines of the US west coast or Japan.
“If you look at coastlines around the world, there’s few that have sufficient area at depths down to 40 metres so if they want to deploy offshore wind, they need to introduce floating wind,” said Rummelhoff.
As well as opening up new frontiers such as the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, floating windfarms could be placed farther out to sea to avoid the sort of aesthetic objections that scuppered a £3.5b windfarm off the Dorset coast.
While Hywind is a minnow among modern offshore wind projects – it will power just 20,000 homes compared with the 800,000 by one being built off the Yorkshire coast – proponents say floating turbines could eclipse fixed-bottom ones in the long run.
“Looking to the next decades, there might be a point where floating is bigger than fixed based,” said Stephan Barth of IEA Wind, an intergovernmental wind power body covering 21 countries.
Bruno Geschier, chief marketing officer at Ideol, a French company hoping to build floating windfarms in Japan, France and elsewhere, said he expected floating farms to begin to take off in the next decade, “reaching cruising altitude in the mid-2020s and a big boom in 2030-35”.
The commercialisation also means a chance for new countries to emerge as renewable energy leaders. The UK has the most offshore wind capacity in the world, with Germany not far behind, but France, which has none, wants to become a market leader.
“Floating wind is an opportunity for France to step on to the podium,” said Geschier.
For Statoil, the ambitions go well beyond Peterhead in Scotland, where Hywind will be moored and providing power from October at the latest.
Rummelhoff said floating windfarms will come of age in the areas where conventional ones have been established, as countries such as the UK run out of suitable sites in shallower waters.
But it is also talking with state governments in Hawaii and California about projects, and eyeing Japan and the new, pro-renewables government in Seoul.
Like many new technologies, the biggest challenge will be cost. Behind the turbines at the deepwater port of Stord in Norway sits a huge lifting vessel usually used in the oil and gas industry. It is the second biggest of its kind, very expensive to hire – and, for now, essential in the process of lifting the turbines off the quayside and floating them.
The first-of-a-kind nature means supply chain complexity, too. “We have 15 main contractors. For the future we cannot have 15, we can have between 5 and 10,” said Leif Delp, project manager for Hywind.
Statoil said floating wind would be the same cost as conventional offshore windfarms by 2030, while IEA said the cost today was the same as fixed-bottom ones a decade ago.
Experts have said a conventional offshore windfarm with the capacity of Hywind would be less than half the cost. A generous subsidy deal from the Scottish government made the project viable.
“Technically, everything is possible. It’s just the price tag that comes with it,” said Barth.
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comments (226)
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1 2
Androsupial
1h ago
0 1
Nice technology, interesting grammar:
- towed, not 'tugged'
- tether, not 'teather'
I'd still like to know why the UK isn't leading in wave power.
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Ozjock
1h ago
1 2
Please correct the spelling of 'teather' (sic) in the diagram.
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World's first floating windfarm to take shape off coast of Scotland
By Adam Vaughan in Stord, Norway
Tuesday 27 June 2017 14.55 BST
Last modified on Tuesday 27 June 2017 22.00 BST
The world’s first floating windfarm has taken to the seas in a sign that a technology once confined to research and development drawing boards is finally ready to unlock expanses of ocean for generating renewable power
After two turbines were floated this week, five now bob gently in the deep waters of a fjord on the western coast of Norway ready to be tugged across the North Sea to their final destination off north-east Scotland.
The £200m Hywind project is unusual not just because of the pioneering technology involved, which uses a 78-metre-tall underwater ballast and three mooring lines that will be attached to the seabed to keep the turbines upright. It is also notable because the developer is not a renewable energy firm but Norway’s Statoil, which is looking to diversify away from carbon-based fuels.
Irene Rummelhoff, head of the oil firm’s low-carbon division, said the technology opened up an enormous new resource of wind power.
“It’s almost unlimited. Currently we are saying [floating windfarms will work in] water depths of between 100 and 700 metres, but I think we can go deeper than that. It opens up ocean that was unavailable,” she said.
Offshore windfarms are springing up across the North Sea for a reason – its waters are uniquely shallow enough to allow turbines to be mounted atop steel poles fixed to the seabed.
However, such fixed-bottom turbines can only be installed at water depths down to 40 metres, making them little use for the steeply shelved coastlines of the US west coast or Japan.
“If you look at coastlines around the world, there’s few that have sufficient area at depths down to 40 metres so if they want to deploy offshore wind, they need to introduce floating wind,” said Rummelhoff.
As well as opening up new frontiers such as the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, floating windfarms could be placed farther out to sea to avoid the sort of aesthetic objections that scuppered a £3.5b windfarm off the Dorset coast.
While Hywind is a minnow among modern offshore wind projects – it will power just 20,000 homes compared with the 800,000 by one being built off the Yorkshire coast – proponents say floating turbines could eclipse fixed-bottom ones in the long run.
“Looking to the next decades, there might be a point where floating is bigger than fixed based,” said Stephan Barth of IEA Wind, an intergovernmental wind power body covering 21 countries.
Bruno Geschier, chief marketing officer at Ideol, a French company hoping to build floating windfarms in Japan, France and elsewhere, said he expected floating farms to begin to take off in the next decade, “reaching cruising altitude in the mid-2020s and a big boom in 2030-35”.
The commercialisation also means a chance for new countries to emerge as renewable energy leaders. The UK has the most offshore wind capacity in the world, with Germany not far behind, but France, which has none, wants to become a market leader.
“Floating wind is an opportunity for France to step on to the podium,” said Geschier.
For Statoil, the ambitions go well beyond Peterhead in Scotland, where Hywind will be moored and providing power from October at the latest.
Rummelhoff said floating windfarms will come of age in the areas where conventional ones have been established, as countries such as the UK run out of suitable sites in shallower waters.
But it is also talking with state governments in Hawaii and California about projects, and eyeing Japan and the new, pro-renewables government in Seoul.
Like many new technologies, the biggest challenge will be cost. Behind the turbines at the deepwater port of Stord in Norway sits a huge lifting vessel usually used in the oil and gas industry. It is the second biggest of its kind, very expensive to hire – and, for now, essential in the process of lifting the turbines off the quayside and floating them.
The first-of-a-kind nature means supply chain complexity, too. “We have 15 main contractors. For the future we cannot have 15, we can have between 5 and 10,” said Leif Delp, project manager for Hywind.
Statoil said floating wind would be the same cost as conventional offshore windfarms by 2030, while IEA said the cost today was the same as fixed-bottom ones a decade ago.
Experts have said a conventional offshore windfarm with the capacity of Hywind would be less than half the cost. A generous subsidy deal from the Scottish government made the project viable.
“Technically, everything is possible. It’s just the price tag that comes with it,” said Barth.
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Scotland
Wind power
Renewable energy
Norway
Energy
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1 2
Androsupial
1h ago
0 1
Nice technology, interesting grammar:
- towed, not 'tugged'
- tether, not 'teather'
I'd still like to know why the UK isn't leading in wave power.
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Ozjock
1h ago
1 2
Please correct the spelling of 'teather' (sic) in the diagram.
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Digiday/Lucia Moses: 'Life is not fair’: How Salon regrouped after Facebook decimated its traffic
Digiday
'Life is not fair’: How Salon regrouped after Facebook decimated its traffic
June 28, 2017 by Lucia Moses
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Many publishers have wrung their hands over being at the mercy of Facebook’s algorithm changes. Rarely are the details made public, though. As a public company, Salon Media Group has to report its financial results.
In its most recent full-year fiscal results, published on June 23, it disclosed its revenue fell 34 percent to $4.6 million year over year and traffic dropped 23 percent, declines it pinned on the twin forces facing media: Facebook and programmatic advertising.
How it dealt with the blow from Facebook sheds light on the risks publishers face as they grow increasingly dependent on algorithms outside their control.
Jordan Hoffner had been CEO of Salon for just a month when Facebook announced it would alter its algorithm to favor posts from users’ friends and family over publishers’ posts in June 2016. Before then, Facebook was doing well for Salon, said Annemarie Dooling, a former community manager at Salon. “We were putting extra work into figuring out how to moderate better and make it a safe space,” she said. “There was a lot of political debate.” Salon was getting about one-fourth of its visits from the platform and roughly one-third each coming from search and direct traffic. But that was enough to ding its traffic significantly, according to the company.
Salon’s average monthly traffic fell 23 percent to 12.7 million uniques for the full year, versus 16.6 million the year before, even as other publishers were seeing their traffic soar on Trump news. The low point was September, when the site had 9.6 million uniques. (According to comScore, traffic has been coming back up, to 9.3 million in May, up 4 percent year over year.)
“It was pretty dramatic,” said Hoffner. “But at the end of the day, what are you going to do? … Life is not fair. Being entitled is not going to get you anywhere.”
Hoffner was brought on to replace Cindy Jeffers and bring the struggling progressive news and commentary site to profitability. Salon had the added pressure of being a single-title company that’s publicly traded. As a vet of Google and YouTube as well as a former NBC News producer, Hoffner said he wasn’t a stranger to the thinking at platforms.
“I come from a platform, so I understand what Facebook is trying to do,” he said. “Generally speaking, and it’s not limited to social media, if you’re running a business, you have to be very careful about building your business on top of other platforms. At the end of the day, something can happen that’s out of your control.”
