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our daily bread (& rice) | wheat, rice, & CO2

Plants need carbon dioxide to live, but its effects on them are complicated.

As the level of carbon dioxide in the air continues to rise because of human activity, scientists are trying to understand how the plants we eat are being affected.

According to recent studies, rice, wheat, and other staple crops lose nutrients when exposed to levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere expected by 2050.

Samuel Myers, principal research scientist at Harvard’s School of Public Health and director of the Harvard-based Planetary Health Alliance and colleagues have conducted studies in which crops are grown bathed in air that simulates the predicted atmospheric conditions expected both by 2050 and by the end of the 21st century. The studies showed declines in protein, iron, and zinc in wheat, and declines in iron and zinc in soybeans and field peas.

The scientists compared nutrient levels in field crops grown in ambient CO2 levels, about 380-390 parts per milliion (ppm) at the time of the work, with those grown in the elevated CO2 levels expected by 2050. The latter level, 545-585ppm, is expected even if substantial curbs on emissions are put in place by the world’s governments. In order to take account of variable growing conditions, the researchers analysed 41 different strains grown in seven locations on three different continents.

Wheat grown in high CO2 levels had 9% less zinc and 5% less iron, as well as 6% less protein, while rice had 3% less iron, 5% less iron and 8% less protein. Maize saw similar falls while soybeans lost similar levels of zinc and iron but, being a legume not a grass, did not see lower protein.

The precise biological and physiological mechanisms that cause nutrient levels to fall when CO2 levels increase are not yet well understood.

See:

“Major crops lose nutrients when grown in elevated carbon dioxide levels,” Harvard School of Public Health, 19 June 2018

“As Carbon Dioxide Levels Rise, Major Crops Are Losing Nutrients,” Merrit Kennedy, NPR, 19 June 2018

“Climate change making food crops less nutritious, research finds,” Damian Carrington, The Guardian, 7 May 2014

“Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition,” Samuel S. Myers, Antonella Zanobetti, Itai Kloog, Peter Huybers, Andrew D. B. Leakey, Arnold J. Bloom, Eli Carlisle, Lee H. Dietterich, Glenn Fitzgerald, Toshihiro Hasegawa, N. Michele Holbrook, Randall L. Nels, Michael J. Ottman, Victor Raboy, Hidemitsu Sakai, Karla A. Sartor, Joel Schwartz, Saman Seneweera, Michael Tausz & Yasuhiro Usui, Nature, International Journal of Science, 7 May 2014

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your money, your life, your choice | California, cars, CO2

California, in so many ways, could learn from the US Northeast. 

To reduce CO2 and and greenhouse gas emissions from cars, a continuing and increasing issue in California and elsewhere, cities need data—ways to accurately measure emissions, pinpoint sources, and monitor change over time; cities need to know how much CO2 they are producing and reducing.

A tool called ACES (Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions System) was developed in response to the requirement for data by researchers at Boston University and Harvard. ACES offers finely-grained maps of CO2 emissions, with a resolution of 1km2, totaled hourly.

As we know, per our atmosphere – the air, its particular mix of gaseous elements, and its temperatures, together vital to life, inclusive of human, animal, and plant – CO2 and other greenhouse gases are an issue, in many ways.

California has “targets” to meet by the year 2020 for limiting the greenhouse gases associated with the driving that people do on a daily basis. The approach to greenhouse gases associated with the driving that people do on a daily basis has a heightened level of complexity in California. Driving a car, rather than availing oneself of public transportation such as a subway, metro, or bus, is a norm that people are highly unwilling and actually afraid to examine and rethink. The many localities within the state have made limited investment in public transportation in significant part because taking such modes of transportation is largely considered to be beneath the dignity – whether personal, social, or professional – of and compromising to anybody with a sense of self esteem.

While the “hope” has been that climate emissions might be curbed largely by promoting regional planning of denser development along transit lines ( S.B. 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act, a landmark 2008 deal, with the California legislature recognizing the critical role of integrated transportation, land use, and housing decisions to meet state climate goals), the California Air Resources Board 2018 Progress Report released in November documents that driving of cars has skyrocketed statewide during the years following the recession of 2008 – 2009 through 2016.

A “key finding of this report is that California is not on track to meet the greenhouse gas reductions expected under SB 375 for 2020, with emissions from statewide passenger vehicle travel per capita increasing and going in the wrong direction” (page 4) and “emissions from the transportation sector continuing to rise despite increases in fuel efficiency and decreases in the carbon content of fuel” (page 5).

Top air quality officials in California state they currently have no way to fully assess whether regions from San Diego to Sacramento are on track to meet 2020 targets for reigning in greenhouse gases associated with daily driving. While “greenhouse gas emissions considered under the SB 375 program reflect carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions only from light-duty passenger vehicles” (page 21, footnote 22), the California Air Resources Board 2018 Progress Report states, “SB 375 passenger vehicle greenhouse gas emissions reductions cannot be directly measured because greenhouse gas emissions come from many sources” (page 21).

Air board officials said that while they tracked the key metric of vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, available statewide through fuel sales, that same information wasn’t available regionally. Without that, officials say there is no consistent way to extrapolate greenhouse gas emissions from driving for each region.

