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https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.businesslive.co.za/amp/bd/opinion/columnists/2019-12-16-busi-mavuso-capability-outside-eskom-for-power-generation-is-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel/

Regarding longer-term plans to boost generating capacity in time frames as long as 18 months, the renewables sector has historically shown it can procure new plant quickly and on budget. A solar plant can be constructed in 12-18 months, while wind plants can be operational in 18-24 months.

With the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) published and indicating a clear allocation for additional renewable energy within that time frame, all that is required is for mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe to make a determination.

Round five of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement (REIPPP) programme could be launched immediately, looking to close by the middle of 2020 and have plants under construction from that point that will come on to the grid through the end of 2021 into 2022.

https://www.energy-storage.news/news/podcast-big-energys-green-drive-a-long-duration-storage-bonanza-and-ge2019

https://business.mb.com.ph/2019/12/11/dti-scored-for-flip-flopping-policy-on-steelmaking-technology/

https://thewest.com.au/business/public-companies/all-minerals-now-spoken-for-at-tng-multi-metals-play-c-602760

TNG Ltd has made the final leap towards securing buyers for 100% of its forecasted production from its flagship Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the Northern Territory.

The ASX-listed company said this week it had signed the final off-take term sheet for the iron that will be produced at Mt Peake with Indian mining conglomerate, Vimson Group committing to 100% of the iron production offtake.

This last hurdle comes after the company announced yesterday that it had also secured offtake agreements for 100% of its vanadium pentoxide products in addition to the existing offtake agreements already in place for 100% of its titanium dioxide pigment.

Vimson will provide full distribution services, including freight financing, technical support, logistics, marketing and sales for the iron product out of Mt Peake.

TNG’s Managing Director and CEO, Mr Paul Burton, said: “Coming hard on the heels of our recent agreement with Gunvor (Singapore), the signing of this Binding Term Sheet means that the forecast Mount Peake production is now fully under contract, strongly supporting a move into the financing and execution phase.”

“Achieving this outcome in the current challenging global market environment is a solid achievement by our team and is testament to the project’s quality, scale and robustness.”

Gunvor is a major global commodity trader and will offtake 40% of the vanadium pentoxide products from Mount Peake with the remaining 60% spoken for by South Korea’s Woojin Metals.

Swiss global specialty chemical distributor DKSH will offtake all of the titanium dioxide products.

Located 235 kilometres north of Alice Springs, the world-class Mount Peake deposit has an ore reserve of 41.1 million tonnes grading 0.42% vanadium pentoxide, 7.99% titanium dioxide and 28% iron.

TNG is planning to churn out about 100,000 tonnes per annum of titanium dioxide pigment, 6,000 tonnes per annum of vanadium pentoxide and 500,000 tonnes per annum of iron oxide over an “initial” 37-year mine life.

Ore from the project will be processed in Darwin using the company’s proprietary “TIVAN” process, a method for treating ore without the need for expensive, energy-intensive roasting.

To-date it has been used successfully to produce a 99% purity vanadium pentoxide, a high-grade titanium dioxide feedstock grading about 80% titanium dioxide and a 99.9% pure iron oxide product.

The optimised mine plan is estimated to deliver a life-of-mine net cash flow of $12.2 billion, a massive pre-tax net present value of $2.8 billion and a pre-tax IRR of 33%.

https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/developing-loadshedding-at-stage-2-grid-remains-stable-and-wont-collapse-eskom-20191211

15:51ShareIcon
Ramaphosa says renewable energy has added extra capacity to the grid.

Some in the private sector have put forward offers to self-generate. He says these proposals will be discussed at a Cabinet meeting on Friday.

https://phys.org/news/2019-12-scientists-plastics-chemicals-sunlight.html

Chemists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have discovered a method that could turn plastic waste into valuable chemicals by using sunlight.

In lab experiments, the research team mixed plastics with their catalyst in a solvent, which allows the solution to harness light energy and convert the dissolved plastics into formic acid—a chemical used in fuel cells to produce electricity.