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July 14, 2017
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Like a lot of publishers at the time, Salon started wading into Facebook Live and on-demand video. This played into Hoffner’s strengths, as he has a TV and video background. Salon posts a live video every weekday, often an interview with a celebrity or politician, which Hoffner said has helped Salon grow traffic on Facebook. But there’s no monetization there yet. So at the same time, he put more resources behind video, building a video team of six. Text is still Salon’s backbone, with about 45 pieces a day, but Salon now also produces four to six videos a day, often featuring its writers interviewing newsmakers, and increasingly, mini documentaries. Salon has been shifting its revenue focus to programmatic because as a small site, it’s hard to sell direct and native advertising, and it can sell more programmatic with fewer staffers. The video effort has helped improve programmatic pre-roll ad rates by 25 percent over the past year.
One trend Salon hasn’t chased is Facebook Instant Articles, the fast-loading mobile pages initiative that requires publishers to post directly to Facebook. It’s widely believed publishers that get on board would have an edge because Facebook rewards publishers that post directly to the platform. Salon implemented Instant Articles a year ago but stopped after finding it could make more money by selling advertising directly on its own site.
When Hoffner arrived, staffers were concerned that he’d water down its progressive bent and cut staffers to boost the company’s performance. Under Hoffner, Salon has cut staff to 40, down from 51, and it’s lost several high-profile writers. Salon is posting more images and polls on Facebook, the sort of content the algorithm wants. But Hoffner, who’s also filling in as Salon’s acting editor-in-chief since Dave Daley’s departure in June last year, insists Facebook isn’t driving the editorial strategy and that the fundamental editorial approach is unchanged.
“It’s one of probably 10 data points we look at,” he said of Salon’s performance on Facebook. “The question is, what is it that we’re best at covering, what kinds of angles can we provide that are interesting and how do you best distribute that.”
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'Life is not fair’: How Salon regrouped after Facebook decimated its traffic
June 28, 2017 by Lucia Moses
Facebook Icon
Twitter Icon
LinkedIn Icon
RSS Icon
Many publishers have wrung their hands over being at the mercy of Facebook’s algorithm changes. Rarely are the details made public, though. As a public company, Salon Media Group has to report its financial results.
In its most recent full-year fiscal results, published on June 23, it disclosed its revenue fell 34 percent to $4.6 million year over year and traffic dropped 23 percent, declines it pinned on the twin forces facing media: Facebook and programmatic advertising.
How it dealt with the blow from Facebook sheds light on the risks publishers face as they grow increasingly dependent on algorithms outside their control.
Jordan Hoffner had been CEO of Salon for just a month when Facebook announced it would alter its algorithm to favor posts from users’ friends and family over publishers’ posts in June 2016. Before then, Facebook was doing well for Salon, said Annemarie Dooling, a former community manager at Salon. “We were putting extra work into figuring out how to moderate better and make it a safe space,” she said. “There was a lot of political debate.” Salon was getting about one-fourth of its visits from the platform and roughly one-third each coming from search and direct traffic. But that was enough to ding its traffic significantly, according to the company.
Salon’s average monthly traffic fell 23 percent to 12.7 million uniques for the full year, versus 16.6 million the year before, even as other publishers were seeing their traffic soar on Trump news. The low point was September, when the site had 9.6 million uniques. (According to comScore, traffic has been coming back up, to 9.3 million in May, up 4 percent year over year.)
“It was pretty dramatic,” said Hoffner. “But at the end of the day, what are you going to do? … Life is not fair. Being entitled is not going to get you anywhere.”
Hoffner was brought on to replace Cindy Jeffers and bring the struggling progressive news and commentary site to profitability. Salon had the added pressure of being a single-title company that’s publicly traded. As a vet of Google and YouTube as well as a former NBC News producer, Hoffner said he wasn’t a stranger to the thinking at platforms.
“I come from a platform, so I understand what Facebook is trying to do,” he said. “Generally speaking, and it’s not limited to social media, if you’re running a business, you have to be very careful about building your business on top of other platforms. At the end of the day, something can happen that’s out of your control.”
Digiday Awards
July 14, 2017
REGULAR DEADLINE
Submit now
Like a lot of publishers at the time, Salon started wading into Facebook Live and on-demand video. This played into Hoffner’s strengths, as he has a TV and video background. Salon posts a live video every weekday, often an interview with a celebrity or politician, which Hoffner said has helped Salon grow traffic on Facebook. But there’s no monetization there yet. So at the same time, he put more resources behind video, building a video team of six. Text is still Salon’s backbone, with about 45 pieces a day, but Salon now also produces four to six videos a day, often featuring its writers interviewing newsmakers, and increasingly, mini documentaries. Salon has been shifting its revenue focus to programmatic because as a small site, it’s hard to sell direct and native advertising, and it can sell more programmatic with fewer staffers. The video effort has helped improve programmatic pre-roll ad rates by 25 percent over the past year.
One trend Salon hasn’t chased is Facebook Instant Articles, the fast-loading mobile pages initiative that requires publishers to post directly to Facebook. It’s widely believed publishers that get on board would have an edge because Facebook rewards publishers that post directly to the platform. Salon implemented Instant Articles a year ago but stopped after finding it could make more money by selling advertising directly on its own site.
When Hoffner arrived, staffers were concerned that he’d water down its progressive bent and cut staffers to boost the company’s performance. Under Hoffner, Salon has cut staff to 40, down from 51, and it’s lost several high-profile writers. Salon is posting more images and polls on Facebook, the sort of content the algorithm wants. But Hoffner, who’s also filling in as Salon’s acting editor-in-chief since Dave Daley’s departure in June last year, insists Facebook isn’t driving the editorial strategy and that the fundamental editorial approach is unchanged.
“It’s one of probably 10 data points we look at,” he said of Salon’s performance on Facebook. “The question is, what is it that we’re best at covering, what kinds of angles can we provide that are interesting and how do you best distribute that.”
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Related Articles
Facebook changes the News Feed to favor friends and family over publishers
June 29, 2016 by Jordan Valinsky
The winners and losers of Facebook’s news feed change
June 29, 2016 by Lucia Moses
Content & Commerce
Inside football startup Dugout’s plan to help clubs turn content into cash
June 28, 2017 by Seb Joseph
Dugout is a football start-up co-funded by clubs.
Publishing on Instagram
Instagram video is soaring for publishers
June 28, 2017 by Max Willens
Publishing on Facebook
For small publishers, Facebook is often a force for good — and frustration
June 28, 2017 by Lucia Moses
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“A toll every mile:” Time to pull back the curtain on pricing
Sponsored by Nativo
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‘There’s nothing to be ashamed about’: How publishers approach buying traffic through Facebook
June 28, 2017 by Ross Benes
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The winners and losers of Google’s $2.7 billion fine from Europe
June 27, 2017 by Lucinda Southern
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APO Group mourns the passing of former International Advisory Board Member Lucia Grenna
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, June 28, 2017/ -- It is with great regret that we have learned of the passing of former APO International Advisory Board Member Lucia Grenna.
Paying tribute to Lucia Grenna, APO Group's Founder and CEO, Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard said, “It is with great sadness that we learned of Lucia’s passing. As one of the first people to join the International Advisory Board of APO in 2008, Lucia made an enormous contribution to the organisation’s development. She was, at the time, Head of the Unit of Communications for Development at the World Bank. On behalf of APO Group, we extend our sympathies to her family at this time.”
Lucia was the task manager for the First World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD) which took place in Rome, Italy, on October 25-27, 2006. The main goal of the WCCD was to position and promote the field of Communication for Development in the overall agenda of development and international cooperation.
The member list for the International Advisory Board of APO was released on 28 April 2008: www.APO.af/IABapo.
With her extensive experience in development communication, Lucia realized that communication for climate action would be key to advancing the climate movement, promoting the solutions necessary and motivating the political leadership needed to build a low-carbon, resilient and sustainable future. She made it her mission to build a social movement for climate action by raising awareness of the impact of climate change and promoting the solutions for addressing it. She worked with partners across the globe to reach the greatest audience possible, especially young people.
In 2009 she convinced the World Bank and the Italian Ministry of Environment that climate communication was critical and well worth supporting and established the Communication for Climate Change Multi-Donor Trust Fund of the World Bank Group. In 2011 the flagship global partnership program Connect4Climate was born. It quickly took hold, gathering half a million Facebook followers and forging ties with leaders in popular culture – including music, film and fashion icons – to reach the generations of the future while at the same time helping scientists, politicians, and administrators raise awareness and prompt action.
Lucia was a unique and influential presence who could mix with anyone, anywhere, gain their attention and advance proposals for seemingly impossible, but magnificent and celebratory initiatives. Who but Lucia could have brought together an unusual group of partners to orchestrate the projection of massive climate-related images on the front of the Vatican, reminding a worldwide audience of our responsibility to protecting the Planet? We remember her for “making the impossible possible.”
For Lucia and the Connect4Climate program, the operative word has been to ‘connect’. This sentiment was Lucia through and through. She was passionate about finding ways for people and organizations to interact together and did her utmost to create and grow lasting connections. Connect4Climate now interacts with hundreds of partners, reaches millions online and engages with global audiences through competitions, events, and education to support the movement for climate action and to end poverty.
Lucia’s ideas would never stay on paper but would lead to tangible outcomes that engaged partners and energized audiences worldwide. She was a leader driven to find the most impactful communications, and in doing so inspired and advocated for a sustainable development pathway.
As Lucia would always say, “let’s get busy and make this happen!”
Please check the Connect4Climate page for latest updates: www.Facebook.com/Connect4Climate. Hashtag: #Love4Lucia
More information: http://APO.af/gEQcgf.