“There’s no unifying way to bring it all together and say ‘You’re at this particular performance metric,’” said Nicole Dolney, chief of the air board’s transportation planning branch. “Our hope was that we would have VMT data that we could rely on, but it wasn’t there.”

So what might California learn from ACES?

“For cities to cut down CO2, they need to know how much they are producing and reducing. Most cities get rough estimates with “carbon calculators” that account for the size and population of a city, electricity used, and an estimate of how many cars zip (or crawl) through the city streets.

“The calculation would be fine except for all those cars. Cars are the hardest part of the emissions equation to quantify. They are moving all the time at different speeds, and there are different cars on the road at different times of day.”

“There are other factors to consider. There’s the make of the car, of course: a Toyota Prius gives off less CO2 than a Chevy Silverado. There’s also the speed; most cars give off the least CO2 when cruising in a “sweet spot” between 40 and 60 miles per hour.”

(Conor Gately, co-developer of ACES; PhD, Geography and Environment, Boston University, 2016; lead author on a study examining cities, traffic, and CO2, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in April 2015.)

ACES (Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions System) has been developed by Lucy Hutyra of Boston University and Conor Gately, now a postdoctoral associate working jointly at Boston University and Harvard. A tool for measuring and mapping CO2 emissions, ACES offers finely-grained maps of CO2 emissions, with a resolution of 1km2, totaled hourly, is relevant and could be helpful to the cities and the state of California.

“Cities have the political will to change emissions, and they have policy levers to pull,” says Lucy Hutyra, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) associate professor of Earth and environment. And because cities are responsible for 70 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the United Nations, their actions matter. But to take effective action, cities need data—ways to accurately measure emissions, pinpoint sources, and monitor change over time. And so Hutyra and her colleague Conor Gately have developed a tool called ACES, for Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions System, that offers the finest-grained maps of CO2 emissions in the Northeastern US to date, with a resolution of 1km2, totaled hourly. The tool, funded by NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System and detailed in the October 12, 2017, issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research—Atmospheres, could provide valuable data to cities nationwide.

“‘The goal was to take the finest grained, most local data possible and build a ‘bottom-up’ inventory,” says Gately. The research team started by divvying up the sources of emissions on a giant whiteboard. “We did every sector of emissions of CO2,” he says. “Roads, residential buildings, commercial buildings, industrial facilities, power plants, airports, marine ports, shipping, and railway.” The group searched for data from 2011, scouring every source they could find: city and country records, household fuel estimates, EPA databases, hundreds of traffic sensors located around New England. All of these data, when combined with the amount of fossil fuels consumed in the region (gasoline, diesel, home heating oil, coal and natural gas for power generation), allowed the team to calculate CO2 emissions for all of the major sources. The team then calculated emissions for every hour of the year.

“Gately, working with a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is now expanding ACES to cover the entire continental United States and meeting with government, scientific, and policy stakeholders to help create a core set of methods and data products.”

DARTE might also be helpful. DARTE, the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (Conor Gately, Lucy Hutyra, Ian Sue Wing) is available for free download from the Harvard Dataverse

Funded by grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE), Gately has developed a more precise way to tally CO2 emissions from vehicles. He used 33 years of traffic data to build the Database of Road Transportation Emissions (DARTE), which displays CO2 data for the contiguous US on a finer scale than ever before—a one-kilometer grid. (He hopes to add Alaska and Hawaii later.) Available for free download, DARTE could change the way cities and states measure greenhouse gas emissions.

“The science is coming together to bring us very fine measurements in a way never possible before,” says Lucy Hutyra, an assistant professor of earth and environment and a coauthor on the PNAS study. Hutyra says that DARTE complements NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2, which is collecting global data on atmospheric carbon dioxide. “We need good bottom-up data to match what we’re measuring looking down from space. That’s what we need to really advance greenhouse gas policies.”

See:

“2018 Progress Report: California’s Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act,” California Air Resources Board, November 2018

“Regions across California likely off the hook for 2020 caps on greenhouse-gas emissions from driving,” Joshua Emerson Smith, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 27 November 2018

“Poor forest management: Trump oversimplifies state’s fire problem,” Readers React, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 20 November 2018

“A Fine-Tuned Map for CO2,” Barbara Moran, Boston University Research, 26 October 2017

“A New Map for Greenhouse Gas,” Barbara Moran, Boston University Research, 10 April 2015

Gately, Conor, K.; Hutyra, Lucy, R.; Sue Wing, Ian, 2015, “Cities, traffic, and CO2: A multi-decadal assessment of trends, drivers, and scaling relationships“, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/28999, Harvard Dataverse, V6

 

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your money, your life, your choice | extra-virgin olive oil

While the olive tree was first domesticated in the Eastern Mediterranean between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago, the earliest written mention of olive oil that we have on record is on cuneiform tablets of the twenty-fourth century BC at Ebla (in today’s Syria, about 55 km southwest of Aleppo).

Olive oil took a central place in Greek sports, performed in the nude. Nigel Kennell, a specialist in ancient history at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, links that centrality to the rise of bronze statuary in the sixth century B.C. “A tanned athlete, shining in the summer sun, covered with oil, would really resemble a statue of the gods.”

