Petroscan december 15

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December 2015

CONTENTS OIL, GAS & ENERGY: NEWS & VIEWS

Editorial Note Editor’s Choice  10 Reasons Why Your Strategy Isn’t Working  Scientists develop new reusable polymer to purify water in seconds  Top Board Priorities for 2016

Editor's Pick     

Why don't gas prices fall?

Who benefits from lower oil prices?

COP21 Climate Deal: What’s Next for Business 5 EHS, Quality Management Predictions for 2016 HR technology innovation brings employee engagement to the fore

IndiScan  Telecom Towers in India Switching to Hydrogen Fuel Cells  Indian Oil Corporation to invest Rs 1.75 lakh cr in expansion projects  Sweeter gas pricing likely to spur search  Cleaning up coal  IOC gets regulator’s nod for Ennore LNG pipeline 2

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 BPCL commissions Rs 1,419-cr crude distillation unit  ONGC to invest Rs 3500 crore for developing 3 CBM blocks  Minister of State(I/c), MoP&NG launches LPG emergency helpline and declares 2016 as the ‘Year of the LPG consumer’  Cheaper LNG: Renegotiated Ras gas

GlobeScan         

Dow Chemicals in merger talks with DuPont ConocoPhillips exits Russia Rig count drops as drillers pull back production Enterprise says the first shipment of export crude will sail from Houston Iran bracing for $30 oil Jacobs as global engineering partner Indonesia announces new policy allowing private sector to build refineries Nigeria to revamp refineries for greater efficiency before deciding on sale Shell cuts 2016 spending plans by $2 billion in preparation for BG deal

TrendScan  Fracking research collaborative cuts across state lines  Shale gas hit a few peaks in 2015, but drillers mostly pulled back  OIL AT 11-YEAR LOW 3

December 2015

 Revises U.S. shale durability upward  Downplay new role of US light oil  `Global M&A deals hit record high in 2015 at $4.86 trillion’

TechScan  Progressive Water Treatment System Begins Operation at Texas Refinery  CB&I ANNOUNCES STARTUP OF SOLID-ACIDCATALYST ALKYLATION UNIT  Theoretical Screening Good Sorbents for CO2 Separation  Life cycle assessment of nanocellulose-reinforced advanced fibre composites  Rechargeable paper sheets could help rewrite the book on electricity storage  LEDs Should Be an Essential Part of Efficiency Plan  Pushing Hydrogen, Fuel Cell Research  Scientists seek more data on existing water in shale  formations  High Pressure Reactors for Research Labs  Software for Administration of FT-NIR Spectrometer Networks  New Reusable Polymer that can clean water

ALTERNATIVE & RENEWABLE ENERGY  Right Time  Combining Fuel Cells with Solar for Telecom Pilot 4

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 In the shadows: Domestic solar power developers feel the heat  Shell to build biofuels demonstration plant in India

HSE, Climate Change & Sustainability  Attention Sustainability Executives : Who has been your best internal ally?  Cyprus’ Water Crisis Shows Climate Change Is Here and Businesses Must  Transforming a Child’s Life With Glasses  COP21: 114 Companies Set ‘Science-Based’ Emissions Targets, Business Climate Tool Launched  Kellogg Pledges to Slash Operations Emissions 65% by 2050By: Karen Henry  COP21: Strong Climate Policy Leads to Lower Business Costs, CEOs SayBy: Jessica Lyons Hardcastle, Dec4, 2015  Unilever: Eco-Efficiency Saves $438 Million  VF Corp: $25 Million Savings on Low-Carbon Initiatives  Mars: Clean Energy Cuts Electricity Costs  EcoVadis: Target Your Supply Chain  Arizona Chemical Begins Construction on 100% Recycled Asphalt Bike Lane  Your Office Is Too Cold. Or Too Hot. But Science Wants to Help  Toyota Surpasses Water Reduction GoalBy: Karen  Toyota Targets Zero Carbon Emissions from Vehicle Lifecycle, Plants by 2050 5

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 $16.5t required to combat pollution  After climate agreement, world faces a carbon diet  Energy Efficiency Goal for 2016: Bridge the Knowledge Gap  Business School Students Want to Work For Companies Taking Action on Climate Change  Roofs over Guangzhou Can Reduce Heat Wave Temps

F2F  India likely to push oil demand growth: IEA  What Have the Past 30 Years Taught Us About Managing Risk?  Zero waste: An attainable goal?

BookScan  What Your CEO Is Reading: The Case for Philanthrocapitalism; Better Negotiating Through Power Poses; Santa’s CIO

The Banyan Tree  Good strategy requires people asking tough questions  10 Things We Know About People Analytics

Petrotech Activities You Said It 6

December 2015

Editorial Note Dear Patron of Petrotech, The year 2015 ended with a happy note at COP 21 in Paris, with the world broadly agreeing for putting themselves on carbon diet, with collective objective of arrest global warming.

In December 2015, nearly 200 nations across the world approved a first-of-its-kind universal agreement to wean Earth off fossil fuels and slow down global warming.

The objective of the agreement is to make sure that the rise in Earth’s temperature stays ‘‘well below’’ 2 degrees Celsius, and to ‘‘pursue efforts’’ to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius.

Temperatures, however, have already increased by about 1.1 degrees since preindustrial times.

The big question is how we do it, when the scientists, who analyzed the pledges made by nations so far to cut greenhouse 7

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gases, believe emissions will be reduced only about half the amount necessary to get to the goal. It may call for to target for a Zero emission World. Time is running out the northern countries had warmest Christmas this year, and India too had its share of untimely and unprecedented rains in 2015 and warmer winter.

The New Year 2016 started on a good note of crude oil becoming cheaper than mineral water. At R 12 / liter crude oil 20 % cheaper than mineral water, we buy at R 15/ liter, and the trend remains southwards. With sanctions on Iran having been lifted, the oil prices do not seems to have yet bottomed out. Best is yet to come?

It is certainly good news for oil importing countries like ours and OMCs, but we can also see its effect on the upstream companies and other commodities, and uncertainties it has led to in the oil driven world economy. Globally, this trend and its effect has been a topic of primetime discussion and more is in store as the year unfolds.

Both of these developments offer great opportunity for reworking our strategies for ensuring energy security and sustainability.

With the finalization of dates for hosting Petrotech-2016 on 5-7 December, related activities have been rolled out, with calling of papers for presentation in this biennial international conference and exhibition. You may like to send abstract of your papers on www.petrotech.in or contact Dr G S Kapur (kapurgs@indianoil.in).

With best wishes for a Happy New Year and regards, (Anand Kumar) Let us work for Zero Waste, Zero Emission: "As long as we view waste as trash it will end up in the landfill. We must recognize it as valuable material."

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That may involve something called negative emissions. That’s when the world — technology and nature combined — take out more carbon dioxide from the air than humanity puts in.

Is Zero Waste attainable? And if so, how do we get there?

HOLLY ELMORE: I do think zero waste is attainable. To get to zero waste, you must recognize which materials have value. Set up a system to recycle it. And reduce …

If you are a corporation, begin for instance by asking yourself, are you printing more than you have to?

Then you replace.

An example: with shipments, tell companies you purchase from you want recyclable packaging. There is power in consumer demand. Once you have reduced and replaced, separate valuable material and find a local recycling option.

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Editor’s Choice 10 Reasons Why Your Strategy Isn’t Working Todd Garretson Source: http://circlemakers.co/blog/10-reasons-why-your-strategyisnt-working/

Recently, two statistics caught my eye. Not only do they signal missed opportunity and blatant underperformance, but more importantly, they reveal a ‘door’ that is wide open for your organization to make your move.

Kaplan and Norton reports that 90% of organizations fail to successfully implement their strategies. Even more, the Economist Intelligence Unit shares that organizations realize just 60% of the potential value of their strategies.

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The surface conclusion would assume the organizations cited are simply failing to adequately mobilize their people to deliver results. Be very careful with that assumption. There’s a whole litany of reasons for poor execution, of which several can be traced back to the decisions and choices made during strategy design.

As an advisor to executive teams leading organizations of all sizes, I am frequently exposed to frustrations, obstacles and traps executive teams face when it comes to getting strategy right. And now (September and October) is the time to get it right – well in advance of 2016.

To help you prepare for your best results ever, I’ve put together a list outlining 10 questions you can use to get beneath underperformance and identify the gaps in your strategy approach.

In no specific order, they are as follows: 1. Do You Have A Strategy Or A Strategic Plan?

Leaders that fall into this particular trap are guilty of running the engines and propellers before they’ve decided where to sail the ship. Putting the tactical in front of the strategy can lead to disaster. The ship ends up lost at sea and full of frustrated sailors.

Your strategy should define a strong value proposition for your target market, the distinctive capabilities you will activate to win in that market, and a picture of how you need to organize your business to make it happen. Here are 4 great questions to get you started down this path.

Your strategic plan should feel like an instruction manual for your overall strategy. Essentially, it should tell you the specific, tactical action steps and plans you will deploy to bring your strategy to 11

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life. It turns the strategy into specific actions. For a great strategic planning template, click here.

2. Have You Put Strategy Before Structure?

Many organizations insist on developing a strategy that works for their organization, instead of building an organization that works for their strategy. Do you see the BIG difference?

With football season in gear, journey across the NFL to read stories of new coaches bringing new systems and strategies to their respective teams. The new strategies often require unique talents and skills in specific positions to which the management needs to acquire in order to be successful. To think they might be able to execute a new system with the exact same talent and skill at every position is insanity.

Are you bold enough to make the change that’s needed to deliver the strategy? People decisions are difficult decisions. In order to release the full potential of the organization in pursuit of the new strategy, it will require change. A number of the organizations sitting in the belly of those statistics are not making tough decisions.

3. Who Is Accountable for Growth?

Business leaders need to find a way to keep growth at the forefront of the organization and ultimately, from slipping into the shadows of the day-to-day priorities. The current approach to strategy typically tasks functional leaders with figuring out where and how the organization will grow. While this has served well in the past, the fast moving external environment coupled with unstable economic conditions and rapid entrepreneurial disruption demands a new approach.

Organizations need to establish single accountability for driving a cohesive approach to strategy and growing the business – unencumbered by political lines, territories or self-promotion. For a few ideas on how to do this in your organization, read The Secret Growth Strategy of the Ant Colony.

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4. Have You Made New Discoveries?

One of the biggest reasons for developing a strategy is a new discovery. Every great strategy, business, or billion-dollar start-up success is traced back to a big learning or unearthing of opportunity. Whether it be a new product, service, technology, or experience, someone spent untold hours slaving over the target market to understand their fits, needs and unexpressed wants.

If on-going learning and discovery is not part of the way you operate your business, it needs to be. Or, you run big risk in being out-discovered. With the data capture capability that’s available through CRM and other real-time feedback platforms, organize your business to get intelligent. For more on how discovery drives the right strategy choice, read Choosing The Right Growth Strategy For Your Business.

Big discovery is the fuel for strategy.

What Capability Will You Add Or Leverage?

They key word here is ‘capability’. Too often, I see cases where leadership has identified opportunity to win share in existing and new markets without having done enough of the necessary research to understand the capabilities they need to win.

Whether it’s leveraging an existing core capability or building a new one, business leaders need to spend more time on this topic as it relates to strategy. Tactical efforts are falling short and failing altogether as companies try to expand their products and services only to discover that they don’t have the firepower to get the job done.

6. Are Your Leaders Creating More Leaders?

Perhaps the widest capability gap in any organization in our present day is talent. Stated further, the inability to identify and 13

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develop future leadership in organizations is pervasive. The Graying of Corporate America (40% of top leadership headed to retirement) will lead to a lot of vacant seats on the organizational chart – are you ready?

This runs way deeper than the annual, high potential meeting that you started a few years ago. It’s a mindset or DNA of the organization that you need to hire-to. In other words, you should only be hiring leaders into your organization who can show you or point to specific leaders (by name) who they’ve developed and created in previous roles.

Of the entire list here, this is the one that gets the most talk and the littlest action. Organizations that consistently perform at a high-level inherently believe, with every fiber of their being, that the role of a leader is to create more leaders.

If you or someone you know is a strong task-oriented manager who has recently been moved into a leadership role where he / she will be called to develop people, then they need to attend the Remarkable Leadership Program.

7. Where Will You Place Your Bets?

Leaders are spreading resources too thinly across their portfolio of products or services instead of prioritizing and placing bets on a few to go big and deep. Ultimately, this leads to a vicious cycle of creating lots of little initiatives to grow your entire portfolio. As you continue to chase, you fall further behind the curve in core businesses that represent a large percentage of your profit.

In your race to be meaningful to all, you risk being everything to a few.

8. Is Personal Growth On Your Radar?

Realizing that lack of growth in our personal lives ultimately impedes professional growth, and then doing something about it, could be the trigger point for leaders to start building the kind of cultures that perform consistently. The easy way out is to assume that everyone is accountable for owning their personal growth.

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The research in this area is compelling and worth your time not matter what size organization you lead.

At CircleMakers, we’re devoting time and resources to personal growth topics, as we believe it is the top limiting factor to strong and consistent performance. However, if organizations even have it on their radar, it’s last on the list. We’ve recently launched Project 24, an initiative designed to bring awareness and best practices to personal growth challenges leaders face. You can learn more about Project 24 HERE. 9. Are You Simultaneously Running And Building?

The self-assessment version of this question is worded slightly different – does running your business get in the way of building your business? Within your strategy process, you need to be having open discussions about the best methods to run and build at the same time. Every company should be chasing a market and creating a new market simultaneously – in fact, it’s the secret recipe for sustainable growth. Becoming an organization that can create, incubate and build new ventures is not easy, but certainly an attribute that will be table stakes in the future.

10. Do You Possess A High-Performance Team?

There is no question that designing a high performance team is vital to your organization’s ability to deliver beautiful, resultsgenerating strategy. However, it’s far too easy for leaders to be lulled into organizational silos, waiting too long to make necessary people changes, and missing opportunities to build a team instead of just ‘filling positions’. Every leader has experienced themselves stuck in one or all of these ruts at sometime in their career. For more encouragement and ideas on building a highperformance team, check out these 4 traits.

In Closing Now that that you’re in the final stretch of 2015, have you done a thorough, top-to-bottom progress evaluation on your strategy and 15

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results? Where are the big misses? What’s behind or underneath the numbers? What needs to be done differently?

Which of these challenges will you take into consideration as you plan for 2016? Pick one or two to bring to your next executive whiteboard session.

The door is wide open.

Time to make your move.

Scientists develop new reusable polymer to purify water in seconds NEW YORK, DEC 26: Scientists have developed a new reusable polymer that can remove pollutants from flowing water within seconds, just like air fresheners trap invisible air pollutants at home and remove unwanted odours.

Researchers have used the same material found in air fresheners, cyclodextrin, to develop a technique that could revolutionise the water-purification industry.

The team, led by Will Dichtel, associate professor at Cornell University in US, developed a porous form of cyclodextrin that has displayed uptake of pollutants through adsorption at rates vastly superior to traditional activated carbon — 200 times greater in some cases.

Activated carbons Activated carbons have the advantage of larger surface area than previous polymers made from cyclodextrin — but they do not bind pollutants as strongly as cyclodextrin.

“What we did is make the first high-surface-area material made of cyclodextrin combining some of the advantages of the activated carbon with the inherent advantages of the cyclodextrin,” Dichtel said.

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“These materials will remove pollutants in seconds, as the water flows by,” he said.

The cyclodextrin-containing polymer features easier, cheaper regeneration, so it can be reused many times with no observed loss in performance.

Recyclability Recyclability is another advantage of the cyclodextrin polymer, Dichtel said. Whereas activated carbon filters must undergo intense heat-treating for regeneration, cyclodextrin filters could be washed at room temperature with methanol or ethanol.

The findings were published in the journal Nature.

(This article was published on December 26, 2015)

Top Board Priorities for 2016

By Ruby Sharma & Ann Yerger, EY Center for Board Matters, Ernst & Young LLP, December 21, 2015 Ruby Sharma is a principal and Ann Yerger is an executive director at the EY Center for Board Matters at Ernst & Young LLP. The following post is based on a report from the EY Center for Board Matters, available here.

Organizations are faced with many critical challenges—including rapidly changing technology, environmental risks, regulatory and legal requirements, major shifts in markets, ethical breaches, and big data and cybersecurity issues—that threaten their long-term success and sustainability. Directors have a unique opportunity to step forward and proactively oversee the development and implementation of effective, long-term strategies responsive to these challenges.

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As a result, the trend of expanding board agendas will continue in 2016. As boards balance multiple priorities, most will heighten their focus on the following:     

Board effectiveness, composition and refreshment Investor and stakeholder engagement Cybersecurity preparedness Oversight of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Oversight of talent risk management

Board effectiveness, composition and refreshment It is a recurring question for directors and their organizations— how do good boards become great? Improving board effectiveness, making sure boards maintain the right combination of skills and experience, and enhancing transparency and accountability will characterize exceptional boards in 2016.

Performing robust and thoughtful board self-assessments, with consideration of peer and individual director evaluations, will be critical for board effectiveness.

Effective boards will balance the viewpoints of tenured directors with the fresh perspectives of new members. These boards will make certain that the appropriate breadth of industry expertise is represented in the boardroom and that the composition of the board reflects the increasing convergence of sectors. Boards will seek directors with a greater diversity of knowledge and experience in order to match boardroom talents with evolving business strategies reflective of the interconnected global economic environment and technological and demographic changes.

We recently found that among Fortune 100 companies with retirement-age policies, 19% of directorships are held by individuals within five years of reaching the board’s designated retirement age. [1] Since a significant number of directors are 18

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currently approaching retirement, boards will have an opportunity to review their oversight needs and engage in strategic director succession planning in the coming year.

Investor and stakeholder engagement The day of the passive investor is behind us. Investors around the globe are increasingly asking tough questions on the issues that matter most to them. They want to understand the board’s role in the oversight of enterprise risk, including emerging risks, strategy and execution. They want to know if boards are robustly evaluating their own performance and confirming that the right portfolio of skill sets aligned with company strategies are represented in the boardroom.

Investors will continue to seek meaningful communications and engagement with board leadership and committee chairs on issues such as company strategy, board composition (including diversity), director tenure, succession planning and executive compensation.

As a result, effective communication is emerging as a growing responsibility of corporate directors. Boards will focus on shareholder communication plans to ensure first, that required filings are not merely “compliance” documents but effective communication tools, and second, that designated directors are fully prepared to engage directly with investors on appropriate governance matters such as oversight of strategy, disclosure effectiveness and board refreshment processes.

Cybersecurity The advent of new technologies and an ecosystem of digital interconnectedness significantly increase an organization’s exposure to theft of its most valuable assets, which include confidential customer data and vital information such as intellectual property and strategic blueprints. Preparedness is the 19

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first line of defense. Yet only 7% of organizations claim to have a robust incident response program that includes third parties and law enforcement and is integrated with their broader threat and vulnerability management function. [2] The emphasis for boards will be to make sure that companies are shoring up critical infrastructure, enhancing crisis response and mapping a strategy that emphasizes a good balance of preventive and responsive tactics. This means being able to efficiently guide an organization through the layers of risks and threats, and boards should appropriately set the risk appetite and be prepared to swing into decisive action to handle any incidents.

Boards accept that the risk of a cyber breach needs to be continually managed, and adequate preparation that enables an organization to get back up and running quickly following an attack will be a key consideration for boards.

Knowing where the vulnerabilities lie is vital. Boards will continue to confirm that companies have a system and backup plan that facilitates data migration in a crisis. They will also need to make sure that their organizations firm up relationships with federal investigating authorities, who can move swiftly in response to attacks and minimize exposure and damage.

Oversight of ERM As boards continue to focus on their roles in long-term value creation, effective oversight of ERM will be high on their agendas.

Oversight of ERM will comprise operational, financial, strategic, compliance and reputational risks.

Board oversight will entail setting the “tone at the top� by promoting, assessing and monitoring risk culture and appetite.

Oversight of talent risk management Boards recognize the crucial role they play in human capital matters as they relate to overseeing the management of three key risks: culture, talent and strategy. The business reason is 20

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compelling since talent and culture are arguably the biggest drivers of innovation, growth and the ability to outperform the competition. In recent conversations we have had with board directors, three out of four said that human capital strategy will be one of the top emerging risks that boards will face in 2016.

Boards will play an important role in ensuring that leadership stays focused on building the right talent strategy. Boards will focus on how to prepare for generational transitions in their organizations and anticipate the changing dynamics at the boardroom and management levels. As new and complex opportunities and risks emerge with evolving strategies and growth markets, having the right people to execute on strategies is an important imperative for success.

For many boards, talent management remains a big challenge.

Failure to understand and mitigate human capital risks and complexities will impact strategy and value creation.

Editor’s Pick Why don't gas prices fall?

By STEVE AUSTIN for OIL-PRICE.NET, 2015 Since the price of crude oil started to tumble in June 2014, almost $80 has been wiped off the cost of a barrel of oil from the peak to the trough of oil market indices.

As a barrel of oil represents 42 gallons, that price fall works out at about $1.60 per gallon. However, the pump price of a gallon of gasoline only decreased by $1.20. Why? Oil-price.net investigates the reasons why drivers aren't benefiting from lower crude oil prices. Economic concepts of the inelasticity of demand, the price the market will bear and supply shortages all 21

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seem to have played a role in preventing gasoline prices from falling in line with crude oil.

Crude Oil Indices Crude oil price changes are registered by two indices. The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is used by the North American oil industry and the Brent Crude Index is used by the rest of the world.

Generally the Brent Crude price is a little higher than the WTI. US oil refiners deal with both the WTI and the Brent price because they buy crude oil from the US and Canada and also from other regions in the world, such as the Middle East. However, both indices have fallen sharply over the last year, which means that crude oil has gotten cheaper. Historically, the price of gas at the pump tends to move in the same direction as the Brent price, rather than the WTI index.

Price Changes The WTI oil price peaked at $105 per barrel in June 2014 and fell to a low of $44 at the end of January 2015. The Brent crude oil price peaked and troughed on the same dates, falling from a high of $112 per barrel to a low of $45 per barrel in January 2015. The price didn't fall in a straight line, but the overall trend continued downward.

Both indices rallied a little, fell back and then peaked again at $66 for Brent and $61 for the WTI in June 2015. The price has fallen again since and analysts including oi-price.net expect the two indices will remain between the $45 and $60 range until the end of the year. There aren't any prospects of the price of crude oil rising until 2016.

Price Justification A retailer may argue that price falls do not feed through to the consumer immediately because stock bought at high prices has to be sold off and lower prices will only kick in once the retailer is 22

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able to restock at cheaper rates. However, the price has been considerably lower than the peak for the entirety of the first half of 2015 and pump prices haven't reflected the new normal of lower crude prices.

Another argument a retailer might give for not adjusting prices lower lies with the expected duration of lower prices. If a dip in the supply price for a commodity is only expected to last a short while, the retailer may justifiably claim that it isn't worth adjusting all prices lower, only to hike them back up again when the price anomaly ends. However, the low crude oil price has become embedded long enough for this justification to be invalidated.

The fact is that the price of gasoline at the pump has fallen over the past six months, but not by as much as the crude oil indexes.

Gas Pump Prices Although gas companies passed some of the early falls in the price of fuel to their customers, they exploited the rise in the price of crude oil in February to increase pump prices again. In fact gas prices rose back in March above their mid-December levels, even though the price of a barrel of crude on the Brent index was $8 cheaper, at a rate of five times the rate at which crude oil prices were rising. The price of crude then took a downward turn after that date, while the pump price of gasoline and diesel continued to rise.

The highest historical average pump price for gasoline this century occurred in July 2008, when the price hit $4.06 per gallon.

The peak in 2014, occurred in June of that year, at $3.69. Pump prices fell along with the fall in crude oil prices, bottoming out in January 2015 at a price of $2.11 per gallon for gasoline. Brent peaked at $62 in February 2015 and the average US pump price for gasoline rose to $2.21 per gallon. However, as the Brent crude index fell back in March, the pump price continued to rise. By May 2015 it had reached $2.71 per gallon, while the Brent crude recovered a little to $65 per barrel.

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The pump price of gasoline has risen with the price of crude during 2015, but did not fall with the intervening dips in the Brent crude index during the year.

Confounding Factors The pump price of gasoline disconnected from the Brent crude index price of oil in March 2015. While crude oil prices fell, gasoline pump prices rose. Here are some reasons why: Crude oil gets turned into gasoline by refineries and although the demand from gasoline users should drive the price, the refineries can distort the price of both crude oil and gasoline. A number of US oil refineries suffered industrial action in February, cutting their output right at the time that New England, America's most densely populated region, encountered freezing temperatures.

The effects of the strike caused a rise in the price of heating oil in late February and a similar rise in automotive fuel prices at the beginning of March.

Prices are set by supply and demand. The crude oil market is currently over-supplied, which depresses the price. Reduced throughput at America's refineries caused the supply of heating oil, gasoline and diesel to fall below demand, causing the prices to rise.

When refinery capacity is reduced, demand for crude oil falls and oil producers have to send their output to storage. This year's strike action occurred at a time when the world crude oil production already exceeded demand, so that put pressure on the price of storage and cut the price of oil for immediate delivery because no one had any space left to hold it.

Lower production occurred just at the time when demand for oil from domestic heating and power stations was at its greatest, causing a shortfall in supply that also impacted the gasoline market. Where there are shortages, prices will rise. So strike action at US refineries caused crude oil prices to fall and gasoline pump prices to rise.

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Refinery Capacity The effects of refinery shut downs are becoming progressively more severe each year because refining capacity in the USA hasn't expanded over the past decade in line with economic activity. This gradual tightening of capacity gives any closure greater impact on the price of gasoline.

The main reason the oil companies are not expanding their facilities is that idle refineries represent a lot of capital tied up without producing any income. By setting their throughput capabilities at maximum demand without room for outages, the oil industry is able to improve utilization, increase return on investment and maximize profits. This strategy means that refineries become bottlenecks during maintenance periods.

The green consumer and happy homeowner compound the problems of refinery shortages. The investment, planning and inquiry phases of building new refineries are becoming increasingly fraught. Everyone wants new refineries built ... just in someone else's backyard. Environmental opposition makes the siting of new refineries close to population centers with high demand for gasolinedifficult to achieve. So higher gas prices are a sort of a tax. They are the price consumer pays in order to enjoy a cleaner environment. US drivers could be paying less for gas, but in reality they are perfectly happy paying a few cents more for gas in order to have less environmental hazards around their homes, and fewer birth defects than China.

Scheduled Maintenance You may not realize it, but without switching brands or grades, you put a different blend of gasoline in your car in the summer to the blend you drive on in the winter. Refineries produce a winter blend and a summer blend of gasoline. Peak heating oil season runs through to February and peak driving season picks up from June, so oil refineries schedule their change over to occur between March and May. 25

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The refineries don't all switch over at the same time. Some will start the switch in March, others leave it until May. However, each refinery will experience a partial or total shutdown during the turnaround. This results in less gasoline available on the market, and, therefore, higher pump prices.

The rise in gasoline pump prices happens to varying degrees every spring. The peak of this maintenance-fueled price rise usually occurs between May 9 and May 24. The rise is usually more severe if unexpected factors occur, and this year had two of those surprises - an exceptionally cold winter and a worker's strike ran gasoline stocks low.

The turnaround from winter blend to summer blend is very expensive and complicated. They are often scheduled about two years in advance and the refineries do not postpone or cancel their plans because of price-exacerbating factors.

In 2009, the price of gasoline rose by 42.2 percent between February 2 and a peak on June 22. In 2010 the rise was only 9.2 percent measured from February 1 to its peak on May 10. Lower refinery capacity accounts for the price rises that occurred from March to May. Crude oil prices started to fall again at the beginning of July, so, now that the turnaround season has finished, gasoline prices should start to fall again.

Other Pricing Factors By our calculations, 51 per cent of the price you pay for gasoline derives from the price of the crude oil that went into making that fuel. The refining process accounts for 23 per cent of the gas gallon price, while transport and retail margins add 8 per cent and taxes account for 18 per cent of the price.

Those figures are averaged across the country, however.