Distributed by APO on behalf of APO Group.
View multimedia content
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Aïssatou Diallo | bdm@APO-opa.org | +41 22 534 96 97
ABOUT APO GROUP
Over the past 10 years, APO Group has successfully established itself as a Glocal facilitation authority within media landscapes. Since its inception, our consulting firm is committed to sharpening its clients’ reputation, brand image and speed to market positioning in emerging markets while maximizing their global value. We collaborate with both private and public organizations - from Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 corporations to emerging companies, from SME’s to NGOs, local and national Governments - to transform their media challenges into relevant bespoke programs that bring together Innovation & Efficiency. As knowledge partner, our role is to combine our long-standing expertise, advanced technologies - Africa Wire® and MENA Wire® (www.APO-opa.com/services.php) - with our unparalleled network to engineer sound media strategies that enable our clients to expand their footprint in the Africa Middle East regions. APO Group’ strengths lie in its ability to address its clients’ specific situations holistically and capitalize on its unique experiences in Media relation, Editorial & Corporate communication, Advertising sales with key institutions and media houses to provide high added-value supports and tangible results.
SOURCE
APO Group
Paying tribute to Lucia Grenna, APO Group's Founder and CEO, Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard said, “It is with great sadness that we learned of Lucia’s passing. As one of the first people to join the International Advisory Board of APO in 2008, Lucia made an enormous contribution to the organisation’s development. She was, at the time, Head of the Unit of Communications for Development at the World Bank. On behalf of APO Group, we extend our sympathies to her family at this time.”
Lucia was the task manager for the First World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD) which took place in Rome, Italy, on October 25-27, 2006. The main goal of the WCCD was to position and promote the field of Communication for Development in the overall agenda of development and international cooperation.
The member list for the International Advisory Board of APO was released on 28 April 2008: www.APO.af/IABapo.
With her extensive experience in development communication, Lucia realized that communication for climate action would be key to advancing the climate movement, promoting the solutions necessary and motivating the political leadership needed to build a low-carbon, resilient and sustainable future. She made it her mission to build a social movement for climate action by raising awareness of the impact of climate change and promoting the solutions for addressing it. She worked with partners across the globe to reach the greatest audience possible, especially young people.
In 2009 she convinced the World Bank and the Italian Ministry of Environment that climate communication was critical and well worth supporting and established the Communication for Climate Change Multi-Donor Trust Fund of the World Bank Group. In 2011 the flagship global partnership program Connect4Climate was born. It quickly took hold, gathering half a million Facebook followers and forging ties with leaders in popular culture – including music, film and fashion icons – to reach the generations of the future while at the same time helping scientists, politicians, and administrators raise awareness and prompt action.
Lucia was a unique and influential presence who could mix with anyone, anywhere, gain their attention and advance proposals for seemingly impossible, but magnificent and celebratory initiatives. Who but Lucia could have brought together an unusual group of partners to orchestrate the projection of massive climate-related images on the front of the Vatican, reminding a worldwide audience of our responsibility to protecting the Planet? We remember her for “making the impossible possible.”
For Lucia and the Connect4Climate program, the operative word has been to ‘connect’. This sentiment was Lucia through and through. She was passionate about finding ways for people and organizations to interact together and did her utmost to create and grow lasting connections. Connect4Climate now interacts with hundreds of partners, reaches millions online and engages with global audiences through competitions, events, and education to support the movement for climate action and to end poverty.
Lucia’s ideas would never stay on paper but would lead to tangible outcomes that engaged partners and energized audiences worldwide. She was a leader driven to find the most impactful communications, and in doing so inspired and advocated for a sustainable development pathway.
As Lucia would always say, “let’s get busy and make this happen!”
Please check the Connect4Climate page for latest updates: www.Facebook.com/Connect4Climate. Hashtag: #Love4Lucia
More information: http://APO.af/gEQcgf.
Distributed by APO on behalf of APO Group.
View multimedia content
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Aïssatou Diallo | bdm@APO-opa.org | +41 22 534 96 97
ABOUT APO GROUP
Over the past 10 years, APO Group has successfully established itself as a Glocal facilitation authority within media landscapes. Since its inception, our consulting firm is committed to sharpening its clients’ reputation, brand image and speed to market positioning in emerging markets while maximizing their global value. We collaborate with both private and public organizations - from Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 corporations to emerging companies, from SME’s to NGOs, local and national Governments - to transform their media challenges into relevant bespoke programs that bring together Innovation & Efficiency. As knowledge partner, our role is to combine our long-standing expertise, advanced technologies - Africa Wire® and MENA Wire® (www.APO-opa.com/services.php) - with our unparalleled network to engineer sound media strategies that enable our clients to expand their footprint in the Africa Middle East regions. APO Group’ strengths lie in its ability to address its clients’ specific situations holistically and capitalize on its unique experiences in Media relation, Editorial & Corporate communication, Advertising sales with key institutions and media houses to provide high added-value supports and tangible results.
SOURCE
APO Group
Win an invitation to the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) and be the privileged journalist to cover the landmark event
As part of its CSR policy, APO Group gives every year the opportunity to African journalists and bloggers to attend exclusive events held in the largest cities of the continent
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, June 28, 2017/ -- APO Group (www.APO-opa.com) is delighted to announce the launch of its prize draw to win an invitation at the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) (www.Africa-Conference.com). The prize draw reflects the company’s DNA and commitment to supporting journalism in Africa by responding to one of the biggest challenges local professionals face: resources constraints and limited networking opportunities. The winner will fly to Kigali, Rwanda, to participate in the prestigious hotel investment conference, on October 10-12, 2017.
Every year since 2011, the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) gathers top-tier international hotel investors, key industry players, Governments as well as National representatives at a single place. A unique moment for meeting counterparts and gaining an overview of the various perspectives on Hospitality and Aviation trends and how they will impact and shape the African industry in the future. For three days, participants are given the opportunity to attend exclusive conferences conducted by key influencers and benefit from their respective expertise.
Last year were present leading figures including Arne Sorenson, President and CEO of Marriott International, Wolfgang Neumann, CEO Rezidor Hotel Group, Antoine Guego, COO of AccorHotel, Patrick Fitzgibbon, SVP Development EMEA of Hilton Worldwide - to name a few - who seized the opportunity to unveil their new hotel projects on the African continent. Valuable insights for reporter Aggrey Mutambo from Nation Media Group who won the 2016 prize draw and had the chance to join the event.
Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, Founder and CEO of APO Group, said: “It is extremely important for us to help African journalists who very often have difficulty in travelling to cover stories compared to their counterparts in the rest of the world. As facilitation authority in the media landscape, it is our responsibility to find alternative solutions that enable news writers to exercise their journalistic profession in good conditions and be present at key events held in Africa.”
In September 2016, reporter Aggrey Mutambo from Kenya (http://APO.af/POgrGb) has won APO’s invitation to attend the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) 2016, the leading hotel investment conference in Africa.
The three previous previous recipients of the AfricaCom invitation were Rwandan science writer Aimable Twahirwa (http://APO.af/nsQpxT), journalist John Churu (http://APO.af/QpEYBG) from Botswana and Kenyan blogger Lilian Murugi Mutegi (http://APO.af/OObhll). They made the trip to South Africa to discover cutting-edge technologies and acquire new knowledge on African digitalization dynamics.
Beyond providing support to journalists, APO Group also sponsors the APO Energy Media Award (http://APO.af/ZhnJGV) and the APO Media Award (http://APO.af/erwHiu). Winners receive a grant ($500 per month for a year), a laptop as well as one intercontinental flight ticket to a destination of his or her choice and one year of access to over 600 airport VIP lounges.
HOW TO APPLY TO THE 2017 EDITION:
To win the invitation to the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF), click on: http://APO.af/RheaYK
The deadline for entry is midnight GMT on September 10, 2017
The winner will be announced on September 13, 2017
APO Group will pay for one round-trip ticket and accommodation in Kigali, Rwanda
The winner will be responsible for the visa, food, local transport and any other expense
Distributed by APO on behalf of APO Group.
View multimedia content
ABOUT THE AFRICA HOTEL INVESTMENT FORUM
Official website: www.Africa-Conference.com
AHIF 2017 Programme: http://www.Africa-Conference.com/Programme2017
AHIF video: http://APO.af/1NHyH9
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Aïssatou Diallo | bdm@apo-opa.org | +41 22 534 96 97
ABOUT APO GROUP
Over the past 10 years, APO Group has successfully established itself as a Glocal facilitation authority within media landscapes. Since its inception, our consulting firm is committed to sharpening its clients’ reputation, brand image and speed to market positioning in emerging markets while maximizing their global value. We collaborate with both private and public organizations - from Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 corporations to emerging companies, from SME’s to NGOs, local and national Governments - to transform their media challenges into relevant bespoke programs that bring together Innovation & Efficiency. As knowledge partner, our role is to combine our long-standing expertise, advanced technologies - Africa Wire® and MENA Wire® - with our unparalleled network to engineer sound media strategies that enable our clients to expand their footprint in the Africa Middle East regions. APO Group’ strengths lie in its ability to address its clients’ specific situations holistically and capitalize on its unique experiences in Media relation, Editorial & Corporate communication, Advertising sales with key institutions and media houses to provide high added-value supports and tangible results.