Olives were a cash crop in the Roman Empire by the first century AD, olive oil was traded internationally. The family of Septimus Severus, emperor of Rome from 193 to 211 AD, traded olive oil from Leptis Magna, a city in the Tripolitania region of North Africa (now Libya). Emperor Septimus Severus was the first to introduce regular free distribution of olive oil in Rome.

Today, demand for high-quality olive oil is on the rise. As of 2012, the American market, the largest outside Europe, was worth about $1.5 billion and growing at a rate of about 10% per year.

Over a five-year projection period of 2017-2022, the global olive oil market is projected to reach approximately US$11 billion by end-2022.

So, what is olive oil? What is meant by “extra-virgin” olive oil?

The olive is a “dupe.” A dupe is a stone fruit with a pit, like a cherry.

The olives are harvested at the moment of the invaiatura, when they begin to turn from green to black; ideally they are picked by hand and milled within hours, to minimize oxidation and enzymatic reactions, which leave unpleasant tastes and odors in the oil.

There are approximately seven hundred olive varieties, or cultivars, whose distinctive tastes and aromas are evident in oils that are made properly, just as different grape varietals are expressed in fine wines.

“Slippery Business, The Trade in Adulterated Olive Oil,” Tom Mueller, The New Yorker, 13 August 2007

The best olive oils are unlike most vegetable oils that are extracted in a refinery from seeds or nuts, using solvents, heat, and intense pressure.

More like fresh-squeezed fruit juice, the best olive oils are made using a simple hydraulic press or centrifuge.

Extra-virgin olive oil, that must be totally unprocessed, is the highest-quality olive oil. During the physical extraction process, extra-virgin olive oil must be kept below 75 degrees Fahrenheit at all times. Extra-virgin olive oil must, further, meet strict chemical criteria as defined by the International Olive Oil Council and adopted by the European Union and USDA, and have flavor and aroma as determined by a certified tasting panel.

According to E.U. law, extra-virgin oil must be made exclusively by physical means (by a press or a centrifuge) and meet thirty-two chemical requirements, including having “free acidity” of no more than 0.8 per cent. (In olive oil, free acidity is an indicator of decomposition.)

According to the E.U. regulations, extra-virgin oil must have appreciable levels of pepperiness, bitterness, and fruitiness, and must be free of sixteen official taste flaws such as “musty,” “fusty,” “cucumber,” and “grubby.”

The next lower grade of olive oil is virgin oil. Virgin oil must have no more than two percent of free acidity. Oil that has a greater percentage of free acidity is classified as lampante.

New milling technologies—stainless steel mills, high-speed centrifuges, temperature- and oxygen-controlled storage tanks—are making it possible to produce the best extra-virgin olive oils in history: fresh, complex, and every bit as varied as wine varietals. (There are about seven hundred different kinds of olives.)

“Olive Oil’s Dark Side,” Sally Errico, The New Yorker, 7 February 2012

There’s also massive output of low-grade olive oils. Some producers are selling these as extra-virgin olive oil even though these low-grade oils do not meet the requirements of the extra-virgin grade. (E.U. and U.S. trade standards require extra-virgin olive oil to be free of sensory defects, and these oils are deeply flawed.) This is creating a downward pressure on olive oil quality.

Given that so many “extra-virgin” oils are actually inferior oils cut with other products, where should the average shopper buy his oil?

Ideally, at a mill, where you can see the fresh olives turned into oil, and get to know the miller—in an industry where the label means so little, personal trust in the people who have made and sold it is important. Barring this, try to visit a store where you can taste before you buy; an increasing number of olive-oil specialty stores exists throughout America, even in small towns and unexpected corners of the country. In a conventional retail store, certain characteristics of labelling and bottling suggest (though they don’t guarantee) high quality: a harvest date (as opposed to a meaningless “best by” date), a specific place of production and producer, mention of the cultivar of olives used, dark glass bottles (light degrades olive oil), a D.O.P. seal on European oils, and a California Olive Oil Council seal on oil made in the U.S.

“Olive Oil’s Dark Side,” Sally Errico, The New Yorker, 7 February 2012

Here are some helpful guides to selecting olive oil:

“How to Buy Great Olive Oil,” Tom Mueller

“About Olive Oil,” Olive Oil Lovers

See:

“How to Buy Great Olive Oil,” Tom Mueller

“About Olive Oil,” Olive Oil Lovers

“Olive Oil Market Revenue to Approach US$ 11 Bn by 2022 despite Dire Supply-Demand-Pricing Setback, Unleashes the New Intelligence Study by Fact.MR,” Globe News Wire, 18 October 2018

“Olive Oil’s Dark Side,” Sally Errico, The New Yorker, 7 February 2012

“Slippery Business, The Trade in Adulterated Olive Oil,” Tom Mueller, The New Yorker, 13 August 2007

Besnard G, Khadari B, Navascues M, Fernandez-Mazuecos M, El Bakkali A, Arrigo N, Baali-Cherif D, Brunini-Bronzini de Caraffa V, Santoni S, Vargas P, Savolainen V. 2013, “The complex history of the olive tree: from Late Quaternary diversification of Mediterranean lineages to primary domestication in the Northern Levant,” Proc R Soc B 280: 20122833. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2833

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your money, your health, your life | the olive

The olive (botanical name “Olea europaea”, meaning “European olive”) is a species of evergreen tree or shrub in the family of Oleaceae in the order of Lamiales. The tree is typically short and squat, seldom taller than 26 – 49 feet (8 – 15 meters). The trunk is gnarled and twisted.