Different states levy different levels of tax and different locations cost more for premises and so add on costs for the retailer. So 26

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those living in San Francisco pay more per gallon than people who live in Austin.

Prospects As previously mentioned, our oil price analysts do not foresee any major rise in the price of crude oil right through to the end of the year. So far this year, the price of a barrel of crude on the Brent index has gone from a low of $45 in January, up to around $60 through February and March, down to $52 in mid-March and up to around $65 through May and early June. The price fell again down towards $55 in early July.

When analysts say they expect crude oil to be at $45 to $50 by the end of the year, that doesn't mean that prices will fall constantly from $55 to $45 in a straight line over the second half of 2015. Market sentiment, or panic, can temporarily raise crude prices above that line. Gluts and storage shortages will knock the price below that line.

Gas stations are unlikely to lower and raise their prices exactly in synch with the crude oil price. They tend to bridge over the dips, which means they leave their prices where they are for a few weeks to see whether the price of crude will rise. If it doesn't, they may shift their prices downward.

Despite the price smoothing performed by gas stations, the general trend in gas prices will be lower over the second half of 2015. Thus, the temporary price hike caused by lower refinery capacity will age out of the price and reappear in March of 2016.

Demand for gasoline is relatively inelastic, which means rising prices don't tend to lower sales turnover. Consumers are happy with any price fall, no matter how small, but resent price rises.

This factor makes gasoline retailers more likely to push up prices quickly with any increase in costs to get the pain over with quickly.

They squeeze as much kudos from their customers with any supply price decrease by reducing pump prices in smaller, graduated steps. In other words, people are charged what they are willing to pay for gasoline, not what it costs.

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Who benefits from lower oil prices?

By STEVE AUSTIN for OIL-PRICE.NET, 2015 Lower fuel prices are great for the consumer, but we know that not all of the cost saving of lower crude oil and gas prices have been passed on to the general public. Oil and gas refiners prosper from lower oil prices. Like the rest of the oil industry, refiners' revenues are down, but their profit margins are up significantly.

Refiners are using lower crude prices to widen their cut of the pump price of oil. In other words, the lower price of oil is not entirely passed down to consumers at the pump, instead the difference is enabling refiners to increase their profits.

Price Falls Crude oil prices have been plummeting since June 2014. The initial fall was rapid and unexpected.

This was because production grew faster than projections and demand deteriorated faster than expected, resulting in an excess of oil for sale in the world. Periodic rumor-fuelled rallies in the market since June 2014 have proved to be the result of wishful thinking. Recent events, such as the fall in Chinese growth projections and the end of sanctions against Iran, have given economists reason to downgrade their expectations for crude oil prices.

The lurches in the consensus of opinion for demand for oil over the past year have caused temporary opportunities for price rises at the gas pump. The retail gas industry tends to raise prices quickly when crude prices rise and drop prices slowly when crude prices fall. This variable speed of price movements has given the refineries and the gas stations opportunities to extend their profit margins.

The fall in the price of crude oil from June 2014 to June 2015 was around $80 per barrel. This shaved $1.60 off the cost of a gallon of gasoline. However, the pump price only fell by $1.20 during that period.

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The Losers High prices for crude oil from 2010 to 2014 gave great incentives to US explorers to invest in locating new sources of oil and gas.

The practice of hydraulic fracturing rapidly expanded the USA's oil production and contributed to the current glut. High sales prices meant that fracking companies could bowl into town, rich with easy money. They sprayed money around the communities they moved into and offered high prices for mineral rights and site access. Those gold rush bonanza days ended in June 2014. The price fall in crude oil did not squeeze frackers out of business, they caused them to be a lot more careful with their money.

Frackers learned to extract more oil from each rig, thus reducing the start up overhead costs of each well. The increased tightness of financing meant the idea of spending millions to get access and buy friends was off the table. A lot of the largesse of fracking has been wiped off the books and so local communities in the vicinity of fracking plays benefit a lot less from a new well, than those lucky citizens reaped back in 2012 and 2013.

Fewer rigs mean fewer workers. It also means that less equipment needs to be sold. Thus, oil service companies make fewer sales, and also require fewer employees to maintain their reduced output. Employment in the oil industry has suffered as plans get put off and exploration is cut back. As examples of this phenomenon, consider Schlumberger, which is the largest oilfield service company in the world. Schlumberger has cut its workforce by 9,000 this year. Weatherford International cut their payroll from 60,000 staff to 46,000 in 2014 and then made a further 5,000 employees redundant in 2015.

By squeezing margins and employing new technology, US frackers have been able to stay in the game. Their success at maintaining profitability at lower market prices has put pressure on conventional producers around the world to reduce profits and 29

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slash costs. So, although no producers have gone bust yet, their drive to survive has returned a lot of oil workers to the employment lines.

Unemployment reduces the wages of employed oil workers, because there are plenty of other who would fill the shoes of specialists who walk off site rather than reducing their fees. Thus, the oil industry's workforce has become a major loser in the low crude price era.

Middle Eastern OPEC members are said to be driving the price fall in order to squeeze out their fracking rivals. This strategy has lost those governments the income they need to keep their economies running with very little alternative sources of income.

They must now subsidize their governments with their foreign currency reserves. Drawing down bank deposits means there is less money available for banks to lend, thus squeezing credit and reducing global economic expansion further.

As Arabian governments start to draw down their savings, they will be forced to cut government spending. Oil producers in the Middle East buy off their citizens' ambitions for democracy with petrodollars. Of course when the money runs out, instability will increase even further in those countries.

The Winners The recorded fall in the gas pump price of $1.20 per gallon is a definite benefit to the American consumer. Under normal circumstances, economists would expect this saving to boost spending on consumer goods. However, this time around, people don't seem to be spending their gas savings on buying larger gas guzzling vehicles. This may be because the trend towards energy efficiency is finally starting to lodge in the American psyche.

Recent memory of economic uncertainty also seems to have made the average American nervous about spending.

An increasing fraction of American consumers has decided to pocket that saving and pay down debt, rather than splurging on 30

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household gadgets or luxury vacations. Therefore, families will also be long-term winners from the crude price fall. Parents now rate financial security over comfort spending.

By far, refiners have been the biggest winners of the crude oil price downturn. This position is reflected in the stock valuations of refining companies. The stock price of the refiners, Valero Energy went from $43.76 per share in November 2014 to $70.43 in August 2015. This rise was mainly due to the company's surge in profits. In June 2014 the business reported a profit margin of 1.68 per cent. By June 2015, that figure had risen to 5.38 per cent. Refiner Tesoro Corporation has risen in value from $56.20 in June 2014 to $102.08 in August 2015.

As an illustration of the increased margins the refiners experienced, figures from Total S.A. show a margin of $3.75 per barrel in the final quarter of that year. Profitability took off through 2015 and the company reported its refining margins at $6.73 in the first quarter and $7.36 in the second quarter.

The oil price fall was a symptom of an excess of production. As wells kept pumping oil into a saturated market, stockholdings rose. This resulted in a shortage of storage capacity, and so the price of storage rocketed. Storage fees rose from 20 cents per barrel to 80 cents by March 2015. The shares in Vopak NV, an oil storage provider, rose by 33 per cent between August 2014 and April 2015. Kinder Morgan rose by a similar margin and rival storage companies also rose in value over the same period.

Is this Profiteering?

There are laws in place to protect against profiteering. These laws prevent gas stations from overcharging for gas during crises and natural disasters, such as tornadoes. Shouldn't they be applied?

By definition, a business can be accused of profiteering when it raises prices during awar or emergency. Although the current oil price is a matter of global economic importance, it cannot be defined as a crisis or an emergency.

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In fact the pump price for gasoline is slightly cheaper than it used to be a year ago so the prices were not even raised. This is called capitalism, not profiteering and is central to a free market economy. This is the American way. If you too want to benefit from this situation you can -- buy refiner or oil storage stocks.

Logistics Profit derives from the gap between what it costs to produce something and what someone is prepared to pay for that product.

No one considers himself a charlatan if he sells his home for more than he paid for it. That profit probably came from nothing more than the increase in the amount that buyers were prepared to pay and not from any decoration or maintenance work performed by the seller.

Demand for gasoline is inelastic, but supply levels can vary widely. Shortages of crude oil cause the price of crude oil to rise and excess production causes the price to fall. Thus, in the current market, refineries can force the price of their raw materials down and they do not lose sales by maintaining sale price levels. The crude oil market is currently in oversupply, but the automotive user can't profit fully from that price-depressing factor, because they can't pump crude oil into their vehicles. This is the classic formula for profit.

The intermediary sectors of the oil industry - transport refining and tanking - usually profit most during a crude oil price downturn.

This is a common pattern noted by economists. As the gatekeepers to the consumer market, this sector gains power when producers need to compete to sell, and thus they are able to force down their input costs.

Logistics companies usually integrate the functions of refining, transport and storage, because that gives them a win-win situation. Producers that are prepared to drop their prices will sell their output to the refiners, who then have lower costs. Those that 32

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hold out for better prices need storage, thus the tanking divisions of the logistics companies can raise their prices thanks to excess demand for their services.

Oil production is slow to turn around. An oil well takes years to plan and established shipping agreements are hard to break.

Over time, producers will reduce their output and put more effort into finding other regions in the world where they can send their crude oil. These activities will eventually bring supply and demand for crude oil back into equilibrium.

Although demand for gasoline is fairly fixed, long-term changes in the fuel market will eventually have an effect there too. The cost of different types of fuel is a major factor when families and businesses decide to purchase vehicles and heating systems. An enduring lower oil price will eventually increase demand for the product as furnaces, trucks, buses and cars get replaced. Higher demand for gasoline puts pressure on logistics companies to source more crude oil, which returns some power to the crude oil producers and reduces the negotiating power of refineries.

Similarly, when demand rises against falling availability, the need for storage falls and logistics companies have to start pricing their services competitively in order to maintain throughput in their high-cost facilities.

The share prices of tanking giants Vopak NV and Kinder Morgan peaked in April 2015 and then started to fall. The excess profits to be made from storage already seem to be petering out. The end of the imbalance in the oil sector seems to be within view for stock investors, so margin gains of the logistics companies will now start to decline.

Conclusion Different oil price conditions generate larger profits at different points in the supply chain. This year, and for at least another year to come, the processors, transporters and retailers have their turn to ramp up their share of the sales price. In other years, oil brokers make all the money and at other times oil producers can 33

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name their price. No matter which particular stakeholder has a periodic opportunity to profit, there is one organization that will always profit from crude oil and gasoline - the government

COP21 Climate Deal: What’s Next for Business By: Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Source: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/15 The world’s 195 countries signed a historic climate agreement this weekend in Paris at COP21. And although the agreement doesn’t bind businesses to making and reporting on emissions cuts, it will require ambitious efforts by private corporations, according to COP21 attendees.

“At COP 21 businesses showed they supported an ambitious agreement and were ready to step up and make bold commitments to tackle climate change,” Kevin Moss global director business center, World Resources Institute, told Environmental Leader. “These commitments ranged from rallying behind carbon pricingand setting science-based emission reduction targets to responsible corporate engagement in policy and major investments in renewable energy. The momentum this created contributed to the ambitious agreement that was reached in Paris. In 2016 businesses need to reinforce their resolve to lead on climate change by continuing to turn their commitments into action.”

In other words: now the real work begins for companies.

The private sector played a leading role in the climate talks. This included commitments from more than 5,000 global companies that together represent over $38 trillion in revenue.

Also in Paris the Science Based Targets initiative announced that 114 companies — including Ikea, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Walmart, Kellogg and Dell — committed to set emissions 34

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reduction targets in line with what scientists say is necessary to keep global warming below the threshold of 2 degrees Celsius.

The Science Based Targets initiative, a joint effort of CDP, WRI, WWF and UN Global Compact, works with companies to set science-based emissions targets and only approves corporate targets that meet its strict criteria.

However only 10 companies’ targets have been approved: CocaCola Enterprises, Dell, Enel, General Mills, Kellogg, NRG Energy, Procter & Gamble, Sony and Thalys. In addition to the remaining 104 that have pledged to set and seek approval for their sciencebased targets, hundreds of other of companies publish annual sustainability reports that cite emissions reduction targets and 8,000 companies have signed the UN Global Compact, which asks its members to address and report on a range of ESG issues.

Reporting on this discrepancy, The Guardian says: “Companies, while eager to save money by becoming more energy efficient, remain reluctant to spend money on low-carbon energy so long as fossil fuels remain cheaper. Put simply, the environmental imperatives and the short term business case are not aligned.”

Plus, the Paris Agreement set the bar for climate change action even higher, by aiming to keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and striving towards 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This will require major investments in renewable energy and clean technology.

The climate deal sends “a very strong signal to business and investors that there is only one future direction of travel to reduce emissions in line with a 1.5 degree pathway,” said Stephanie Pfeifer, chief executive of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, whose members manage assets valued at over 13 trillion euros, in a statement to the Washington Post. “Investors across Europe will now have the confidence to do much more to address the risks arising from high carbon assets and to seek 35

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opportunities linked to the low carbon transition already transforming the world’s energy system and infrastructure.”

Unilever chief Paul Polman says keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius presents an opportunity for business. “Achieving a zero emissions economy is the greatest business opportunity of the century,” he says, adding that the “consequences of this agreement go far beyond the actions of governments. They will be felt in banks, stock exchanges, board rooms and research centers as the world absorbs the fact that we are embarking on an unprecedented project to decarbonize the global economy.

This realization will unlock trillions of dollars and the immense creativity and innovation of the private sector who will rise to the challenge in a way that will avert the worst effects of climate change.”

The next step for businesses is to decrease their own emissions, says Tom Murray, vice president, Corporate Partnerships Program at Environmental Defense Fund.

“The climate deal is a strong step that signals to business that the nations of the world are serious about reducing the impacts of climate change,” Murray told Environmental Leader. “Business has played a key role in pushing for a strong climate agreement, and the outcome shows the power of their support. But with the ambitious deal comes the hard work of making this agreement a reality. The next steps for companies are to continue to decrease their emissions, to continue to innovate and, crucially, to work toward a low-carbon world. In the United States in particular, business support for the Clean Power Plan will be key to helping the US fulfill its commitments under the Paris Accord.”

Readmore: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/15/cop21climate-deal-whats-next-for-business/#ixzz3vBdUs4YC

5 EHS, Quality Management Predictions for 2016 36

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The environment, health and safety sector saw significant changes in 2015, with increasing regulatory pressures such as changes to the OSHA fine structure and updates to ISO 9001 quality management systems and ISO 14001 environmental management systems, according to an Intelex Technologies.

The EHS software provider says the macro trends driving these changes — consumer awareness of workplace safety, product quality and consumer safety, along with increasing EHS regulations from governments — are prompting some businesses to reevaluate how they operate.

Technology also saw advancements this year, with industries from oil and gas to agriculture relying on big data-driven decisions.

In the post, Intelex also makes five EHS and quality management predictions for 2016: 1. Increased reliance on data driven decisions.

2. Increased scrutiny on data quality 3. Executive level visibility for safety initiatives 4. Breaking down departmental and information silos 5. Oh yeah and mobility Intelex is one of the top EHS software brands according to an October report by Verdantix.

Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/22/5ehs-quality-management-predictions-for-2016/#ixzz3vBf602CR

10 Disruptive HR Technology Trends for 2016 HR technology innovation brings employee engagement to the fore The transformational changes taking place across the HR technology landscape have the potential to provide CIOs with better tools for managing the people side of their IT organizations.

Imagine a human resources application that runs on employees’ smartphones, recommends nearby people with whom they can 37

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network, helps to boost their productivity by evaluating their time management, offers suggestions for improving work-life balance, and provides targeted, on-the-job training. It may even share exercise and healthy eating tips when and where employees need them.

This scenario illustrates the consumer-focused direction of HR technology, one that centers on employee productivity and engagement. Given the strides vendors are making to provide those capabilities, they may become reality for large enterprises sooner than many executives think, according to a new report from Bersin by Deloitte, “HR Technology for 2016: 10 Big Disruptions Ahead”.

Indeed, HR technology providers are increasingly designing applications for employees first, to enable workers to learn and develop, collaborate, share feedback, steer their careers, and even manage other people more effectively. The trend reflects a major shift from a decade ago, when vendors designed HR systems primarily to streamline HR administration, improve record-keeping, and help redesign HR processes. Today, digital technologies are transforming nearly every aspect of HR, from sourcing and recruiting to talent and performance management.

The current wave of technology-led HR transformation has two primary implications for CIOs. One, it offers a range of potentially promising new tools to help IT leaders better manage and engage the talent inside their organizations. Two, it creates opportunities for increased HR-IT partnership as HR leaders seek vendor selection and technology integration advice from CIOs. In addition to technology aimed at engaging employees, several other trends are likely to influence CIOs’ and CHROs’ purchasing decisions: Mobile emerges as a new HR technology platform. With smartphone use surging and employees across a range of functions seeking access to corporate applications via their mobile devices, companies are scrambling to adapt their HR systems accordingly. In some cases, they may create their own 38

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apps—pared-down versions of enterprise software that offer users streamlined access to basic HR functionality, such as submitting time sheets or expense reports. In cases where companies are ready to replace existing HR systems, they may look for vendors that offer mobile apps as part of their core services. Regardless of whether companies build or buy, delivering HR functionality via mobile platforms requires companies to consider the different features, mechanics, and user dynamics associated with mobile devices.

ERP vendors catch up as credible talent management providers. A decade ago, the talent management market was dominated by best-of-breed providers selling licensed software.

Recruiting, learning, and performance management tools were sold as separate products, forcing companies to stitch those systems together and integrate them with their ERP systems.

Then ERP vendors began acquiring these smaller companies and weaving specialized talent management products into their broader suites. As a result, many ERP vendors now provide endto-end talent management solutions that meet the requirements of large, complex organizations.

“Built for the cloud” technology providers redefine HR functions. Even as ERP providers expand their HR product lines, a “third wave” of vendors is emerging with cloud-based talent solutions that are user-friendly, inexpensive to buy, and built for mobile devices from the start. These new vendors target a range of core HR activities, including payroll, recruiting, learning, and employee engagement.

New software categories include feedback, engagement, and culture management. Companies have grown increasingly concerned about low levels of employee engagement. In response, a plethora of software vendors have popped up that provide new tools for soliciting real-time employee feedback, assessing culture, monitoring engagement, and managing employee performance and goals. These tools allow 39

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organizations to more promptly uncover and respond to employees’ issues, needs, and suggestions.

Performance and goal management are reinvented with feedback and check-ins. Dozens of large companies that have replaced traditional, year-end performance management practices with more agile, real-time, and feedback-driven approaches have found their existing performance management software doesn’t support their new processes. Startups see an opportunity to fill this gap but, to date, they have yet to build into their products many of the features that large companies typically want, such as reviews and ratings. As a result, companies may have trouble finding the appropriate tools to support a performance management redesign.

Startups move to integrate learning content from disparate sources. The growing need for training has created tremendous demand for easy-to-use, Web-based professional development content. Companies are increasingly offering online training from a range of sources and platforms, but the challenge many now face is bringing this content together to create an integrated learning experience for employees. As with the areas of performance, engagement, and culture management, small vendors are stepping in to address this need.

The field of predictive analytics continues to grow. Predictive analytics is likely to become one of the most important features in HR technology platforms over the next several years. Even though many HR organizations have been slow to adopt people analytics, a wide variety of vendors offer impressive capabilities in that area, including the ability to identify “toxic” employees, recommend training, predict attrition and unplanned absences, and highlight the promotions and transfers most likely to produce high-performing employees.

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Cloud computing hasn’t dampened demand for technology services. While cloud-based software is generally easier than on-premise systems to implement and maintain, it still requires significant effort to roll out. Bersin’s research shows organizations that purchase new cloud-based HR systems experience many unexpected challenges during the transition: New systems have to be “harmonized” with existing processes, integrated with existing systems, and introduced to users with vast amounts of training and communication. To ease the switch from on-premise to cloud, select HR vendors that offer high levels of service, products with open-programming interfaces, and industry-specific experience.

HR technology innovation brings employee engagement to the fore. The HR technology landscape is changing more rapidly than ever. As CIOs and HR leaders look to upgrade and replace existing HR systems, they should consider vendors and tools that offer consumer-like experiences, mobile capabilities, and predictive analytics—and allow employees to test them for ease of use, not just for features and workflow. The number of employees using HR tools and the duration and frequency of their usage will become important measures of engagement and effectiveness.

—by Josh Bersin, founder and principal, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP December 23, 2015, 12:01am Questions? Write to Deloitte CIO Journal Editor Source: http://deloitte.wsj.com/cio/2015/12/23/10-disruptive-hrtechnology-trends-for-2016/

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IndiScan Telecom Towers in India Switching to Hydrogen Fuel Cells October 5, 2015 By Carl Weinschenk Intelligent Energy saysthat it is purchasing contracts from GTL Limited to provide hydrogen fuel cell technology to more than 27,400 telecommunications towers in India.

More than 70 percent of the 425,000 telecom towers in India go offline for about eight hours per day, according to the release. That impacts almost half of the 935 million phones used across the country.

The main backups today are diesel generators. This approach is costly, inefficient and emits large amounts of CO2, NOx and carcinogens.

Hydrogen fuel cells are thought to be both less expensive and safer. Intelligent Energy’s Indian subsidiary Essential Energy will assume power management of the towers. About 70 percent of the towers will be transitioned from diesel to hydrogen during the life of the contract.

The move of the contracts from GTL to Intelligent Energy appears to be part of a larger deal. The Economic Times reports that GTL 42

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is selling its energy management business to Essential Energy India. The story says that the regulatory process soon will start

Indian Oil Corporation to invest Rs 1.75 lakh cr in expansion projects

IOC, India’s largest oil firm, will invest Rs 1.75 lakh crore over the next seven years on expanding refinery capacity, building petrochemical plants and laying pipelines, a company official said.

The plan includes spending Rs 34,555 crore in the 15 million tons a year Paradip oil refinery in Odisha that has recently started producing fuel.

Besides, the refinery expansion projects planned include raising Panipat refinery capacity to 20.2 million tons from 15 million tons currently at a cost of Rs 15,000 crore as well as raising capacity at Koyali, Mathura and Barauni units by 2020, the official said.

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Paradip has started producing fuel and helped Indian Oil Corp regain the top refinery slot in the country, the official said.

Prior to Paradip, its eight refineries had a cumulative capacity of 54.2 million tons of crude oil. Paradip helped IOC overtake Reliance Industries, which has twin refineries at Jamnagar in Gujarat with a capacity of 62 million tons.

Essar Oil is the only other private refiner having a 20 million tons a year unit at Vadinar in Gujarat.

The official said IOC is looking at raising capacity of its 13.7 million tons a year Koyali refinery in Gujarat by 4.3 million tons as well as hiking capacity of Mathura refinery in Uttar Pradesh by three million tons to 11 million tons in two stages – first to 9.2 million tons and than to 11 million tons.

A small capacity addition of 0.5 million tons is also planned at 7.5 million tons Haldia refinery in West Bengal.

Also Barauni refinery in Bihar will be expanded from 6 million tons to 7 million tons in first phase and than to 9 million tons in second, he said. “We are also setting up a 700,000 tonnes per annum polypropylene (PP) plant at a cost of Rs 3,150 crore at Paradip.

The plant is to be built by 2017-18,� the official said.

IOC will use propylene from cracked LPG and ethylene from refinery offgas to produce plastic that is used in making furniture, disposable cups and trays, printed packaging material, plain and transparent films, currency notes, food packets and pressuresensitive tapes.

The official said the company is also looking at setting up a 5 million tons a year LNG import terminal at Ennore in Tamil Nadu.

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New pipelines planned include Paradip-Raipur-Ranchi product pipeline, debottlenecking of Salaya-Mathura crude oil pipeline, augmentation of Paradip-Haldia-Barauni crude oil pipeline, Paradip-Hyderabad pipeline and Jaipur-Panipat naphtha pipeline.

The new expansion planned will cater to fuel needs of north and western India, he added.

Sweeter gas pricing likely to spur search

By Subhash Narayan, Dec 21 2015 , New Delhi Policy changes may help ONGC, RIL The government is poised to take several key initiatives to prevent the current slump in global oil prices from impacting the country’s exploration and production activities.

For one, it is exploring an option to relax provisions in the proposed gas pricing policy for difficult deepwater and ultra deepwater blocks so as to allow premium pricing of gas even for blocks discovered prior to November 2014, but are yet to be developed.

Sources in the government said that the issue was being discussed and could be rolled out later after getting the finance ministry’s approval. The move to sweeten policy provisions is being considered in the wake of a slowdown in exploration and production activities following a sharp decline in global energy prices.

As per organisation of petroleum exporting countries (Opec) secretary-general Abdullah al-Badri, the current phase of low oil prices has already sucked out investments worth $130 billion from the oil and gas sector.

The premium gas pricing policy for production from difficult deepwater blocks is being considered by the oil ministry to encourage investments in exploration.

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As per the initial policy formulation, the government proposes to allow market price for a part of the discoveries made in future from these fields.

While approving the new gas pricing formula based on an average of international hub rates in October last year, the government had decided that all new discoveries in deepwater blocks would be treated differently and would command a premium over normal blocks. But it had also indicated that this premium would only be offered to discoveries made after the finalisation of the formula or from November 2014.

The likely changes in the premium gas pricing policy would help companies like ONGC, Reliance Industries and GSPC, all of whom have several discovered blocks in difficult areas prior to the November 2014 cutoff date.

ONGC has its ultra deepwater east coast blocks that are estimated to have a capacity of about 6-9 million standard cubic metres of gas. Similarly, most of RIL’s exploration blocks are in difficult deepwater areas in the Krishna-Godavari basin.

RIL’s hydrocarbon blocks such as CYD5 in the Cauvery basin, NEC25 in the Mahanadi basin and the D6 block in the KrishnaGodavari (KG) basin are all deepwater blocks. GSPC also has deepwater blocks in the KG basin.

While the exact features of the new gas pricing formula for deepwater blocks are still being worked out, sources said it would incorporate a graded premium over and above the existing price of natural gas based on the level of difficulty encountered for extracting gas.

This – the degree of difficulty – could be based on whether the exploration block is located in ultra deepwater/high pressure high temperature field, deepwater/high pressure high temperature field, deepwater field, ultra deepwater field and high pressure-high temperature field.

The first category would have permission to sell the maximum 50 per cent of gas output in the open market while the last category would get to sell the lowest.

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Contractors of other categories could be allowed to sell about 2040 per cent of the gas output at the market-determined rate.

Deepwater blocks are those located at depths of more than 1,000 metres, unlike shallow water blocks that are at 100-500 metres.

Blocks at depths beyond 1,500 metres are classified as ultra deepwater ones. These blocks are typically more expensive to develop. subhashnarayan@mydigitalfc.com

Cleaning up coal

By BusinessLine, December 27, 2015 Allowing limited commercial mining is a good start The decision to allot coal mines to States marks the first step in ending the Centre’s four-decade old monopoly over the mining and sale of coal. Public sector undertakings — both Central and State — will now be allocated coal blocks and the Centre’s stated objective in doing this is to provide small and medium industries in various States with easier access to coal supplies. This is certainly a laudable goal, although it will be a secondary outcome of the move. So far, States have been allocated coal blocks, but such allocations are tied to specific end uses such as power, steel or cement production. By now allowing merchant mining of coal, even if in a circumscribed fashion, the Centre has taken a step forward in reforming the market for India’s largest energy resource; at the same time, it has opened up additional revenue earning opportunities for coal-rich States.

While the Centre’s de jure monopoly over coal may have ended, its de facto monopoly is assured for years to come as it controls 90 per cent of the country’s total coal output through the centrallyowned Coal India Limited and Singareni Collieries, a Central government joint venture with the Telangana government. CIL is, 47

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for all purposes, a monopoly, leading to many market distortions.

Since customers do not have an effective grievance redressal mechanism in the absence of a coal regulator empowered to regulate prices, this has also led to undue pricing power in the hands of the State-owned miner. Another undesirable outcome has been a steady rise in coal imports, despite India having over a tenth of the world’s total reserves of the fuel.