Reporting their work in Advanced Science, the team led by NTU Assistant Professor Soo Han Sen from the School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences made their catalyst from the affordable, biocompatible metal vanadium, commonly used in steel alloys for vehicles and aluminum alloys for aircraft.

When the vanadium-based catalyst was dissolved in a solution containing a non-biodegradable consumer plastic like polyethylene and exposed to artificial sunlight, it broke down the carbon-carbon bonds within the plastic in six days.

This process turned the polyethylene into formic acid, a naturally occurring preservative and antibacterial agent, which can also be used for energy generation by power plants and in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

"We aimed to develop sustainable and cost-effective methods to harness sunlight to manufacture fuels and other chemical products," said Asst Prof Soo. "This new chemical treatment is the first reported process that can completely break down a non-biodegradable plastic such as polyethylene using visible light and a catalyst that does not contain heavy metals."

In Singapore, most plastic waste is incinerated, producing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, and the leftover mass-burn ash—is transported to the Semakau landfill, which is estimated to run out of space by 2035.

Developing innovative zero-waste solutions, such as this environmentally friendly catalyst to turn waste into resources, is part of the NTU Smart Campus vision to develop a sustainable future.

Using energy from the sun to convert chemicals

The vanadium-based catalyst, which is supported by organic groups and typically abbreviated as LV(O), uses light energy to drive a chemical reaction and is known as a photocatalyst.

Photocatalysts enable chemical reactions to be powered by sunlight, unlike most reactions performed in the industry that require heat, usually generated through the burning of fossil fuels.

Other advantages of the new photocatalyst are that it is low cost, abundant, and environmentally friendly, unlike common catalysts made from expensive or toxic metals such as platinum, palladium or ruthenium.

The new vanadium-based photocatalyst developed by the NTU research team was specially designed to break these bonds, and does so by latching onto a nearby chemical group known as an alcohol group and using energy absorbed from sunlight to unravel the molecule like a zipper.

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-google-microsoft-green-clouds-and-hyperscale-data-centers/#

Data is the new oil” may have outlasted its usefulness as a metaphor, but one aspect still rings true: Both industries have a serious environmental footprint. According to the Department of Energy, data centers account for about 2 percent of all electricity use in the US.

That means the cloud—which powers every Netflix binge, PUBG match, and email—has a lining made not of silver, but of carbon. For individuals, the bits in question don’t amount to much. The digital footprints of businesses, however, can be large enough to ding the environment. For them, finding the greenest way to store their data would help cut down on their emissions. But how does a high-minded plutocrat go about that? The answers are not always obvious.

The top three cloud providers—Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure—account for approximately two-thirds of all rentable computing services, so WIRED has compiled a guide to help you understand how they decarbonize your data.

https://www.politico.eu/article/politico-pro-sustainability-insights-circular-batteries-boost-chemicals-leaks-cop-update/

EUROPEAN BATTERY SECTOR GETS BOOST TO GO CIRCULAR: The European Commission's competition authority today approved plans to funnel billions of euros of public cash into a multi-country battery project. The plan builds on a Franco-German initiative to promote battery cell production within the EU, and broadens it into a bloc-wide initiative covering everything from raw materials needed in manufacturing to cell production and recycling. The demand for batteries is expected to grow “very rapidly” in the coming years due to the bloc’s transition from combustion to electric engines.

Companies involved in the battery project include chemical multinationals BASF and Solvay, and recycling group Umicore.

Industry perspective: The head of the European metals industry, Mikael Steffas, told Eline earlier this year that the Continent needs to open more mines if Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to advance the green transition. Non-ferrous metals like aluminum, copper, brass, gold, nickel, silver, tin, lead and zinc are crucial to the technologies needed to decarbonize energy and transport. The EU gets about a fifth of such materials from its own mines.

https://www.econotimes.com/Dr-Stone-episode-22-air-date-spoilers-Senku-Chrome-and-Magma-look-for-the-The-Treasure-in-the-caves-1569344

https://www.econotimes.com/Dr-Stone-chapter-23-Senku-acquired-tungsten-and-finally-builds-a-cellphone-in-The-Wave-of-Science-1569795

Certainly do Alpha.
Time is money.
Disgruntled share holders will also start asking the question "well what are you going to do about it.............. ?"
The lights are definitely not going off for Fortune and the Bushveld steam train.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.timeslive.co.za/amp/news/south-africa/2019-12-09-sa-mines-shut-operations-because-of-eskom/

SA's mining companies shut their underground mining operations and processing plants on Monday night because of unprecedented power cuts by monopoly electricity supplier Eskom.