With a sturdy and extensive root system, the olive tree can tolerate drought well, live for centuries, and remain productive for long periods if pruned correctly and regularly.

Hundreds of cultivars (assemblage of plants selected for desirable characters that are maintained during plant propagation) of the olive tree are known.

Many olive cultivars are self-sterile (self-incompatible; when a pollen grain produced in a plant reaches a stigma of the same plant or another plant with a similar genotype, the process of pollen germination, pollen-tube growth, ovule fertilization and embryo development is halted at one of its stages and consequently no seeds are produced). Olive trees are generally planted in pairs with a single primary cultivar and a secondary cultivar selected for its ability to fertilize the primary one.

Only a few olive varieties can be used to cross-pollinate. Olive trees are, then, propagated by various other methods, including grafting (in Greece grafting the cultivated tree on the wild tree is a common practice) and budding (asexual reproduction; in Italy, for instance, embryonic buds, which form small swellings on the stems, are excised and planted under the soil surface).

With common ancestors that go way (way) back, long before written history (“the most recent common ancestor of each Mediterranean lineage dates back to the Middle or Upper Pleistocene: 139 100 BP for E1 (95% CI: 49 200–482 100), 284 300 BP for E2 (95% CI: 84 400–948 100) and 143 700 BP for E3 (95% CI: 37 100–542 700″), the olive tree was first domesticated in the Eastern Mediterranean between 8,000 and 6,000 years ago, according to research published in February 2013 in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences): “The complex history of the olive tree: from Late Quaternary diversification of Mediterranean lineages to primary domestication in the northern Levant.”

We can say there were probably several steps, and it probably starts in the Levant,” or the area that today includes Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, said study co-author Gillaume Besnard, an archaeobotanist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France. “People selected new cultivars everywhere, but that was a secondary diversification later.”

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, are based on the genetic analysis of nearly 1,900 samples from around the Mediterranean Sea. The study reveals that domesticated olives, which are larger and juicier than wild varieties, were probably first cultivated from wild olive trees at the frontier between Turkey and Syria.

Tia Ghose, “The Origins of the Olive Tree Revealed,” LiveScience, 5 February 2013

The cradle of primary domestication of the olive tree is located in the northeastern Levant, where populations currently contain substantial genetic diversity, although not the highest in the Mediterranean basin (i.e. the Strait of Gibraltar [13,43]). This paradox can be explained by the fact that advanced civilizations emerged in the north Levant, such as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B [51,52], and that they had enough genetic resources to succeed in domesticating a self-incompatible tree. The domestication of the olive tree appears to have been a long and continuous process that involved numerous genetic exchanges between the cultivated trees and wild gene pools, as already reported for other crops [53]. The first domesticated gene pool of olive was more likely to have spread with agriculture, first to the whole Levant and Cyprus [54] before being progressively disseminated to the western Mediterranean. Genetic evidence for multi-local origins of cultivars previously reported by several authors [6–12,55] may be explained by secondary domestication events involving crosses between newly introduced cultivars and local oleasters across the entire Mediterranean.

Besnard G, Khadari B, Navascues M, Fernandez-Mazuecos M, El Bakkali A, Arrigo N, Baali-Cherif D, Brunini-Bronzini de Caraffa V, Santoni S, Vargas P, Savolainen V. 2013 “The complex history of the olive tree: from Late Quaternary diversification of Mediterranean lineages to primary domestication in the northern Levant“. Proc R Soc B 280: 20122833. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2833

To unravel the history of the olive tree, the team took 1,263 wild and 534 cultivated olive tree samples from throughout the Mediterranean and analyzed genetic material from the trees’ chloroplasts, the green plant structures where photosynthesis takes place. Because chloroplast DNA is passed from one tree to the descendant trees that spring up around it, the DNA can reveal local changes in plant lineages, study co-author Gillaume Besnard, an archaeobotanist at the National Center for Scientific Research, said.

The researchers then reconstructed a genetic tree to show how the plant dispersed. The team found that the thin, small and bitter wild fruit first gave way to oil-rich, larger olives on the border between Turkey and Syria.

After that first cultivation, modern-day domesticated olives came mostly from three hotspots: the Near East (including Cyprus), the Aegean Sea and the Strait of Gibraltar. They were then gradually spread throughout the Mediterranean with the rise of civilization.

Tia Ghose, “The Origins of the Olive Tree Revealed,” LiveScience, 5 February 2013

See:

Besnard G, Khadari B, Navascues M, Fernandez-Mazuecos M, El Bakkali A, Arrigo N, Baali-Cherif D, Brunini-Bronzini de Caraffa V, Santoni S, Vargas P, Savolainen V. 2013 “The complex history of the olive tree: from Late Quaternary diversification of Mediterranean lineages to primary domestication in the northern Levant“. Proc R Soc B 280: 20122833. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2833

Author for correspondence:

G. Besnard
e-mail: guillaume.besnard@univ-tlse3.fr

Electronic supplementary material is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2833 or via http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org.