We need to ramp up our coal production considerably if we are to meet the target of 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Coal India’s output has shown an impressive growth rate in recent months, but there are still challenges to contend with. Lack of modern technology, issues with manpower, land acquisition and problems with environmental clearances need to be addressed if the country is going to get anywhere close to its ambitious target. Added to this is the issue of productivity; CIL’s is among the lowest among organised miners in the world, at just 0.8 tonnes per man-shift.

Also, although 60 per cent of CIL’s manpower is deployed in underground mining, such mines account for only 10 per cent of its output. While the Centre has taken commendable steps to reform the coal sector by auctioning coal blocks, making a small disinvestment in CIL, and now allowing limited commercial mining, the task has only just begun. The next step is to have an independent regulator for the sector. Although coal prices have been nominally deregulated since 2000, given CIL’s monopoly, this has meant little. An independent and statutorily empowered regulator, and further opening up of commercial mining to the private sector can provide the necessary impetus to the sector and attract fresh investments.

(This article was published on December 27, 2015)

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IOC gets regulator’s nod for Ennore LNG pipeline R. BALAJI

Natural gas to be available to fuel industry and homes in Tamil Nadu by mid-2018 CHENNAI, DECEMBER 28: The proposed ₹5,150-crore Ennore LNG Terminal project has crossed a key milestone with the promoter Indian Oil Corporation getting the authorisation to lay the Ennore-Tuticorin pipeline for the project.

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board has authorised IOC to lay the 1,170-km pipeline linking the terminal to come up at Ennore to important consumption centres.

The pipeline will link Ennore-Thiruvallur-Bengaluru-PuducherryNagapattinam-Madurai-Tuticorin. The pipeline is a ₹2,800-crore project to be implemented by IOC. This is a crucial stage in IOC 49

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making available natural gas to fuel industry and houses in Tamil Nadu by mid-2018 using LNG imported at the proposed Ennore Terminal.

The public sector oil company is confident of having the infrastructure to supply the fuel in the State by mid-2018, according to the company officials.

At a recent meeting with industry representatives from chemical and petrochemical industries in Chennai, an IOC official said that the five-million-tonne-a-year natural gas terminal coming up to the north of Chennai is on schedule for completion in mid-2018.

Natural gas will be available up to 50 km on either side of the trunk line.

Survey, tariff The oil company has called for bids to carry out a Right-of-User survey for the pipeline and this is likely to be awarded within a month. IOC has the Right-of-Use for the Madurai-Tiruchi section which will run along an existing route for a petroleum products pipeline.

The pipeline tariff will be at an aggressive â‚š6.40 per million British Thermal Unit which is among the cheapest, according to the official.

Shift to natural gas Availability of LNG as fuel for industry has emerged a critical factor. Industries that use furnace oil, naphtha, LPG and diesel fuel are expected to shift to natural gas. IOC has a captive user base in Manali area to the north of Chennai with its own subsidiary refinery, Chennai Petroleum Corporation, and other units such as Madras Fertilizers Ltd and the major power plant keen on using natural gas.

For naphtha-dependent urea manufacturers such as MFL and SPIC in southern Tamil Nadu availability of natural gas is key to survival as government policy provides for fertiliser subsidy based on gas prices.

The Ennore LNG terminal coming up within the Kamarajar Port is progressing with major contracts for tankages and regasification 50

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facilities awarded. LNG storage facility construction has been awarded to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and regasification facilities to Black & Veatch.

(This article was published on December 28, 2015)

BPCL commissions Rs 1,419-cr crude distillation unit MUMBAI, DEC 28: State-run oil refiner and marketer Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) today commissioned a new 6-million tonne crude distillation unit (CDU) at its Mumbai refinery, which will take the capacity of its oldest facility to 12 million tonne per annum.

The Rs 1,419-crore CDU, fourth unit was completed as per schedule.

BPCL Chairman and Managing Director S Varadarajan said the modern technologies employed in the unit will help the PSU save Rs 128 crore annually by way of lower (a whopping 30 per cent less from the current levels) fuel consumption alone.

The facility was dedicated to the nation by Chief Minister of Maharashtra DevendraFadnavis in the presence of Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan at Mahul on the eastern fringe of the megapolis.

Varadarajan said with the new CDU, the Mumbai facility has the lowest sulphur dioxide emission levels, at 10.5 million tonne per day, amongst all refineries in the country.

Following this commissioning, BPCL will dismantle two older crude vacuum and distillation units that were set up in 1955 by Burma Shell, the private sector parent of BPCL, 51

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and create space for modernisation at the land—starved refinery.

BPCL has only 454 acres for the entire refinery.

The Mumbai refinery was set up by Burma Shell way back in 1955 with a capacity of 2.2 mtpa. A decade later, the Government nationalised the oil sector and Burma Shell was renamed as Bharat Petroleum Corporation.

(This article was published on December 28, 2015) ONGC to invest Rs 3500 crore for developing 3 CBM blocks State-owned Oil and Natural Corp (ONGC) today said it will invest Rs 3,500 crore in extracting gas lying below coal seams (CBM) in three coal-bed methane blocks in eastern India.

"We see a peak production of 3.2 million standard cubic meters per day of gas from the three CBM blocks," ONGC Director (Onshore) Ved Prakash Mahawar told reporters here.

ONGC will drill over 350 wells in three blocks in Jharia, Bokaro and North Karanpur in Jharkhand. A fourth block in Ranigajan North in West Bengal may be relinquished as it may fall in way of a planned air-strip.

"Production will start in three years and peak output of 3.2 mmscmd is likely in 2020-21," he said. On pricing, he said 52

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CBM production is viable at USD 4.8 per million British thermal unit gas price.

In comparison, the current government mandated rate is USD 4.24. ONGC sells CBM gas from wells at Parbatpur in the Jharia block at an approved price of USD 5.1 per mmBtu. Mahawar said the company board has approved an investment of Rs 1,200 crore in the Bokaro block to produce a peak gas of 0.7 mmscmd.

In all, 160 wells are to be drilled on Bokaro block, of which 9 have already been drilled, he said. ONGC is the operator of Bokaro as well as North Karanpur blocks with 80 per cent interest. Indian Oil Corp (IOC) holds the remaining 20 per cent.

It is the operator of the Raniganj North block with a 74 percent stake and Coal India Ltd holds the rest. In Jharia, ONGC holds 90 percent and Coal India the remaining 10 per cent. The Jharia block is estimated to hold 85 billion cubic metres of gas reserves, North Karanpura 62 billion cubic metres, Bokaro 45 billion cubic metres and Raniganj North 43 billion cubic metres.

Oil Secretary K D Tripathi said India's current CBM output is around 1 million standard cubic meters per day or one per cent of the total natural gas production. The output is targeted to be raised to 5 mmscmd in three years, he added.

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Minister of State(I/c), MoP&NG launches LPG emergency helpline and declares 2016 as the ‘Year of the LPG consumer’ Mr.Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Petroleum & Natural Gas, addressing the gathering during the launch of ‘1906’ - All India LPG Emergency Helpline number in New Delhi.

Mr.Dharmendra Pradhan, Hon’ble Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Petroleum & Natural Gas launched ‘1906 - round-the-clock LPG Emergency Helpline Number’ for enhanced customer safety and convenience in a programme held in New Delhi today in the presence of Mr. K. D. Tripathi, Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Mr. A. P. Sawhney, Additional Secretary, MoP&NG, Mr.Ashutosh Jindal, Joint Secretary (Marketing), MoP&NG, Mr. B. Ashok, Chairman, IndianOil, Mr. B. S. Canth, Director (Marketing), IndianOil, and other senior officials from MoP&NG and oil marketing companies.

The number – ‘1906’ is a call-centre based service, available panIndia for all LPG customers of the three public sector Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs). The centralised Emergency Service Cell (ESC) is operational through a call centre operating 24x7 to attend to LPG leakage calls. The helpline offers services in nine vernacular languages – Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam, except Hindi and English, to ensure that the callers are comfortable in registering their grievances. The call centre is also equipped with a setup for outbound calls for contacting mechanics and distributors and oil company officials.

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Though customers can access the ESC only through voice calls, the call centre is equipped with a web-based application for logging and viewing complaints. The portal houses an exhaustive data on the contact details of all LPG distributors, emergency service mechanics, and field officers, across the OMCs. The LPG area in-charges of the three OMCs have been provided access to the portal to constantly monitor call logs, and update contact details of the mechanic and field officers on a regular basis.

Mr. Pradhan said on the occasion said that the initiatives taken by Petroleum Ministry in 2015 have enhanced coverage of LPG and also have extended better services to the customers. “The policy initiatives implemented by Government of India in LPG sector has brought a paradigm shift in the LPG marketing and has taken us closer to the target of achieving 70% LPG penetration as envisioned by our Prime Minister, Mr.NarendraModi,” he added.

The expansion of PAHAL, a scheme aimed to improve the subsidy administration of LPG across the country, has ensured smooth transfer of subsidy on LPG cylinder directly to the customers’ bank accounts.

Mr.Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Petroleum & Natural Gas being welcomed by Mr. B. Ashok, Chairman.

Mr. Pradhan mentioned that a host of other such initiatives for customer convenience would be offered and that the year 2016 would be celebrated as the ‘Year of the LPG consumer.’ Mr. Pradhan also urged to oil marketing companies to make the helpline number 1906 toll-free.

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Cheaper LNG: Renegotiated Ras gas

By BusinessLine, January 1, 2015 The RasGas deal has been well renegotiated, but it is a reminder that domestic gas pricing must be linked to the market The best thing about the renegotiated liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply deal with RasGas of Qatar is that it brings down the benchmark rate for natural gas in the country to more realistic levels.

There are two major components to the new deal that has been signed between RasGas and Petronet LNG. First, the LNG price will be linked to a three-month average of Brent crude oil prices, replacing the earlier formula based on fiveyear average of a basket of crude imported by Japan. It is this change that has been primarily responsible for the sharp fall in the import price.

Second, RasGas has agreed to waive a â‚š12,000 crore penalty payable by Petronet for not taking up the contracted supplies in 2015. The shortfall will be made up by Petronet through higher volumes of purchase over the remaining term of the contract that runs until 2028.

As a sweetener for the whole deal, the total quantum of LNG that Petronet will buy from RasGas has been bumped up by a million tonnes to 8.5 MT per annum through the term of the contract.

While the Centre deserves credit for renegotiating the contract, it should proceed to afffix accountability for what was fundamentally a bad deal. The original agreement between RasGas and Petronet was a 25-year fixed price contract linked to crude oil prices, with a floor price of $3 and a cap of $4 per million metric British thermal unit (MMBTU).

Why were the pricing terms changed to the country’s detriment when the deal was renegotiated in 1999 for higher volumes of LNG? 56

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Why did Petronet agree in 2006 to buy ‘lean’ gas or gas with a lower component of hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane and butane, for a volume of 2.5 million tonnes of the overall contracted quantum of 7.5 million tonnes?

These, and related issues, were investigated by a government committee in early 2015 and the Petroleum Minister is on record in Parliament that its findings, arrived with the help of the Central Vigilance Commission, were under examination.

Of course, an impediment for further action is the fact that since less than half of Petronet’s equity is held by PSUs, it remains strictly outside the purview of the CVC and the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The $14-18 per MMBTU price of imported LNG was cited by Indian gas producers as proof that domestic gas was priced artificially low as per the formula fixed by the Centre.

That argument has been weakened with the renegotiated price of $6-7 per MMBTU being very close to the domestic price of $4.24 per MMBTU. Consumers such as power plants and fertiliser units which had shunned LNG following the price spiral may once again find the fuel viable for use. Eventually, gas pricing in India should be linked to the market rather than to artificial formulae with their inherent biases. That would be true reform.

(This article was published on January 1, 2016)

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GlobeScan Dow Chemicals in merger talks with DuPont

By Greg Roumeliotis, ReutersDec 09 2015 , New York Firms look at creating a chemicals giant of more than $120 billion Dow Chemical and DuPont are in talks to merge, creating a chemicals giant with a market value of more than $120 billion that could then break up into different businesses, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

A deal, which would face regulatory approval in several countries, would allow the two US companies to rejig their assets based on their diverging fortunes. Their plastics and specialty chemical businesses have benefited from lower energy costs, while their agrochemicals divisions have struggled to cope with weak demand for crop protection products.

Following what would be structured as a merger of equals, the combined company could split into material sciences, specialty products and agrochemicals, the people said, cautioning that the plans have not been finalised.

Dow’s CEO Andrew Liveris and DuPont chief executive Edward Breen would have the two top jobs in the combined company, one of the people said.

An agreement could be reached in the coming days, that person added. Dow and DuPont declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the merger talks earlier on Tuesday.

The possible merger may see cost synergies worth about $3 billion, CNBC reported citing people familiar with the matter. As of Tuesday’s trading close, Dow had a market valuation of $58.97 billion, while DuPont was valued at $58.37 billion.DuPont, under 58

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Breen, who took over as CEO last month, had already been in talks with rivals, including Dow, about exploring options about its agriculture business.

Dow had also been reviewing all options for its farm chemicals and seeds unit, which has reported falling sales for nearly a year.

In August, the world’s largest seed company, Monsanto, abandoned a $45 billion bid for rival Syngenta as declining grain prices and farm income led to the major players in the farm chemicals and seeds business becoming the subject of consolidation talks.

However, even before the merger is announced, speculation is rife that the potential combination, which could overtake Germany’s BASF in revenue, may come under intense scrutiny by antitrust regulators.

“A deal like this will definitely be subject to close antitrust scrutiny

by Chinese regulators -- not just Mofcom -- but many other government actors will be involved in the process. That doesn’t mean the deal will necessarily be prohibited,” said Angela Zhang, an antitrust expert at King’s College in London.

Zhang warns that the merger review process will be protracted.

However, if the companies “can offer remedies that satisfy the Chinese regulators,” they could obtain clearance, subject to conditions, Zhang said.

Breen took over after his predecessor and company veteran Ellen Kullman resigned abruptly in October. Best known as a turnaround expert, Breen was the CEO of Tyco between 2002 and 2012 and split Tyco into six companies, a sprawling conglomerate beset by scandal and strategic flip-flops DuPont, which gets about 60 per cent of its sales from outside North America, has seen a strong dollar chip away 53 cents per share from its earnings this year. The company has been facing sliding sales for nearly two years.

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ConocoPhillips exits Russia HOUSTON, December 23, 2015 US independent ConocoPhillips announced on Tuesday that it would be exiting Russia after more than 25 years of operations in the country. The company sold out of its Polar Lights joint venture with Russia’s state-owned Rosneft.

Russia’s energy industry has suffered from political tensions, the tumble in oil prices and a volatile currency, making it difficult for foreign players to succeed. The ruble rose 42% from January to May, and then fell 25% by August against the US dollar.

ConocoPhillips confirmed the sale of its 50% stake in Polar Lights, in the far northwest of the country. Rosneft also sold its stake in the asset last week in a USD 150 million-200 million deal, according to an unnamed Financial Times source.

The US Company made a string of dry investments in Russia and has been increasingly drawn to the shale boom in the US. Several Western companies have recently signed deals with Russian oil companies to develop the vast, but challenging resources in the Arctic and in unconventional plays. These projects have been frozen due to Western sanctions over the annexation of Crimea, falling oil prices, and Russia’s shift in business co-operation with Chinese and Indian groups.

Rig count drops as drillers pull back production December 22, 2015 In the last 12 months, the number of active rigs operating on land in the United States has dropped significantly.

That’s due to two factors. One is that oil and gas companies are reeling from plummeting commodity prices. The other is 60

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that drillers have become more efficient at tapping shale formations. They can extract more oil and gas with fewer rigs.

Still, it’s been a tough year, marked by exploration and production companies scaling back drilling plans and announcing layoffs. It’s hit the smaller players, like Cecil-based Consol Energy and State College-based Rex Energy, as well as energy giants like Chevron, and oilfield service companies Halliburton and Schlumberger.

As of Friday, the national oil rig count shed just shy of 1,000 rigs in the last 12 months. Meanwhile, the number of rigs targeting natural gas has dropped by 170, according to Baker Hughes Inc. Some more pain may be in store for 2016. Moody’s Investor Services expects “a prolonged period of oversupply will keep oil prices lower for longer and continue to pressure issuers in the oil and gas industry in 2016, particularly those in the exploration & production and drilling and oilfield services sectors.” The rating agency is maintaining its negative outlook on these sectors.    

United States Gulf of Mexico Canada North America

Enterprise says the first shipment of export crude will sail from Houston

By Robert Grattan on December 23, 2015 HOUSTON — Enterprise Products Partners plans to fill a tanker with of U.S. crude in early January and send it overseas — laying claim to the first shipment of domestic oil from the Gulf Coast since the government lifted a 40-year ban on such exports last week.

The Houston-based midstream company said it will transport about 600,000 barrels of domestic light crude oil to Houston and 61

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load it onto a tanker at the Enterprise Hydrocarbon Terminal in the first week of 2016. In its announcement Wednesday, Enterprise didn’t identify the source of the oil or its destination.

“We applaud the actions of Congress and President Obama to remove the ban on U.S. crude oil exports,” said Jim Teague, chief operating officer of Enterprise’s general partner, in a prepared statement. “Enterprise’s integrated system enabled us to quickly respond to customer demand for U.S. crude oil by international markets.”

The U.S. government OK’d sending domestic oil abroad last week, after years of political pressure from independent oil producers. A rider ending the ban passed along with a $1.8 trillion tax and spending omnibus bill.

Oil producers — who stand to benefit as they gain access to international markets — have been the loudest cheerleaders for allowing exports. But Enterprise and other midstream companies also are positioned well for exporting oil. Houston and Corpus Christi are likely staging areas for U.S. oil headed abroad, and Enterprise owns a significant amount of infrastructure in and connecting to the cities.

Previously, Enterprise had used its Texas terminals to export an ultralight oil called condensate. In summer of 2014, the Commerce Department permitted companies to ship condensate after minimal processing. The export ban didn’t apply to refined products.

Most Gulf Coast refineries are configured to process heavier crude than condensate. But the lighter oil flows in large quantities from the nearby Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, making condensate an attractive product for export to more suitable refineries overseas.

This year, condensate shipments have averaged about 100,000 barrels a day, according to figures from ClipperData, a company that tracks global oil movement.

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Iran bracing for $30 oil Crude oil production from Islamic republic up about 4 percent from 2013.

By Daniel J. Graeber | Dec. 23, 2015

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's administration preparing for lower-forlonger slump in crude oil prices. Photo by Ali Mohammadi/UPI

TEHRAN, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Financial planners in Iran need to be prepared for crude oil prices moving potentially below $30 per barrel, the Iranian minister of the economy said.

Minister Ali Tayyebnia described the slump in crude oil prices as a fiscal act of war, but stressed the administration of President Hassan Rouhanihas been able to control inflation and achieve positive economic growth.

"The inflation rate was lowering in Iran, but a [potential] oil price below $30 per barrel is an indication of an all-out war which requires the use of all the country's capacities to confront it," he was quoted by the Oil Ministry's news website SHANA as saying.

Iran has been at odds with Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, over production levels. Tehran suggested rival members should make room for the eventual return of Iranian crude oil to an eventual post-sanctions market.

The minister said oil revenue for Iran is expected to drop from $120 billion recorded in 2011 to below $20 billion for the Iranian calendar year ending March 20. Nevertheless, Tayyebnia said the 63

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administration was taking steps to reduce the dependence on oil revenues.

A world market outlook from OPEC, published Thursday, said there is some upside potential for the Iranian economy over the medium-term. In its monthly market report for December, OPEC said Iranian crude oil production was around 2.8 million barrels per day, a 4.2 percent increase from 2013.

Sanctions pressure was tightened on Iran early this decade in response to the country's nuclear program. That pressure will ease as a result of a July agreement to curb nuclear activity reached between Iran, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany.

The International Monetary Fund said in a review of the Iranian economy that oil prices and postponed investment decisions have slowed economic growth for Iran. Real growth in gross domestic product is expected to decline from 3 percent to somewhere between 0.5 percent and -0.5 percent in the coming year.

Jacobs as global engineering partner 12.23.2015 | HP Under a three-year contract, Jacobs is providing engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) and integrated project management services to BASF for global projects.

Keywords: Jacobs Engineering Group was chosen by BASF as a global engineering partner, officials with both the contractor and global chemicals company confirmed on Wednesday.

Under a three-year contract, Jacobs is providing engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) and integrated project management services to BASF for projects around the world.

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The selection follows a rigorous process in which Jacobs was able to demonstrate extensive project execution capabilities in India, Southeast Asia, North America and Europe.

Jacobs’ international experience in these markets is expected to prove beneficial to BASF, as it opens opportunities for further growth and expansion.

“Our relationship with BASF spans many years, and we are delighted to further strengthen our relationship across the globe," said Gary Mandel, president of Jacobs' petroleum and chemicals business.

"This selection represents a strong endorsement of our international reach and EPCM capabilities, and we look forward to working alongside BASF to support its continued growth and success," he added.

Indonesia announces new policy allowing private sector to build refineries 12.23.2015 | HP Under the country’s eighth policy package announced on Monday, private-sector companies will be allowed to build oil refineries as long as they sell the end product to state-owned PT Pertamina.

Keywords:

By YUDITH HO Bloomberg Indonesia’s rupiah rose for a fourth day in the longest stretch of gains in more than two months after the government took measures to support growth in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

Under the country’s eighth policy package announced on Monday, private-sector companies will be allowed to build oil refineries as long as they sell the end product to state-owned PT Pertamina, said Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs DarminNasution.

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The nation will also scrap import taxes on aviation spare parts to support that industry, he said. The rupiah’s advance was also underpinned by a new economic roadmap for China, which is Indonesia’s largest trading partner, according to Australia & New Zealand Banking Group.

“The policy on refinery development would attract investment and support growth, while China saying it will spend more is also a small positive,” said Irene Cheung, a currency strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking in Singapore. “But we’re still bearish on the rupiah as US rates continue to rise next year.”

The rupiah strengthened 0.8% to close at 13,675 a dollar in Jakarta, prices from local banks compiled byBloomberg show. It rose as much as 1.6% to 13,565, the highest since Nov. 12 and is leading gains in Asia this quarter.

“Investors are looking closer into coming back to Indonesian assets as there are enough positive domestic reasons to do so,” said WellianWiranto, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. in Singapore. “The big question is, can the global market stay calm enough for emerging markets to benefit?”

Inflation may ease further as the government plans to cut regulated fuel prices in January, I GustiNyomanWiratmaja Puja, director general of oil and gas at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, was cited as saying on Tuesday by Investor Daily Indonesia. Prices rose 4.89% in November from a year earlier, the slowest pace since October 2014.

The central bank estimates the economy will expand 4.8% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, compared with 4.73% in the previous three months. That’s below the full-year target of 5% to 5.2% in the revised state budget.

OCBC expects growth of 4.8% this year and 5.1% in 2016, Wiranto said.

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Nigeria to revamp refineries for greater efficiency before deciding on sale 12.18.2015 | HP Nigeria is determined to revamp its refineries and make them work efficiently before deciding if they should be sold, petroleum minister Emmanuel Kachikwu said.

By ELISHA BALA-GBOGBO Bloomberg Nigeria plans to pump 2.4 million bpd of oil in 2016 as it pursues low-cost production to offset revenue losses from falling crude prices, Emmanuel Kachikwu, petroleum minister of state, said.

“We must bring down substantially the cost per barrel of oil in this country,” Kachikwu, who is also the head of the state oil company, told reporters on Thursday in the capital, Abuja. “In an era of declining price of oil it’s going to be very essential that we’re able to produce the most competitive oil in the market. We must be the lowest-cost producer.”

Africa’s biggest oil producer depends on exports of the commodity for more than 90% of its foreign earnings and two-thirds of government revenue. A 68% drop in the price of Brent crude from its 2014 peak, has seen government revenue plummet, piling pressure on the country’s currency, the naira. Kachikwu sees average prices of crude per barrel at $45 next year, higher than the budget estimate of $38.

With the government unable to fund new oil and gas investments in the face of limited income, new financing models are being considered for capital investments, Kachikwu said. A longdelayed reform bill for the oil and gas industry will be split into two parts, separating its fiscal and non-fiscal aspects for easier passage by lawmakers, he said.

Nigeria, which holds Africa’s largest gas reserves of more than 180 trillion cubic feet, will give low-tax incentives for investments to help boost gas revenue in the face of falling crude prices, Kachikwu said.

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Revamp Refineries Nigeria is determined to revamp its refineries and make them work efficiently before deciding if they should be sold, Kachikwu said. The refineries with a combined capacity for 445,000 bpd only managed to operate at an average of 5% of their capacity in the first 10 months of this year, leaving a loss of 67.4 billion naira ($338.6 million), according to a report published by the owner, Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.

“We can’t sell the refineries in their current state because they’ll be sold as scraps,” he said. “We have to get the refineries to work. If they don’t work, we close them down.”

For an average daily consumption of 40 million liters of gasoline, Nigeria has paid subsidies of more than 1 trillion naira this year to maintain a fixed price, according to the petroleum minister

Shell cuts 2016 spending plans by $2 billion in preparation for BG deal

By RAKTEEM KATAKEY Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, further reduced spending plans for this year and 2016 as it prepares to take over BG Group amid slumping prices for crude.

The combined company plans $33 billion of capital spending next year, lower than Shell’s previous guidance of $35 billion, it said Tuesday. Shell also cut its spending forecast for this year by $1 billion to $29 billion.

Crude’s collapse to less than $37/bbl from about $55 on the day the deal was announced in April has prompted some investors to question whether Shell is paying too much. The oil producer has justified the deal by saying that it boosts its ability to maintain 68

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dividends, makes it the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas company and gives it oil and gas assets from Australia to Brazil.

“The two companies are combining during a low oil-price environment and cutting their spending plans makes a lot of sense,” said Jason Gammel, a London-based analyst with Jefferies International. “This moves the plans for the deal forward.”

Shell expects operating costs to fall by $4 billion this year, about 10% lower than last year, and by $3 billion in 2016. The acquisition will break even with Brent crude prices in the low $60s and add to operating cash flow per share at $50/bbl in 2016, the company said in a statement. It expects the deal to be accretive to earnings per share, excluding identified items, in 2017 at $65 Brent.

Shares Rise Shell’s B shares, the class of stock used in the deal, rose 2.9% to 1,536 pence at 9:51 a.m. in London, adding to Tuesday’s 2.9% increase. BG gained 3.3% to 960.7 pence, also rising for a second day.

Shell in April offered to pay 0.4454 of its B shares and 383 pence in cash for each BG share in a deal valued at $70 billion. A decline in Shell’s stock has cut that to about $53 billion as of Dec. 18, the company said in the statement.

Shell’s shareholders are scheduled to vote on the acquisition on Jan. 27 and BG’s the next day. Shell requires the backing of 50% of its holders. In BG’s case, votes in favor must represent at least 75% of the total value of BG shares. The merger is likely to become effective Feb. 15, Shell said.

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TrendScan Fracking research collaborative cuts across state lines

A drilling site in the Marcellus Shale.

Mid-October, a trio of shale drilling states — Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — signed an agreement to grow the natural gas industry on a regional level, focusing on job training, infrastructure and other areas.

As that tri-state connection forms, a grassroots network of independent policy organizations and research groups located within the affected region are shaping a more holistic dialogue about the long-term consequences of hydraulic fracturing.

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The Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative, with member groups in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, monitors economic development and the community impacts of energy extraction in the Marcellus and Utica shales.

Affiliates of the coalition, launched in 2013, include the Fiscal Policy Institute (New York), Policy Matters Ohio, Keystone Research Center/Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, Commonwealth (Virginia) Institute for Fiscal Analysis, and West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy.

"You have pro- and anti-fracking camps, but our goal is to navigate the middle ground," said Amanda Woodrum, a researcher with Policy Matters Ohio. "We document and acknowledge both the benefits and the costs."

The group's research focuses on four heavy shale-drilling counties: Carroll County in Ohio, Tioga and Greene counties in Pennsylvania, and Wetzel County in West Virginia.

Interviews with township and county officials revealed the consequences of rapid industrial development of shale gas on municipal services and community institutions such as hospitals.

While this data has been previously collected at a county level, there has never been a systematic attempt to aggregate these sources over fracking regions, Woodrum said.