Related to an RNS released this morning from another AIM company.
Written by the CEO.

"Someone pointed out rightly, I believe, that no single negative poster on a bulletin board can drive a share price lower. Bad management, market sentiment, lack of communication to shareholders and ultimately sellers drive a share price lower.

If you don't believe your own research or existing shareholders and management are not prepared to put their own money on the line, then you should not be invested."

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/12/06/blackrock-aims-a-2-5-billion-fund-at-commercial-and-industrial-solar-wind-and-battery-storage/

The good news is that the world’s largest fund manager, BlackRock, just closed $1 billion of a record $2.5 billion fund dedicated to solar, wind, and energy storage projects.

BlackRock’s Global Renewable Power III fund has commitments from over 35 institutional investors in North America, Europe and Asia and “reflects strong investor demand for renewable power assets,” according to a release.

BlackRock already manages one of the world’s largest renewable power portfolios with $5.5 billion in assets under management and investments in more than 250 wind and solar projects since 2011.

David Giordano, Global Head of BlackRock Renewable Power, said, “As global power generation shifts from two-thirds fossil fuels to two-thirds renewables over the next few decades, renewables are increasingly becoming a standalone allocation for investors and one of the most active sectors in infrastructure.”

When quizzed by PV-Tech, a spokesperson for BlackRock said that it would target commercial and industrial solar projects, a good fit with its recent investments in CleanCapital and Distributed Solar Development.

The bad news

The bad news is that the $2.5 billion fund is a tiny fraction of BlackRock’s $6.96 trillion balance sheet and small change compared to BlackRock’s $17.5 billion (and growing) investment in coal.

According to The Global Coal Exit List, “BlackRock is not only the largest investor in companies developing new coal plants, it is also the largest shareholder in oil, gas, and thermal coal reserves.”

Financial Times quotes Christopher Hohn, founder of the TCI hedge fund, as saying, “Major asset managers such as BlackRock have been shown to be full of greenwash.“ FT adds that BlackRock “continues to pour money into sectors such as fossil fuels through its mainstream investment products — dominated by passive funds that track indices.”

Impactalpha expands on that: “As a manager of mostly ‘passive’ portfolios pegged to indexes, BlackRock has been loath to divest from fossil fuels and other environmentally destructive industries and only rarely bucks management on shareholder resolutions.”

But other large funds are changing their ways: Japan’s $1.6 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund is potentially shifting up to $50 billion of its fund to add more careful review of the “negative externalities” created by firms in its portfolio.

Gillian Tett of FT writes that BlackRock has begun “implementing a comprehensive internal analysis of all its operations in relation to climate change, covering both active and passive funds.” She expects “more pressure on corporate management for climate-risk disclosure and other environmental, social and governance issues.”

https://news.metal.com/newscontent/101002141/china-tin-production-dropped-246-in-nov/

SHANGHAI, Dec 6 (SMM) – China’s production of refined tin dropped 24.6% from a month ago to 7,520 mt in November, showed SMM data, as Yunnan Tin, the world’s largest producer of such material, remained shuttered for equipment overhaul.

Brief maintenance at some smelters and the closure of some smelters in regions like Yunnan and Jiangxi also contributed to the sharp decline in overall tin production last month.

For the first 11 months of 2019, production of refined tin in China stood at 129,647 mt, down 13,579 mt, or 9.48% from the same period a year earlier.

Notably, operating rates of Chinese tin smelters slipped to the lowest in nearly four years at 31.3% last month, according to SMM data.