Tia Ghose, “The Origins of the Olive Tree Revealed,” LiveScience, 5 February 2013

“Olive,” Wikipedia

“Budding,” Wikipedia

“Plant Propagation,” Wikipedia

“Self-incompatibility,” Wikipedia

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it’s your money, your life, your health | olive oil

For years I’ve cooked with olive oil, dipped bread in olive oil, “drizzled” olive oil onto asparagus, and enjoyed olive oil infused with garlic or rosemary. More recently I’ve begun to use (what is labeled as organic, extra virgin) olive oil as a moisturizer. For use on my face I’ll even squeeze a few drops of juice from an organic lime into the olive oil.

So, what is olive oil and what is its story? Why is olive oil said to be so conducive to good health? This, I am learning, is a long, robust, multi-faceted, and global story with many players, a story that we will examine in small steps.

It is helpful to remember why, in the first place, we “eat.”

We are all sophisticated systems of systems and systems of players, finely evolved, precisely calibrated to the relationships between ourselves and our environments.

Through eating we bring chemical compounds of biological origin (and increasingly, in some cases, of synthetic origin) into our systems and ultimately into our blood (a finely tuned transport system) and from our blood into our cells (of which we each have billions and billions, chugging away and doing their work, each cell precisely calibrated to its particular environment and task) so that they can do their work.

Through breathing we bring atmospheric chemical elements and compounds, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen, into our lungs, and from our lungs into our blood and from our blood into our cells.

Some of the compounds ingested through our food and breathed in through our air interact to better effect with our cells, some less so, towards the optimal performance of the systems of systems and systems of players that we all are, each individually.

Fortunately, nature’s wizardry has evolved a sense of “taste.” Much of the food that contains the chemical compounds that are beneficial to our cells tastes good. We enjoy eating it. Some of the food, however, that tastes good does not lead to optimal performance. In today’s world it is important to consult our taste buds and the label and do our due diligence.

An observation published in an earlier post, about risk and the system of systems that is the built environment, is pertinent:

“You owe it to yourself to call on every dispassionate expert you can find and grab all available data on any risk you are taking on.”

“You’re Buying a Home? Have You Considered Climate Change?”, Ron Lieber, The New York Times, 2 December 2016

Determine your goals, identify pathways towards them, identify risks, “grab” data, proceed with your due diligence, and eat (and breathe, another story) well.

As we proceed along our journey of exploration and learning we’ll investigate and discuss olives and olive oil. Come future posts we’ll examine a variety of foods including peanuts, peanut butter, coffee (a bean), blueberries, and grapes.

See:

“You’re Buying a Home? Have You Considered Climate Change?”, Ron Lieber, The New York Times, 2 December 2016

 

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the compounding costs of California’s year-after-year wildfires

The compounding costs of California’s year-after-year wildfires are making it increasingly difficult for any party to absorb the expenses.

So observes Mark Cooper, Yale PhD, former Yale University and Fulbright Fellow, and Senior Research Fellow for Economic Analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment of Vermont Law School currently working on Energy Assessment.

PG&E electrical equipment, including power lines and poles, has been found to be responsible for at least 17 of 21 major Northern California fires of autumn 2017.

While the cause of California’s Camp Fire has not yet been determined, PG&E, one of California’s largest utilities, disclosed to the SEC on 9 November that an outage and damage to a transmission tower were reported in the area shortly before the fire started.

In the SEC Form 8-K of 9 November, PG&E declared that it may face billions of dollars in potential liabilities, far more than its insurance would cover, for the wildfires of 2018.

The Form 8-K reads, in pertinent part:

On November 8, 2018, a wildfire began near the city of Paradise, Butte County, California (the “Camp Fire”), located in the service territory of the Utility.  The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s (“Cal Fire”) Camp Fire Incident Report dated November 13, 2018, 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time (the “incident report”), indicated that the Camp Fire had consumed 125,000 acres and was 30% contained.  Cal Fire estimates in the incident report that the Camp Fire will be fully contained on November 30, 2018.  In the incident report, Cal Fire reported 42 fatalities.  The incident report also indicates the following: structures threatened, 15,500; single residences destroyed, 6,522; single residences damaged, 75; multiple residences destroyed, 85; commercial structures destroyed, 260; commercial structures damaged, 32; and other minor structures destroyed, 772.

The cause of the Camp Fire is under investigation. On November 8, 2018, the Utility submitted an electric incident report to the California Public Utilities Commission (the “CPUC”) indicating that “on November 8, 2018 at approximately 0615 hours, PG&E experienced an outage on the Caribou-Palermo 115 kV Transmission line in Butte County. In the afternoon of November 8, PG&E observed by aerial patrol damage to a transmission tower on the Caribou-Palermo 115 kV Transmission line, approximately one mile north-east of the town of Pulga, in the area of the Camp Fire. This information is preliminary.” Also on November 8, 2018, acting governor Gavin Newsom issued an emergency proclamation for Butte County, due to the effect of the Camp Fire.

As previously reported, during the third quarter of 2018, PG&E Corporation and the Utility renewed their liability insurance coverage for wildfire events in an aggregate amount of approximately $1.4 billion for the period from August 1, 2018 through July 31, 2019. For more information about wildfire insurance and risks associated with wildfires, see PG&E Corporation and the Utility’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2018.

While the cause of the Camp Fire is still under investigation, if the Utility’s equipment is determined to be the cause, the Utility could be subject to significant liability in excess of insurance coverage that would be expected to have a material impact on PG&E Corporation’s and the Utility’s financial condition, results of operations, liquidity, and cash flows.