Tackling these issues on a larger scale can aid communities in making the most of extraction’s “boom” while mitigating the effects of an inevitable "bust" cycle, research group members believe.

Next year, the collaborative will amass information on housing, traffic, local access to jobs and other shale industry concerns for a "scorecard" that will be sent to legislators.

"Troubling practices and negative impacts from shale development look similar in all our states," Woodrum said. "By working together, we can share experiences and best practices and promote high standards."

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One small step The recent interstate pact, signed by West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolfe, is a solid step in getting a regional conversation going about issues like job creation and damage done to road systems by trucks carrying fracking-related equipment, said Woodrum.

However, collaborative members urge more cooperation among states on these questions as well as implementation of a 5 percent severancetax the coalition believes is a reasonable proposal for oil and gas companies to pay their portion of costs associated with the shale boom.

A commitment to consistent policies on taxes and compensation for areas impacted by drilling would strengthen the recently inked tri-state agreement, said collaborative supporter Ted Auch, a Cleveland-based program coordinator for the drilling watchdog group FracTracker Alliance.

Auch, who has worked with the collaborative as an advisor, said the group could be even more ambitious in its call for a severance tax hike. A 5-percent drilling tax, though an improvement on Ohio's present half-percent marker, is still well below the national average of 9.5 percent. Proceeds could be sunk back into fracking areas to provide sufficient oversight, resources for job training and needed infrastructure.

"These are five- to 10-year wells when you look from an ecological and geological standpoint," said Auch. "It's worth trying to extract flesh now rather than trying to get it over the long run."

Working as a team A wider approach to oil and gas production also applies to expansion of the industry workforce, collaborative members said.

In Ohio, the Utica shale formation is expected to generate 10,505 full-time jobs in state by 2019, according to a study released in September by Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs.

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Even with the uptick, companies will continue to use transient workers for well-field development and construction of interstate pipelines, the report stated. While locally produced employment could include well maintenance and other post-production activity, Ohio will need more than the approximately 3,000 jobs grown thus far through drilling activity, said Woodrum.

Policy Matters Ohio has brought in collaborative partners from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to discuss the matter further. In Pennsylvania, direct employment in oil and gas more than tripled (from 9,659 to 33,137) in the seven years since the Marcellus Shale boom began, according to a state Department of Labor and Industry study.

From a regional standpoint, those numbers are not as impressive as they sound, Woodrum said. Shale-based employment accounts for one out of every 795 jobs in the Appalachian Basin, as stated in a 2013 collaborative report.

A parameter of the Oct. 13 state agreement is the creation of industry-supported training programs akin to ShaleNET. Paul Kaboth of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which hosted an economy-focused shale symposium with the collaborative in March, said building "cracker" plants in drilling areas would spur additional job growth. Cracker plants turn ethane, a component of natural gas, into ethylene, a chemical used in plastics.

"We should be working together to bring those processing facilities to the region rather than have that fuel piped elsewhere," said Kaboth. "The secondary and tertiary effects of extraction are what the collaborative needs to be working toward."

State lawmakers, with the collaborative's advice, should also set high environmental standards for the industry, said Melanie Houston, director of water policy and environmental health with the Ohio Environmental Council. Houston points to air emissions 73

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and protective distances between fracking wells and water sources as problems that can now be addressed in full.

"We need to learn from our sister states about the impacts residents are feeling," Houston said. "These issues cut across borders."

Ultimately, the multi-state research network can be a powerful force in translating data for legislators unschooled on the ins and outs of natural gas, said Auch of FracTracker.

"It's a chance to hold policymakers' feet to the fire," he said.

"Increasing their scientific literacy rate should be a goal, too."

Shale gas hit a few peaks in 2015, but drillers mostly pulled back December 22, 2015

Range Resources workers stand near the rig that drills into the shale at a well site in Washington, Pa. in this 2011 photo. Range Resources was among five of the top 10 producers in Pennsylvania showing double-digit gas production growth in October compared to January.

Shale gas companies pumped the brakes in 2015 after years of rapid increases in the amount of natural gas they pulled from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus and Utica shales, new production data released by the state shows.

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Unconventional gas production in Pennsylvania this year hit its highest point in March then dipped to its lowest point in June during a three-month slide, according to monthly figures that shale operators reported to the Department of Environmental Protection. Production rose in July, August and September before dropping off again in October.

The October figures, the most recent available, were released by DEP last week. Average gas production in October — 12.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) — was 1 percent lower than September and roughly on par with January.

The stuttering production volumes are evidence of companies drilling and completing fewer wells, and choking back the flow of gas at wells already connected to pipelines. Several companies announced their intentions to curb production in response to low prices, oversupply and tepid demand amid warmer-than-normal temperatures.

“By our estimates, there is up to almost 1.5 billion cubic feet of choked production in the Northeast alone,” said Sami Yahya, an energy analyst with PlattsBentek. “A lot of producers are saying, we’re going to wait until the first quarter of 2016 to come back into the game. They are just waiting for better demand, better prices to bump it out again.”

Chesapeake Energy, Cabot Oil and Gas, and Southwestern Energy — shale operators focused on the dry gas region in Pennsylvania’s northeastern counties — led production for the first 10 months of 2015, although Chesapeake and Cabot both showed signs of pulling back after years of nearly uninterrupted production increases. Both companies reported producing less gas in October than they did in January.

Of the state’s top 10 producers for the year so far, Woodlands, Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum showed the biggest drop in 75

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production compared to the first month of the year, reporting 62 percent less production in October than in January.

Other companies continued to post production gains each month or they cut back mid year only to rebound in the fall. Five of the top 10 producers showed double-digit production growth in October compared to January, with Cecil-based Consol Energy producing 51 percent more and Chief Oil and Gas, Chevron, Range Resources and Southwestern showing increases of between 21 and 36 percent.

This was the first year that gas companies reported monthly production to the state. Previously, companies reported their production in six-month blocks.

Some growth on the horizon The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that natural gas production from the broader Marcellus region will drop from 15.6 Bcf/d in December to 15.4 Bcf/d in January, as production from new wells won’t be enough to offset declines in older wells.

The agency expects Utica production to grow from 3.1 Bcf/d in December to 3.2 Bcf/d in January.

In its most recent short-term energy outlook, the statistics agency forecast that natural gas production will grow nationally in 2016, despite low natural gas prices and declining rig activity, because companies continue to become more efficient at drilling wells quickly and getting more gas out of fewer wells.

“Most of the growth is expected to come from the Marcellus Shale, as the backlog of uncompleted wells is reduced and as new pipelines come online to deliver Marcellus natural gas to markets in the Northeast,” the EIA said.

Mr.Yahya said efficiency improvements were a defining trend this year. The number of active drilling rigs in the region has been cut in half since this time last year, he said. “And yet our production 76

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grew significantly and we’re still producing over 21 billion cubic feet per day. Which is a testament to the efficiency gains and the resilience of producers.”

The northeast region also has a backlog of wells — PlattsBentek puts the number at close to 2,800 — that have been drilled and are waiting for better prices or a connecting pipeline to arrive.

Some of the wells have also been completed, which will make unleashing their gas that much easier when the time is right.

“Basically it’s a matter of flipping a valve to bring those volumes on line,” Mr.Yahya said.

OIL AT 11-YEAR LOW Oil still hasn't found the bottom.

Brent crude broke through the symbolic 7-year low mark of $36.20 (£24.29) in overnight trade on Monday to touch an 11-year low of $36.18 (£24.27) a barrel, down 1.9% from Friday's close.

It initially pulled back but now, in early trade in London, it's even lower - down 1.36% at $35.16 (£23.59) at 7.50 a.m. GMT (2.50 a.m. GMT).

West Texas crude oil, the US measure of oil prices, is also getting crushed. Crude is currently down $0.41, or 0.93%, at $35.66 (£23.93).

Prices keep falling because of one simple reason - the market is saturated with oil right now. OPEC is pumping out cheap oil in a big to strangle the US's nascent shale oil boom by making production prohibitively expensive for many operators.

But, as CLSA's Christopher Wood pointed out in a note over the weekend, the efforts have so far had relatively little effect. US crude production has fallen by just 4.5% since its peak in June, even while oil prices have fallen by over 40%.

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CLSA is predicting we'll get to $20 (ÂŁ13.40) oil. We certainly haven't found the bottom yet.

Investing.com

Revises U.S. shale durability upward World Oil Outlook finds U.S. shale output by 2040 better than previous estimates.

By Daniel J. Graeber | Dec. 23, 2015

In its latest world oil report, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries says it expects U.S. shale oil production will be more resilient than previously expected. File photo by Gary C. Caskey/UPI 78

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VIENNA, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Oil production from inland shale basins in the United States is expected to be more robust than previously thought, OPEC said in its global outlook.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries released its much-watched World Oil Outlook report for 2015, outlining its expectations for the global energy sector. OPEC has defended its market share during the past year as higher U.S. oil production pushed sector dynamics heavily toward the supply side. Coupled with weak global economic growth, crude oil prices have plummeted from above the $100 per barrel mark in mid 2014 to below $40 per barrel.

In its latest outlook, OPEC said it expects U.S. crude oil production from shale deposits to increase from 3.8 million barrels per day in 2014 to 4.9 million bpd by 2023. By 2040, the trend will start to reverse as U.S. shale output falls to 4.2 million bpd.

"Although the updated forecast for the 2015 outlook shows that U.S. tight crude [oil production] will decline gradually over the long-term to 4.2 million bpd in 2040, in the 2014 outlook, it was projected at only 2.8 million bpd in 2040," the report said.

From the U.S. perspective, a drilling productivity report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that, of the seven inland shale basins that accounted for domestic oil production growth, few are expected to report gains next year. Only the Permian shale basin that straddles the border of Texas and New Mexico and the Utica shale in the U.S. Midwest are expected to report increased in production from November.

A full-year 2014 profile from the EIA found total U.S. proved oil reserves of 39.9 billion barrels marked a 9 percent increase from the previous year. Total reserves for that year where their highest since 1972.

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Downplay new role of US light oil 12.21.2015 | HP News Services Asian buyers will likely have a limited appetite for the quality of crudes on offer, since many refiners are geared to process heavier, cheaper crude oils with higher sulfur content.

NEW DELHI (Bloomberg) -- In the world's biggest oil market, buyers have better options than US crude.

As the country inches toward ending the last restrictions on exports, Asian buyers will probably have a limited appetite for the quality of crude on offer. Many of the region's refiners are geared to process heavier, cheaper oil with higher sulfur content.

The lighter and cleaner shale oil from the US has also got about a third farther to come than alternative supplies from the Middle East and that represents an additional cost.

"US light oil economically is not viable for most of Asian refiners," B.K. Namdeo, head of refineries at state-run Hindustan Petroleum Corp., said by phone from New Delhi. "The majority of the refiners in this region are not configured to use light oil, plus there is a long charter time and high freight costs involved."

Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a flood of light, sweet oil from shale rock, pushing the US toward ending its 40-year export ban. President Barack Obama is expected to sign legislation that will end the restrictions, the culmination of years of lobbying by an industry faced with a domestic oversupply.

Oil buyers in Asia are already reaping the benefits of a global glut that's driven prices down about 35% over the past year. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which supplies the region with most of its oil, has effectively decided to abandon production limits in the hope that unrelenting stream of cheap 80

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crude will squeeze out rivals. That's treated Asia to a steady flow of cargoes from the Middle East to Mexico, Nigeria and Russia as producers compete for market share.

For Japanese refiners, buying US crude isn't profitable relative to Middle East supplies, according to Masashi Nakayama, the general manager for crude oil and tanker department at Cosmo Oil Co. It takes a tanker approximately 27 days to reach the Japanese port of Chiba from Saudi Arabia's RasTanura terminal, versus 38 days for a ship departing from Houston, according to Sea-Distances.org.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude cost about $2.80/bbl more than the Middle East's Dubai oil on Thursday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. As recently as March, it was US$7 cheaper. The US marker grade was 79 cents below Brent, up from a discount of about $7.50 at the end of March.

Higher shipping costs add to the premium for US oil. An Aframaxsized tanker, which is typically used to carry American supplies to northeast Asia, costs about $5/bbl from the US, compared with about $2.25/bbl for a Very Large Crude Carrier from the Middle East, the most-frequently used ship for that route, according to Clarksons and Braemar ACM shipbrokers.

"For Asian refineries, it won't be cost effective to use US light oil," said Arun Kumar Sharma, finance director at Indian Oil Corp., the country's biggest refiner. "But Asian refiners will benefit from those displaced volumes that US tight oil will replace," which may come from the Middle East or Africa, he said.

Some cargoes of US condensates, a very light type of oil typically produced along with natural gas, have been making their way to buyers in Asia this year. The shipments aren't profitable with 81

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current regional price differences and freight rates, according to a survey Wednesday of three buyers and producers.

The Asia-Pacific region will consume 31.93 million bpd of oil in 2015, exceeding demand of 31.17 million bbl from the Americas, the International Energy Agency said in a report on Dec 11.

China, India, Japan and South Korea will be among the biggest users of crude, according to the Paris-based agency.

Both Japan and South Korea relied on the Middle East for about 84% of their oil imports last year, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The region accounted for about 62% of India's overseas supplies and 52% for China.

China, Asia's biggest importer, may purchase US oil as the country's independent refiners seek lighter crudes to mix with heavier, cheaper feedstocks, according to Wu Kang, a Beijingbased analyst with FGE, an energy researcher. Smaller plants, known as teapots, account for almost a third of the nation's processing capacity and 13 of them have been granted import quotas totaling a combined 55 million tons, or 18% of the nation's annual imports.

US producers may find a more attractive outlet in Latin America, where refiners are in need of light, sweet shale oil that can help dilute heavier crudes common to the region, said EhsanUl-Haq, a senior analyst at KBC Energy Economics.

It's also not always about money. Buyers in Japan and South Korea have welcomed the arrival of US barrels because it adds another option to choose from for countries that rely heavily on the Middle East.

"If US crude exports become reality, supply sources will be largely diversified," YoshihideSuga, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, said Thursday. "That will result in contribution to Japan's energy security."

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`Global M&A deals hit record high in 2015 at $4.86 trillion’ NEW DELHI, DEC 28:

The 2015 was a record year for global merger and acquisitions (M&A) as corporates announced deals worth $4.86 trillion and a significant portion of this came from Asia Pacific targeted deals, says a report.

According to global deal tracking firm Dealogic, global M&A volume at $4.86 trillion in 2015 was the highest on record for any year, surpassing the previous record of $4.61 trillion in 2007.

Moreover, this year’s total is a good 33 per cent higher than the last year.

In another first, the Asia Pacific targeted M&A broke the $1 trillion mark, reaching $1.16 trillion in 2015 and accounted for a record 24 per cent share of global M&A. Sector wise, healthcare was the top ranked sector in 2015 with $708.7 billion, up 62 per cent from 2014 when deals worth $436.3 billion were announced.

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Technology was a close second with record high volume and activity ($697.4 billion by way of 9,038 deals), almost double 2014 volume ($326.1 billion).

The four largest technology deals on record were all announced in 2015, led by Dell’s $66 billion bid for EMC, announced on October 1.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs ($1.76 trillion), Morgan Stanley ($1.49 trillion), JPMorgan ($1.48 trillion) and Bank of America Merrill Lynch ($1.12 trillion) all recorded their highest annual advisory volumes on record.

(This article was published on December 28, 2015)

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TechScan Progressive Water Treatment System Begins Operation at Texas Refinery By: Karen Henry Progressive Water Treatment (PWT), a wholly owned subsidiary of OriginClear, has put into operation a 750 gallon per minute Multiple Media Filtration, Softener and Reverse Osmosis (RO) system for a 75,000 barrel-per-day refinery operated by Delek Refining in Tyler, Texas. Valued at more than $1 million, the water processing system is PWT’s largest single unit to date and includes advanced process technologies that are new to the refinery and its operators.

The new system replaces a water softening system that had been in service for more than 30 years. It treats boiler feed water by removing suspended solids and dissolved particles, creating steam for refinery processes.

PWT engineers designed an RO skid that is physically the largest single piece of equipment the company has ever built. PWT responded to the client’s request to combine all three RO units onto one common frame.

Research shows that upgrading wastewater systems to new technology can reduce operating costs and has the potential to reduce industry CO2 emissions. OriginClear completed the acquisition of PWT in October. The refinery project was paid for prior to the acquisition.

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CB&I ANNOUNCES STARTUP OF SOLID-ACIDCATALYST ALKYLATION UNIT

By Mary Page Bailey | December 10, 2015 CB&I (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com) has announced that the world’s first commercial-scale, solid acid catalyst alkylation unit was started up in August at Zibo Haiyi Fine Chemical Co., a subsidiary of Shandong Wonfull Petrochemical Group Co. Ltd. (Wonfull).

The unit employs CB&I’s AlkyCleantechnology, jointly developed

by CB&I, Albemarle Corp. and Neste Corp. The unit has a capacity of 2,700 barrels per day of alkylate production (100,000 metric tons per year).

The unit, which is located in Zibo, Shandong Province, China, has achieved all performance expectations thus far. Since the startup, the alkylate product has demonstrated excellent quality, including an octane value (RON) between 96 and 98 — a considerably higher RON than typical alkylate products, according to CB&I. RON is considered an indicator of the alkylate’s value as a gasoline blending component.

AlkyClean technology uses Albemarle’s AlkyStar catalyst, a robust fixed-bed zeolite catalyst. By pairing this catalyst with CB&I’s novel reactor scheme, the AlkyClean process is able to produce a high-quality alkylate product without the use of liquidacid catalysts typical of other alkylation technologies, which makes the process inherently safer.

Without the need for post treatment, and the elimination of waste streams such as acid soluble oils, the AlkyClean process offers a more efficient technology for the production of alkylate.

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Theoretical Screening Good Sorbents for CO2 Separation Developed by: CEI - Center for Energy Initiatives Carbon dioxide is the major product from coal combustion and is released into the air and causes global climate warming which we are facing today.

Current technologies for capturing CO2 including solvent-based (amines) and CaO-based materials are still too energy intensive.

Hence, there is critical need for new materials that can capture and release CO2 reversibly with acceptable energy costs.

Accordingly, solid sorbent materials have been proposed for capturing CO2 through a reversible chemical transformation and most of them result in the formation of carbonate products.

By combining first principles density functional theory and phonon lattice dynamics calculations, the thermodynamic properties of solid materials are obtained and used for computing the thermodynamic reaction equilibrium properties of CO2 absorption/desorption cycle based on the chemical potential and heat of reaction analysis.

According to the pre- and post- combustion technology and conditions (such as CO2 partial pressures and temperatures) in power-plants, based on our calculated thermodynamic properties of reactions for each solid capturing CO2 varying with temperatures and pressures, only those solid materials, which result lower energy cost in the capture and regeneration process and could work at desired conditions of CO2 pressure and temperature, will be selected as promised candidates of CO2 sorbents and further be sent for experimental validations.

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By combining ab initio calculations with molecular dynamics or Monte Carlo simulations, the CO2 capture behavior of solutions (such as amino acids, peptides, salts, etc.) also can be evaluated.

The results can provide some guidelines for improving aminebased CO2 capture technology. Here, we first present our screening methodology and report our results on alkali and alkaline earth metal oxides, hydroxides and carbonates/bicarbonates and compare with available thermodynamic data. Then, we apply our methodology to predict good candidates of CO2. sorbents from vast of mixing and substituted/doped solids which thermodynamic data are usually not available.[1-3] Lastly, we will present some preliminary results on arginine amino acid capturing CO2 by comparing with MEA.

Life cycle assessment of nanocellulose-reinforced advanced fibre composites 

Martin Hervy1, Sara Evangelisti, Paola Lettieri, , Koon-Yang Lee, 1, Open Access funded by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Abstract The research and development of nanocellulose-reinforced polymer composites have dramatically increased in recent years due to the possibility of exploiting the high tensile stiffness and strength of nanocellulose. In the work, the environmental impact of bacterial cellulose (BC)- and nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC)reinforced epoxy composites were evaluated using life cycle assessment (LCA). Neat polylactide (PLA) and 30 wt.-% randomly oriented glass fibre-reinforced polypropylene (GF/PP) composites were used as benchmark materials for comparison. Our cradle-togate LCA showed that BC- and NFC-reinforced epoxy composites have higher global warming potential (GWP) and abiotic depletion 88

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potential of fossil fuels (ADf) compared to neat PLA and GF/PP even though the specific tensile moduli of the nanocellulosereinforced epoxy composites were higher than neat PLA and GF/PP. However, when the use phase and the end-of-life of nanocellulose-reinforced epoxy composites were considered, the “green credentials” of nanocellulose-reinforced epoxy composites were comparable to that of neat PLA and GF/PP composites. Our life cycle scenario analysis further showed that the cradle-tograve GWP and ADf of BC- and NFC-reinforced epoxy composites could be lower than neat PLA when the composites contains more than 60 vol.-% nanocellulose. This suggests that nanocellulose-reinforced epoxy composites with high nanocellulose loading is desirable to produce materials with “greener credentials” than the best performing commercially available bio-derived polymers.

Keywords  Nanocellulose;  Nanocomposites;  Polymer-matrix composites (PMCs);  Mechanical properties;  Modelling 1. Introduction The growing awareness on the consequences of depletion of fossil resources and the increasing demand for more environmental friendlier products have led to the development of sustainable and/or renewable composites to replace petroleumderived plastics [1], particularly in the automotive industry [2]. In this context, nanometre-scale cellulose fibres, or nanocellulose, are emerging green nano-reinforcements for polymers[3]. The major driver for utilisingnanocellulose as reinforcement for polymer is the possibility of exploiting the high tensile stiffness and strength of the cellulose crystals [4]. Theoretical predictions [5], [6] and [7] and numerical 89

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simulations [8], [9] and [10]estimated the tensile moduli of single cellulose crystal to be between 58 and 180 GPa. X-ray diffraction [11], [12] and [13] and Raman spectroscopy [14], [15] and [16] further showed experimentally that a single cellulose nanofibre possess tensile moduli of between 100 and 160 GPa. The tensile strength of a single cellulose crystal has also been estimated theoretically to be between 0.3 and 22 GPa [17], [18], [19] and [20]. The high tensile modulus and strength of nanocellulosefibres suggest that they could potentially serve as replacement for glass fibres given their low toxicity and low density (1.5 g cm−3 for nanocellulose versus 2.5 g cm−3 for glass fibres). As a result, numerous research effort has been poured into the use of nanocellulose as reinforcement for polymers [21] and [22].

Nanocellulose can be produced via two approaches: top-down and bottom-up. In the top-down approach, (ligno)cellulosic biomass, such as wood fibres, is disintegrated into nanofibres.

The earliest report on the preparation of wood-derived nanocellulose from (ligno)cellulosic biomass was presented by Wurhmann et al. [23]. The authors disintegrated ramie, hemp and cotton fibres using high intensity ultrasound into their respective elementary fibrils with diameters as small as 6 nm. Later, Herrick et al. [24]and Turbak et al. [25] used high pressure homogenisers to reduce the diameter of wood pulp to 10 nm. Wood-derived nanocellulose, herein termed nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC), can also be produced using stone grinders [26], whereby the high shearing forces generated by the static and rotating grinding stones fibrillates micrometre-sized pulp fibres into cellulose nanofibres. The bottom-up approach, on the other hand, utilises the fermentation of low molecular weight sugars using celluloseproducing bacteria, such as from the Acetobacter species, to synthesisenanocellulose [27].

Nanocellulosesynthesised by bacteria, herein termed bacterial cellulose (BC), is pure cellulose without impurities that are typically present in wood-derived nanocellulose, such as hemicellulose, pectin and traces of lignin.

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In addition to this, both BC and NFC possess cellulose-I structure [28]. Even though BC possesses higher degree of crystallinity compared to NFC (72% for BC and 41% for NFC, respectively, based on area under the X-ray diffraction spectra), both BC and NFC were found to possess similar reinforcing ability for polymers [29].

The first use of nanocellulose as reinforcement in polymers, namely polypropylene, polystyrene and polyethylene, was reported by Boldizar et al. [30]. The authors found that the tensile modulus increased from 2.4 GPa for neat polystyrene to 5.2 GPa for polystyrene reinforced with 40 wt.-% NFC. Yano et al. [31] reported tensile modulus and strength of up to 20 GPa and 325 MPa, respectively, for BC-reinforced epoxy composites containing 65 wt.-% BC loading. Tensile modulus and strength of up to 8 GPa and 202 MPa, respectively, have also been obtained for NFC-reinforced hydroxyethyl cellulose composites containing 68 wt.-% NFC loading [32]. It is therefore evident that high performance BC- and NFC-reinforced polymer composites can be produced. However, one major question still remains: “Are nanocellulose-reinforced polymer composites truly environmentally friendly compared to commercially available renewable polymers or engineering materials?�

Li et al. [33] recently used life cycle assessment (LCA) to analyse the environmental impact associated with the production of NFC using high pressure homogenisation and high intensity sonication.

TEMPO-oxidised and chloroacetic acid-etherified kraft pulp were chosen as the starting materials in their LCA model. The authors found that NFC produced from high-pressure homogenisation of TEMPO-oxidisedkraft pulp has the lowest environmental impact among all the NFC production routes studied. In a recent LCA study conducted by Hohenthal et al. [34], the non-renewable energy consumption associated with the production of NFC nanopaper was estimated to be 107.5 MJ kg−1. This is significantly higher than the energy consumed for the production 91

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of polylactide (PLA), which is estimated to consume only 42 MJ kg−1[35] of energy.

With increasing demand for environmental friendlier materials, it is timely to investigate the environmental impact associated with the manufacturing of nanocellulose-reinforced polymer composites.

Therefore in this work, we quantify the environmental impact associated with the manufacturing of BC- and NFC-reinforced polymer composites through a life cycle assessment approach, starting from the production of nanocellulose (i.e. the cradle) to the end-of-life (i.e. the grave) of the nanocellulose-reinforced polymer composites. Joshi et al. [36] have suggested that natural fibre composites could potentially compete environmentally with glass fibre-reinforced polymer composites in most applications. In this work, a comparison of environmental impact between BC/NFC-reinforced polymer composites and glass fibre-reinforced polymer composites is also reported.

Read More: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0266353815300 725

Rechargeable paper sheets could help rewrite the book on electricity storage 

COLIN JEFFREY, DECEMBER 7, 2015 Using millions of tiny fibers of nanocellulose sheathed with a conductive polymer coating, scientists have created sheets of paper that can store significant amounts of electric charge. Dubbed "power paper," the material is able to be recharged many hundreds of time, and in mere seconds. It is also lightweight, requires no toxic chemicals or heavy metals to create, and may offer a renewable and prolific way to provide energy to all manner of devices.

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Lightweight, extremely thin, and foldable, sheets of "power paper" have been created by scientists that can store significant amounts of electric charge and may one day provide ultra-thin electricity storage for modern devices (Credit: Linkoping University)

According to one of the groups of researchers working on the new material in the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at LinkĂśping University, power paper has the characteristics of ordinary paper with a slight plastic sheen. To demonstrate its flexibility and strength, the researchers claim they were even able to use one piece to fold an origami swan.

Just one sheet of the new electric paper, some 15 cm (6 in) wide and mere tenths of a millimeter thick, is able store as much as electric charge as a 1 Farad capacitor; an amount similar to currently available supercapacitors. According to the researchers, the new paper also holds four world records for any supercapacitor – the highest charge and capacitance in organic electronics, of 1 Coulomb and 2 Farad, the highest measured 93

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current in an organic conductor of 1 Ampere, along with the highest capacity to simultaneously conduct ions and electrons, and the highest transconductance in a transistor.

"Thin films that function as capacitors have existed for some time," said Xavier Crispin, professor of organic electronics. "What we have done is to produce the material in three dimensions. We can produce thick sheets."

The primary construction material used is nanocellulose, which is composed of cellulose that has been broken down into fibers around 20 nm in diameter. These nanocellulose fibers are then soaked in water, and an electrically charged polymer, PEDOT:PSS (the same ingredient recently used in the production of weavable LED fibers and the creation of semitransparent solar cells) in solution is added. The ensuing process then sees a thin patina of polymer form around the fibers.