The resumption of Yunnan Tin is expected to lift production of refined tin to 10,000 mt this month, after three consecutive months of declines, even as some smelters will close for the impending Chinese New Year.

https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/scottishpower-lifts-lid-on-major-solar-wind-battery-storage-hybrid-strategy-for-uk-and-ireland

ScottishPower has unveiled a new hybrid power strategy for the UK and Ireland, combining solar and battery storage with wind on both existing and new sites.

The new strategy comes amidst the energy giant’s first foray into solar PV, and will see ScottishPower look to deploy more than one clean energy technology on the “vast majority” of future developments in the UK and Ireland.

In addition, the utility is looking to revisit existing generators and retrofit additional technologies. Planning applications have been submitted to add solar to windfarms at Carland Cross in Cornwall, Coal Clough in Lancashire and Coldham in Cambridgeshire, with further applications to add solar to wind farms in Scotland and Ireland currently under development.

ScottishPower has applications for more than 1GW of new onshore wind farms in its pipeline, and the company anticipates a significant majority of those will include plans for solar, battery storage or a mixture of both.

Indeed, the utility has already lined up its first battery storage project, having received government approval to install a 50MW battery storage facility at the Whitelee onshore wind farm in June.

ScottishPower chief Keith Anderson unveiled the strategy at COP25 in Madrid yesterday, stating that “every green megawatt” of electricity will be crucial to the global net zero targets.

“This means squeezing the absolute maximum potential out of every clean energy project that we consider,” he said.

Anderson said that within the next 18 months, hybrids will be become the “new normal” for all renewable energy projects.

"In the UK and Ireland the perfect of blend of clean power from onshore renewables should include a mixture of clean energy technologies. The costs for building wind, solar and batteries have reduced considerably in recent years, and they complement each other very well. They perform best at different times of the day and at different times of the year.”

Co-locating wind, solar and battery storage is nothing especially new for the UK market. Other developers, most notably Vattenfall, have successfully combined two or more of the technologies at a single grid connection point in the past.

In February this year, ScottishPower unveiled a £2 billion investment programme, placing large-scale battery storage and EV infrastructure firmly in its crosshairs as part of a wider clean technology push.

Co-location of battery storage with other renewables will be a key subject of discussion at the Energy Storage Summit 2020, held at London’s Victoria Park Place on 25 – 26 February 2020. More details on the event, including how to attend, can be found here.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.newsobserver.com/news/business/article238062629.html

A Maine company will receive more than $4 million to speed up development of products for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins says the federal money is going to Elmet Technologies of Lewiston. The company is working on development of tungsten heavy alloy and other products needed by the defense department.

Domestic manufacturing of the products is limited among American-owned companies, Collins said. Elmet is U.S.-owned and manufactures materials, alloys and components.

The Department of Defense awarded the money through its Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program, which is designed to assist the Pentagon in addressing operational needs.

https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/908447/tin-roskill-s-jessica-roberts-sees--substantial-growth-prospects--908447.html

https://m.miningweekly.com/article/glencore-2019-12-03

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Despite weaker 2019 demand, base metals are fundamentally in good shape, Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg said on Tuesday.

Presenting an investor update with Glencore CFO Steve Kalmin and Glencore industrial assets head Peter Freyberg, Glasenberg described copper, zinc and nickel markets as being tightly balanced and heavily destocked.

He said that urbanisation and rising living standards, and a two-billion projected global population increase by 2050, would benefit all commodities across the spectrum, from basic infrastructure through to discretionary consumer spending.

Electrification mobility in the form of 580-million electric vehicles on the roads by 2040 would provide a material new source of demand for nickel, cobalt and copper.

Thermal coal would, in the interim, provide significant baseload power generation, as well as being part of the planned energy mix in Asia.

The long-term outlook would, however, be driven by the pace of decarbonisation of energy, with the forecast of 1 000 GW of wind power by 2029.

The redesign of traditional energy systems run on renewables would benefit copper, nickel, cobalt and vanadium through battery systems and related biomass/wind/solar grid infrastructure.

