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https://www.amm.com/Article/3940394/Steel/Steel-ferro-alloys-have-great-prospects-in-H2.html

Vanadium, silico-manganese demand underpinned
Rebar, as the top performer amid grand infrastructure spending plans in China, will benefit several ferro-alloys, especially vanadium, speakers told audience members at the webinar.

“With steel consumption likely to stabilize this year, supported by spending in infrastructure steels, we are going to see rebar consumption increase… Our ferro-alloys analysts believe there will be increased intensity of use in vanadium, such as in rebar,” Ramsay said.

Fastmarkets price analyst Amy Lv seconded Ramsay, pointing out one major driver behind strength in the Chinese vanadium market in the first half of this year was infrastructure spending stimulus amid expectations of inspections of the implementation of the latest rebar policy.

The rebar policy, which was first introduced in November 2018, requires steel mills to utilize greater volumes of vanadium alloys to meet new requirement on rebar strength.

Fastmarkets’ assessment for ferro-vanadium 78% V min, fob China recovered in late April and reached a year-to-date peak of $30-31.50 per kg on June 11. The price retreated to $29-30 per kg on July 2.

Lv also pointed out vanadium prices are lower compared with niobium, a substitution alloy in rebar production, causing some mills which previously adopted niobium to switch back to vanadium. This has been partially reflected in the sharp fall of niobium imports in March and April.

Citic Metal, the exclusive sales agent in China for ferro-niobium from Companhia Brasileira de Metalurgia e Mineração, has maintained its quarterly price for the July-September period at 205,000-225,000 yuan ($29,000-31,830) per tonne. It is equivalent to around $44.70-48.90 per kg, according to Fastmarkets’ calculations. Fastmarkets does not currently assess prices for ferro-niobium.

China imported around 11,499 tonnes of ferro-niobium in the first five months of this year, down by 49.2% from 22,619 tonnes over the corresponding period in 2019, according to China Customs data.

In addition, the decent margins in rebar give steel mills more spending power to stock alloys one month ahead, Ramsay noted.

Rebar prices in China have been rising amid intermittent fluctuations since early April. Fastmarkets’ assessment for steel reinforcing bar (rebar) domestic, ex-whs Eastern China climbed up to 3,630-3,660 yuan per tonne on June 8, the highest level since the Chinese New Year holiday (January 24-February 2). The price dipped slightly to 3,510-3,540 yuan per tonne on July 3.

“When the margin is a problem, maybe steel mills decline to use vanadium. In the current environment, the margin is slightly better… and vanadium is cheap, so it is a fantastic time to use vanadium,” Ramsay said.

The new infrastructure spending environment will lead to a 2-6% yearly growth in vanadium consumption in 2020, according to Ra

https://reliefweb.int/report/world/un-water-chair-after-pandemic-we-must-build-hope-through-water-and-sanitation

The coronavirus has stopped the world in its tracks and while the pandemic threatens rich and poor alike, our ability to protect ourselves is far from equal. While we wait for the development of a vaccine or effective medication, good hygiene is part of our best defence. But how do you clean your hands, and keep your family safe, without a reliable water supply or a decent toilet, not to mention access to soap or sanitizer?

As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, the consequences of chronic underinvestment in water and sanitation services for billions of people are becoming abundantly clear. Right now, the global focus is on helping families to survive this disease outbreak. But even as we get on top of the pandemic and save as many lives as possible, we need to build resilience for the future. Without action, we remain dangerously vulnerable to a range of growing threats:

Global demand for water is rocketing, while many water sources are becoming more polluted.
Agriculture is getting thirstier, as is industry, manufacturing and energy generation.
Climate change is making water scarcer and more unpredictable, wreaking havoc and displacing millions of people.
The United Nations Secretary-General has called for a comprehensive multilateral response amounting to a double-digit percentage of global gross domestic product (GDP). This is intended to address the financial shock of the recession.

But how can we use that investment to build the more inclusive and sustainable future we want and need? The economic case for investments in drinking water, sanitation and hygiene services is clear. In urban areas, every US dollar (USD) invested in basic sanitation returns USD 2.5 in saved medical costs and increased productivity. For drinking water, the average return is USD 3.0.