"The covered fibers are in tangles, where the liquid in the spaces between them functions as an electrolyte," said Linkรถping University doctoral student Jesper Edberg.

With an exceptional capacity for energy storage, the researchers believe that continued development will eventually produce even higher capacity units. And with the new power paper being prepared like ordinary paper using regular cellulose pulp, which is dehydrated in the same way, the most significant challenge is to produce an industrial-scale process to accommodate this.

"Together with KTH, Acreo and Innventia we just received SEK 34 million (US$4 million) from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research to continue our efforts to develop a rational production method, a paper machine for power paper," says Professor Berggren.

Financed by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation since 2012, the power paper project also included researchers from the 94

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KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Innventia, the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Kentucky.

The results of this research were recently published in the journal Advanced Science.

Source: Linkรถping University

LEDs Should Be an Essential Part of Efficiency Plan December 7, 2015 By Jay Black

Jay Black Vice President of Development and Communications, Revolution Lighting Technologies As 2015 comes to a close and the New Year begins, organizations begin assessing budgets to search for ways to control or cut costs across the business. Energy usage is a tremendous expense in many industries, where electricity and utilities account for big dollars spent every year, so a move to more energy efficient technologies could provide tremendous financial benefits.

One such technology to consider is LED lighting, with some commercially available offerings able to help business cut energy costs by up to 60 percent, while also producing a healthier lighting 95

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experience. Most non-LED lighting solutions currently installed can be easily converted to LED technologies, reducing energy consumption, carbon emissions, maintenance costs and other indirect costs associated with the consumption and generation of electricity, while improving light output with negligible depreciation over time.

There are a number of health and productivity related benefits reportedly associated, as well. But the biggest payback comes from efficiency. LED technologies are exceeding 70,000 hours compared to the 15,000 hours of fluorescent lighting.

While organizations in any industry can benefit from LED lighting technologies, there are several untapped market opportunities where LED could provide significant savings for organizations and revenue for the companies that complete the installations.

Education Lighting represents 31 percent of $7 billion annual energy and utility expenses for higher education within the US. LED lighting products offer a critical opportunity for the 4,700 U.S. colleges and universities to save $1.2 billion annually by improving lighting efficiency more than 60 percent, while providing superior photometrics, eliminating UV radiation and visible lamp light depreciation to increase motivation, positively impact mental wellbeing and improve concentration and productivity for students.

The benefits of LED lighting extend beyond the higher education market. According to the US Department of Energy, lighting is a significant consumer of energy use in K-12 schools as well, second only to space heating. According to a US Environmental Protection Agency report, school buildings are often able to achieve upwards of 40 percent energy cost savings through lighting installations and retrofits. These savings can be further enhanced by introducing LED lighting controls to address occupancy, dimming and daylight harvesting. It is estimated that lighting control systems can improve lighting energy savings by 96

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an additional 20 percent. With approximately 98,000 public schoolsnationwide, the market for energy efficient lighting solutions is significant, as is the opportunity for cost savings for the schools and districts installing the technology.

Parking Facilities There are approximately 40,000 parking garages costing owners more than $6 billion annually on lighting energy costs across the US. One of the biggest reasons for the costs is the price tag associated with current high energy systems and the need to keep them running for 24/7 as a safety feature. While cost savings alone may be a prevailing reason to install LED lighting, the increased light output provides an additional benefit of improved safety and security for both enclosed open area parking facilities.

Grocery and Food Preparation Lighting makes up 18 percent of US supermarket and grocery store energy use nationwide. With approximately 40,000 stores nationwide, totaling 1.6 billion square feet, LED lighting could have a significant impact, reducing the approximately $4 per square foot spent on energy use to save grocers $691 million annually. Consider this example: A typical LED installation within a grocery store could save $28,500 annually. Those savings are the equivalent of an additional $950,000 in revenue at a 3 percent profit margin.

There is additional opportunity in this sector for LED technologies with food safety certifications — from NSF International for example — which allows for installation within areas where food is processed, prepared and handled. Key certifications like these ensure that the technology meets the highest standards in food safety, passing stringent testing from both the FDA and USDA. 97

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LED technologies have become a major factor within the lighting and energy efficiency marketplace because of the financial and environmental benefits they produce. Most organizations wait until something is broken to fix or replace it, but LED technologies should be installed as part of an efficiency plan before the need arises. When done so, significant savings, both financially and environmentally, can occur.

Jay Black is the vice president of development and communications for Revolution Lighting Technologies.

Pushing Hydrogen, Fuel Cell Research December 14, 2015 By Carl Weinschenk The U.S. Department of Energy is making as much as $35 million in funding available to advanced hydrogen and fuel cell technology research, according to NGT News.

The funding will go toward research in hydrogen production, delivery and storage research and development, according to the story. In addition, the DoE will support demonstration of infrastructure component manufacturing, support for deployment of hydrogen and fuel cell technology and other initiatives, the story said. The DoE says research aimed at increasing durability and reducing costs also are key goals, the story added.

The advance of fuel cells has been due to the great progress made by electric vehicles. This research is benefiting other industries as well. For instance, Intelligent Energy said this summer that it is purchasing contracts from GTL Limited to provide hydrogen fuel cell technology to power 27,400 telecommunications towers in India.

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Scientists seek more data on existing water in shale formations WRITTEN BY Kathiann M. Kowalski, 12/21/2015 Source: http://midwestenergynews.com/2015/12/21/scientistsseek-more-data-on-existing-water-in-shale-formations/ In hydraulic fracturing, what goes down isn’t always the same as what comes back up.

The process, informally known as fracking, pumps millions of gallons of treated water and sand into deep shale formations so oil and natural gas can flow out.

Along the way, drilling and production also bring up brine from the ground – super-salty liquid with elevated levels of heavy metals, radium and other chemicals.

If scientists can learn more about that naturally-occurring water in the shale formations, drilling companies and well operators might figure out better ways to protect equipment and well integrity.

More complete information could also lead to safer disposal options and other actions to protect public health and the environment.

Researchers from government, academia and industry reported on new study results – looking at shale formations in Ohio and other states -- at the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Baltimore in November. But more data are needed to draw definitive conclusions.

“Hydraulic fracturing uses lots of water and produces a lot of water by volume,” said Madalyn Blondes at the United States Geological Survey (USGS). “So to be able to understand all these things, we really need to understand the natural formation water.”

What comes up Fracking and horizontal drilling have led to a boom in oil and natural gas production. Yet just as the process uses large 99

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quantities of water to crack rock, it also produces huge amounts of liquid waste as flowback and produced fluids.

“Flowback usually is what we get out when we clean the well up after a hydraulic fracking job,” usually within the first week or two, explained TarasBryndzia, a geologist with Shell International Exploration and Production, Inc. Flowback typically produces huge quantities of water in a short time period.

Produced fluid comes up afterward and as the well continues in operation. The quantities are much less than flowback on a daily basis.

“The composition in the flowback period is not the same as what comes back later,” said Blondes, who presented her research on produced fluid from the Utica shale at the GSA meeting.

In addition to radium, produced fluid from the Marcellus and Utica shale usually has higher levels of salt and heavy metals than fracking fluid does.

As a result, produced fluid could “be worse for the environment than what’s being injected in there,” Blondes continued. “That could affect disposal.”

Produced fluid is also “more of a problem” for well operators, Bryndzia noted, particularly when it comes to “salt in our production facilities.” Among other things, chemicals could crystalize inside pipes and reduce the rate of production.

“If I know where this stuff is coming from, I can actually mitigate against having salting out in production,” Bryndzia said.

Going deeper “It seems very clear that what we’re looking at is actually natural formation water,” Blondes said.

Yet knowing that the produced fluid is “stuff that’s naturally there” doesn’t solve the mystery of how it got there in the first place, she said.

For both the Utica and Marcellus layers, brine in produced fluid likely started out in an ancient sea.

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The salt content of that ancient sea water would have become more and more concentrated as water evaporated. Some liquid may still exist in either deep shale or adjacent rock layers. If the water evaporated completely, solids could have been left in the rock.

Pumping large quantities of fracking fluid down into the deep shale formations could dissolve some chemicals from the rock.

Similarly, some amount of liquid could still remain in the tiny pores of that rock and then come up after fracking.

Bryndzia’s research on the Marcellus shale, also presented at the GSA meeting, suggested that lots of brine likely began in the shale layer in one of these ways. However, his data also showed that some brine could come from an adjacent layer.

Indeed, it would be unlikely for the Marcellus shale layer to be the source for all of the produced water, said Brian Stewart, a geologist at the University of Pittsburgh who also spoke at the GSA meeting. Stewart’s team analyzed drill cuttings from Marcellus shale operations in New York.

“There’s not enough salt or water in those pores to really explain the super salty water that comes back,” Stewart said.

Instead, the fluid could come from part of the formation “that’s maybe not really a shale, like a little lens of sand in there that might hold more water,” he suggested. “Or, it could come from rock formations above or below the shale.”

In order for that to happen, some interaction with that other layer would have to take place. One possibility is the fracking process itself.

“When you hydraulically fracture, you basically create cracks under those formations, and the water can leak back into your well,” Stewart said.

“It’s clear that the fractures extend outside of the target formation” in the fracking process, he added. “It’s not really possible to keep it within a relatively thin shale unit.” Other research presented at the GSA meeting supports this position.

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In some cases, some upward migration of gas or fluids may be possible, which is why there’s some concern about areas with lots of older, abandoned oil and gas wells. However, groundwater contamination would be “extremely difficult” as a result of fracturing done in deep unconventional shale layers, Stewart said.

“You’re still not getting anywhere close to the surface,” Stewart noted. When groundwater contamination has occurred, the more likely reason is faulty drilling or well completion, he said.

Data wanted Getting more exact answers gets tricky, especially because there’s a bit of a “chicken and egg” problem, Blondes noted.

Fluids from deep shale layers generally don’t come up unless fracking is done, so it’s harder to figure out what would come up otherwise.

In the case of produced fluid from the Utica shale, “ it’s likely it’s from Utica itself,” Blondes suspects. “It seems somewhat different from the Marcellus.”

“We definitely cannot say for sure,” though, she said, “because we don’t necessarily have samples overlying and underlying the formation.” To get those samples, she and other researchers need more access to wells, particularly those in the Utica shale.

“We’re actually mostly interested in some of the older wells that have been in production for a while,” since those would have the highest proportion of natural formation water, Blondes said.

USGS is “not a regulatory agency,” she added, “and we take utmost care to not give away any proprietary data.”

“We only have a couple of data points from the Utica,” Blondes said. “Our goal is to be able to sample the Utica and above and below.”

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High Pressure Reactors for Research Labs Fri 12/18/2015 Source: R&D headlines and news Supercritical Fluid Technologies has introduced a new, highpressure reactor specifically designed for small batch reaction chemistry. The HPRMicro Reactor is a suitable highpressure reactor for early, exploratory research. It is especially well-suited for research, process development and screening applications when reagents, catalysts or other essential materials are expensive or available in very limited supply. The HPR-Micro Reactor comes standard with a 10-mL Iconel 718 reactor vessel for operation up to 10,000 psi (689 Bar/68.9 MPa), inlet and outlet valves and a pressure gauge. Optional 25- and 50-mL vessels are available. Depending upon the temperature option selected, operation from -40 C to 150 C is possible. The vessel closures are the hand tight type where no wrenches are needed. The reactor is equipped with magnetically coupled stirring for optimal mixing. All high-pressure components are ASME compliant designed and overall assembly is protected by a rupture disc assembly for safe operation. The Micro Reactor is compact and can fit into a fume hood. The Micro Reactor can be easily removed from the mounting stand and brought to a glove box for reactant and reagent loading under an inert atmosphere. Multiple inlet ports are included for addition of solvents, reagents, or gases. An optional Reagent Injection Manifold increases 103

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versatility by providing a means to add a precise amount of reagent at anytime during course of the reaction. Standard addition quantities include 2.0, 1.0 and 0.5 mL. Supercritical Fluid Technologies, www.supercriticalfluids.com

Software for Administration of FT-NIR Spectrometer Networks Wed, 12/17/2014 - Bruker Optics Source: R&D headlines and news – ONETBruker Optics has introduced the new networking software ONET. The software is a server application accessed via a browser-based Web interface (WebUI), allowing users to set up, administrate and control a network of FTNIR instruments from a central remote location anywhere. All data measured on local spectrometers are stored first locally and replicated to an ONET database for central access. ONET supports the connection of LIMS to the central database and is available in English, Chinese, French, German and Spanish. The number of clients in the network is limited by the performance of the server and the network data transfer rate.

Bruker Corp., www.bruker.com

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New Reusable Polymer that can clean water NEW YORK, DEC 26: Scientists have developed a new reusable polymer that can remove pollutants from flowing water within seconds, just like air fresheners trap invisible air pollutants at home and remove unwanted odours.

Researchers have used the same material found in air fresheners, cyclodextrin, to develop a technique that could revolutionise the waterpurification industry.

The team, led by Will Dichtel, associate professor at Cornell University in US, developed a porous form of cyclodextrin that has displayed uptake of pollutants through adsorption at rates vastly superior to traditional activated carbon — 200 times greater in some cases.

Activated carbons Activated carbons have the advantage of larger surface area than previous polymers made from cyclodextrin — but they do not bind pollutants as strongly as cyclodextrin.

“What we did is make the first high-surface-area material made of cyclodextrin combining some of the advantages of the activated carbon with the inherent advantages of the cyclodextrin,” Dichtel said.

“These materials will remove pollutants in seconds, as the water flows by,” he said.

The cyclodextrin-containing polymer features easier, cheaper regeneration, so it can be reused many times with no observed loss in performance.

Recyclability Recyclability is another advantage of the cyclodextrin polymer, Dichtel said.

Whereas activated carbon filters must undergo intense heat-treating for regeneration, cyclodextrin filters could be washed at room temperature with methanol or ethanol.

The findings were published in the journal Nature.

(This article was published on December 26, 2015)

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ALTERNATIVEThe & RENEWABLE ENERGY Cogeneration: Right Technology at the Right Time December 2, 2015 By Carl Weinschenk

Cogeneration – also known as combined heat and power (CHP) – is expected to grow, according to a study released in October by Grandview Research. It’s not surprising: The technique, which uses one process to 106

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generate electricity and heat, is clean and efficient. That puts it right in line with the desire of energy managers, their bosses and society at large.

Grandview found that the global market, which it valued at $6.25 billion last year, is being driven by increasing demand at both the commercial and industrial levels.

Drivers include increasing limits on carbon emissions and low prices and abundance of natural gas, the fuel most often used in cogeneration.

There are trends within the cogeneration/CHP sector.

Experts say use of coal is expected to slow and biomass is expected to grow. For example, a 25 MW biogas-fueled cogeneration plant currently under construction will provide all of the steam and electricity to Los Angeles’ Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant, according to WaterWorld. Exelon Generation subsidiary Constellation is the developer of the plant, which will generate 173 million kWh of electricity annually and as much as 70,000 pounds of steam per hour.

Grandview notes that cogeneration is divided into large and micro/small scale segments. Large scale dominates, but micro/small scale is growing in its overall size and proportion compared to the entire segment: It represented about 15 percent of the market last year — and will add more than 8 percent from this year to 2022. Overall, North America cogeneration is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 3.5 percent from this year to 2022.

The drivers of cogeneration are significant. Russell Ray, the Editor-in-Chief of Power Engineering and Chairman of POWER-GEN International, makes the case for 107

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CHP. Actually, he uses a LinkedIn post to make two. The first is that the centralized power industry is increasingly troubled: Costly regulations are proliferating and revenue is stagnant. The second case is that CHP – which he points out has been a reliable source of energy for generations – is being supported by the Obama administration, which sees it as a prudent approach to decentralizing and distributing power generation. The bottom line is that the industry has a powerful friend: The Obama administration wants to boost CHP capacity by 40,000 MW, or 50 percent, by 2020. That was the goal established in an executive order directing several federal agencies and departments to encourage more investment in CHP projects through existing programs and policies.

It’s not smooth sailing in Washington, however.

The fate of legislation in Congress will have a big impact on CHP and waste to power (WHP), a related segment.

Patricia Sharkey and Susan Brodie – from the Midwest Cogeneration Association and The Heat is Power Association, respectively – in a letter to the editor of The Belleville News-Democrat described the benefits and drawbacks of the technologies.

The key drawback is high capex. The problem is that federal tax incentives of 10 percent for CHP (WHP gets none) simply is not enough. There is hope, however: The Power Efficiency and Resiliency (POWER) Act (H.R. 2657 in the House and S. 1516 in the Senate), which would give both CHP and WHP 30 percent investment tax credit, the 108

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same as other low- and zero-emitting technologies, according to the letter.

The writers say that prospects for the legislation are good.

Brodie, in response to emailed questions from Energy Manager Today, sounded upbeat but concluded that the prospects are uncertain: “The POWER Act has gained significant momentum this year, approaching 50 bipartisan cosponsors (26 Republicans, 17 Democrats),” she wrote. “It’s part of the discussion as Congress considers a year-end tax deal, although prospects for enactment this year are uncertain.

If it’s not included, we will continue the push in 2016.”

There is a separate initiative for WHP. “Meanwhile, legislation that would add waste heat to power (WHP) to the existing 10 percent investment tax credit (ITC) is poised to be included in the year-end tax package,” Brodie wrote. “The bill, S. 913, is co-sponsored by Senators Carper and Heller, and was reported from the Senate Finance Committee early this year by voice vote.”

It is not a monolithic segment. Companies shopping for CHP systems face a choice of whether to buy customized or packaged systems. A story at Cogeneration & On-Site Power Production which features vendor Veolia does a good job of describing the benefits of the packaged approach. A packaged system a simple installation – almost certainly easier than that of a customized system – but there are space requirements to which attention must be paid. The story quotes a Veolia executive in the United 109

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Kingdom who says that “a vast majority” of commercial CHP systems, especially those bound for new buildings, are packaged.

The future looks good for cogeneration. “Demand for distributed generation and clean energy options continue to grow as customers seek more control over how their energy is produced and supplied to meet budget, resiliency and sustainability goals,” wrote Gary Fromer, the Senior Vice President of Distributed Energy for Constellation in response to emailed questions from Energy Manager Today. “Some customers may require very high resiliency for their specific mission, a critical sewage treatment plant like LA Sanitation’s is a good example.”

Combining Fuel Cells with Solar for Telecom Pilot December 12, 2013 By Linda Hardesty Ballard Power Systems will be supplying ElectraGen-ME 2.5 kW methanolbased fuel cell systems for a pilot project in Idea Cellular’s India telecom network.

The fuel cell systems will be combined with solar technology to 110

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generate continuous power at five wireless base station sites.

Funding for a feasibility study as well as the pilot project has been made available through a grant from the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). The trial is scheduled to take place in early 2014.

Idea Cellular is India’s third-largest mobile services operator with 128 million subscribers and has been powering telecom base stations in the region of Nadga, Madhya Pradesh with Ballard Power’s ElectraGen-H2 direct hydrogen systems since early 2012. These systems utilize by-product hydrogen from a nearby chemical product plant as a low-cost fuel source.

India’s Department of Telecommunications has mandated that at least 50 percent of all rural cell towers and 20 percent of urban cell towers be powered using clean energy systems by 2015. The regulation is targeted at reducing the country’s reliance on diesel generators, which currently power 60 percent of all wireless base station sites.

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In the shadows: Domestic solar power developers feel the heat DEBABRATA DAS

Solar power tariffs coming down to near grid parity make for great headlines. But behind it is a growing fear that domestic developers could be left out of the solar energy story in India.

According to industry estimates 14,000 MW of solar power projects are in the pipeline; they are yet to be commissioned but have been allocated, or are in the process of being allocated. A majority of these projects are of international developers such as SunEdison, Trina Solar and SkyPower who are outbidding their domestic counterparts by big margins. And the key factor helping them bid aggressively is their access to cheap finance.

It is accepted within the industry that to bring down solar power tariffs, either the equipment cost needs to go down or financing needs to be cheaper. With the global cost of solar power panels now having bottomed out after two years of drastic reductions, finance is only cost aspect left to play with. It is here that international developers are crowding out domestic players. With AAA-rated agencies such as NTPC and Solar Energy Corporation 112

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of India turning into power procurers, domestic institutions are keen to lend to solar power projects. However, the cost of domestically sourced finance still hovers around 11.5 per cent.

This is after the series of rate cuts announced by the RBI. International developers have access to finance at an average rate of 7-8 per cent; in some cases, even lower.

The aggressive bids have also meant that some of the big names looking to enter the market are still waiting on the sidelines after signing MoUs as they hope for competition to ease. As a result, smaller domestic developers who have waited for years for the market to open up are being increasingly shunted from groundbased solar power projects and forced to look at rooftop projects.

With talks of an upcoming rooftop solar policy, the domestic industry now hopes for mandatory rooftop solar installation for buildings to provide them some certainty about the business model.

Principal Correspondent (This article was published on November 30, 2015)

Shellto build biofuels demonstration plant in India 12.16.2015 | The IH2 technology was developed by the US-based Gas Technology Institute in 2009 and is being further developed in collaboration with CRI Catalyst Co. (CRI), Shell’s catalyst business.

Shell India Markets (SIMPL) will proceed with the installation of a 5 tpd IH2 technology demonstration plant on the site of SIMPL’s new technology center in Bangalore, India, officials confirmed on Wednesday.

The Shell unit SIMPL will build, operate and own the demonstration-scale IH2 plant. IH 2 technology is a continuous 113

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catalytic thermo-chemical process which converts a broad range of forestry/agricultural residues and municipal wastes directly into renewable hydrocarbon transportation fuels and/or blend stocks.

The IH2 technology was developed by the US-based Gas Technology Institute in 2009 and is being further developed in collaboration with CRI Catalyst Co. (CRI), Shell’s catalyst business. CRI will supply the proprietary catalysts for the unit.

The basic engineering package for the plant will be provided by Zeton of Ontario, Canada.

As the IH2 technology converts a wide range of residual biomass, the facility in Bangalore will be designed to allow for variation in feedstock. Highly relevant commercial feedstocks, such as residual woody biomass and select agricultural and municipal residues, will be within the intended feed scope. Regardless of the feedstock, the IH2 hydrocarbons produced span the gasoline, jet and diesel range.

Hydrocarbons produced from the IH2 technology using lignocellulosic biomass feed meet the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) specifications for road transport fuels, positioned for the US market as an E10 gasoline fully renewable product and as a 100% fully renewable on-road diesel.

Testing of the neat kerosene (R100) cut indicates that the material meet specifications for global jet fuel specifications for Jet A-1/JP8 for those properties tested to date. Ongoing research indicates a high probability to achieve European Union (EN) specification fuels, the company says.

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HSE, CLIMATE Climate Change CHANGE & SUSTAINABILITY Attention Sustainability Executives : Who has been your best internal ally?

Sustainability execs name their most important allies Executing sustainability projects effectively requires the help of internal allies, say some of the country's top sustainability pros.

For Tiffany & Co.'s AnisaKamadoli Costa, the most important ally of all is the chief financial officer. "When you find a clear way to link sustainability to value creation, they can be your best ally -and they can help fund critical projects," she said.

GreenBiz.com (12/30) John Davies Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - 1:45am

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As 2015 ends, we decided to get some advice from members of the GreenBiz Executive Network, our member-based, peer-topeer learning forum for sustainability professionals, about who within their companies has been an effective ally.

Judging from their responses, your best ally can come from anywhere within the organization. And they might even be someone who previously used to run away from you.

Here's what our members said when we asked, "Who has been your best internal ally and why?"

John Schulz, AVP, Sustainability Operations, AT&T

The members of our Sustainability Steering Committee — made up of executives from across the company — were critical to successfully launching our new 2025 Goalsplatform.

These long-term goals and targets will help us focus our resources and keep us accountable for progress.

We’re not just focused on outputs, but on outcome and our impact. That takes focus and time. We stretched ourselves and made long-term, somewhat aspirational goals. Now, the journey begins and we are looking forward to chronicling it.

Kim Marotta, director of sustainability, MillerCoors

We have been fortunate to have our CEO be one of our strongest allies. Sustainability is part of our overall company strategy and is one of the five platforms that will help us become America's best beer company.

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Nanette Lockwood, global director, climate policy, Ingersoll Rand Center for Energy Efficiency and Sustainability

Product management because they look to us for market leadership opportunities. Our climate commitment has positioned us as a global leader with respect to refrigerant transition and demonstrates to our businesses how bold commitments can lead to growth opportunities.

Brandy M. Wilson, global sustainability director, CH2M

My best internal ally is our senior vice president for innovation and sustainability, who also serves on our Board of Directors.

Our board and senior leadership are committed to CH2M’s promise of sustainable solutions and corporate citizenship, and the link my ally provides between my program’s work on-theground and our company’s chief strategists makes our program business-relevant, and therefore, sustainable.

Jenny McColloch McDonald's

— director,

restaurant

sustainability,

At the global level, our sustainability team partners with many branches of our global business. For example, our recent participation in the White House American Business Act on Climate Pledge involved input from many groups, such as supply 117

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chain, restaurant innovation and operations and corporate communications.

Some of the most important allies in our work that I’m personally inspired by are the local sustainability champions across McDonald’s system who are driving innovation at the country and city levels. McDonald’s U.K.’s Planet Championscrew engagement program has been adopted across several European countries, and McDonald’s UAE’s logistics program recently reached the 5 million kilometer milestone with its closed loop biodiesel program (see its new video to explain how it works) I love hearing from our environment lead in Sweden with periodic Twitter updates about the popularity of McDonald’s Sweden’s EV chargers network with our customers there. And, of course, we wouldn’t be where we are without the leadership of our restaurant owner-operators, who are supporting their communities with green building efforts and connecting with customers through programs like "Good Neighbor, Good Grounds" used coffee grounds recycling. As anyone working in sustainability knows, it takes a village.

Dave Stangis, vice president — public affairs and corporate responsibility, Campbell Soup Company; president, Campbell Soup Foundation

Chief procurement officer. This person and role has been critical to our sustainability journey and they have moved from running the other direction when they saw me coming to working with me to identify longer-term risks — and position them as opportunities.

They have also come to view the discipline as a key risk reduction strategy and have put resources and accountability behind it.

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Jenny Cross, vice Mohawk Industries

president

corporate

sustainability,

The success or failure of our environmental sustainability initiatives rests mostly within our manufacturing facilities, so I would have to say our operations teams. The alliance is frankly a natural one since these teams are so dedicated to continuous improvement, increased efficiencies and lean manufacturing.

What I’ve been most impressed with is the level of enthusiasm shown for sustainability. Initiatives require resources and resources are often quite tight, but our operations teams get it and make it happen. They truly see the value and realize the benefits that come from running a sustainable business. They make my job a pleasure.

Kathrin Winkler, senior sustainability officer, EMC

vice

president

and

chief

One of the biggest advocates of our sustainability initiatives is our global head of HR. Our missions are not only aligned, but mutually reinforcing. Opportunities to make a difference in creating a sustainable future help engage our colleagues, and the innovation on which progress in sustainability depends comes out of more engaged and diverse workforce.

We have representatives on each other’s working groups, and she sits on our executive sustainability council.

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Above all, we are both passionate about making people’s lives better and are gratified when we can do something that generates a smile in another person.

AnisaKamadoli Costa, chief sustainability officer, Tiffany & Co.

CFO. When you find a clear way to link sustainability to value creation, they can be your best ally — and they can help fund critical projects.

Laura Bishop, vice sustainability, Best Buy

president,

public

affairs

and

At Best Buy, we are very fortunate to have the complete support and encouragement of our executive leadership team for our corporate responsibility and sustainability efforts.

Their endorsement is further reinforced by a broad network of advocates who hold leadership positions across our company — from finance to marketing to an internal sustainability advisory council representing a cross-section of Best Buy management.

Laurel Peacock, senior manager, sustainability, NRG Energy

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Business operations manager. He sees the business value of sustainability and can enroll others given that he has "street cred" coming from the operations side of the business.

He also knows the org structure so well that if I ask him a question which he doesn’t have the answer for, he likely knows who will.

Deborah Hecker, vice president, sustainability and corporate social responsibility, Sodexo North America

Our Better Tomorrow Plan Executive Advisory Committee and, especially, the vice presidents of operations from each of our business segments. These are the several executives who have sufficient knowledge and passion to act as champions at the senior leadership levels of the organization.