United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 8-K, filed by PG&E on 9 November 2018

Citigroup estimates that PG&E’s exposure to liability for at least 17 of 21 major Norther California fires that took place in autumn 2017 is $15 billion. Citigroup estimates further that if it is found responsible for the Camp Fire, PG&E could face another $15 billion in claims. This number could rise, the fire is as yet only partially contained.

PG&E’s customers, both business and residential, may find themselves responsible for covering the bill for the company’s liabilities through higher costs.

California state  legislators took steps this year to shield PG&E and the state’s other investor-owned utilities from overwhelming legal claims, allowing them to pass the expense on to ratepayers.

California Senate Bill 901, signed into law on 21 September 2018, applies to fires beginning in 2019, and to some that occurred in 2017.

The bill enables utilities to sell bonds to cover liability costs and pay them off over time through higher rates.

(14) The existing restructuring of the electrical services industry provides for the issuance of rate reduction bonds by the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank for the recovery of transition costs, as defined, by electrical corporations. Existing law authorizes the PUC to issue financing orders, to support the issuance of recovery bonds, as defined, by the recovery corporation, as defined, secured by a dedicated rate component, to finance the unamortized balance of the regulatory asset awarded Pacific Gas and Electric Company in PUC Decision 03-12-035.

This bill would, under specific circumstances, authorize the PUC, upon application by an electrical corporation, to issue financing orders to support the issuance of recovery bonds to finance costs, in excess of insurance proceeds, incurred, or that are expected to be incurred, by an electrical corporation, excluding fines and penalties, related to wildfires, as provided.

SB 901, Dodd. Wildfires.

PG&E’s company shares dropped by more than 20 percent yesterday (Wednesday). More than half of its market value has been lost since late last week as the fires have spread.

Shares of other investor-owned utilities in California, Edison International (operated Southern California Edison) and Sempra Energy (owns San Diego Gas and Electric), dropped earlier this week.

California’s power supply is likely not to be at risk. PG&E could face bankruptcy if it cannot cover the liabilities it faces. Such a bankruptcy would eliminate shareholders’ equity and affect bondholder investments.

See:

“California Utility Customers May Be on the Hook for Billions in Wildfire Damage,” Ivan Penn and Peter Eavis, The New York Times, 14 November 2018

SEC Form 8-K filed by PG&E, dated 9 November 2018

California Senate Bill No. 901

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Amazon selects New York & Arlington, VA for HQ2 ・people, mass transit, sustainability

Amazon has selected New York City (the Long Island City neighborhood of the borough of Queens) and Arlington,Virginia (the Crystal City neighborhood, across the Potomac from Washington, DC) for its HQ2.

In agreements with the local and state governments, Amazon stipulates that the two locations will house at least 25,000 employees each. The new sites will require $5 billion in construction and other investments.

Direct access to rail, train, subway/metro, bus routes (mass transit) at site has been a core preference of Amazon, stipulated in the Amazon HQ2 RFP.

Significantly, Amazon’s HQ2 RFP stipulates that it will develop HQ2 with a dedication to sustainability:

Sustainability: Amazon is committed to sustainability efforts. Amazon’s buildings in its current Seattle campus are sustainable and energy efficient. The buildings’ interiors feature salvaged and locally sourced woods, energy efficient lighting, composting and recycling alternatives as well as public plazas and pockets of green space. Twenty of the buildings in our Seattle campus were built using LEED standards. Additionally, Amazon’s newest buildings use a ‘District Energy’ system that utilizes recycled heat from a nearby non-Amazon data center to heat millions of square feet of office space – a system that is about 4x more efficient than traditional heating. This system is designed to allow Amazon to warm just over 4 million square feet of office space on Amazon’s four-block campus, saving 80 million kilowatt hours over 20 years, or about 4 million kilowatt-hours a year. We also invest in large solar and wind operations and were the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the U.S. in 2016.

Amazon will develop HQ2 with a dedication to sustainability.

Of the cities selected, Emily Badger of The New York Times observes:

“Tech companies feed on highly educated and specialized workers, specifically dense clusters of them where workers and companies interacting with one another are more likely to produce new ideas. Washington and New York, as it turns out, are two of the most highly educated regions in the country, with already large pools of tech workers.

“Drop a big Amazon headquarters into Washington or New York, and economists expect the 50,000 workers there to be more productive than if the same 50,000 jobs were dropped into Indianapolis. Simply putting them in New York, near so many other tech workers, increases the likelihood that Amazon invents more services, connects to more markets, makes more money.

“Those added benefits are so strong, economists say, that it’s worth it to companies like Amazon to pay more — a lot more — for office space and employee salaries in New York City.

“‘If you are in the business of making new things — whether it’s a new product, or a new way of delivering things, or a new service — and it’s something that is unique, and it keeps changing and it needs updating, the most important factor of all is human capital,” said Enrico Moretti, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s not like making soap, or like making textiles.’”

See:

Amazon HQ2 RFP

“Amazon Announces New York and Virginia as HQ2 Picks,” Karen Weise, Technology | The New York Times, 13 November 2018

“In Superstar Cities, the Rich Get Richer, and They Get Amazon,” Emily Badger, The New York Times, 7 November 2018

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It’s your money ・ Hurricanes, flooding, fires. Buying a home?