However, these investments must go beyond access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. Benefits are maximized only if investments are part of longer-term plans to ensure the sustainable management of water resources. The OECD calculates around USD 6.7 trillion is needed in global financing for water infrastructure.

Without strong water and sanitation systems and the integrated management of water resources we cannot make progress on health, education, food, energy, climate change and peace.

COVID-19 makes us acutely aware of our shared vulnerability and common destiny. Yet the extraordinary global disruption caused by the pandemic offers a unique opportunity, and a new hope, to “build back better”. With a shift in priorities, we can get the world on track to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, including SDG 6 – water and sanitation for all.

This is why the United Nations system is setting up a global framework to accelerate progress on SDG 6.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1232858

In the United Kingdom, a group of researchers on Thursday launched a cross-country epidemiology surveillance program, dubbed N-WESP network, in what will become one of the biggest international undertakings looking into wastewater surveillance for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

They will be trying to develop models that would correlate viral RNA, the genetic material of the coronavirus, found in wastewater with the actual number of COVID-19 cases in the community that produced that wastewater in the first place.
Once the science matures, which will hopefully be on the order of a few months, we will be helping to provide the methods that will be used to generate the data needed to inform decisions on lockdown,” said Andrew Singer, the project’s chief researcher and senior scientist at the U.K. Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

The U.K. suffered the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Europe with more than 43,900 deaths and 313,000 cases, forcing millions of people into lockdown.

And British health authorities have been testing thousands of people every day to keep track of the virus’ spread as its economy reopens and lockdown restrictions are lifted. However, it’s usually people with symptoms or known exposure to confirmed cases that are screened. It is these asymptomatic people with no symptoms, who can still spread the virus, who are often missed.
That’s where researchers hope sewage testing can come in, using virus genetic material to conclusively quantify how many people in the population are shedding the virus at any given point in time. While it can’t identify which specific individuals have the virus, it gives a more immediate snapshot of the epidemiological situation in a community based on its wastewater profile.
It’s a potentially low cost, anonymous and immediate mechanism for predicting local outbreaks, said Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern, a professor of chemistry with the University of Bath, one of the researchers involved in the project.

“Wastewater can be really useful in understanding where the virus is spreading even if we don’t necessarily see increased numbers of people in the hospitals, because this happens later and not everyone gets symptoms, so we can provide a truly comprehensive picture of community wide infection,” she added.

The team will probe sewage in cities across England, Wales and Scotland and look at individual nodes in their wastewater systems that feed different parts of the city. That way, health officials can identify any possible hot spots within the confines of that city and move in with targeted restrictions in specific neighborhoods.

“The cost-benefit is, if you catch it early, you don’t lose an entire city and therefore furlough an entire city,” Singer said.

“One of the very few positive things that could come out of COVID-19 is that we recognize that there is data within our wastewater, and that data can b

https://www.amm.com/Article/3939757/Nonferrous/RESEARCH-Key-takeaways-from-the-latest-Ferro-alloys-Market-Tracker.html

In previous reports, we noted that upside risks to our forecasts existed. These were based on Chinese steel production, and in turn alloy consumption, outperforming our expectations. Chinese crude steel production is rising each month in a year-on-year comparison, prompting our revised view that Chinese alloy consumption will surprise to the upside in 2020. This is particularly true for alloys used in the reinforcing bar sector, with stimulus spending by the Chinese government being concentrated on investment in infrastructure.
Chinese steel output rose year on year in May, with much of the gain coming from increased rebar production. In our analysis of Chinese infrastructure spending plans, and their effect on rebar consumption, we have upwardly revised our forecasts for consumption of both vanadium and silico-manganese within China for 2020.
Given the sharp contrast between demand from steelmakers in China versus demand for alloys from steelmakers in Europe and the United States, Chinese alloy prices will generally outperform markets elsewhere in the near term.
Average US steel capacity utilization rates were around 54% in June, while the steel sector in Europe was operating at anywhere between 30% and 60%. Steelmakers in Germany, Spain, Italy, France and the United Kingdom intend to shut for two or three weeks in July and August because demand for steel products is so weak. With more impending shutdowns, feedstock deals for the second quarter were being stretched into July-September, with any shortfall to be supplemented from the spot market. Suppliers were expected to compete aggressively for any spot market demand, with further price declines likely as a result.
The improvement in chrome ore and ferro-chrome prices seen during the past couple of months appears to have been temporary, with a downward correction now likely. Both South African and Turkish ore prices have retreated from their early June peaks, with ferro-chrome prices largely stable. Ferro-chrome smelters are unable to pass on higher costs due to market weakness in the downstream stainless steel sector and an abundance of stocks, leading to compressed margins. Our outlook is for stable to lower chrome pricing in the near term.