SOURCE
APO Group
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, June 28, 2017/ -- APO Group (www.APO-opa.com) is delighted to announce the launch of its prize draw to win an invitation at the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) (www.Africa-Conference.com). The prize draw reflects the company’s DNA and commitment to supporting journalism in Africa by responding to one of the biggest challenges local professionals face: resources constraints and limited networking opportunities. The winner will fly to Kigali, Rwanda, to participate in the prestigious hotel investment conference, on October 10-12, 2017.
Every year since 2011, the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) gathers top-tier international hotel investors, key industry players, Governments as well as National representatives at a single place. A unique moment for meeting counterparts and gaining an overview of the various perspectives on Hospitality and Aviation trends and how they will impact and shape the African industry in the future. For three days, participants are given the opportunity to attend exclusive conferences conducted by key influencers and benefit from their respective expertise.
Last year were present leading figures including Arne Sorenson, President and CEO of Marriott International, Wolfgang Neumann, CEO Rezidor Hotel Group, Antoine Guego, COO of AccorHotel, Patrick Fitzgibbon, SVP Development EMEA of Hilton Worldwide - to name a few - who seized the opportunity to unveil their new hotel projects on the African continent. Valuable insights for reporter Aggrey Mutambo from Nation Media Group who won the 2016 prize draw and had the chance to join the event.
Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard, Founder and CEO of APO Group, said: “It is extremely important for us to help African journalists who very often have difficulty in travelling to cover stories compared to their counterparts in the rest of the world. As facilitation authority in the media landscape, it is our responsibility to find alternative solutions that enable news writers to exercise their journalistic profession in good conditions and be present at key events held in Africa.”
In September 2016, reporter Aggrey Mutambo from Kenya (http://APO.af/POgrGb) has won APO’s invitation to attend the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) 2016, the leading hotel investment conference in Africa.
The three previous previous recipients of the AfricaCom invitation were Rwandan science writer Aimable Twahirwa (http://APO.af/nsQpxT), journalist John Churu (http://APO.af/QpEYBG) from Botswana and Kenyan blogger Lilian Murugi Mutegi (http://APO.af/OObhll). They made the trip to South Africa to discover cutting-edge technologies and acquire new knowledge on African digitalization dynamics.
Beyond providing support to journalists, APO Group also sponsors the APO Energy Media Award (http://APO.af/ZhnJGV) and the APO Media Award (http://APO.af/erwHiu). Winners receive a grant ($500 per month for a year), a laptop as well as one intercontinental flight ticket to a destination of his or her choice and one year of access to over 600 airport VIP lounges.
HOW TO APPLY TO THE 2017 EDITION:
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The deadline for entry is midnight GMT on September 10, 2017
The winner will be announced on September 13, 2017
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The winner will be responsible for the visa, food, local transport and any other expense
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McKinsey's latest report on Africa-China economic partnership challenges previous beliefs
DALIAN, June 28, 2017/ -- China is Africa’s largest economic partner. Yet it has been a challenge to understand the full extent of the partnership due to a dearth of data. A new report by McKinsey Africa (www.McKinsey.com) finds that its involvement is bigger and more multifaceted than previous studies suggest.
Through a study conducted across eight countries that together make up about two-thirds of Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP, the report finds that there are already over 10,000 Chinese firms operating in Africa—four times the previous estimate. About 90 percent of these are private firms, of all sizes and operating in diverse sectors, with about a third in manufacturing. These firms are bringing capital investment, management know-how and entreprenuerial energy to the continent, and in so doing, are helping to accelerate the progress of Africa’s economies.
Across trade, investment, infrastructure, financing and aid, China is a top five partner to Africa—no other country matches this level of engagement. The China-Africa relationship has ramped up over the past decade with trade growing at around 20 percent per annum. FDI has grown even faster—at an annual growth rate of 40 percent. China’s financial flows to Africa are 15 percent larger than official figures suggest when nontraditional flows are included. China is also a large and fast-growing source of aid and the largest source of infrastructure financing, supporting many of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure developments in recent years.
Chinese firms are market-driven and investing for the long-term
Operating across many sectors of the African economy, in addition to manufacturing, a quarter is in services and a fifth in trade and in construction and real estate. Chinese firms already handle 12% of Africa’s industrial production—valued at $500 billion a year in total. In infrastructure, Chinese firms’ dominance is even more pronounced, having cornered nearly 50 percent market share of Africa’s international EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) market. Chinese firms are making healthy profits. Nearly a quarter of the 1000 firms surveyed said they covered their initial investment within a year or less. A third recorded profit margins of over 20 percent. These firms are agile and quick to respond to new opportunities. They are primarily focused on serving the needs of Africa’s fast-growing markets rather than on exports. Chinese firms have made investments that represent a long-term commitment to Africa. Of the Chinese firms surveyed, 74 percent said that they are optimistic about their future in Africa.
Clear benefits, but challenges must be addressed
The report points to three main economic benefits to Africa from Chinese investment and business activity:
Job creation and skills development: Of the 1,000 firms surveyed, 89 percent of the employees are local. The research suggests that Chinese firms employ several million Africans. Nearly two-thirds of Chinese firms provide skills training to their workers.
Transfer of knowledge and new technology: Chinese firms are modernizing African markets by introducing new products and technologies. Some 48 percent introduced a new product or service and 36 percent have introduced a new technology in the last three years.
Financing and development of infrastructure: When asked what they value most from their Chinese partners, for some 50 African public-sector leaders, low-cost financing and improved infrastructure topped the list. They cited Chinese firms’ efficient cost-structures and speedy delivery as major value-adds.
While on balance, China’s burgeoning partnership with Africa is a positive for Africa’s economies, governments and workers, there are areas that need significant improvement:
Local sourcing: By value, only 47 percent of Chinese firms’ sourcing was from local African firms, which is lost opportunity for these firms to benefit from Chinese investment.
Local managers: Too few locals are in managerial positions—only 44 percent today.
Pain points for both sides: Chinese firms cite personal safety and corruption in some countries as their top concerns. For African leaders, language and cultural barriers are pain points. There have been instances of labour and environmental violations by Chinese firms.
Maximising the impact of the partnership
Kartik Jayaram, a senior partner and co-author of the report said, “Chinese engagement with Africa is set to accelerate—by 2025 Chinese firms could be earning revenues worth $440 billion, from $180 billion today. Additional industries could be in play for Chinese investment, including technology, housing, agriculture, financial services and transport and logistics. However, to unlock the full potential of the China-Africa partnership, we have identified 10 recommendations for Chinese and African governments as well as the private sector. To highlight two key ones—African goverments should have a China stragegy and the Chinese government should open financing and provide guidance to Chinese firms.”
Few African countries have a clear strategy and engagement plan for China. Governments shold develop such strategies, linked to national plans and priorities. They should also cultivate capabilities in their bureacracies to support these strategies.
Opening Chinese government financing and providing guidance on responsible business practices to Chinese private sector firms in Africa would accelerate sustainable investment.
Distributed by APO on behalf of McKinsey & Company.
View multimedia content
For more information, contact:
Bonita Dordel
Bonita_Dordel@McKinsey.com
+27 (0) 11 506-8193
About McKinsey & Company Africa:
With a presence in Africa of over 20 years, McKinsey & Company (www.McKinsey.com) has offices in Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Angola. We shape strategy and strengthen operations for players in major industries, and help deliver better outcomes in education and health care, in over 40 African countries. McKinsey has delivered over 1400 projects across the African continent.
SOURCE
McKinsey & Company
Through a study conducted across eight countries that together make up about two-thirds of Sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP, the report finds that there are already over 10,000 Chinese firms operating in Africa—four times the previous estimate. About 90 percent of these are private firms, of all sizes and operating in diverse sectors, with about a third in manufacturing. These firms are bringing capital investment, management know-how and entreprenuerial energy to the continent, and in so doing, are helping to accelerate the progress of Africa’s economies.
Across trade, investment, infrastructure, financing and aid, China is a top five partner to Africa—no other country matches this level of engagement. The China-Africa relationship has ramped up over the past decade with trade growing at around 20 percent per annum. FDI has grown even faster—at an annual growth rate of 40 percent. China’s financial flows to Africa are 15 percent larger than official figures suggest when nontraditional flows are included. China is also a large and fast-growing source of aid and the largest source of infrastructure financing, supporting many of Africa’s most ambitious infrastructure developments in recent years.
Chinese firms are market-driven and investing for the long-term
Operating across many sectors of the African economy, in addition to manufacturing, a quarter is in services and a fifth in trade and in construction and real estate. Chinese firms already handle 12% of Africa’s industrial production—valued at $500 billion a year in total. In infrastructure, Chinese firms’ dominance is even more pronounced, having cornered nearly 50 percent market share of Africa’s international EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) market. Chinese firms are making healthy profits. Nearly a quarter of the 1000 firms surveyed said they covered their initial investment within a year or less. A third recorded profit margins of over 20 percent. These firms are agile and quick to respond to new opportunities. They are primarily focused on serving the needs of Africa’s fast-growing markets rather than on exports. Chinese firms have made investments that represent a long-term commitment to Africa. Of the Chinese firms surveyed, 74 percent said that they are optimistic about their future in Africa.
Clear benefits, but challenges must be addressed
The report points to three main economic benefits to Africa from Chinese investment and business activity:
Job creation and skills development: Of the 1,000 firms surveyed, 89 percent of the employees are local. The research suggests that Chinese firms employ several million Africans. Nearly two-thirds of Chinese firms provide skills training to their workers.