They get time on agendas for sustainability topics; they include practices and processes into their operating standards; and they provide success stories from their businesses that we can share and replicate across the enterprise.

Jeff Rehm, LEED-GA, senior manager corporate facilities and global sustainability, W.W. Grainger

Whether it is a corporate office or in our distribution centers, our facilities managers are great to work with. They have a tremendous amount of practical knowledge and ideas around reducing energy consumption.

They are also always eager to try new things, like renewable energy, at their facilities.

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Susan Rochford, VP, energy efficiency, sustainability and public policy, Legrand, North America

VP, strategic sourcing — who is completely aligned on the necessity of supplier collaboration to achieve product sustainability goals and is willing to act upon it.

Cyprus’ Water Crisis Shows Climate Change Is Here and Businesses Must Dec 21,2015 Environmental Leader With the historic agreement at the recent COP21 climate change conference in Paris, the world’s leaders finally seem to recognize the magnitude of the risks we face. One of the most immediate threats is water scarcity as global temperature increases change global climatic patterns.

Countries like my own homeland of Cyprus are already experiencing prolonged and frequent droughts which demonstrate, as President Obama said, that climate change is not some far-off future risk, but a danger that we must confront now.

The most recent drought in Cyprus lasted four years between 2004 and 2008, and caused reservoir levels on the island to plunge. Groundwater and desalination proved insufficient to meet demand. There were 30 percent cuts to water supplies, giving households only just enough water to live on. People were fined for using more than their share.

Farming on Cyprus was badly affected as there was no water for irrigation and livestock, leading to illegal water abstraction from 122

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aquifers. At the height of the crisis, the government imported eight million cubic meters of water over six months from Greece at a cost of over €40 million (US$43.4 million).

Despite this, policymakers, businesses and citizens see the 2008 situation as a one-off “freak” event rather than something that could increasingly become the “new normal.”

My research suggests that water scarcity is indeed the new normal on Cyprus. I studied the effect of climate change on the Kouris Dam reservoir which supplies 40 percent of the country’s water for agricultural irrigation. The results show that decreases in rainfall and increases in evaporation mean that water levels in the reservoir will decrease in future.

While problems due to water shortages become ever more acute, action is delayed because low water prices mitigate against the financial case for investing in water conservation. Prices signal value to consumers, and it is important that policymakers use prices to reflect the increasing scarcity of water and its importance to sustaining life.

Working at Trucost has shown me that businesses can act now to prepare for increasing water scarcity by getting better information on the water they consume at their production sites and through their supply chains. They need to understand how their use of water in drought-prone regions creates risks for their business, so that these can be factored into plans for business growth alongside operational costs and revenue forecasts.

At COP21, France’s energy and environment minister Ségolène Royal said: “It is through water that we can measure both the severity and the acceleration of global warming; however, we can also see that, through water, solutions can be found.”

Companies can work toward these solutions by monetizing water risks, enabling them to use information about water scarcity to drive more effective business decisions.

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NikolIoannou worked as a research intern at Trucost from October to December 2015 after achieving a Masters degree in climate change from University College London.

Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/21/cyprus-watercrisis-shows-climate-change-is-here-and-businesses-must-actnow/#ixzz3uycJdVBi SUSTAINABLE CSR

Transforming a Child’s Life With Glasses

By JANE E. BRODY, DECEMBER 14, 2015

Put eyeglasses on children who can’t see clearly and you can turn their lives around. That is the aim of a terrific program calledChildSight, run by Helen Keller International, which each year screens up to 100,000 middle school and high school 124

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children in poor communities throughout the country and provides glasses to those who need them.

In New York City, the program has been expanded to serve older students in G.E.D. programs, to public schools with a high percentage of recent immigrants, and to teenagers living in homeless shelters, where the unmet need for vision services has been found to be particularly acute.

Through a longstanding partnership with The Children’s Aid Society in New York, Helen Keller International last year screened and treated more than 6,000 students in 16 low-income public schools.

Noting that between 25 percent and 30 percent of students fail routine vision screening, the city recently committed $10 million over four years to fund vision screening in 130 additional community schools, with an estimated 20,000 glasses to be provided free by the eyewear company Warby Parker.

In addition to New York State, ChildSight now serves high-poverty communities in California, Connecticut, New Jersey and Ohio and in thousands of communities in Asian countries, where nearsightedness is an especially prevalent problem.

The organization’s goal is to maximize children’s ability to “take full advantage of their educational opportunities,” said Nick Kourgialis, who heads the Helen Keller program globally. “It’s an easy problem to correct that can enable children to succeed academically.”

Children with uncorrected vision problems often struggle in school. Those with the common refractive error called myopia, or nearsightedness, may not see what teachers write on the blackboard. Some children are unable to track words on a page, which makes reading an arduous, and sometimes impossible, task. Too often, despite average intelligence, such children become academic failures or school dropouts or are incorrectly 125

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deemed learning disabled and assigned to special education classes.

Behavior problems are also common among children with vision problems, who may be mislabeled as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and mistreated with stimulants. In one study of 81 elementary, middle school and high school studentsconsidered “at risk” because of behavior problems, 97 percent failed at least one test of the New York State Optometric Association Vision Screening Battery.

You may wonder how children can reach middle school or even high school and not know that their vision is compromised. But, as Mr.Kourgialis put it, “If a child has always seen the world as fuzzy, he may not know that he has a problem and that others don’t see it the same way.”

For example, when Christian Merchan was a fourth grader in Queens, said he “found life really challenging” before the schoolbased ChildSight program revealed a severe myopia and gave him corrective lenses, which his family could not otherwise afford.

Christian’s teachers had told his mother that he failed to complete homework assignments. His mother then realized that he couldn’t see the board well enough to copy them all down. But with glasses and annual vision screenings to update his prescription, he is now an honor student attending Cathedral Prep High School on a scholarship and exploring his prospects for a scholarship to college.

One in five children who need glasses can’t afford them “and face each day without clear vision,” the organization reports. Even among those who get corrective lenses, about half the time the prescription is outdated and no longer very effective. As children progress in school, the demands on their visual abilities only increase.

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Although rigorous scientific data on the program’s effectiveness is lacking, Mr.Kourgialis said that teachers see “a very positive” effect. They report that children whose vision has been corrected with glasses “are better engaged, participate more in class and complete their assignments,” he said.

A randomized controlled trial conducted in China among 3,177 fourth and fifth grade children with uncorrected myopia found that providing them with free glasses had a greater positive effect on math test scores than parental education or family wealth. And those who received the glasses scored higher than those who did not.

In this country, nearly 12 percent of people age 12 and older have an inadequately corrected refractive error, with the problem most common among Mexican Americans, non-Hispanic blacks and young people 12 to 19.

While all children should have vision tests early in their school careers, there is no standardized follow-up to assure that those who need corrective lenses get them or have them updated as their visual acuity changes with age. Impediments among children living in poor communities include insufficient family finances and a lack of access to the needed professional services, especially in rural areas, Mr.Kourgialis said.

Even if families can afford an initial pair of glasses, if they are lost or broken — a common problem — the cost of replacing them can be prohibitive. The ChildSight program provides free replacements, much to the relief of Christian, who accidentally broke his current pair last month.

To be sure, children in middle and high school, an age when selfconsciousness soars, are not always thrilled to learn that they 127

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need glasses. But it helps when many of their classmates do, too, and when glasses enable them to participate in sports.

To ensure that children get the glasses they need and wear them, the organization provides all the services within their schools and offers a variety of stylish frames.

The initial screening is done by trained personnel who have every child in the school read the ever-smaller lines on a Snellen chart, one eye at a time, from a distance of 20 feet. Those with difficulty seeing below the 20-40 line on the chart are examined by an optometrist, who provides a corrective prescription that is sent to an optical lab along with the selected frames. When the glasses are ready, they are delivered to the children at school.

While the primary task of ChildSight is to screen children for refractive vision problems revealed by reading the Snellen chart, other vision problems are sometimes also detected and the children referred to professionals for additional free or low-cost care.

Parents should not assume that a child who passes a screening exam in school has no vision problems. Among signs that a further check is needed are frequent eye rubbing or blinking, avoidance of reading and other close activities, holding reading material close to the face, sitting close to the television, losing his or her place when reading, difficulty remembering what is read, frequent headaches and a short attention span.

Climate Change

COP21: 114 Companies Set ‘Science-Based’ Emissions Targets, Business Climate Tool Launched By: Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Environment Leader, Dec8, 2015 Some 114 companies — including Ikea, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Walmart, Kellogg and Dell — have committed to set emissions reduction targets in line with what scientists say is 128

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necessary to keep global warming below the dangerous threshold of 2 degrees Celsius, according to the Science Based Targets initiative.

The announcement was made at the LPAA Business focus event hosted by Caring for Climate at COP21 in Paris.

The companies participating have combined annual emissions of at least 476 million metric tons CO2.

Also today WRI released the new CAIT Climate Data Explorer Business platform, an interactive database of corporate emissions and emissions reduction targets. This new tool is built on WRI’s CAIT Climate Data Explorer platform, a source for international climate data and visualizations. Company data is provided by CDP, a global corporate climate data-reporting platform, and the Science Based Targets initiative.

The Science Based Targets initiative, a joint effort of CDP, WRI, WWF and UN Global Compact, works with companies to set science-based emissions targets and only approves corporate targets that meet its strict criteria.

Ten companies have already had their targets approved including: Coca-Cola Enterprises, Dell, Enel, General Mills, Kellogg, NRG Energy, Procter & Gamble, Sony and Thalys.

Combined, these 10 companies will reduce their emissions from operations by 799 million metric tons CO2 over the lifetime of the targets.

These companies have also made commitments to reduce indirect emissions throughout their value chains.

When the Science Based Targets initiative launched, its goal was to recruit 100 companies by the end of 2015 to commit to setting a science-based target.

Today, Kellogg, NRG Energy, and Enel announce that the Science Based Targets initiative has approved the following targets: 129

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Kellogg commits to a 15 percent reduction in emissions intensity (metric tons of CO2e per metric ton of food produced) by 2020 from a 2015 base-year (scopes 1 & 2). Kellogg commits to reduce absolute value chain emissions by 20 percent from 2015 to 2030 (scope 3).

NRG Energy commits to a 50 percent reduction of absolute emissions by 2030 from a 2014 base-year (scopes 1, 2 & 3). The company also has a long-term target: a reduction of 90 percent absolute emissions by 2050 from 2014 levels (scopes 1, 2 and 3).

Enel commits to reduce CO2 emissions 25 percent per kWh by 2020, from a 2007 base-year. The target includes the decommissioning of 13 GW of fossil power plants in Italy, and is a milestone in the long-term goal to operate in carbon neutrality by 2050.

The 114 companies that have agreed to set science-based targets represent at least $932 billion USD in total combined profits. Almost a quarter of the companies who have signed up are from the US, with the UK, France and Canada being the next most common home locations.

Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/08/cop21-114companies-set-science-based-emissions-targets-businessclimate-tool-launched/#ixzz3u2EY6UkA

Kellogg Pledges to Slash Operations Emissions 65% by 2050By: Karen Henry Kellogg has announced new science-based emissions targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across its operations 65 percent and help its suppliers reduce their emissions 50 percent by 2050 against a 2015 baseline.

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Science Based Targets is a joint initiative by CDP, the UN Global Compact, the World Resources Institute and WWF intended to increase corporate ambition on climate action by changing the conversation about GHG emissions reduction target setting and creating an expectation that companies will set targets consistent with the level of decarbonization required by science to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial temperatures.

Kellogg is focusing on upstream agriculture emissions and manufacturing in its new targets because these two areas are the largest sources of emissions in the company’s supply chain. The company has already reduced GHG emissions from its manufacturing facilities by approximately 12 percent since 2008.

The new targets are an extension of Kellogg’s 2020 global sustainability goals set in August 2014, when the organization announced commitments to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its own operations, increase the use of low carbon energy and require all key suppliers to measure and publicly disclose their own emissions and reduction targets.

Kellogg has committed to supporting 15,000 smallholder growers by 2020 to increase adoption of Climate Smart Agriculture.

Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/08/kellogg-pledgesto-slash-operations-emissions-65-by-2050/#

COP21: Strong Climate Policy Leads to Lower Business Costs, CEOs SayBy: Jessica Lyons Hardcastle, Dec4, 2015 Two new draft texts for a climate deal were released today at COP21, with additional drafts expected to follow as governments negotiate a global climate deal in Paris. Business leaders, meanwhile, continue to step up their efforts to influence climate policy.

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CEOs of seven apparel companies — Levi Strauss & Co., Gap Inc., VF Corporation, H&M, Eileen Fisher, Adidas Group and Burton Snowboards — yesterday issued a statement urging government leaders to reach a strong climate change deal. They called for ratchet mechanism and other measures to ensure tangible pollution reductions and pledged to reduce their own emissions.

“Drought, changing temperatures and extreme weather will make the production of apparel more difficult and costly,” the statement says. “Climate change mitigation and technological innovation are vital to the health and well-being of those who make and use our products, as well as the future supply of materials needed to make those products.”

The statement follows a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal earlier in the week signed by more than 100 companies that asks the US government to: seek a global climate deal in Paris that keeps global temperature rise below 2 degrees C; achieve or exceed national emissions reduction commitments, and; support investment in the low-carbon economy in the US and abroad.

Victoria Mills, a managing director of corporate partnerships at Environmental Defense Fund wrote a blog post about the ad and told Environmental Leader that there’s a simple reason why businesses are advocating for climate policy at COP21.

“The reason hundreds of companies are calling for a strong climate deal in Paris is simple: they want to avoid the risks, costs and instability of a warming world,” Mills says. “These companies see their businesses thriving in a low-carbon future, and they want to get there as quickly as possible.”

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Unilever: Eco-Efficiency Saves $438 Million Unilever spokesman William Davies told Environmental Leader that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of inaction. Last week Unilever announced it will become “carbon positive” in its operations by 2030.

“In the last decade, the world spent $2.7 trillion more on natural disasters than usual; the same disasters are costing Unilever around €300 million ($328 million) a year,” Davies says.

Meanwhile, Unilever and other firms are saving money and increasing profits by investing in environmentally sustainable measures, Davies says. “Eco-efficiency measures in our factories have saved us over €400 million ($438 million) since 2008,” he explains. “ Consumers are demanding it too — last year our most sustainable brands grew twice as fast as the rest of the business.

Sustainable solutions make business sense. More than half of the Fortune 100 companies are saving in aggregate around $1.1 billion per year from emission reduction initiatives.”

VF Corp: $25 Million Savings on Low-Carbon Initiatives Ceres’ spokesperson Meg Wilcox points to last year’s Risky Business report, which highlights economic risks to industries from climate change.

“Businesses face a range of costs associated with climate change, such as physical impacts to buildings and infrastructure (i.e. from flooding, severe storms or drought), and supply chain disruptions (e.g. agricultural impacts), loss of business from severe weather,” Wilcox says.

Ceres today hosts a panel at COP 21 titled Corporate Climate Leadership In Action with investors and business leaders taking strong climate actions, including pollution reductions, renewable energy sourcing or public advocacy for strong climate policies.

VF Corp., one of the companies speaking on the panel, “can already point to $25 million in savings that it has accrued by 133

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investing in energy efficiency and other low carbon initiatives,” Wilcox says.

Mars: Clean Energy Cuts Electricity Costs Another panel presenter, food company Mars, highlights cost savings from investing in clean energy. Kevin Rabinovitch, global sustainability director at Mars, told Environmental Leader reducing the company’s carbon footprint leads to lower costs.

“For nearly a decade, we’ve been working toward meeting our own measurable, science-based sustainability goals,” Rabinovitch says. “These include a commitment to eliminate fossil fuel use from our operations by 2040.” To achieve this goal, Mars built a 118-turbine wind farm in Texas, called the Mesquite Creek wind farm, which now generates the equivalent of 100 percent of the electricity needed to power Mars’ US operations.

“It’s an example of how we are contributing to our sustainability goals in a way that is also cost-effective for the company,” Rabinovitch says. “The fact is, it’s no longer a cost to business to switch to renewable energy. In many places the economics are now equal to or better than fossil energy, and the comparison will become even more favorable over the next few years. This is the clean little secret of a sustainable business: preserving the climate can also save you money.”

EcoVadis: Target Your Supply Chain Strong climate policy can also help reduce supply chain costs, says Pierre-Francois Thaler, co-founder and co-CEO of EcoVadis, which is hosting a panel at COP21 today titled Driving Global CO2 Reductions Through Sustainable Supply Chain.

“With 90 percent of the world’s investments currently managed by the private sector, the best way to make real progress in sustainability and reduce the impact of climate change is to act 134

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through the supply chain and get the world’s top companies to implement a sustainable procurement program,” Thaler, says.

“The leverage these companies have on suppliers is tremendous.

On average, a large company spends about 55 percent of its revenue on purchased materials, and 80 percent in supply chain activities. This type of investment in a supply base can drive significant supplier engagement, and the trickle-down effect of getting these global companies on board with sustainable procurement can be monumental as they can encourage sustainable behavior across tier 1-3 suppliers and ultimately the entire supply chain.”

Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/04/cop21-strongclimate-policy-leads-to-lower-business-costs-ceossay/#ixzz3u2GFXeva Sustainability

Arizona Chemical Begins Construction on 100% Recycled Asphalt Bike Lane By: Karen Henry, Dec22,2015 Arizona Chemical has started construction on a 100 percent recycled asphalt pavement bike lane in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Rotterdam is the first city in the Netherlands to use 100 percent recycled asphalt in a sub, base and top layer of a bicycle road. This is the first time 100 percent recycled asphalt has been applied on all three layers of pavement in the country.

Because of road performance issues such as rutting, cracking and water damage, the percentage of recycled asphalt mixed with virgin asphalt has been limited to about 30 percent on average globally. Arizona Chemical developed a biobased rejuvenator for recycled asphalt that regenerates used bitumen in the mix. The additive is derived from crude tall oil, which originates from pine trees. Trials using the rejuvenator have been successful with 70 135

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percent reclaimed asphalt in the mix, and similar results are expected with 100 percent.

With the higher percentage of recycled asphalt used, there will be less of it in landfills. Not having to transport fresh bitumen to the mixing plants will reduce the carbon footprint associated with asphalt production and result in considerable cost savings.

The project is a collaboration between the Port of Rotterdam, Rotterdam Municipality, KWS Infra and Arizona Chemical.

Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/22/rotterdam-bikepath-first-in-nl-to-use-100-recycled-asphalt/#ixzz3vANaqyp0

Your Office Is Too Cold. Or Too Hot. But Science Wants to Help THE FOREVER WAR over the office thermostat has a new beachhead: the “Comfort Suite” at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, where researchers are chasing detente between the half of the office that wants the air conditioning on maximum and the other half shivering in their cubicles, huddled under sweaters, pointing their toes toward wan little electric heaters.

In the suite—actually a 250 square-foot office simulator in NREL’s Golden, Colo. headquarters—engineers and ergonomics specialists are testing all kinds of technologies to see if they can improve comfort while reducing the energy an office building uses. Desk chairs warm up and cool down in seconds, controlled via a smart phone app. Infrared cameras show when someone’s fingers are starting to chill. Sensors track the concentration of carbon dioxide as 20 registers alternately blast hot and cold air at pretend-office workers.

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Some of this kind of tech is already out in the world—heated computer mice, desk fans, and so on, says Dane Christensen, manager of Residential Systems Innovation and Performance at NREL. But the lab wants to see personal comfort bear energy savings. “The purpose of this project is really to try to improve the interactions between those individual devices,” Christensen says, “and the whole building.”

As it becomes easier and cheaper to put computer chips in more devices, systems that previously couldn’t communicate will be able to talk to each other. And that’s not limited to electronics.

NREL retrofitted the chairs in the Comfort Suite with a $30 Arduino microcomputer.

Comfort Suite-type technologies aren’t just experimental. More and more companies are getting into the business of improving the office climate. Last month, Personal Comfort Systems shipped 70 Hyperchairs to the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, says Peter Rumsey, the Oakland-based company’s co-founder and CEO. Like the ones in the Comfort Suite, Hyperchairs have luxury carlike climate controls built in, controlled from an interface on the chair or with a smartphone. Sitters charge them overnight, and they use a maximum power of 15 watts, compared to about 1,500 watts consumed by a space heater.

Of course, a space heater is also a fraction of the cost; Hyperchairs cost $1,900 a pop. That’s about $750 more than a top-of-the-line Aeron.

But it might be worth it. “When you ask a building facility manager, ‘what’s the No. 1 complaint?’

By far it’s ‘too hot, too cold,’” Rumsey says. When HVAC systems are set to maintain a temperature between, say, 72 and 74 degrees, they use extra energy throttling up and down as the building overheats and then gets too cold. Rumsey thinks that as 137

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more people using devices like the Hyperchair would let buildings broaden that range while the drones inside stayed comfortable.

Meanwhile everyone in working in a high-fashion collaborative space (as opposed to offices, which are so 20th century) can also use an app called Comfy to vote on the temperature setting for their thermostat. The system considers the time of day and the weather but has an added dose of instant gratification, cooling down a stuffy meeting room for about 15 minutes on command.

After debuting Comfy on two floors of the headquarters of Johnson Controls in Milwaukee1 in January 2014, the building reduced steam used for heating the space by about 23 percent over a four-month period. Electricity used for cooling went down by about the same amount.

And at the Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley, architect Edward Arens is working on adapting standing desks to the same climate ideas. Arens, director of the center, uses a standing desk himself. And he’s working on insoles that use electricity wirelessly transmitted from a floor mat to warm a pair of feet.

Ideally, all this new gear will mesh into the burgeoning Internet of Things, integrated into energy systems overall. NREL researchers are now taking what they’ve learned from tests of the heatingand-cooling chair and building it into simulations of whole buildings’ energy use.

Then they’ll try to figure out how to connect the chairs to building HVAC systems directly–no thermostat resetting required. “We’ll be able to reduce operating costs for buildings but actually keep people more comfortable than we do today,” NREL’s Christensen says. “The work that we’re doing should make the world better for occupants of the buildings, as well as for the owner and the operator.” Which all sounds…pretty cool, actually.

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Toyota Surpasses Water Reduction GoalBy: Karen Environmentalleader.com Dec 7, 2015 Toyota saved more than 54 million gallons of water in North America during fiscal year 2015 through reduce, reuse and recycle efforts, according to its latest North American Environmental Report.

The automaker had targeted a 6 percent reduction in water withdrawals by fiscal year 2016 from a 2010 baseline. In FY2015, Toyota surpassed this goal, achieving an 8 percent reduction.

Installing additional filtration at Toyota’s San Antonio, Texas, assembly plant reduced water use by 80 gallons per vehicle produced. The company’s Chicago, Illinois, service training center collects rainwater and routes it to a rain garden, which, in combination with drought-tolerate native landscaping, eliminates the need for irrigation.

The company also reported impressive recycling and waste management achievements in 2015. Toyota’s North American facilities reduced, reused, recycled or composted over 96 percent of non-regulated waste during calendar year 2014. Twenty-eight of the company’s North American facilities meet the US Zero Waste Business Council’s definition of a zero waste business — one with a 90 percent or greater diversion of all waste from landfill, incineration and the environment.

Toyota is working to reduce is carbon emissions through various energy-saving initiatives. Toyota’s plant in Alabama is the first in North America to reuse batteries from end-of-life hybrid vehicles as stationary energy storage.

Toyota has received the Energy Star Partner of the Year – Sustained Excellence Award from the EPA for the 11th consecutive year. Forty-seven Toyota and Lexus dealers have achieved LEED certification.

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Toyota has set a series of goals to eliminate almost all of its carbon emissions by 2050.

Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/12/07/toyota-surpasses-water-reduction-goal/#ixzz3vBmuyhg4

Sustainability

Toyota Targets Zero Carbon Emissions from Vehicle Lifecycle, Plants by 2050 Source: http://www.environmentalleader.com/ Dec2015 Toyota has set a series of goals to eliminate almost all of its carbon emissions — from its new vehicles, production and plants — over the next 35 years.

The Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050, which aims to cut water use and CO2 emissions, and reduce the negative environmental impact of manufacturing and driving vehicles as much as possible, includes six individual challenges.

As a key step toward achieving these long-term targets, Toyota has announced its Sixth Toyota Environmental Action Plan, which it says will be enacted between April 2016 and the end of March 2021.

Toyota has set a goal of reducing global average new-vehicle CO2 emissions by 90 percent by 2050, compared to its 2010 global average. The company says it will achieve this by increasing sales of fuel cell vehicles, achieving annual global sales of over 30,000 fuel cell vehicles around or after 2020.

Earlier this year Toyota launched its Mirai fuel cell sedan — the first mass market fuel cell car — in Toyota City, Japan.

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supporting a project for the development of hydrogen station infrastructure in Japan, with the companies paying up to $90,000 per hydrogen station.

Other environmental challenges are to completely eliminate all CO2 emissions, including materials, parts and manufacturing, from the vehicle lifecycle, and to achieve zero CO2 emissions at all plants by 2050. To achieve this, Toyota says it will cut production process-related CO2 emissions per vehicle from new plants and new production lines to roughly half of 2001 levels by 2020, and roughly a third by 2030. It is also using renewable energy and hydrogen-based production methods to completely eliminate CO2 emissions by 2050.

Toyota also has set a goal of effective wastewater management and minimizing water consumption, taking into account the conditions in each country and region.

Read more: http://www.environmentalleader.com/2015/10/19/toyota-targetszero-carbon-emissions-from-vehicle-lifecycle-plants-by2050/#ixzz3vBnZga4c Climate Change

$16.5t required to combat pollution

By Alex Morales &EwaKrukowska, BloombergDec 13 2015 Spending targets for renewables outlined The deal struck at United Nations climate talks requires an overhaul of historic proportions for energy policies worldwide and a huge investment in cleaning up the pollution now damaging the atmosphere.

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Targets outlined in the agreement on Saturday, involving 195 countries, will require $16.5 trillion of spending on renewables and efficiency through 2030, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). To accomplish that, governments will have to offer incentives for clean energy production, scale back support for fossil fuels like oil, make emissions more costly and reduce deforestation. The changes will touch industries from transport to construction and encourage people to change their behaviour.

“The strength of the agreement is that it allows a thousand policy flowers to bloom,” Paul Bledsoe, a climate aide during US President Bill Clinton’s administration, said in an interview in Paris, where the deal was sealed. “This sends a powerful economic signal that fossil fuels will be saddled with financial and legal premiums to remain part of the energy mix and clean energy will get subsidies.”

The deal aims to limit the rising temperature since the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries to 2 degrees celsius, while calling on nations to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees.” That more ambitious goal implies vast cuts to emissions from burning fuels.

“Politically and technologically, this is no walk in the park,” said OttmarEdenhofer, chief economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Institute and a lead author of the UN’s most rigorous assessment of climate economics.

The target may trigger “a fundamental shift of investments towards renewables, energy efficiency, and carbon capture and storage,” he said. Policies such as carbon pricing through markets or taxes and planting trees while burning biomass rather than fossil fuels, will also be needed, and in a 1.5-degree scenario, they’ll need to be stepped up, Edenhofer said.

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Pledges to limit carbon from 187 nations aren’t yet enough to hold to a 2-degree pathway, let alone 1.5 degrees, according to researchers at the Climate Action Tracker, a group of four European institutions, who estimate the measures will cap the rise at 2.7 degrees. While those changes would be small for a single day, applied to the world they mark a shift in the climate that’s quicker than the one that ended the last ice age.

That would mean “high risks by climate extremes, commitment to multi-metre sea level rise and detrimental impacts for global agriculture and food security,” said Bill Hare, chief executive officer of Climate Analytics, a Berlin-based research group. “It would also lead to complete loss of coral reefs and serious impacts on water resources in many regions.”

Keeping that in mind, envoys in Paris established a review process that would ensure countries look at their targets every five years, with a view to stepping up ambition based on advances in technologies and declining costs of clean energy.