https://www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/low-carbon-energy/renewables/2020/solar-supply-chains-need-to-be-localised

Solar supply chains need to be localised
The pandemic has demonstrated the downside of relying on one global centre of production and long-distance supply chains

The disruption to global solar supply chains caused by Covid-19 highlights that new, local alternatives are needed for the industry to ensure that solar remains a reliable source of power.

Vanadium

The IEA says the pandemic is hurting but not halting global growth in solar power capacity. Additions are forecast to decline from 109GW in 2019 to about 90GW in 2020, before a partial rebound in 2021.

According to a paper from Ken Koyama, managing director at thinktank the Institute of Energy Economics in Tokyo, renewable energy after Covid-19 will take on greater importance as a means of economic reconstruction. Yet, he notes, recession and lower electricity consumption will hurt the profitability of renewable energy investment, which also faces competition from lower fossil fuel prices.

The chief problem with solar power, Hanke says, is finding ways to store it. The best batteries for doing so, he says, use vanadium. The biggest such batteries are found in Dalian province in China. “If you are going solar, China is playing the fiddle.”

The AMG solution is based on recycling vanadium from spent oil refinery catalysts. The company’s vanadium subsidiary is the world’s largest recycler of these catalysts. The approach avoids disposing of the catalysts by burying them, which is itself a source of environmental hazards, Hanke says.

The company is doubling its capacity in Ohio with a new plant at Zanesville being added to the existing facility at Cambridge. The combined capacity, Hanke says, will be “the equivalent of the world’s largest vanadium mine.”

AMG says that its process has the industry’s lowest air, water and solid waste emissions, as well as the highest industry conversion to saleable products ratio. The Zanesville plant is scheduled for completion in 2021.

The company stated in May that its major expansion projects in vanadium and lithium are continuing on schedule despite Covid-19. Hanke adds that AMG plans to expand its recycling technology to new geographies.

Governments, Shrestha notes, were attempting to localise solar supply chains even before the pandemic. The need to do so has been underlined, he says, particularly in countries with ambitious solar targets such as India and South Korea. Government support, he argues, will be needed to make local solar supply chains a reality.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/06/30/uk-developer-reveals-1-gw-subsidy-free-solar-and-storage-pipeline/

With U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson today launching what he claims is a “positively Rooseveltian” £5 billion (€5.47 billion) infrastructure plan which appears light on green commitments, English solar developer Enso Energy has also announced ambitious plans – to develop 1 GW of subsidy-free solar generation capacity plus battery storage systems.

The U.K. government – like many of its global peers hemorrhaging cash to finance emergency Covid-19 economic assistance programs – might have benefited from returns from the ambitious solar and energy storage program outlined by Enso, given the developer is bringing the planned portfolio to life through a joint venture with environmental financier the Green Investment Group. That entity started life in 2012 as the U.K. national Green Investment Bank under a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government but was sold off to Australian investment giant Macquarie in April 2017, by Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May.

Regardless of the political background, the announcement by Gloucestershire-based Enso is an endorsement of power purchase agreement (PPA)-backed, unsubsidized solar in the U.K.

Projects

A statement issued by Enso this morning gave details of plans for a 1 GW generation portfolio of solar projects across England and Wales which have secured grid connections and which have entered a planning process which, in the age of Covid-19, includes virtual town hall consultation events as well as information mail-outs.