Transfer of knowledge and new technology: Chinese firms are modernizing African markets by introducing new products and technologies. Some 48 percent introduced a new product or service and 36 percent have introduced a new technology in the last three years.
Financing and development of infrastructure: When asked what they value most from their Chinese partners, for some 50 African public-sector leaders, low-cost financing and improved infrastructure topped the list. They cited Chinese firms’ efficient cost-structures and speedy delivery as major value-adds.
While on balance, China’s burgeoning partnership with Africa is a positive for Africa’s economies, governments and workers, there are areas that need significant improvement:
Local sourcing: By value, only 47 percent of Chinese firms’ sourcing was from local African firms, which is lost opportunity for these firms to benefit from Chinese investment.
Local managers: Too few locals are in managerial positions—only 44 percent today.
Pain points for both sides: Chinese firms cite personal safety and corruption in some countries as their top concerns. For African leaders, language and cultural barriers are pain points. There have been instances of labour and environmental violations by Chinese firms.
Maximising the impact of the partnership
Kartik Jayaram, a senior partner and co-author of the report said, “Chinese engagement with Africa is set to accelerate—by 2025 Chinese firms could be earning revenues worth $440 billion, from $180 billion today. Additional industries could be in play for Chinese investment, including technology, housing, agriculture, financial services and transport and logistics. However, to unlock the full potential of the China-Africa partnership, we have identified 10 recommendations for Chinese and African governments as well as the private sector. To highlight two key ones—African goverments should have a China stragegy and the Chinese government should open financing and provide guidance to Chinese firms.”
Few African countries have a clear strategy and engagement plan for China. Governments shold develop such strategies, linked to national plans and priorities. They should also cultivate capabilities in their bureacracies to support these strategies.
Opening Chinese government financing and providing guidance on responsible business practices to Chinese private sector firms in Africa would accelerate sustainable investment.
Distributed by APO on behalf of McKinsey & Company.
View multimedia content
For more information, contact:
Bonita Dordel
Bonita_Dordel@McKinsey.com
+27 (0) 11 506-8193
About McKinsey & Company Africa:
With a presence in Africa of over 20 years, McKinsey & Company (www.McKinsey.com) has offices in Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa and Angola. We shape strategy and strengthen operations for players in major industries, and help deliver better outcomes in education and health care, in over 40 African countries. McKinsey has delivered over 1400 projects across the African continent.
SOURCE
McKinsey & Company
RenewEconomy/Giles Parkinson: "Baseload" is outdated, and should not be confused with “reliability”
"Baseload" is outdated, and should not be confused with “reliability”
By Giles Parkinson on 28 June 2017
The “coal versus no new coal” debate has come to define the battle lines over Australia’s energy future. It can basically be boiled down to one concept: the assumption that we have to rely on baseload power for the reliability and security of out electricity supply.
A new report from the US highlights how the concept of “baseload” is really just an artefact of an old industry, and points out that baseload should not be confused with reliability. The two do not go hand in hand, and hanging on to the term is getting in the way of planning for the future.
“Baseload power”, however, is a line encouraged by the fossil fuel industry, happy that “baseload” has become a marketing tool, in the same way that it has exploited the idea of “clean coal” and “energy poverty” to pursue their interests.
The Brattle Group report was commissioned by the NRDC, a US-based NGO, just as the Trump administration prepares its own battle over the future of “baseload” in a rapidly changing energy market. It prompted this series of tweets.
NRCD tweet
As in Australia, conservatives in the US are fighting back against renewables – and variable sources like wind and solar in particular – on the basis that baseload power should be protected at all costs.
It was the central theme of former prime minister and back-bench rabble-rouser Tony Abbott’s latest salvo into Coalition party politics, and his desire for the government to build a new coal-fired power station, under the fantasy that this will somehow reduce costs.(It will do the opposite).
He was followed by George Christensen, the Queensland MP wanting a baseload coal generator in the north of the state, to give people “power that they can rely on” and not have it derailed by “sacrifices to the climate gods”.
Christensen clearly did not read the Finkel Review, or the latest BNEF analysis, because he thinks coal is half the price of solar.
And it’s the line pushed by the Trump administration and its energy secretary Rick Perry. It’s a coal industry marketing point. But it’s a lousy argument that makes no sense in a world full of technology alternatives.
Increasingly, more energy regulators, such as the head of the UK’s National Grid, and other energy experts are accepting this point. Perry’s comments were slapped down almost immediately by one of the country’s senior energy regulator. “It is absolutely not true,” she said on Perry’s false claims on wind and solar.
And energy users are starting to come to this idea too. The best example is Nectar Farms, who were ready to abandon the building of the country’s biggest glasshouse for vegetable growing, and build it overseas, instead of western Victoria, before discovering that wind energy and battery storage could deliver the same reliability at a fraction of the cost of grid power and gas.
“Why would we do it any other way,” says the CEO Stephen Sasse. Extraordinary, this tale of a half a billion dollar investment, 1,300 jobs and 100 per cent renewables was completely ignored by the mainstream media. You’d think it would be a great story for prime minister Jobson Grothe.
And that explains the battle over baseload. The media runs with the coal industry talking point, it is infused in their discussions. How else could we deliver reliable energy, they ask.
Well, by using smarter, cleaner, faster and more reliable technology for one thing, would be the answer from the likes of AEMO boss Audrey Zibelman.
The new demand management recommendations coming from ARENA and the Institute of Sustainable Futures shows how these concepts like demand management can deliver the flexibility that the modern energy system needs, and save heaps on the cost of poles and wires.
The key point is that it is important to have enough power to meet demand at all times – but there are smarter ways of doing this than simply relying on large, inflexible generators – that just happen to be dirtier and more expensive than the alternatives.
The Brattle Report, like a similar analysis by the Climate Policy Initiative, and so many others before it, tries to puncture some of the myth-making around baseload.
Just because a coal generator is big, and can go for 24 hours uninterrupted, does not make it reliable.
To start with, the they can and do have unexplained outages, and the need for maintenance means that system planners have had to build in significant system upgrades, back-up and transmission infrastructure to spread generation over a larger region.
The planners also had to provide “contingency” management processes to avoid blackouts when one or more of these large power plants experienced unexpected outages. All the redundancy that critics say have to be built for wind and solar, have already been built for coal and gas.
Brattle points out events in Texas in 2011 when an unexpected cold snap forced 7GW of coal and gas-fired generation offline as equipment froze. Some 3GW of wind power was uninterrupted and helped keep the lights on.
Similarly, during the 2014 “Polar Vortex,” many coal and gas plants had difficulties generating power, as equipment froze and coal deliveries were stopped. Wind resources in the Midwest consistently produced power that helped to save electricity customers more than $US1 billion in two days.
In Australia, heat waves are having similar impacts. Reports into the various outages, load shedding and price spikes in Australia this past summer almost always point to the loss of capacity at coal and gas plants due to heat stress as the heart of the problem.
But still, to many people, the basic premise of the traditional utility planning processes developed over the last few decades remains unchanged today, despite the fact that wind and solar are killing coal on costs, and battery storage and other smart software has emerged to provide faster and more efficient controls, and do things that big coal-fired power stations could never do.
Brattle argues that system reliability is achieved through a mix of resources, not by any single unit. “There is no special need for continuous power supply to come from a single unit (when available and not on outage) rather than a mix of resources,” it notes.
“It is a misconception that “baseload” plants (or any plants, for that matter) are 100% reliable,” it says. “Coal and nuclear plants periodically go on outage, and when they do, their outages tend to be long.
“No generating plants operate 100% reliably in all hours of the year. All generators are prone to occasional unexpected outages and must regularly go offline for maintenance outages.
The report from CPI reached the same conclusion, affirming that baseload is an outdated term and that “reliability is a technology-neutral concept.”
“Electricity systems have always been managed ‘flexibly’,” it notes. “Weather, work patterns, industry, or even sports schedules create predictable or unexpected drops or spikes in demand.
“Sudden system failures, such as power station or transmission outages, mean that backup generation has always been required to keep the lights on. “
power generation & balancing costIf renewable generation and battery storage prices continue to fall in line with forecasts, meeting demand in each hour of a year with 80 per cent of electricity coming from wind and solar could cost as little as $US70/MWh – even when accounting for required short-term reserves, flexibility and backup generation.
In Australia, with even greater wind and solar resources, this is expected to be around the same price, but in Australian dollars. Either way, it is cheaper than what we have got now.
And the US modelling was done with cheap gas prices. Australia’s Finkel Review came up with a much higher number because it assumed that gas would be needed to replace coal, a highly contentious assumption that seems to perpetuate the “baseload” myth.
The CPI looked at grids and energy mixes in the US, India, Europe and Scandinavia.
“A lack of flexible capacity is often cited as a constraint on the amount of variable renewable energy we can add to the grid. But in our report, we found that most systems already have enough latent flexibility to meet over 30 per cent of their electricity demand from solar and wind.”
That is exactly the conclusion of the CSIRO, which points out that in Australia there is so much back-up already built into the grid, that anything less than 50 per cent wind and solar might be considered “trivial” in some areas.
And they both agree on the second point: “Moreover, technologies that exist today could support much higher shares of wind and solar; 80% or more.” That means little if any “baseload”. Reliability is they key. Nectar Farms now understands this, it is time for politicians and mainstream media to move on.
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By Giles Parkinson on 28 June 2017
The “coal versus no new coal” debate has come to define the battle lines over Australia’s energy future. It can basically be boiled down to one concept: the assumption that we have to rely on baseload power for the reliability and security of out electricity supply.