National emissions goals enshrined in the pact are voluntary, though binding transparency rules mean nations “risk a pariah status if they flout their pledges,” according to Bledsoe, the former Clinton aide. “The heart of the deal is emissions monitoring. The only way we’re going to be able to compel compliance is through accurate data.”

IEA’s figures reflect the costs of nations reaching the voluntary commitments they made under the Paris programme plus an estimate of what it would take to bring temperatures down to the 2-degree target. “The 2-degree target as it stands now is very challenging to meet,” FatihBirol, IEA director general said in Paris on December 9. “We need to accelerate our efforts even further to reach 1.5 degrees.”

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and report their emissions and the progress made toward their targets. That’s important because developing nations account for more than half of global emissions and the agreement can’t succeed without them reducing their greenhouse gases.

The new deal doesn’t take effect until 2020. Over the next five years, governments will have to complete the rules for the various mechanisms set up in the agreement on transparency and technology transfer. It won’t come into force until at least 55 parties, accounting for 55 per cent of global emissions, have ratified it.

“The main work is for every country to go through their domestic process to ratify and join the agreement,” said Jake Schmidt, international programme director at the natural resources defense council in Washington. As far as the UN process, “they basically have the guiding principles and need to write the detailed rule book.”

“Markets now have the clear signal they need to unleash the full force of human ingenuity and scale up investments that will generate low emissions and resilient growth,” UN secretarygeneral Ban Ki-Moon said in Paris after the talks concluded.

Climate Change

After climate agreement, world faces a carbon diet PARIS — The world is about to go on a carbon diet. It won’t be easy — or cheap.

Nearly 200 nations across the world on Saturday approved a firstof-its-kind universal agreement to wean Earth off fossil fuels and slow global warming, patting themselves on the back for showing such resolve.

On Sunday morning, as for many first-day dieters, the reality set in: 144

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The numbers are daunting: More than 7.04 billion tons of carbon dioxide. That’s how much has to stay in the ground instead of being spewed into the atmosphere for the planned reductions to happen, even if you take the easier of two goals mentioned in Saturday’s deal. To get to the harder goal, it’s an even larger number.

The objective of the agreement is to make sure global warming stays ‘‘well below’’ 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) and to ‘‘pursue efforts’’ to limit the temperature rise to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 Celsius). Temperatures have already increased by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since preindustrial times.

Climate deal faces wrath of GOP senators The immediate reaction of leading Republican critics was a stark reminder of the conflict that lies ahead.

Scientists who have analyzed the pledges made by nations so far to cut greenhouse gases believe emissions will be reduced only about half the amount necessary to stave off an increase in atmospheric temperatures of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

That is the point at which, scientific studies have concluded, the world will be locked into a future of rising sea levels, severe 145

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droughts and flooding, widespread food and water shortages, and more destructive storms.

Ideally, by sometime in the second half of the century, man-made greenhouse gas emissions — which includes methane and other heat-trapping gases as well as carbon dioxide — should not exceed the amount nature can absorb.

In practice, the world has to emit close to zero greenhouse gases by 2070 to reach the easier temperature goal, or by 2050 to reach the harder one, said John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

Probably the best the world can hope for is overshooting that temperature by a few tenths of a degree and then somehow slowly — over decades if not centuries — come back to the target temperature.

That may involve something called negative emissions. That’s when the world — technology and nature combined — take out more carbon dioxide from the air than humanity puts in.

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Nearly 90 percent of strategies for establishing a safer temperature in the world involve going backward on emissions, but that’s not very realistic, said Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Britain.

Negative emissions involve more forests, maybe seeding the oceans, and possibly technology that sucks carbon out of the air and stores it underground somehow. More biomass or forests require enormous land areas and direct capture of carbon from air is expensive.

Leading up to the Paris agreement, nearly every nation formed an individual action plan to cut or slow the growth of carbon pollution over the next decade or so. Richer nations that have already developed, including the United States, European countries, and Japan, pledged to cut now.

Developing nations that say they need fossil fuels to pull themselves out poverty pledged to slow the rate of growth for now and to cut later.

China, the world’s top carbon polluter, will eventually have to make the biggest cuts. Overall, for the world to hit its new target, global carbon dioxide emissions will have to peak by 2030, and then fall to near-zero, experts said.

Those levels have been generally rising since the industrial revolution.

Without any efforts to limit global warming, the world would warm by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit from now by 2100, according to Climate Interactive, a climate modeling group. But China’s submitted plan alone would cut that projected warming by 1.3 degrees, according to Climate Interactive. The US plan trims about six tenths of a degree off the projected warming.

And while China is now the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter with more than a quarter of the world’s emissions, carbon dioxide stays in the air for at least a century, so historical emissions are important. Since 1870, the United States is responsible for 18 percent of the world’s carbon pollution, compared to 13 percent for China.

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That all sounds good, but the goals the nations have set aren’t enough. Taken together, they would still allow temperatures to rise 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, Climate Interactive found.

Sustainability

Energy Efficiency Goal for 2016: Bridge the Knowledge Gap December 24, 2015 By Carl Weinschenk The high level takeaway from research conducted by Digital Lumens and Peerless Research Group is that facility managers understand how important efficiency efforts are and have a good idea of what they want to accomplish – but haven’t yet figured out how to achieve those goals.

There always is a gap between the time that an industry accepts a new approach and technology and when it filters down into the actual day to day operational procedures of technicians in the field. This is especially true in the case of energy efficiency because the new approaches rely on the Internet of Things (IoT) and other technologies that are from outside its realm.

The reality that the new year will dawn with a gap between what industry leaders advocate and the awareness of people in the 148

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field is clearly illustrated in the study, which is based upon responses from 230 facility managers of warehouse and distribution centers with an average of 330,000 square feet:  Ninety-three percent said that “understanding energy consumption is a top priority for their business” – but only 29 percent are fully aware of how much power their building consumes.  Only 20 percent of managers are very familiar with IoT concept – but 48 percent are thinking about, planning or implementing and IoT-based strategy.

Taken together the numbers suggest a confusing landscape.

How, for instance, can almost half of respondents be on the road to employing IoT technology, while only 20 percent are aware of it? That, on the surface, doesn’t make much sense. However, it speaks to the bigger issue: There is a lot of confusion among managers. It also suggests that current events involving energy efficiency issues – the push for renewable sources, COP21, aggressive federal moves and others – is making an impression on managers and ownership while the specifics of actually moving buildings in that direction still are vague.

The finding that more than nine of ten managers understand the importance of energy consumption while less than three in 10 know what it is in their facility is especially telling. “Everybody wants to be in boat, but they are not all in the boat yet,” said Allison Parker, Digital Lumens’ Director of Marketing.

This suggests that the focus of the year ahead may be filling in the details – some of which are basic. “Interesting but not surprising to me was the low number of respondents who had specific data on the energy intensity per square foot in operations,” Parker said. “That’s a really important number. To 149

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me, it means that there is a tremendous opportunity to instrument facilities, get more data and improve overall efficiency.�

The confusion also was identified in survey results released in October by Mach Energy. The firm found that the 800 commercial building professionals who responded are struggling, at least with terminology: The results revealed widespread confusion amongst property managers, facility managers and directors on the difference between energy management software (EMS), which provides low-cost analytics and reporting software platforms, and building management systems (BMS), which are costly projects that physically control equipment.

The confusion isn’t only about technology. The financial structures also must be fleshed out. Parker said that a key step is financial analysis. She told Energy Manager Today that building managers tend to rely on return on investment (ROI) analysis and bypass the broader and more comprehensive total cost of ownership (TCO) metrics.

The use of TCO may not grow, however. Ron Vokoun, the Director of Mission Critical Design at RK Mission Critical, in late December posted his predictions for the data center industry at DataCenter Dynamics. Growth of TCO measures wasn’t one of them, at least at the design stage: In 2016, TCO will actually lose ground in data center design consideration. It defies logic, but I have witnessed a movement back toward pure capex driven decisions over considerations of energy efficiency, accelerated depreciation, and other financial factors. This seems to be more prevalent with enterprises, but I have seen examples across market sectors. Kudos to those enlightened souls that understand the benefits to be gained for years to come.

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The gap revealed in the Digital Lumens research between what experts say about energy efficiency and what is happening in the field is not surprising. Things are changing quickly, and 2016 clearly will be an important one in efforts to make the lofty goals into action.

Sustainability

Business School Students Want to Work For Companies Taking Action on Climate Change Dec 21, 2015, John Howell for 3BL Media.

Students at top business schools prefer to work at companies taking action on climate change. That’s the finding of a new global study of 3,700 students at 29 top business schools around the world. The study was conducted by Yale University, with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Global Network for Advanced Management.

The survey found that more than two-thirds of students want to include environmental sustainability in their careers. Eighty-four percent would choose to work for a company with good environmental practices. Forty-four percent would work for a lower salary to do so. Business school students also asked for more action from their schools. Sixty-one percent thought that their schools should hire more faculty and staff with expertise in sustainability. Sixty-four percent asked for more career services and counseling on sustainability-related jobs.

The driver for these attitudes is the bottom line. Today’s business school students believe that environmental action is a profitable approach, one that improves economic growth and creates new jobs.

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Climate Change

Roofs over Guangzhou Can Reduce Heat Wave Temps Wed, 12/23/2015 - Greg Watry, Digital Reporter Source: R&D headlines and news Chinese and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers have found white roofs, or cool roofs, if implemented in Guangzhou, could significantly reduce the urban heat island effect.

The greater urban area of Guangzhou is outlined in the center of each figure. A midday urban heat island effect is clearly visible.

The results of increased roof albedos are shown in the bottom row. Credit Berkeley Lab The Chinese mehacityGuangzhou is no stranger to heat waves.

In 2004, heatwaves, on the order of 39 C, left 39 people dead.

With a population of more than 8.5 million people, Guangzhou suffers from the urban heat island effect. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the term is used to describe urban areas that are hotter than their surrounding rural areas.

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“The annual mean air temperature of a city with 1 million people or more can be (1-3 C) warmer than its surroundings,” according to the agency. “In the evening, the difference can be as high as (12 C).”

The resulting effects include rises in energy demand, air conditioning costs, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and heat-related illness and mortality, among others.

Chinese and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers have found white roofs, or cool roofs, if implemented in Guangzhou, could significantly reduce the urban heat island effect.

Published in Environmental Science & Technology, the study combined a regional climate model and urban model that allowed the adjustment of roof reflectance.

“We simulate temperature reductions during six of the strongest historical heat-wave events over the past decade, finding average urban midday temperature reductions of 1.2 C,” the researchers wrote. “In comparison, we simulate 25 typical summer weeks between 2004 and 2008, finding average urban midday temperature reductions of 0.8 C, indicating that air temperature sensitivity to urban albedo in Guangzhou varies with meteorological conditions.”

As study author Dev Millstein, a Berkeley Lab researcher, explained: “The hotter it is, the more cooling you get with cool roofs—and it is a significant difference, compared to the margin of error.”

Previous research from the Berkeley Lab found implementing cool roofs can have a great effect on reducing carbon dioxide emissions. A cool roof on a 1,500 sq m building in Guangzhou would save 5 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

In the recent study, the researchers made all the roofs in the city as reflective as an aged white roof. They suggest cool roofs can be easily implemented over time, as buildings put on new roofs due to wear and tear.

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F2F India likely to push oil demand growth: IEA In an interview to CNBC-TV18's Ronojoy Banerjee, FatihBirol Executive Director, IEA shared his views on the road ahead for crude oil.

Ronjoy Banerjee Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview..

Q: Since you made that prediction about the demand for oil growing at about 1.1 percent over the next few years we have seen a further decline in oil price. What implications could this have in terms of the annual outlook you have made in the coming two to three years?

A: First of all there will be lot of oil in 2016 still coming from Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) countries as well as from United States, Canada, Russia but the 154

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important thing here is to note that there is also a big decline in the investments for new projects. For example 2015, this year oil investments declined more than 20 percent compared to last year and we expect 2016 investments for new projects will decline again.

We have never seen in the last 30 years oil investments for new projects, new field decline two years in a row which may mean that in the next few years of time when the demand gets stronger, when this supply glut is over we may well see upward pressure on the international oil price and currently low oil prices are welcome news for the consumers, very good for the trade balance and everything but in a few years of time this low prices may be high cost for the consumers.

Q: You have also mentioned in one of your interviews to Financial Times you have said that we are approaching end of the single largest demand growth story in the energy history. You said it in the context of the 15 year surge in oil prices primarily owing to China. So, the 15-year run that we have seen in higher oil prices breaching the USD 110 barrel mark, do you think that was more of an aberration?

A: China played a very important role here as a engine of the oil demand growth. Their appetite for oil is still there but it is slowing down. Having said that there are other countries such as India now which are going to push the oil demand growth. For example today in Europe 550 people out of 1000 own a car, in United States 750 out of 1000 and India it is 20 out of 1000. With increasing income levels people are going to buy cars which in turn will fuel the oil demand growth. So, there will be still demand growth globally but it may be a bit slower than in the past.

However the most important point is in order to incentivise new oil investments we need prices higher than today. Otherwise a big chunk of the oil will come from one single region, low cost region which is the Middle East.

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At these prices, about USD 30-40 to have investments in United States, in Canada, in Brazil, in other parts of the world would not make lot of sense. It would only make sense in Middle East and the worlds reliance on Middle East will increase substantially very quickly which may not be the best news given the geopolitical situation today.

What Have the Past 30 Years Taught Us About Managing Risk? knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/past-30-years-taught-usmanaging-risk/ Dec 17, 2015 Podcasts Video Global Focus North America mic Listen to the podcast: How Managing Risk Has Changed The problem with many catastrophic risks isn’t just that their impacts, when they hit, are so massive. It’s also that their odds of occurring in any given short time frame are very small, so that planning for them has to be handled as a long-term priority while the proverbial sun is shining. And neither companies nor individuals are particularly apt at taking serious, long-term action to prepare for low probability, high consequence events.

Enter the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, which was created 30 years ago to help individuals, businesses, governments and global organizations to be better prepared for those longer range, more unpredictable dangers.

Knowledge@Wharton spoke with Howard Kunreuther and Robert Meyer, co-directors of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, and executive director Erwann Michel-Kerjan about the center’s research and how managing risk has changed over the past few decades.

An edited transcript of the conversation appears below.

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Knowledge@Wharton: Howard, what led to the starting of the Risk Center 30 years ago?

Howard Kunreuther: Well, it’s interesting that our center has always focused on low probability, high consequence events, [because] it was a low probability, high consequence event that actually got the center started. I was in the office of the CEO of Rohm and Haas with my colleague Ned Bowman [of Wharton].

We were looking at the challenges that the company was facing in dealing with environmental risks, and when we arrived there, we were told that there had been a large chemical accident in Bhopal that the company was very concerned about. It involved Union Carbide, but every chemical company was involved. And that really was the start of the center, because we worked very closely with Rohm and Haas and Cigna to begin to look at issues like chemical accidents as a way of trying to figure out how we would deal with extreme events.

Knowledge@Wharton: Thinking about the catastrophic risks that businesses faced 30 years ago, what were some of the most important risks in addition to manufacturing accidents like Bhopal that you were concerned about?

Kunreuther: It was really the chemical accidents that got us started, and I think technological accidents were clearly a very important part of how businesses had to think. They weren’t thinking as much about it as we would have liked them to. They were saying it wasn’t going to happen to me. But that was certainly on the agenda, and any time there was an accident like a Bhopal, they then paid attention to it. The other area we focused on — and that had been the focus of a lot of the research a number of us had been doing, including my late colleague, Paul Kleindorfer, who was co-director of the center when we formed it — was natural hazard risks and natural disasters. And those were risks that were not predictable, but if there was a severe hurricane 157

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or flood or earthquake, that might have an impact in terms of how the firms had to react.

“When you talk to companies or individuals and ask what risks they are most concerned about, typically, they are the things that just happened yesterday. People tend to focus on the disaster that just happened.” –Robert Meyer Knowledge@Wharton: What were some of the research projects that you took on to look into these risks?

Kunreuther: Well, because of our start with the chemical industry, we had a very large project with the Environmental Protection Agency on chemical accidents — how one dealt with them — and technological accidents, so we were certainly working on that. We were also working on the natural hazards area and why individuals were not protecting themselves and purchasing insurance. That was something that both Paul and I had been focusing on with others over a period of time.

The other area that emerged was the siting of the high-level radioactive waste facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. There was a whole project that was formed, and for 10 years, there was a group of us who were working together. It was very much an interdisciplinary group. Paul Slovic, president of Decision Research, was a part of that. Roger Kasperson, a geographer, a psychologist, and then there were anthropologists — we were all working with the state of Nevada to try to figure out how to site this facility, and so the center played a role in that. We had been looking at siting a liquefied natural gas facility before the center had been formed.

Knowledge@Wharton: What would you say were some of the key findings of your earliest research projects?

Kunreuther: The key findings are findings we may want to talk about even today. Really, what was happening was that it wasn’t 158

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until a disaster occurred that there was really a lot of attention paid. There was a tendency to say, “This is not going to happen to me,” and firms were behaving that way. Certainly, consumers and homeowners were behaving that way. As a result, we as a center were trying to figure out the important things to think about beforehand, and what kinds of programs and policies could be put forward to try to deal with them so we didn’t have to be in a reactive mode after a disaster occurred.

Knowledge@Wharton: If all of you were to look back over the past 30 years, how would you say the nature of risk has evolved and changed? Bob, would you like to start us off?

Robert Meyer: The risks have always been there. To build on what Howard was saying, one of the things we’ve observed as a center is that often, when you talk to companies or individuals and ask what risks they’re most concerned about, typically, they are the things that just happened yesterday. People tend to focus on the disaster that just happened, so one of the things we try to do as a center is get people and organizations to focus not only on the event that just happened, but also to refocus on unseen risks.

Just to give you an example, we work with the World Economic Forum, and every year, they come out with a survey of about 900 academics and ask them what are the risks that they are most concerned about. Typically, what you find is an awful lot of yearto-year variability in what is hitting the radar screen. For example, last year, the No. 1 thing that came up was state unrest, particularly in Europe. If you think about it, that makes sense, because one of the big news items in Europe last year was unrest in the Ukraine and so forth. But what’s interesting is a risk that was very important two or three years ago: cyberterrorism. In some sense, one of our challenges as a center is to get people and organizations to think about not just the thing that happened most recently, but to take a good long-term view of what are real 159

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risks. Often, the things you have to worry about are the things that you’re not currently thinking about.

Knowledge@Wharton: Erwann, what do you think?

Erwann Michel-Kerjan: …The nature of risk management has changed a lot over the past 30 years, from something that was almost exclusively technical to something that remains technical, of course, but has become more and more strategic today. More risk committees are being formed as we speak in many industries across the world. The topic itself changed, which means that as researchers, we need to change the way we approach these issues as well, whether it’s natural disasters, cyber risk or interdependencies between these risks.

Maybe you looked at what was happening in Syria and thought, “Oh, it’s just a geopolitical issue.” Then three months later, it becomes an immigration issue, an economic issue in Europe.

Then maybe in two months, it becomes a big issue in the U.S. The world is becoming more and more interdependent. It’s somewhat of a cliche, but I think we’re living it every day. An earthquake in China 30 years ago would have been an earthquake in China. Today, an earthquake in China has massive impact on global supply chains worldwide from Frankfurt to Detroit.

“An earthquake in China 30 years ago would have been an earthquake in China. Today, an earthquake in China has a massive impact on global supply chains worldwide from Frankfurt to Detroit.” –Erwann Michel-Kerjan Knowledge@Wharton: I wonder if I could turn to each of you and ask you to speak about a current research initiative that you are involved in, and why it is so important to business practitioners? Howard, could you start?

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Kunreuther: Yes. Let me just add one comment to what Bob and Erwann have said.

One of the things that the center was focused on was the decision process. We always are thinking about essentially how people are behaving — whether it’s a consumer, a homeowner, a manager in a firm, or the government and the public sector — so that we can develop strategies for dealing with that. In that sense, the center is somewhat unique in that we are really trying to tie together the risk assessment part and also risk perception and risk management. It’s that theme coming together.

To talk about a current project, related to some of the points that were just made: We have been interviewing the CEOs of 100 of the S&P 500 firms in a large project funded by the Travelers Foundation, and that involves also the Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management that [Wharton management professor] Mike Useem directs. What we’ve been asking these CEOs is what is the most important risk they are concerned about and have been concerned about — not just necessarily yesterday, but that they’ve been concerned might have adverse or catastrophic consequences to them. And you get a whole variety of different answers from them.

As Bob had indicated, often, it is a more recent disaster. Just to illustrate one example, the Fukushima earthquake was something that you hear of from these CEOs as being important. It highlights the points that Erwann was raising on interdependencies. These firms are very concerned. The automobile industry was really hurt by the supply chain problem with respect to that, so we’ve been interested in that.

The reason for doing this project is to try to develop some benchmarks with respect to how firms could behave differently in the future. We’re finishing it up now and we hope to publish our results over the course of the next year or so.

Knowledge@Wharton: Bob? 161

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Meyer: One of the things we’ve discovered in the course of our research is that often, one of the reasons that people have a difficult time making good decisions to prepare for rare events is that they have very poor mental models of how these events are going to unfold. A great example was Hurricane Sandy. One of the real surprising results is, even though this was an event that everyone in the world knew about, and there were front-page banner headlines telling people that this huge storm was coming in, and there was no shortage of warnings, there were an awful lot of deaths and damage primarily due to flooding.

Just as the storm was approaching, we asked people — this is before the storm actually hit – “What is the threat that you are most worried about?” And even though the main threat, the actual threat that they faced, was flooding, what people tended to say was they were mainly worried about wind. That’s a fundamental mistake, because the storm is coming in, it’s a flood threat, and they’re going out and boarding up their windows while at the same time leaving their car on the street. The next day, they wake up and, of course, their car is ruined. Or they don’t evacuate, and they don’t understand why they’ve been asked to evacuate.

So one of the things we were involved in doing is developing virtual web-based simulations that allow people to visually experience events like very severe storms and so forth which they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. In these environments, people are, for example, put into a virtual living room and they’re told that there’s a storm out in the distant horizon. They have the opportunity to gather information as they normally would, and they basically get to experience what it would actually be like to go through one of these events. We see that as a great vehicle for us — a teaching vehicle and also a research vehicle for studying very, very rare events. These are things that you want people to know about before they occur, not learn from unfortunate experiences after they occur.

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Michel-Kerjan: And you want something that can be used anywhere in the world.

“One of the reasons that people have a difficult time making good decisions to prepare for rare events is that they have very poor mental models of how these events are going to unfold.” –Robert Meyer Meyer: Yes, absolutely.

Michel-Kerjan: When you look at natural disasters around the world, flooding is by an order of magnitude the largest of all, in terms of number of people affected and economic cost. That’s throughout the world, and it’s true in the U.S. as well. So the center is doing a lot of work on flood-related risk, both on coastal flooding and inland flooding, trying to better understand the risk.

And we’ve been doing lot of work on flood insurance as well. For instance, we have access through our collaboration with FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) and DHS (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) to their entire portfolio of data. So we can actually crunch data — a few million data points — to try to better understand the national flood insurance program, then publish the results, and then work with the industry and also the federal government trying to improve that program.

Related to that project — there is a buzzword out there: “resilience.” You know, everybody talks about resilience, and we’re still having a hard time finding one person who is against resilience, which tells me that maybe we have an issue here. But joking aside, we decided as a group to take a serious look at flood resilience in a more quantitative manner. We have a few projects related to flood resilience. We have done some work in New York City. We’re doing some work with the Z Zurich Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit funded by insurers, in five or six different countries. And in all these projects, I think instead of having one person or two people working on a paper, which some of us tend to do, we recognize we need expertise from a large number of 163

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individuals. So most of our large projects tend to involve five, six, 10 people with different backgrounds, which obviously is much more interesting for us, because you can really tackle large-scale issues in a way that you couldn’t if you were just writing your own paper by yourself.

Knowledge@Wharton: Now, let’s turn from the present to the next three to five years. Given everything that we have discussed about the interdependence factor, and not just in the U.S., but globally, what do you think will be the biggest risks that people and companies around the world should be thinking about for the next three to five years?

Kunreuther: Well, there’s no doubt that a risk we’ve all been thinking about but have a very hard time dealing with is climate change. That’s something the center has been paying attention to over the last few years, more so than in the past. It became really a very important theme in the 30th anniversary that we just had for the Risk Center. There was a long discussion at the end of our conference related to a question that had been posed. We did a little polling exercise over lunch, and one of the questions asked was, how serious does one think the climate change problem is?

When this was done with MBA students entering a couple years ago, there was a significant number, maybe 8%, who actually felt it was not a problem at all, which was very surprising. No one in the room felt that way. No one in the room felt that it was not serious. But there were a group of people who felt that it was serious, but not very serious.

How do you instill the fact that there are these problems that may not happen for 50 years in terms of very serious impacts, but that we have to worry about now? How do we deal with them? I think Bob’s simulation project is an example of how you get people to pay attention…. So, we had a discussion on how we could make everyone feel [climate change] is a very serious problem in this country so we could take some steps now to deal with it. Because 164

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if you have enough people believe that it isn’t very serious — and this was a group of people who really should have felt that it was very serious – that becomes a problem.

The challenge we face with our center is how do we stimulate long-term strategies and encourage people to take protection — organizations, countries to take protection — but at the same time, recognize that one has to address the short-run concerns that people have if we’re going to be successful. We may have to use new technologies and videos and pictures rather than words to be able to get that across.

Meyer: I think one of the issues is that climate change is an enormously difficult and fascinating topic. One of the things that’s involved in dealing with it is encouraging communities, individuals and organizations to develop much more of an adaptive mindset than has traditionally been the case. If you think long-term historically, human civilization emerged at a time of very extreme, rapid climate change. For example, as recently as 7,000 years ago — which is not really that long ago — if you lived in the Netherlands, you would walk to Great Britain. During that period, sea level was coming up very rapidly after the melting of the last glaciers. What would happen, of course, is that we lived in tents, and we wandered around anywhere. If the water came up, we would just move to a new place.

“How do you instill the fact that there are these problems that may not happen for 50 years in terms of very serious impacts, but that we have to worry about now?” –Howard Kunreuther Of course, what’s happened since then is suddenly going from this mindset of “the world is constantly changing,” and we’re very much part of that change, to a more modern view of “the world is static,” and we put cities right at sea level and so forth, and we have an enormous civilization which is built on the premise that nothing ever changes: number one, that the climate is invariant, and number two, that we somehow or another are independent of the climate. That the actions that we take, the things that we build, 165

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the things we put into the air aren’t having an effect on climate.

What’s happened is in recent years, there has suddenly come this big awakening that no, in fact, all of the world is constantly changing, and if we don’t have this adaptive mindset, we’re going to be facing enormous trouble. Unfortunately, the cost of getting from here to there suddenly is a significant one.

Because now, you’re going to have to take large cities like Miami and New York and say, “Well, what are you going to do when the sea level comes up by another six feet? What are you going to do with all these buildings?” And these are fundamental problems.

Michel-Kerjan: In addition to [climate change], which is kind of a big one, [other risks we need to focus on involve] cyber attacks, big data, risks related to new technologies, and overregulation.

We haven’t talked about that, but it’s clearly something on the mind of many people around the world — although overregulation, obviously, depends on where you sit.

On the top [of the list] is terrorism…. Given what ISIS is doing in the Middle East, we know it’s not over. So the list is long. I think one big question we’ll have in the future, in addition to what has been mentioned already, is who’s paying for all of these catastrophes at the end? What type of optimal risk-sharing arrangement can you put together in a world where more and more governments are running very large public deficits, where more people ask for their government to help them during disaster times, but we don’t necessarily have the money? Reforming our own mindset, not only here in the U.S. but around the world. Who is supposed to pay for these disasters? How do we incentivize people, firms, governments and cities to start investing before a catastrophe happens? Again, we’re not just talking about natural disasters here.

We talked a lot about risks. There are great opportunities coming with that as well. By 2050, 80% of the world’s population will be in cities. So to think about cities as small pockets here and there, it’s totally irrelevant. There are great things with concentrating people 166

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and assets in the same place, but as Bob mentioned, when something hits that city, well, it’s a pandemic. An earthquake, a natural disaster, a terrorist attack — that will be a catastrophe almost by definition. And then, we need the other 20%, because the other 20% is basically agriculture. We need to feed other people as well. So there are amazing, amazing challenges and opportunities ahead of us.