It’s your money. ・ Hurricanes, flooding, wildfires. Buying a home? Approach your investment with care and due diligence.

“Buying a home involves an enormous amount of money, and few people do it often enough to be experts. Given the realities of climate change, the process is now set against a backdrop of radical uncertainty about the very ground you will live on and the air you will breathe.

“Given all that, you owe it to yourself to call on every dispassionate expert you can find and grab all available data on any risk you are taking on.”

“There is a case for optimism here, where the world comes together and manages to turn the (rising) tides. So if you are a positive thinker or can afford a big loss, by all means bet one of your biggest assets on that possibility.

“Otherwise, ask yourself this: Just how much more science and weather will it take before ever larger numbers of people decide to settle in or retire to places that pose less risk? And once they do, do you want to be trying to unload your property in a danger zone so you can afford to join them?

“You’re Buying a Home? Have You Considered Climate Change?”, Ron Lieber, The New York Times, 2 December 2016

Research and understand highly pertinent issues such as those that follow below. Examine flood zones, flood insurance, fire zones, and the term Wildland Urban Interface (WUI, indexes the conversion of wildland to developed territory).

In the context of wildfires, a cornerstone of risk evaluation is a metric called the Wildland Urban Interface, or WUI. WUI indexes the conversion of wildland to developed territory. WUI indicates an explosion in wildland development over recent years.

According to the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) measurement framework, the conversion rate from wildlands to urban development has grown to 4,000 acres per day or close to 2 million acres per year.

The explosion in WUI development increasingly puts homeowners, firefighters and communities at risk of wildfire – a risk that is only growing across the United States as the globe warms and aridification worsens. Since the 1980s, large fires in Northern California have increased by 60 percent. Some forests in the Pacific Northwest have seen a 5,000 percent increase in annual burned land. 

According to the  2017 Verisk Wildfire Risk Analysis, more than 2 million of the 4.5 million homes at high or extreme risk of wildfire are in California.

We should start by learning which regions are most at risk. Many people assume that most WUI lands fall in the western states. The large eastern and southern states have the most land in the WUI. In 2016, Kansas and Oklahome saw over a million acres burn – that’s an area bigger than the state of Rhode Island. 

The so-called “fire season” has continued to lengthen over the past several decades, and that, since 2000, climate change has been attributed to adding 9 additional days of high fire season. The environmental context facing designers and developers is thus increasingly risky.

“We Should Plan Homes to Minimize the Threat of Wildfires,” Jesse M. Keenan and Alice Hill, Newsweek, 21 October 2017

Services & infrastructure

Sources & uses of municipal services such as flood- and fire-prevention, -recovery, and related maintenance services.

How much does the locality (village, town, county, parish, state) pay for public services such as roads, pumps, fire services, drinking water, sewage, etc. Where does the money come from. 

Sources & uses of flood- and fire-prevention and -recovery service funds

How are flood- and fire-prevention and -recovery services financed and funded. How long will flood- and fire-prevention and -recovery services be affordable. How is “affordable” defined.

Home-purchase finance

If you plan to finance a purchase with a mortgage, examine how banks and insurance companies are currently managing flood- and fire-prone properties in their portfolios. What are the trend lines? What steps are being taken by banks and insurance companies vis a vis such properties to protect their balance sheets over the long term.

Insurance

Examine how insurance companies are managing flood- and fire-prone properties in their portfolios. What are the trend lines? What steps are being taken by insurance companies vis a vis such properties to protect their balance sheets over the long term.

What are current premiums? Is the appropriate insurance provided by private companies, by the government? How much will you receive in case of a disaster? Will you receive the full market value of the damaged property?

Sources & uses of energy

Energy matters. Know sources and uses of energy. A house designed and built for low energy unit intensity offers multiple advantages.

Sources, uses, costs, & quality of water

Water matters. Know sources, uses, costs, and quality of water.

Building materials

Building materials and construction matter. Know how and of what materials the house is constructed. Is the house built for fire resilience? Is the house built for flood resilience?

Access & transportation infrastructure

Access matters. How is the neighborhood served by transportation. Can you get to work / school / the doctor’s and dentist’s office / the grocery store and shops / all those important places by foot, bike, bus, train? Must you drive a car? (Think of the CO2 emissions that are exacerbating both the floods and the fires.) Are there multiple lines of access? One road?

Climate change

Research climate change and its effects in your geographical area of interest.

A team & teamwork matter

Develop a team of experts, whom you can trust and consult and with whom you can work together, in your geographical area of interest.

As you delve into these questions, here are links to articles, and there are many more, that provide information, insight, perspective and links to further sources of information.