A new report from the US highlights how the concept of “baseload” is really just an artefact of an old industry, and points out that baseload should not be confused with reliability. The two do not go hand in hand, and hanging on to the term is getting in the way of planning for the future.
“Baseload power”, however, is a line encouraged by the fossil fuel industry, happy that “baseload” has become a marketing tool, in the same way that it has exploited the idea of “clean coal” and “energy poverty” to pursue their interests.
The Brattle Group report was commissioned by the NRDC, a US-based NGO, just as the Trump administration prepares its own battle over the future of “baseload” in a rapidly changing energy market. It prompted this series of tweets.
NRCD tweet
As in Australia, conservatives in the US are fighting back against renewables – and variable sources like wind and solar in particular – on the basis that baseload power should be protected at all costs.
It was the central theme of former prime minister and back-bench rabble-rouser Tony Abbott’s latest salvo into Coalition party politics, and his desire for the government to build a new coal-fired power station, under the fantasy that this will somehow reduce costs.(It will do the opposite).
He was followed by George Christensen, the Queensland MP wanting a baseload coal generator in the north of the state, to give people “power that they can rely on” and not have it derailed by “sacrifices to the climate gods”.
Christensen clearly did not read the Finkel Review, or the latest BNEF analysis, because he thinks coal is half the price of solar.
And it’s the line pushed by the Trump administration and its energy secretary Rick Perry. It’s a coal industry marketing point. But it’s a lousy argument that makes no sense in a world full of technology alternatives.
Increasingly, more energy regulators, such as the head of the UK’s National Grid, and other energy experts are accepting this point. Perry’s comments were slapped down almost immediately by one of the country’s senior energy regulator. “It is absolutely not true,” she said on Perry’s false claims on wind and solar.
And energy users are starting to come to this idea too. The best example is Nectar Farms, who were ready to abandon the building of the country’s biggest glasshouse for vegetable growing, and build it overseas, instead of western Victoria, before discovering that wind energy and battery storage could deliver the same reliability at a fraction of the cost of grid power and gas.
“Why would we do it any other way,” says the CEO Stephen Sasse. Extraordinary, this tale of a half a billion dollar investment, 1,300 jobs and 100 per cent renewables was completely ignored by the mainstream media. You’d think it would be a great story for prime minister Jobson Grothe.
And that explains the battle over baseload. The media runs with the coal industry talking point, it is infused in their discussions. How else could we deliver reliable energy, they ask.
Well, by using smarter, cleaner, faster and more reliable technology for one thing, would be the answer from the likes of AEMO boss Audrey Zibelman.
The new demand management recommendations coming from ARENA and the Institute of Sustainable Futures shows how these concepts like demand management can deliver the flexibility that the modern energy system needs, and save heaps on the cost of poles and wires.
The key point is that it is important to have enough power to meet demand at all times – but there are smarter ways of doing this than simply relying on large, inflexible generators – that just happen to be dirtier and more expensive than the alternatives.
The Brattle Report, like a similar analysis by the Climate Policy Initiative, and so many others before it, tries to puncture some of the myth-making around baseload.
Just because a coal generator is big, and can go for 24 hours uninterrupted, does not make it reliable.
To start with, the they can and do have unexplained outages, and the need for maintenance means that system planners have had to build in significant system upgrades, back-up and transmission infrastructure to spread generation over a larger region.
The planners also had to provide “contingency” management processes to avoid blackouts when one or more of these large power plants experienced unexpected outages. All the redundancy that critics say have to be built for wind and solar, have already been built for coal and gas.
Brattle points out events in Texas in 2011 when an unexpected cold snap forced 7GW of coal and gas-fired generation offline as equipment froze. Some 3GW of wind power was uninterrupted and helped keep the lights on.
Similarly, during the 2014 “Polar Vortex,” many coal and gas plants had difficulties generating power, as equipment froze and coal deliveries were stopped. Wind resources in the Midwest consistently produced power that helped to save electricity customers more than $US1 billion in two days.
In Australia, heat waves are having similar impacts. Reports into the various outages, load shedding and price spikes in Australia this past summer almost always point to the loss of capacity at coal and gas plants due to heat stress as the heart of the problem.
But still, to many people, the basic premise of the traditional utility planning processes developed over the last few decades remains unchanged today, despite the fact that wind and solar are killing coal on costs, and battery storage and other smart software has emerged to provide faster and more efficient controls, and do things that big coal-fired power stations could never do.
Brattle argues that system reliability is achieved through a mix of resources, not by any single unit. “There is no special need for continuous power supply to come from a single unit (when available and not on outage) rather than a mix of resources,” it notes.
“It is a misconception that “baseload” plants (or any plants, for that matter) are 100% reliable,” it says. “Coal and nuclear plants periodically go on outage, and when they do, their outages tend to be long.
“No generating plants operate 100% reliably in all hours of the year. All generators are prone to occasional unexpected outages and must regularly go offline for maintenance outages.
The report from CPI reached the same conclusion, affirming that baseload is an outdated term and that “reliability is a technology-neutral concept.”
“Electricity systems have always been managed ‘flexibly’,” it notes. “Weather, work patterns, industry, or even sports schedules create predictable or unexpected drops or spikes in demand.
“Sudden system failures, such as power station or transmission outages, mean that backup generation has always been required to keep the lights on. “
power generation & balancing costIf renewable generation and battery storage prices continue to fall in line with forecasts, meeting demand in each hour of a year with 80 per cent of electricity coming from wind and solar could cost as little as $US70/MWh – even when accounting for required short-term reserves, flexibility and backup generation.
In Australia, with even greater wind and solar resources, this is expected to be around the same price, but in Australian dollars. Either way, it is cheaper than what we have got now.
And the US modelling was done with cheap gas prices. Australia’s Finkel Review came up with a much higher number because it assumed that gas would be needed to replace coal, a highly contentious assumption that seems to perpetuate the “baseload” myth.
The CPI looked at grids and energy mixes in the US, India, Europe and Scandinavia.
“A lack of flexible capacity is often cited as a constraint on the amount of variable renewable energy we can add to the grid. But in our report, we found that most systems already have enough latent flexibility to meet over 30 per cent of their electricity demand from solar and wind.”
That is exactly the conclusion of the CSIRO, which points out that in Australia there is so much back-up already built into the grid, that anything less than 50 per cent wind and solar might be considered “trivial” in some areas.
And they both agree on the second point: “Moreover, technologies that exist today could support much higher shares of wind and solar; 80% or more.” That means little if any “baseload”. Reliability is they key. Nectar Farms now understands this, it is time for politicians and mainstream media to move on.
Share this:
1 0 0share0share0 0 1
We Recommend
News & Commentary,one... Rooftop solar’s new boom – when installing PV becomes a...
Governments,News &... Abbott’s death-wish on industry: Freeze RET, ban wind, build coal
News & Commentary,Renewables APA takes step closer to big wind-solar energy park in W.A.
Battery storage,News &... Rule-maker wants all new generation to be smarter, quicker
CleanTech Bites,Solar IPART bumps up benchmark range for NSW solar tariffs
Governments,Other Good Stuff,Smart... Devil’s in detail, but Finkel may have gotten it just about right
Recommendations powered by plista
Battery storage • Coal • Featured • Governments baseload
« Previous Post
Next Post »
RenewEconomy Free Daily Newsletter
Email Address
From Our Partners At SolarQuotes
Live Australia Electricity Generation Data
Live Generation
Wed 28 Jun at 15:20 (NEM Time)
WATASSAVICNSWQLD0 MW3,000 MW6,000 MW9,000 MWBlack CoalBrown CoalGasLiquid FuelOtherHydroWindLarge SolarAPVI Small Solar*
v2.0.4.8875
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Why We Must Focus On Farming Without Synthetic Fertilisers And Pesticides In Ghana
A Ghanaweb.com general news webpage story with the title: "China bans fruits and vegetables from Ghana" immediately caught my eye, as I scanned through the Ghana-focused online portal's news headlines.
Apparently, it was the deputy minister for trade and industry, Hon. Carlos Ahenkora, who divulged news of that sad commercial disaster and new fact-on-the-ground reality, to the media.
Clearly, it is counter productive to continue burying our heads in the sand on the issue of applying synthetic chemicals and pesticides in farming across our homeland Ghana.
In the long-term, strategically, it simply no longer makes sense commercially to continue using synthetic fertilisers and pesticides in farming, if we want to target overseas markets - and, above all, if we want to have a healthy population. Good health, we're are told, is wealth.
Unfortunately, the trouble about Ghana, is that we seldom connect things. Sadly, lobbyists working for the greedy and wealthy individuals who control the importation and distribution of agro-chemicals in this country, have so many of the members of our ruling elites in their pockets. On a daily basis. Literally.
For example, why is it that Parliament passes all manner of laws that are clearly detrimental to the well-being of our nation and its people? Food for thought. But I digress.
Alas, the worst is yet to come, as regards the banning of agricultural produce such as fruits and vegetables, from Ghana, in overseas markets.
Ghana's pesticide-laden cocoa beans will eventually end up like that too soon if our hard-of-hearing vampire-elites continue to refuse to listen to those of us in the cocoa farming sector who have insisted for years that we must focus on growing cocoa organically in this country - if the industry is to survive and thrive.
We must simply discourage the widespread use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides in farms across Ghana - for the plain truth is they actually pose a risk to public health in Ghana. Full stop.