The Enso statement said “many” of the projects in the pipeline would feature tracker and bifacial technology to reduce their land footprint. The seven solar projects listed on the Enso website, which add up to less than 350 MW of generation capacity, are all understood to form part of the 1 GW plan but only one named project – in South Oxfordshire – mentions trackers and only one, at Larks Green, South Gloucestershire, states bifacial panels will be used.

All the projects listed on the Enso site mention battery storage elements, although no indication of storage capacities is given.

https://m.engineeringnews.co.za/article/covid-19-brings-about-a-wider-scope-of-opportunity-for-energy-water-waste-sectors-2020-06-26

Energy programme manager Jack Radmore believes a strong and balanced energy sector can address many of the problems South Africa faces, including rising electricity prices, which are due to rise by between 9% and 15% this year, and power supply reliability.

At the same time that State-owned power utility Eskom has announced that load-shedding may be implemented again soon, government has started the push toward utility-scale procurement of renewable energy.

“We have seen the National Energy Regulator of South Africa focusing on the immediate procurement of emergency power and rolling out utility-scale programmes to procure again by the end of the year,” says Radmore.

He explains that local-level resilience in a post-Covid-19 future can come from municipalities buying power directly from independent power producers. There has been a lot of push for this, which will do away with municipalities going through Eskom only.

The City of Cape Town has appeared in court to argue for this right and Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe has published, for public comment, regulations to allow municipalities to buy their own power.

Radmore says should this realise, it presents opportunities for investors with regard to the design of 1 MW projects that can be built fairly quickly.

“Manufacturing in the energy space probably presents the biggest post-Covid-19 recovery opportunity. As we see more embedded generation and renewable energy generation in general, there is opportunity for local manufacturing of towers, turbines and even electric vehicles.”

He also mentions that energy storage will be a game changer in South Africa’s energy transition as a form of resilience against load-shedding, which is expected to continue for the next four to five years.

Herein lies opportunities for manufacturing batteries and developing a battery value chain, as the technologies become more price competitive every year.

Additionally, in the push for circularity and resilience, the beneficiation of batteries and solar panels will come to the fore as an opportunity, especially since South African is banning more and more products from ending up in landfill. This will effect a change both in consumers and manufacturers’ behaviour

In terms of transport, working from home may become the new normal and this has a marked impact on how people engage with mobility. This, Radmore notes, has motivated GreenCape to start looking at how people will be moving around and what opportunities this presents.

Flu virus with 'pandemic potential' found in China https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53218704

A new strain of flu which has the potential to become pandemic has been identified in China by scientists.
It emerged recently and is carried by pigs, but can infect humans, they say.
The researchers are concerned that it could mutate further so that it can spread easily from person to person, and trigger a global outbreak.
They say it has "all the hallmarks" of being highly adapted to infect humans - and needs close monitoring.
As it's new, people could have little or no immunity to the virus.
Pandemic threat
A bad new strain of influenza is among the top disease threats that experts are watching for, even as the world attempts to bring to an end the current coronavirus pandemic.
The last pandemic flu the world encountered - the swine flu outbreak of 2009 that began in Mexico - was less deadly than initially feared, largely because many older people had some immunity to it, probably because of its similarity to other flu viruses that had circulated years before.

That virus, called A/H1N1pdm09, is now covered by the annual flu vaccine to make sure people are protected.
The new flu strain that has been identified in China is similar to 2009 swine flu, but with some new changes.
So far, it hasn't posed a big threat, but Prof Kin-Chow Chang and colleagues who have been studying it, say it is one to keep an eye on.
The virus, which the researchers call G4 EA H1N1, can grow and multiply in the cells that line the human airways.
They found evidence of recent infection starting in people who worked in abattoirs and the swine industry in China.
Current flu vaccines do not appear to protect against it, although they could be adapted to do so if needed.
Prof Kin-Chow Chang, who works at Nottingham University in the UK, told the BBC: "Right now we are distracted with coronavirus and rightly so. But we must not lose sight of potentially dangerous new viruses."
While this new virus is not an immediate problem, he says: "We should not ignore it".
The scientists write in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that measures to control the virus in pigs and closely monitor working populations should be swiftly implemented.
Prof James Wood, Head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Cambridge, said the work "comes as a salutary reminder" that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of pathogens, and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses.

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