See:

“You’re Buying a Home? Have You Considered Climate Change?”, Ron Lieber, Your Money | The New York Times, 2 December 2016

“Flooding Risk Knocks $7 Billion Off Home Values, Study Finds,” Laura Kusisto, The Wall Street Journal, 25 August 2018

“Your coastal property has already lost value to sea rise. This site can tell you how much”, Alex Harris, Miami Herald, 25 July 2018

Fire Weather Outlooks (updated daily), NOAA’s National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, Fire Weather Outlooks

“Why does California have so many wildfires?”, Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times, 9 November 2018

“Forced Out by Deadly Fires, Then Trapped in Traffic,” Jack Nicas, Thomas Fuller, Tim Arango, The New York Times, 11 November 2018

“Jesse M. Keenan in Newsweek: time is now to evaluate design risk, enhance resilience against wildfires,” Travis Dagenais, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 24 October 2017

“We Should Plan Homes to Minimize the Threat of Wildfires,” Jesse M. Keenan and Alice Hill, Newsweek, 21 October 2017

“North Carolina, Warned of Rising Seas, Chose to Favor Development,” John Schwartz and Richard Fausset, The New York Times, 12 September 2018

“Perils of Climate Change Could Swamp Coastal Real Estate,” Ian Urbina, The New York Times, 24 November 2016

“Underwater. Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate,” Union of Concerned Scientists, 2018

“Del Mar stands firm against ‘planned retreat”, Phil Diehl, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 22 May 2018

“Can Miami Beach survive global warming?”, David Kamp, Vanity Fair, 10 November 2015

“Rising seas, distressed communities, and ‘climate gentrification’: Jesse M. Keenan talks Miami in Vice, Scientific American,” Travis Dagenais, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 14 August 2017

“California Today: Now Comes the Insurance Challenge,” Mike McPhate, The New York Times, 11 October 2017

“Climate change and commercial real estate: How resilient is your portfolio?” Jeffrey Kanne, Carlos Madex-Madani, Sam Bendix, Institutional Real Estate, Inc., 1 June 2017

“Settling post-catastrophe insurance claims: What agents should know,” Bernice Ross, Inman, 5 September 2017

“High Ground Is Becoming Hot Property as Sea Level Rises,” Erika Bolstad, Scientific American, 1 May 2017

“Wildland-Urban Interface: Key Issues,” L. Annie Hermansen-Báez, Jennifer Seitz, and Martha C. Monroe, Joint product of InterfaceSouth of the Centers for Urban and Interface Forestry, Southern Research Station, U.S. Forest Service and the University of Florida, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS). Published March 2009.

“Key findings from the 2017 Verisk wildfire risk analysis,” Arindam Samanta, Verisk, 12 July 2017

“The Wildland-Urban Interface in the United States,” Susan I. Stewart, Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Evanston, IL (sistewart@fs.fed.us), Volker C. Radeloff, Department of Forestry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Roger B. Hammer, Department of Sociology, Oregon State University

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Material Ecology

Brilliant, beautiful, and stylish MIT polymath Neri Oxman, coiner of the term Material Ecology and pioneer in the research discipline, observes how matter is not secondary to shape but is, rather, a progenitor to form.

“Today, perhaps under the imperatives of growing recognition of the ecological failures of modern design, inspired by the growing presence of advanced fabrication methods, design culture is witnessing a new materiality. Within the last decade in both industrial design and architecture, a new body of knowledge is emerging within architectural praxis.

“Examples of the growing interest in the technological potential of innovative material usage and material innovation as a source of design generation are developments in biomaterials, mediated and responsive materials, as well as composite materials. With the growing relevance of “materialization”, new frontiers of material science and digital fabrication are supporting the emergence of new perspectives in architectural and industrial design.

“Thus the role of digital design research as the enabling environment of the transformation to a new age of material-based design in various design disciplines has become the cutting edge of computational design research. Here we are at the cusp of a new paradigm inspired by the Troika structure of craft, at the interaction of Materials Science, Digital Fabrication and the environment.

“Material Ecology is an emerging field in design denoting informed relations between products, buildings, systems, and their environment (Oxman, 2010).

“Defined as the study and design of products and processes integrating environmentally aware computational form-generation and digital fabrication, the field operates at the intersection of Biology, Material Science & Engineering, and Computer Science with emphasis on environmentally informed digital design and fabrication.”

See:

Neri Oxman, “Material Ecology.” Abstract, 21 February 2014.. ”

Neri Oxman, Mediated Matter, MIT Media Lab People

“Style | Who is Neri Oxman?,” Penelope Green, The New York Times, Style, 6 October 2018

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collections care & engineered resilience

As the markets for works of art, collections care, and engineered resilience in the built environment (private collections, museums – public and private, galleries, fairs, corporate and university collections, etc.) converge, renewable energy will be a factor.

“Underlying property increases in value by virtue of the fact that positive externalities associated with the performance of the resilience investments represents a superior outcome to the status quo – even when netted out by any costs.” (Keenan et.al.)

Companies have signed long-term contracts to purchase solar and wind energy in 28 markets.

Cost declines and efficiency improvements are making renewables cost-competitive with wholesale power prices of more traditional sources of electricity.

While larger corporations are entering into corporate power purchase agreements (PPA),

smaller companies are increasingly pooling electricity demand together to access economies of scale achieved through solar and wind projects.

This is called “aggregation.”

“Aggregation” might be a workable model for entities in the art market concerned about the long-term resilience of structures and care and value of works and collections.


See: 1) Jesse M. Keenan, Thomas Hill, Anurag Gumber, “Climate Gentrification: From Theory to Empiricism in Miami-Dade County,” IOPScience, 23 April 2018; 2) “Corporations Already Purchased Record Clean Energy Volumes in 2018, and It’s Not an Anomaly,” Bloomberg New Energy Finance, 9 August 2018

 

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