BioDeposit, a much better and greener alternative - that is incidentally doing wonders for the coffee-growing industries of nations such as Rwanda - is available. Today. Not tomorrow.
Fortunately, it can be used to effectively replace all the different brands of the carcinogenic agro-chemicals and synthetic fertilisers - now being used by farmers with such disastrous effect on the health of so many Ghanaians - and result in higher yields and the production of healthier crops.
But, first, the powerful lobbyists working for the super-wealthy mafiosi that control the importation and distribution of agro-chemicals into Ghana must be defeated. And, quickly, too.
If this government's ministerial team in charge of the ministry of food and agriculture were wise, they would encourage all the nation's farmers to switch to using BioDeposit's very effective natural products for all categories of farming in Ghana - to ensure bumper harvests of pesticide-free agricultural produce. That makes a great deal of sense for Mother Ghana - in our humble view.
Hmm, Oman Ghana - enti yewieye paa enei? Asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa!
Apparently, it was the deputy minister for trade and industry, Hon. Carlos Ahenkora, who divulged news of that sad commercial disaster and new fact-on-the-ground reality, to the media.
Clearly, it is counter productive to continue burying our heads in the sand on the issue of applying synthetic chemicals and pesticides in farming across our homeland Ghana.
In the long-term, strategically, it simply no longer makes sense commercially to continue using synthetic fertilisers and pesticides in farming, if we want to target overseas markets - and, above all, if we want to have a healthy population. Good health, we're are told, is wealth.
Unfortunately, the trouble about Ghana, is that we seldom connect things. Sadly, lobbyists working for the greedy and wealthy individuals who control the importation and distribution of agro-chemicals in this country, have so many of the members of our ruling elites in their pockets. On a daily basis. Literally.
For example, why is it that Parliament passes all manner of laws that are clearly detrimental to the well-being of our nation and its people? Food for thought. But I digress.
Alas, the worst is yet to come, as regards the banning of agricultural produce such as fruits and vegetables, from Ghana, in overseas markets.
Ghana's pesticide-laden cocoa beans will eventually end up like that too soon if our hard-of-hearing vampire-elites continue to refuse to listen to those of us in the cocoa farming sector who have insisted for years that we must focus on growing cocoa organically in this country - if the industry is to survive and thrive.
We must simply discourage the widespread use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides in farms across Ghana - for the plain truth is they actually pose a risk to public health in Ghana. Full stop.
BioDeposit, a much better and greener alternative - that is incidentally doing wonders for the coffee-growing industries of nations such as Rwanda - is available. Today. Not tomorrow.
Fortunately, it can be used to effectively replace all the different brands of the carcinogenic agro-chemicals and synthetic fertilisers - now being used by farmers with such disastrous effect on the health of so many Ghanaians - and result in higher yields and the production of healthier crops.
But, first, the powerful lobbyists working for the super-wealthy mafiosi that control the importation and distribution of agro-chemicals into Ghana must be defeated. And, quickly, too.
If this government's ministerial team in charge of the ministry of food and agriculture were wise, they would encourage all the nation's farmers to switch to using BioDeposit's very effective natural products for all categories of farming in Ghana - to ensure bumper harvests of pesticide-free agricultural produce. That makes a great deal of sense for Mother Ghana - in our humble view.
Hmm, Oman Ghana - enti yewieye paa enei? Asem kesie ebeba debi ankasa!
Dr. Mercola: The New Top Cause of Ill Health, and It's No Longer Smoking
Obesity Takes Greater Than Ever Toll on Global Health
June 28, 2017 • 7,459 views Disponible en Español
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Story at-a-glance
One in 5 American deaths is associated with obesity and more than 5 in 10 Americans struggle with chronic illness. As of 2014, the obesity rate among adults over the age of 20 was just shy of 38 percent
Since 1980, childhood obesity rates have tripled in the U.S., the rate of obese teens has quadrupled from 5 to 20.5 percent and nearly 9 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds are now obese
The global obesity rate among adults is now estimated to be 1 in 10, or 1 in 12, depending on the source. When you factor in those who are overweight but not obese, 3 in 10 are affected
By Dr. Mercola
According to research published in 2013, 1 in 5 American deaths is associated with obesity,1 and the younger you are, the greater obesity's influence on your mortality. Considering one-third of American children between the ages of 2 and 19 are now overweight or obese, chronic disease and mortality rates will likely climb dramatically in coming decades as the health of these youths begins to fail.
Since 1980, childhood obesity rates have tripled in the U.S., the rate of obese teens has quadrupled from 5 to 20.5 percent, and nearly 9 percent of 2- to 5-year-olds are now obese.2 As of 2014, the obesity rate among adults over 20 was just shy of 38 percent, costing the U.S. medical system $147 million annually.3
In December 2011, severe obesity was included as a qualifying disability under the American With Disabilities Act, further raising the cost of obesity on society as a whole. Being overweight during pregnancy also increases the risk of birth defects, recent research warns, and the more obese the mother, the greater the risk.4,5
More than half of all Americans also struggle with chronic illness6 — a truly shocking statistic when you consider modern health care is supposed to be the best mankind has ever been privy to. It really says a lot about the influence lifestyle wields on your health, and the price we pay for convenience.
Obesity — A Greater Health Threat Than Smoking
Data collected from tens of thousands of Canadians confirms obesity surpasses smoking in terms of creating ill health, and Dutch researchers recently predicted obesity and inactivity will overtake smoking as a leading cause of cancer deaths specifically.7 Processed foods shoulder the greatest blame for this trend. Many children are raised on fast food from the time they're able to eat solid foods, and are given sugary sodas and juices at even younger ages. As recently noted by Bruce Y. Lee in a Forbes op-ed:8
"The human population is in desperate need of an intervention … the kind organized by your friends when you don't realize how bad your problem has gotten and need to be confronted about it … How much more convincing do people really need? Continuing to gather more evidence without taking much more action is like continuing to check the water level while your toilet is overflowing without even reaching for the plunger.
In both cases, the result will be messy. The latest additions to what has become a growing mound of scientific evidence are the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Obesity Update 2017 report9 and a just published study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)."
1 in 10 Adults Worldwide Is Obese
According to the OECD, the global obesity rate among adults is now 1 in 10, or 10 percent.10,11,12 In 2015, excess weight accounted for 4 million deaths worldwide (just over 7 percent). Thirty-nine percent of people who died from cardiovascular disease were overweight but not obese, prompting a warning that health problems are not relegated to obesity. Carrying even a modest amount of excess weight can have a significant impact on your health.
The NEJM study13 reviewed over 1,000 published studies and data from more than 170 countries, looking to extrapolate and measure health effects associated with different body mass indexes (BMI). This study presents an even grimmer picture, showing a total of 12 percent of adults, globally, are obese, and 5 percent of all children.
When you factor in those who are overweight but not obese, the global rate is about 30 percent. Echoing previous studies, these results suggest there are now more overweight people in the world than there are underweight ones.14 No less than 73 countries have seen obesity rates double since 1980. Disturbingly, but not surprisingly, obesity rates are increasing much faster among children than adults. Lee continues:15
"The study also quantified the high amount of suffering caused by obesity using a measure called disability-adjusted life-years … which is the number of years lost to impaired function. All of this is not simply because people have gotten lazier or are making worse decisions.
With such 'big' numbers, something greater is amiss. Too many countries now have broken systems (e.g., too much garbage in food, too much garbage everywhere maybe affecting our metabolism, too much garbage on the internet, television, in our jobs and in our daily lives to keep us from eating well, exercising and sleeping) with the U.S. leading the way.
And not enough people are doing anything to change these systems … [T]he Trump administration has proposed massive cuts to scientific and public health funding and rolling back [Michelle Obama's] healthy school lunch initiatives, which may be like throwing more toilet paper into an overflowing toilet …"
BMI Is a Poor Metric of Health
Most studies, including those above, use BMI to determine whether an individual is of normal or excessive weight. A BMI of 25 to 30 is considered overweight; anything over 30 is obese. Your BMI is arrived at by dividing your weight in kilograms by the square of your height in meters. The problem is, this method fails to differentiate between muscle and fat tissue. It also doesn't take into account the actual distribution of body fat on your physical frame.
As noted in a recent Popular Science article,16 "… [B]elly fat might be hidden on your 6-foot, 2-inch frame, but it could still contribute to problems that kill you." We now know that excess visceral fat — the fat that accumulates around your internal organs — is far more hazardous to your health than subcutaneous fat (the more noticeable fat found just under your skin).
The danger of visceral fat is related to the release of proteins and hormones that can cause inflammation, which in turn can damage arteries and enter your liver, and affect how your body breaks down sugars and fats. Two tests that give you a far better idea of your body composition and health risk are your waist-to-hip ratio and your height-to-waist ratio.17
Either one will be far more accurate than BMI. As noted in a 2015 study,18 men with normal BMI but central obesity (fat centralized around the midsection) had TWICE the mortality risk of men considered obese according to their BMI but who had no central obesity.
Two Tests to Evaluate Your Health Risks
To determine your height-to-waist ratio,19 measure your height and your waist circumference with a measuring tape. Your waist circumference should be less than half of your height. Having a height-to-waist ratio of at least 2-to-1 is associated with longer life expectancy and a lower risk of inflammation, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.20
Your waist-to-hip ratio has the added benefit of giving you a better idea of the actual distribution of fat on your body. Having an apple shaped body is indicative of carrying more harmful visceral fat, which is associated with an increased risk for heart disease and diabetes. Carrying more fat around your hips and buttocks, on the other hand, is associated with lower health risks as this subcutaneous fat is not nearly as harmful as the fat around your internal organs.