Kunreuther: Let me add one point to what Erwann was just saying on who should pay, because I think it’s a really critical issue that we have been struggling with. And I want to raise the issue of inequality, which is now a real challenge. It’s not just the low-income people. As we all know, the middle class is a part of that discussion as well. We focus at the center on case studies and examples and concrete problems. Take the flooding problem, as an example, which is obviously related to the climate change issue, and what’s going to happen to a city like Miami, which is clearly at risk with sea-level rise and some of the things that are going to occur.

We really have a challenge here related to the affordability issue.

We as a center have been focusing from almost the outset on the role that insurance can play as a way of getting people to take protection. But the way that insurance could play that role is the premiums have to reflect the risk, to let people know how serious the hazard is, but at the same time, to help them to maybe take some steps to reduce that risk — to elevate their house or to make their house flood proof in some fashion, because they’ll get a premium discount, for example. Now, the challenge we see in this relates to the who is going to pay when you have a lot of lowincome and middle-income people who are living in high hazard areas who cannot afford that insurance when the premiums reflect risk. So the center has been focusing on that issue, and we’ll be doing a fair amount more in the coming years with the inequality issue in terms of answering the questions: Are we going to in some fashion subsidize low-income people? Should we do it 167

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through an insurance premium? Should we do it through other mechanisms such as vouchers or other ways that are now tied to insurance?

At the end of the day, the question of who should pay is going to come on the table, which is what we know Congress is facing when they are making decisions on what programs they are going to support.

Michel-Kerjan: We also know that the answer will depend on where you are. I mean, the U.S. may have a different view on the matter than Great Britain or Germany or India or China.

Meyer: Howard was talking about the importance of decision processes in all of this, and at the end of the day, a lot of decisions that people make — all the decisions that people make — about whether or not they want to buy insurance or undertake protection, are rooted very much in what they believe the risks are that they’re facing. So in some sense, in addition to the affordability issue, one thing that’s compounding it is the fact that an insurer may come in and say, “This is what we’ve calculated objectively your risk to be, and so based on that, here is the price of this coverage.” But then, of course, the people who are living in a home look at that and they say, “Well, that’s not at all my risk, OK, and in fact, I don’t have anything near the risk that you think I face, and therefore it’s grossly overpriced,” and so they don’t buy the coverage.

So in some sense, you could do risk-based rates, but basically if people feel that it’s mispriced and they don’t buy the coverage, then insurance doesn’t work. Then, essentially, you still have to ask the question: When the disaster comes and you have all these people that are uninsured, who pays for that at that point?

And that’s a major problem.

Kunreuther: And that problem is compounded when you have a highly subsidized premium, because then people think that they’re 168

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safer than they actually are. So you have a combination of saying, “Here’s a premium that has a risk,” and they say, “That isn’t really my risk.” But then you also have the reverse problem, which is true in the flood case, where the premium is very low for many individuals and they say, “Well, I’m really a lot safer than I actually thought I was,” and they aren’t really that safe.

Knowledge@Wharton: So given all the risks that you identified that the world will be facing over the next three to five years, what advice would you give to, say, chief risk officers or security officers about how to protect people and property against these risks?

“We have an enormous civilization which is built on the premise that nothing ever changes.” –Robert Meyer Kunreuther: Well, I want to just follow on Bob’s comment on decision processes and the challenges, which I think is something that managers as well as homeowners and people face. The biggest [questions] that we have been trying to get across are: How do you get people to think long term? How do you get managers to think long term? But at the same time, we have to recognize that there are all sorts of reasons why they’re going to want to think short term. How do we develop the kinds of programs with incentives that will enable them to think long term, but at the same time reward them or reward their company, let’s say, if you’re talking about firms, or reward the homeowner if you’re talking about families, to take some steps today? We have thoughts on that, but it would be one area that we want to think about.

Meyer: My actual main position [at Wharton is] in the marketing department, and we’re trying to think about how do you persuade people to buy products and undertake certain sorts of actions.

And I think that one of the real challenges that exists in the area of protective investments is the fact that there’s probably no 169

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harder sell. Because effectively, what you’re asking people to do is to invest a large amount in instruments such as insurance or protective measures that you hope they’re never going to use at all. So in some sense, it’s a very, very difficult thing, and you’re trying to convince them based on credence that somehow or another, in the long run — five years, 10 years, 50 years from now — this investment will prove beneficial in helping you avoid a loss that you might otherwise face. That’s just such a very difficult thing to do, to get people to think of those sorts of long-term benefits. So that’s one of the long-term challenges: How do you get people to shift their mindset from focusing on what’s the best use of my money today — which will almost never be to buy insurance, will almost never be to build a stronger house — and to say, no, no, no, no, you can’t think about today, you have to think about maximizing utility over a 50-year horizon.

Michel-Kerjan: Yes, all of that is right. You only rarely talk about insurance at the dinner table except to complain about it. Rarely do you say, “Oh my gosh, I got a great insurance contract.”

I think your question depends very much on whether you’re talking about individuals versus corporations, especially large corporations. I think the challenge with individuals is that, yes, there have been more floods, there have been more natural disasters around the world. But still, the likelihood of you being hit by a flood in the next 10 years, hopefully it’s not 100%, and it’s not 20 times during 10 years. So the salience of the event is important. When you move from these individuals to large, multinational corporations, what is the likelihood of that firm being hit by a serious crisis next month? Much higher.

So going back to Howard’s starting the center 30 years ago … maybe every 10, 20 years, [there was] a big event. It seems like now, every six months, you have another one. For example, what is happening in Syria and with the migrants. A year ago, it was all about Ebola.

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People almost forget about Ebola. Then you have Volkswagen cheating the system, so the nature of its crisis will be different. But every time there is a disaster, I think that makes risk management even more salient at the level of the firm, which explains why so many companies have created a position called the chief risk officer, recognizing that we cannot just look at risk in silos. We have to aggregate risks. And more and more countries or cities, at least, are starting to think the same way, saying, “As a city, as the mayor of the city, I cannot just think about floods. Unemployment is a big risk. Health is a big risk.”

Knowledge@Wharton: I have one last question. Research centers exist to do research, but also to make an impact. If you were to think about the work being done at the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, what would you say its impact has been on the practice of management so far, and what kind of impact would you hope to have in the future?

Kunreuther: Well, I think I’d come back to some of the studies that we’ve done that actually are more optimistic than we would have thought when we started 30 years ago. I’ll just use the S&P 500 study that I mentioned earlier, which is looking at how firms have behaved. I think one of the major changes that has occurred is that firms are really seeing this issue as being important on the firm side. Maybe not the consumer yet; although as Bob was saying, maybe they’re still facing the challenge of how to deal with it. But firms are really focusing on this now.

I think what we’ve heard in almost all of our interviews with chief risk officers, CEOs or high-level people in these firms, is that now we’re in a new era of catastrophes. We’ve got to be thinking about these issues. It’s an important issue for the board. It’s an important issue for us to pay attention to. And most important, we’re learning from our past experience, which is one of the decision processes that we always focus on. There is a set of biases that exist when you have a serious disaster, then you pay 171

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attention. Firms are now paying attention to it in a way that they haven’t paid attention before.

I think the challenge for the center is to take advantage of the fact that people are now thinking about these issues, to begin to suggest some policies and programs that are a lot harder to actually adopt, not only for these firms, but for countries. I think the interdependency, the global issues, are important for our work not only on climate change, but on a lot of other risks. How do we actually take some steps so that we are able to change a system that’s not just for the corporations or for the individuals, it’s for legislation, it’s for governments and the public sector? We’ve put a fair amount of attention into trying to work in the U.S. with Congress, and with other countries’ governments, to try to deal with that. The World Economic Forum and the OECD are groups that we really have an integral working relationship with and are involved with, in order to make inroads on international and global problems. That’s what we really have to do, is to try to figure out how we take advantage of where we are today to make some very important changes as we go forward.

Zero waste: An attainable goal?

Q&A with Elemental Impact Founder Holly Elmore

By Arlene Karidis | Source: http://www.wastedive.com/news/zero-waste-anattainable-goal/409441/ Around the globe, we have echoed a decades-old mantra: reduce, reuse, recycle.

For years, this meant making the effort to compost the food, recycle the bottle, or reuse the plastic bag. But through the evolution of the recycling industry, the bar has been raised to attain a higher goal: zero waste.

It is a philosophy that contends every ounce of salvageable trash — that which can still serve a purpose — can be turned into valued commodities. In embracing this philosophy, its proponents 172

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say, we can capitalize on resources while taking some of the load off our landfills.

Holly Elmore, Atlanta GA-based Elemental Impact founder and CEO, works with the industry on creating sustainable best practices. Among her work to reach zero waste, she developed Zero Waste Zones, which was acquired by the National Restaurant Association.

While the idea has its merits, one may wonder: is zero waste really achievable? If so, how do you convince a "throwaway" society of this lifestyle? And what are ways to get zero waste to make sense from a logistics and economic perspective?

Waste Dive caught up with Elmore to address these questions and more.

WASTE DIVE: Is Zero Waste attainable? And if so, how do we get there?

HOLLY ELMORE: I do think zero waste is attainable. To get to zero waste, you must recognize which materials have value. Set up a system to recycle it. And reduce ‌ If you are a corporation, begin for instance by asking yourself, are you printing more than you have to?

Then you replace.

An example: with shipments, tell companies you purchase from you want recyclable packaging. There is power in consumer demand. Once you have reduced and replaced, separate valuable material and find a local recycling option.

What is key to getting the public to buy into zero waste?

ELMORE: You need to cultivate a culture. That culture has to come from the top management down in the case of large 173

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organizations. In the community it has to start with the mayor and city council …

There should be green team leaders or sustainability leaders who have zero waste responsibilities written in their job descriptions. It should be tied to their compensation and evaluations …

There should be good signage and recycling bins. Their use and why we use them should be in newspaper articles. And community leaders should be talking about this …

The Georgia World Congress Center is the world’s largest LEED certified conference center. They were one of the nation’s pioneers in the commercial collection of food waste for composting in 2009. You can’t tell me most people are busier than them. But they make the time because this is in their culture.

Can you speak to the role of education in changing a culture?

ELMORE: Education is crucial. Charlotte, NC has an MRF that had low contamination rates, but the community spent mega time educating and rewarding residents on clean recycling. The MRF got great material. When they started accepting from other communities, who had not been educated and did not have comprehensive programs with government support, contamination increased.

What are the biggest roadblocks to obtaining zero waste?

"As long as we view it as trash it will end up in the landfill.

We must recognize it as valuable material."

ELMORE: It is that mentality that waste is trash. As long as we view it as trash it will end up in the landfill. We must recognize it as valuable material … determining what is trash and separating it once you have reduced and replaced is where challenges happen 174

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… Single-stream recycling is a big problem leading to contamination. According to the Container Recycling Institute, about 25% of material sent to MRFs ends up in landfills due to contamination. And one person or corporation can contaminate an entire single-stream load, with two main contaminants being food and glass.

How do you address this road block?

ELMORE: First know that according to US Zero Waste Business Council, you can only claim 100% zero waste if the entire value chain is zero waste, which includes suppliers, manufacturers and consumers …

It’s important to get manufacturers to understand their responsibility for packaging. Packaging should be reusable or recyclable, and labeled as recyclable with clear instructions.

Those instructions should include if items need to be separated …

If caps are a different plastic than bottles; well, tell us …Consumers can avoid contamination by removing food, and if packer trucks are crushing materials, remove glass.

What is the MRF’s role in working toward zero waste?

The MRFs "should not be there to clean, but to separate."

ELMORE: First, they should not be there to clean, but to separate. The MRF is simply the destination. Haulers, citizens, and government should take responsibility for clean material. So for MRFs to be affective, consumers [and organizations] must put only clean material into the stream … I think MRFs should fine haulers. Or reject dirty loads. The hauler would have to go to landfills and pay tipping fees.

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Can you speak of "benefit of scale" to justify investments made to reach for zero waste?

ELMORE: You need scale for zero waste efforts to make economic sense. It’s expensive to put trucks out there, so you need route density. Cluster pickup places where there are generators of material in a zone. Haulers have to fill that truck to justify overall cost of their routes. Bales of waste to be sold to end markets must be large enough to fill tractor trailers of materials sold by weight … If you travel outside your community, especially, you have to have volume.

How do you get corporations and other business entities to support zero waste goals?

ELMORE: Look at what material is generated in the community, corporations, universities, government and other organizations. If a significant amount of material is generated in the community, for instance, but you don’t have an end market, look at who would use the “commodities." And attract businesses that could capitalize on it … keep dollars in your community to build a vital local economy, create jobs and new products … and remember, it’s a team effort between businesses, government, citizens … As far as trash collectors, they have to tell municipalities, your citizens are sending contaminated stuff ... Let’s work together: the government, businesses, citizens, haulers and MRFs.

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BookScan What Your CEO Is Reading: The Case for Philanthrocapitalism; Better Negotiating Through Power Poses; Santa’s CIO

By TOM LOFTUS, WSJ

Bill Gates, philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft, participates in a session at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City, Sept. 27, 2015.

Associated Press

The case for philanthrocapitalism. Seconds after Mark Zuckerberg announced that he and wife Priscilla Chan would be donating 99% of their Facebook stock to a new nonprofit organization, a backlash brewed. Some saw the move as a tax avoidance scheme or, at best, a clever way to separate good intentions from the social network’s more realpolitik actions.

Now here’s The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki, in a backlash to the backlash. “There is a long history of this: the 177

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Rockefeller Foundation funded the research that produced a vaccine for yellow fever,” he writes.

“The Gates Foundation, since its founding, in 2000, has put billions of dollars into global health programs, and now spends more on health issues than the W.H.O.” That being said, perhaps the argument that taxing billionaires to fund social projects needs to be reconsidered. “It’s far likelier that those projects would just go underfunded,” he writes.

Five steps to better negotiating. You’re not going to convince the CEO next year to adopt your ideas of moving the entire organization to an agile, bi-modal, Spark-enabled, hybrid-cloudish stance by sending him or her emails from the data center. There are few actions CEOs and their ilk respect more than meeting them on the field of battle—i.e. the boardroom or, if lucky, an offsite resort conference room stocked with bottled water and drinkable coffee—for mano a mano negotiation.

For the CIOs looking to start the New Year off with a victory in the dark arts, Stanford Business offers ‘Five Steps to Better Negotiating.’ “Try power poses when negotiating,” Elizabeth MacBride suggests. Also, recall those times when “you felt physically attractive” and “when you had power over another person. Focus on what happened, how you felt, and what that experience was like.” Got it? Now go get ‘em Tiger…after New Years.

“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the cluster, not a vnode was stirring…” The hardest working person on Christmas Eve is Santa’s CIO, according to Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman.

“Here’s to a happy, healthy, hybrid, secure, data-driven, mobile, and prosperous 2016!” she writes in LinkedIn.

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THE BANYAN Good strategy requires people asking tough TREE questions

Art of Managing—Beware Lazy Approaches to the Hard Work of Strategy

by Art Petty Too many leaders ignore the tough questions about their organization's strategic direction, seek to answer them with platitudes or don't even have specific goals, writes Art Petty. "Whether you're sitting at the top of the food chain or operating from somewhere in the middle, it's essential to ask and push for clear, coherent answers to the hard questions," he writes “Not miscalculation, bad strategy is the active avoidance of the hard work of crafting a good strategy.” Richard Rumelt—Good Strategy/Bad Strategy

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“Our strategy is to be more profitable than our competitors.”

“Our strategy is to grow from 10,000 to 100,000 customers in the next three years.”

“Our strategy is to be the leading provider of (insert your category) to the (insert your market) by (insert your year).

“Our strategy is to grow.”

“The absence of a strategy for us is actually a strategy.”

Sadly, I’m not making these quotes up. I was present for each of these utterances from otherwise intelligent senior executives.

The statements underscore the widespread misunderstanding of what strategy is coupled with little idea how to actually generate one that’s coherent and legitimate.

Fluff statements don’t define a coherent strategy.

The absence of a strategy is…well, a strategy to flail and fail.

Growth is not a strategy.

And big, lofty goals don’t define or describe a strategy. In the meeting where the customer count went from 10,000 to 100,000, it was like a bidding war to see which executive could propose the most outlandish number.

“20,000, you’re thinking too small,” crowed one executive. “It should be 50,000.”

“50,000, we’ve got to go big or go home. It’s 100,000,” suggested the Managing Director. “Are we agreed that this is our strategy,” he asked, rhetorically as the bidding war came to an end.

One senior manager courageously suggested that the customer count didn’t define a strategy. He was verbally beaten down, run over and ground up by the numbercharged crowd.

Rumelt’s Kernel of a Strategy: Rumelt’s treatment on good strategy is both simple and elegant.

He suggests focusing on developing the kernel of a strategy.

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The Diagnosis answers very clearly, “What’s going on here?”

Getting to a clear answer to this question involves considerable work in sorting through the emotions and opinions and to focus on both internal and external realities. You’re after clear statements of the truth.

The Guiding Philosophy frames: “What are we going to do about it?” It clarifies the opportunity, amplifies the firm’s key leverage points and sets bounds the field of play. It’s this absence of a guiding philosophy that is most common and most fatal to a firm’s strategic thinking and actions. Without a clear, sound guiding philosophy, every option is on the table. The goal of strategy is to take all but the essential options for success off the table.

The Coherent Actions are those steps or initiatives (and progress measures) the firm agrees to take to bring the guiding philosophy to life. Another leading strategy thinker, George Day, describes this as: “identifying a series of integrated actions to pursue competitive advantage.” The operative word is “integrated.”

What’s not apparent (although it is implied) in his “kernel” approach is the incredible hard work—the heavy lifting of debating and deciding and selecting.It’s some of the hardest brain work you’ll ever do, and the complexity is compounded by the essential need for a group of high-powered people to move beyond ego and bias to a place that is more honest and objective. That last point, the group dynamic, is in my experience, the most difficult part of the process for a book’s worth of reasons.

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In most of our firms and even in our public matters of state, we’re letting our leaders and our executive teams off the hook on the hard work of cultivating and articulating coherent strategies.

Don’t settle for the platitudes and lofty goals and fluffstatements—they’re not strategies, they’re the result of a lazy approach to a critical topic.

Whether you’re sitting at the top of the food chain or operating from somewhere in the middle, it’s essential to ask and push for clear, coherent answers to the hard questions.

Art Petty serves senior executives and management teams as a performance coach and strategy facilitator. Art is a popular keynote speaker focusing on helping professionals and organizations learn to survive and thrive in an era of change.

Additionally, Art’s books are widely used in leadership development programs. To learn more or discuss a challenge, contact Art.

10 Things We Know About People Analytics A growing number of organizations are recognizing the importance of defining the discipline of people analytics and determining what business problems it can help address.

People analytics, a business intelligence-based approach to assessing and managing talent, presents a groundbreaking opportunity for HR organizations. People analytics is in its early days, but following are 10 lessons we’ve already gleaned about this burgeoning discipline.

1. People analytics is even more important than we thought.

Deloitte’s Human Capital Trends 2015 reportshows that 87 percent of business leaders are highly concerned about retention and engagement, 86 percent about leadership, and 85 percent about current workforce skills. Despite the vast number of engagement surveys in businesses, Glassdoor ratings for the average company are 3.1 out of 5, with a nearly perfect bell curve distribution. Companies desperately need data to figure 182

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out what makes people join and stay with the organization, who is most likely to be successful, and what can be done to build more leadership, customer service, and innovation capabilities— all of which can be directly informed by great people analytics.

2. People analytics will grow exponentially, but we are in the early days. Our research indicates that the maturity of people analytics in HR has barely budged in the last year. Does that mean the market is stalled? No, rather the opposite: Many business trends grow exponentially, and I expect the people analytics market to start doubling at a larger and larger increment each year until it is a standard part of HR operations within 10 years.

3. Most companies still can’t really define people analytics.

Despite many great articles and references to the book “Moneyball,” many HR executives and leaders are still a little confused about people analytics. Some think it is about computing retention rates or measuring the ROI of training or other HR programs. Our research shows that it’s much more than that: People analytics brings together a company’s employee-related data to solve specific business problems in such areas as sales productivity, retention, fraud, and customer satisfaction.

4. Data management remains the biggest barrier.

Bersin by Deloitte’s High-Impact Talent Analytics research shows that more than 80 percent of companies are dealing with reporting challenges. Many large companies are dealing with data integration problems, unable to readily determine how many salaried and contract employees they have at a given time. At a recent people analytics conference in San Francisco, many leading Silicon Valley companies, large financial institutions, manufacturers, and others agreed that their HR data was “bad,” which can mean inconsistent, incorrect, out 183

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of date, and located in many places. Most agreed that there is a lot of “technical debt” to clean up in order to really scale their people analytics operations.

5. Modeling is valuable, but implementing models is key.

We all love great models that predict retention, guide compensation decisions for high performers, and the like. These models are incredibly valuable, but the hardest part of people analytics is implementing the changes recommended by the models, which calls for people analytics to be accompanied by sound change management practices. I recently spoke with a large company that discovered it was underpaying its high performers and overpaying its midlevel performers. It took several years to teach managers (and the organization itself) that it’s OK to give somebody a huge raise for high performance and a middling raise for fair performance.

6. Tools and platforms are here, but the market has yet to shake out.

As with many emerging markets, there are dozens of new tools, technologies, and platforms available to help with the analysis of people data. Almost every major ERP software company is investing in people analytics; at the same time, there are dozens of smaller companies focusing on text analytics, retention analytics, sentiment analysis, and even analysis of employees’ physical locations, heart rates, and exercise patterns. As the market matures, these smaller companies will either grow quickly or be bought.

7. Geeks will rule this world, but they cannot do it alone.

While we need data scientists and statisticians to analyze and build models, people analytics is multidisciplinary. In addition to core IT people, successful teams include process gurus, organizational development experts, industrial and organizational psychologists, and visual designers, among others. This team 184

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can become a new Center of Excellence in HR—one that must report to the chief human resources officer, not be buried in the HR technology team.

8. We will have to deal with many new types of data, and new ways of analyzing it.

The days of exclusively analyzing payroll, HR management systems, and time and attendance data are over. We have to look at employee engagement survey data, email history data, employee badge and sociometric data, and all of the information that will come from wearable devices. Remember: Your employees are likely walking around with video cameras and GPS devices all day, so much of the data we will look at over time will be based on location, time, and visuals.

9. Security and anonymity will become your middle name.

Thanks in part to recent credit card and security breaches, employees and legal departments are very nervous about how HR collects and uses data. HR departments and people analytics teams would be well-served to take a crash course in data security, privacy, and identity protection.

10. We are all learning and need to work together.

While much of people analytics currently is (and will likely become) a source of proprietary competitive advantage, we should share what we are learning now so we can move this industry past the “hobby phase” to true industrial scale. It’s not the findings that make companies practicing people analytics unique, but what you do with them.

—by Josh Bersin, principal and founder, Bersin by Deloitte

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Petrotech Activities: Sl No

Date

Name of the Event

Venue

1.

4th-6th February 2016

11th Program on “Latest Trends in Petroleum Exploration” in association with KDMIPE-ONGC

Dehradun

2.

23th-25th February 2016

4th Petrotech - Petronet LNG Program

New Delhi

3.

17th-18th March 2016

8th National Workshop on Health, Safety & Environment

Jaipur

Theme : “HSE Operational Integrity – Closing the Safety Loop” 4.

10th – 11th March 2016

8th Seminar on “Hydrocarbon Industry Growth Prospects and Challenges in North-East” in collaboration with NRL

Assam

5.

30th March 2016

Annual Convention of Petrotech Chapters

New Delhi

6.

25th-29th April 2016

“Leadership Competencies for Energy Sector” in association with IIM-A

IIM-Ahmedabad

7.

May 2016

R&D Conclave

8.

June 2016

Summer School on “Petroleum Refining and Petrochemicals” in association with IOCL-R&D and IiPM

IiPM, Gurgoan

9.

July 2016

Industry Educational Tour to University of Alberta Canada / India Canada Energy Forum in association with University of Alberta

Canada

10.

July 2016

Program on “Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas Sector: India 2016”

New Delhi

11.

August 2016

Workshop on “Human Capital Analytics” with SHRM

New Delhi

12.

September 2016

Program on “Drilling Technology” in association

Dehradun

With ONGC, Dehradun 13.

October 2016

Program on “HR Challenges in Oil & Gas Industry in India”

New Delhi

14.

November 2016

Seminar on “Sustainable Development” in association with ONGC

New Delhi

15.

December 2016

PETROTECH-2016

New Delhi

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You Said It Dear Mr Anand Kumar, Let me first wish Petrotech Society and the veterans a very happy ,Healthy and Prosperous New Year.Every year on the New year eve ,I share my thoughts for the new years with my professional friends.I am this time including Petrotech Veterans on my mailing list. Hope this message will give some food for thought to my veteran colleagues The New Year has already taken possession of the clock yesterday, leaving memories of Year 2015 behind. Each year on the same day, I pen down my thoughts with lot of optimism for the New Year. We resolve to achieve many goals in the new year, some of these are achieved, some are forgotten and some remain unfulfilled inspite of our best efforts. The one which are full filled, give us inspiration and the one which remain unfulfilled give us courage to strive harder.

Looking back in the year 2015, India did have reasonable GDP growth this year, mainly due to dramatic drop in crude oil prices but unfortunately the corporate performance and the industrial growth has been the cause of major worry. Growth in most of the industrial sectors like Power, mining & metals and even Oil & Gas was not as expected.

Equipment manufacturing sector operated much below their capacity because of decreased demand which not only escalated the price war but also encouraged cartelization. Service sector had a major hit because of dearth of projects. In fact the picture was gloomier than what I thought and presented in my last New Year-2015 message, thanks to the Policy makers and so called environmentalists.

Year 2015 has seen major upheaval. Crude price has piercing the $40 per barrel threshold this year and by the time I press the button to send this 187

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mail, it is expected to fall below $37. Historically, falling oil prices has been a cause of financial stress for oil producing companies globally but in countries like India where majority of crude is imported, this has provided a general boost to the economy. This is largely what is happening today in India.

One thing which interests all of us at this point of time is ’which way the Indian economy going to move in the coming year’. In my opinion, the coming year is going to be a very challenging for the Indian industry mainly due to internal politics, external uncertainties like volatile crude oil price and economic data from china (which may surprise the industry as a whole). Industry is expected to respond differently and to different degree to this dynamics. Even though, a boost to environmental technologies after Paris talks and push to Renewable power generation by Indian Government is a welcome sign but all of us who are closely associated with or are part of the Indian industry, should get ready for a rollercoaster ride this new year. Work smarter will only help in overcoming a potential storm and help industry to overcome this volatility.

While Oil producing companies in India should quickly review marginal and discretionary investments and aim their efforts to improve their performance on the operational, supply chain, and cost fronts to achieve reductions in their production cost in the coming year, Indian Refining and petrochemicals companies need to act fast to develop new operating and expansion strategies. Indian service companiesshould work to offer innovative value added proposals to their clients for collaborative cost saving.

It is still remained to be seen whether and, if so, for how long, this current crisis and its resulting financial “endurance challenge” persist. It 188

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is presumed that situation will be somewhat clear only after the announcement of Fiscal year 2016-17 budget and conditions for industry will start positive signs in the later part of 2016.In my opinion the industry must respond with long term planning considering little mature Indian political situation and crude oil price levels closer to those prevailed through mid-2014.

So, as the night- bells ring for the last time this year, I wish that let this year signify a year of courage & believes for you and prove to be a year of realization of your dreams,. Let us plan achieve what we could not achieve in year 2015 and work toward achieving what we aspire to achieve in the new year. May this mantra “Think smart, Think beyond, Think Innovative� lead our way to success this New year.

My wife joins me to wish you and your family a very happy, healthy and successful year ahead.

While complementing for regularly bring out excellent and very useful 'PetroScan', I also Wish also Petrotech society a very...very...very Eventful Year 2016 Have a great Year ahead, With warm Regards Peush Mahajan

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