Current government policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 would require an additional cumulative 22-million tons of copper by 2030.

That meant that copper supply would need to grow 3.6% every year between now and 2030 to meet modelled government targets, compared with copper’s annual average supply growth of 2.6% from 2000 to 2018.

Electric vehicles would create demand for more than 330 000 t of new nickel and more than 73 000 t of new cobalt demand by 2025.

Energy demand fundamentals were also supporting an ongoing role for coal, primarily in Asia. New coal-fired generating capacity build in Asia/Middle East would likely add 160-million tonnes of coal demand by 2030.

In Asia, coal-based power generation was forecast to remain the lowest cost source of baseload power into the mid-2030s and new Asian generating capacity would offset European declines.

Coal supply was increasingly at risk owing to approval delays and shrinking financing options that would likely limit planned future supply.

Indonesian seaborne supply was expected to reduce as domestic coal generating capacity expanded, accelerating the depletion of the seaborne coal reserve base.

“Renewables can fill the gap, but not enough of the gap. Thermal coal will have to coexist with the renewables. Carbon capture and storage will become an important part of the energy use. Coal-fired power stations will have to have more carbon capture to ensure that coal is burnt a lot cleaner,” Glasenberg said.

Fairly lengthy article

https://www.tdworld.com/renewables/energy-storage-path-clean-california

Over the last two decades, the energy industry has been in a constant state of transformation, catalyzed by dramatic increases in clean energy and a multitude of technology innovations. In California, the spotlight has been on maximizing the use and storage of renewable energy to meet climate goals. As an early adopter of clean energy innovations, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has been a key partner in California’s efforts to fight climate change and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Today, SDG&E supplies around 45% renewable energy to every family and business in the San Diego-Southern Orange County, California, U.S. region, up 1% from nearly two decades ago. The national average is about 10%. SDG&E’s mission to become America’s cleanest energy infrastructure utility is complemented by its relentless efforts to enhance the safety and reliability of energy delivery.

In 2017, the utility initiated a demonstration project to test a 2-MW, 8-MWh vanadium redox flow (VRF) battery storage technology. The project is underway in partnership with the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) of Sumitomo, Japan, and the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. This four-year demonstration project is testing whether flow battery technology economically can enhance the delivery of reliable energy to customers, integrate growing amounts of renewable energy and increase flexibility in the way the utility manages the power grid. On April 30, 2019, this VRF battery was connected to the California ISO market.

In the long term, meeting the SB 100 carbon-free energy mandate will require technologies that can store energy for months, not the few hours utilities are accustomed to with the current technologies dominating the market.

Deployed with the correct scale and scope, energy storage could enhance the value of the power grid dramatically. A more valuable grid has far-reaching benefits for consumers and aligns with SDG&E’s goal of becoming the cleanest, safest and most reliable energy infrastructure utility in America.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/2/underwater-bullet-tipped-with-tungsten-that-beats-/

A new bullet that can fire through 13 blocks of ballistic gelatin is in the hands of U.S. Special Operations Command.

A tungsten-tipped CAV-X bullet by Virginia’s DSG Technologies‘ may be the next asset at special operations forces’ disposal. The round, which creates an air bubble as it zips through a liquid, mitigates momentum loss suffered by regular ammunition.

The military website Defense One recently reported on DSG Technologies‘ testing and experiments conducted by SOCOM in November.

“DSG officials said the demonstration, which was part of a larger event put on by the Global SOF Foundation, bested an ‘unofficial’ world record that DSG had set just the day before, and another record that they had bested in May,” technology editor Patrick Tucker wrote.

Most rounds can only pierce a couple of gelatin blocks, which are 1.3 feet long, the website reported.

Of interest to military officials is the ability for “frogmen to shoot up into enemy boats or helicopter gunners to strafe periscope-depth submarines,” he added. “In tests performed by DSG, the .50-cal. bullets can travel 60 meters through water or penetrate 2 cm of steel through 17 meters of water.”

Odd Leonhardsen, the company’s chief science officer, told the military website that foreign governments have expressed interest in the round, although he declined to identify them.