That said, some body types may render this technique less than perfect as well. For example, women who are very thin and "straight" (i.e., don't have an hourglass figure) may end up in a higher risk category than is warranted. In such cases, you may want to measure both your height-to-waist and your waist-to-hip ratio to get a better idea of your overall risk.
To determine your waist-to-hip ratio, get a tape measure and record your waist and hip circumference. Then divide your waist circumference by your hip circumference. For a more thorough demonstration, please see the video above.
Ideal
0.8
0.7
Low Risk
<0.95
<0.8
Moderate Risk
0.96-0.99
0.81 - 0.84
High Risk
>1.0
>0.85
Food Policies Have Worsened Obesity Epidemic
Government policies have contributed to the growing obesity epidemic in a number of different ways, starting with the issuing of flawed dietary guidelines. Hand in hand with that you have agricultural subsidies promoting the growing of junk food ingredients rather than healthy fruits and vegetables, and the subsidizing of factory farms rather than smaller family-run farms. The U.S. government is even funding consumer outreach and education programs to promote acceptance of genetically engineered foods.21
Government policies have also made it far easier for minorities to open fast-food franchises rather than grocery stores, thereby contributing to the growing problem of "food deserts" — areas where all you can find are fast-food joints and gas station fare.
One of the reasons why fast-food franchises are given preference for Small Business Administration (SBA) Equal Opportunity Loans is because they have a far greater profit margin; a fast-food restaurant can have a profit margin as high as 6 percent, whereas a grocery store typically only has a profit margin of 1 percent, so loans are more likely to be repaid.
As noted in a recent NPR article reviewing professor Chin Jou's book, "Super Sizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food With Government Help":22
"'African-American consumption of fast food today is not a function of any longstanding preferences for fast food,' Jou told NPR … She says that it's a consequence of 'targeted relentless marketing,' as well as historic developments like the [SBA] loan program and high unemployment rates among African-Americans …
Fast-food companies, which had saturated their original markets of roadside stops and suburbs, needed expansion in order to grow profits. Reaching out to potential African-American franchisees was their roadmap to success. In fact, fast-food companies couldn't open restaurants in many urban areas without them …
Jou quotes Brady Keys, former NFL football player turned franchisee, who put it more bluntly: 'They [fast-food corporations] know that doing business in my area is hell. There's cutting, shooting, killing. So they say, we really don't want to do this ourselves, so why don't we get this black cat over here and franchise him?'"
Fried Potatoes Double Risk of Early Death
There's simply no doubt that processed foods are at the very heart of the obesity problem. The risks of a processed food diet, high in added sugars, harmful fats and synthetic ingredients have been demonstrated in numerous studies. Most recently, a study23,24 published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition warns that eating fried potatoes more than twice a week can double your risk of an early death, compared to not eating fried potatoes at all.
The researchers believe this is due to the cooking oil, which is high in trans fat. As noted by author Nicola Veronese, trans fat raises LDL cholesterol, a risk factor in cardiovascular disease. Vegetable oils also degrade into toxic oxidation products when heated, including aldehydes, which are highly inflammatory and have been implicated in heart disease and Alzheimer's.
Cooking oils are also a source of damaged omega-6 fats, and a lopsided ratio of omega-6 and omega-3 is yet another contributing factor to obesity. Studies show a connection between the consumption of omega-3 fats and a decrease in fatty tissue development, along with increases in beneficial brown fat and weight loss, while eating too many omega-6s promotes fatty white tissue and chronic inflammation, two of the biggest red flags indicating obesity.
Omega-6 polyunsaturated fats, when taken in large amounts, also cannot be burned for fuel. Instead, they're incorporated into cellular and mitochondrial membranes. Here, they become highly susceptible to oxidative damage, which ultimately damages your metabolic machinery. Not surprisingly, the National Potato Council has rebuffed the findings, saying that "it is very much a stretch to brand fried potatoes, or any other form of potato, as unhealthy."25
Metabolic Mitochondrial Therapy to the Rescue
Modern food manufacturing processes have failed to improve health or increase longevity. It's time for a radical U-turn. Compelling evidence shows your net carbohydrate intake is a primary factor that determines your body's fat ratio, and processed grains and sugars (particularly fructose) are the primary culprits behind our skyrocketing obesity, diabetes and chronic disease rates.
In short, most people eat far too many processed foods, net carbs, unhealthy fats and protein — and too few healthy fats. The result is weight gain and insulin resistance. Exercise cannot compensate for the damage done by a high-carb, low-fat diet, and most do not get enough physical movement to boot. These factors set in motion metabolic and biological cascades that deteriorate your health.
In the video above, Dr. David Perlmutter26 and I discuss my No. 1 best-seller, "Fat for Fuel," released on May 16. In this book, I explain the principles of metabolic mitochondrial therapy (MMT), and the metabolic advantages you gain once your body regains the ability to burn fat for fuel. As explained in the interview, and in my book, a foundational cause of most degenerative diseases is the fact that your mitochondria, the little powerhouses located in most of your body's cells, are not receiving sufficient amounts of proper fuel.
As a result, your mitochondria start to deteriorate. Mitochondrial dysfunction lays the groundwork for subsequent breakdowns of various bodily systems. Your mitochondria are nourished by some nutrients and harmed by others. So, a healthy diet is a diet that supports mitochondrial function, and having the metabolic flexibility to burn fat is the key.
The vast majority of people on the planet who eat a primarily processed food diet are burning carbohydrates as their primary fuel, which has the devastating effect of shutting down your body's ability to burn fat.
This is why obesity is so prevalent, and why so many find it nearly impossible to lose weight and keep it off. When your body burns primarily carbs for fuel, excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) and secondary free radicals are also created, which damage cellular mitochondrial membranes and DNA.
Healthy dietary fats, which are a cleaner-burning fuel, create far fewer ROS and free radicals. This lays the groundwork for many of the metabolic benefits of this program. Fats are also critical for the health of cellular membranes and many other biological functions.
Dietary Keys to Health
The initial strategy of my MMT program involves restricting net carbohydrates (total carbs minus fiber) to 20 to 50 grams per day until you start burning fat for fuel. To replace the lost carbs, you increase healthy fats, so that you're getting anywhere from 50 to 85 percent of your daily calories from fat. Examples of high-quality healthy fats include:
Avocados
Coconuts and coconut oil (excellent for cooking as it can withstand higher temperatures without oxidizing)
Animal-based omega-3 fat from fatty fish low in mercury like wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies and/or krill oil
Butter made from raw grass fed organic milk
Raw nuts (macadamia and pecans are ideal as they're high in healthy fat while being low in protein)
Seeds like black sesame, cumin, pumpkin and hemp seeds
Olives and olive oil (make sure it's third party certified, as 80 percent of olive oils are adulterated with vegetable oils)
Grass fed (pastured) preferably organic and humanely raised meats. Avoid CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) animal products
MCT oil
Ghee (clarified butter), lard and tallow (excellent for cooking)
Raw cacao butter
Organic, pastured egg yolks
Fats to avoid include trans fats and highly refined polyunsaturated vegetable oils.27 I also recommend limiting protein to just what your body needs. I've previously given out the details on how to calculate your protein requirement, so for a refresher, see "Are You Sabotaging Your Health and Longevity by Eating Too Much Protein?"
It's important to emphasize that MMT is not merely adding more healthy fat to your current diet or eating as much fat as you want. It is absolutely crucial to restrict net carbs, or else you're merely increasing the number of calories you consume. Raising the amount of fat and decreasing net carbs is what pushes your body into burning fat for fuel. Eating high amounts of both fat and net carbs will NOT allow your body to make this shift, as your body will use whatever sugar is available first.
Another crucial tenet of MMT is something called feast-famine cycling. The ketogenic cycling is implemented once you're out of the initial stage and your body has regained the ability to burn fat. At that point, you begin cycling in and out of nutritional ketosis by upping your carb and protein intake once or twice a week (ideally on the days you're doing strength training).
Getting Started
To be successful on this program, precision is important. You cannot guess when it comes to the amount of fat, net carbs and protein you eat. In the beginning, you have to measure and track them. To do this you need:
• A digital kitchen scale to weigh food items
• Measuring cups to measure food amounts
• A nutrient tracker. I recommend using www.cronometer.com/mercola, as it is the most accurate nutrient tracker available, it's free, and it's already set up for nutritional ketosis.
Based on the personal base parameters you enter, such as height, weight, body fat percentage and waist circumference, it will automatically calculate the ideal ratios of net carbs, protein and healthy fats (including your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio) to put you into nutritional ketosis
Opportunities to Learn More
To learn more, consider joining me at one of the following live events. August 3 through 6, I will lecture at the Low Carb USA event in San Diego, along with Gary Taubes, Stephen Phinney and several other experts. You can see the entire list of invited speakers lower on the page.
I am also speaking in Florida in November. If you are a physician and are interested in learning about how you can use the ketogenic diet and other therapies for cancer, heart disease, Lyme and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, please be sure and come to our ACIM conference in Orlando, Florida, November 2 through 4 at the Florida Conference and Hotel Center. Early Bird price for all three days ends July 1.
If you are a patient, there will be a separate and less expensive track on the same date and location. However, you will need to come back to this page at a later date, as the registration page for the event is still unavailable.
+ Sources and References
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