EcoCrops International´s blog spot

In 2007 the USA Federal Government passed the US Renewable Fuel Standard which required ethanol blending with domestic oil in large quantities with frequent increases in amounts of ethanol being used.  The bill was passed to reduce the USA carbon footprint and increase the amount of renewable biofuel being used in the USA. Under the Trump administrations, they have been far less supportive of the biomass blending mandate, granting biofuel waivers to major industry players and allowing the trading of biomass credits to develop. Despite the less than active support for biofuel domestically Trump has been pushing his trade negotiators to get big concessions from his Chinese counterparts by asking them to lower their tariffs on biomass in particular biofuel. China's ethanol demand is expected to grow nearly sevenfold as the country prepares to introduce E10 fuel throughout the country next year. E10 fuel is a fuel using 10% ethanol and 90% petrol. U.S. trade negotiato...

EcoCrops International reports that Industrial wood pellets, as opposed to domestic wood pellets, are currently trading at an all-time high.  With the Argus 90 day Industrial wood pellet index trading at US$210 per tonne, up strongly from July 2018 where they were trading at US$175. The steep increase in prices is primarily driven by higher demand from European Power Stations.  Such as new power station coming online in the Netherland, Belgium, and Italy.  And existing Power stations such as the huge UK Drax power station burning more wood pellets and burning less coal. This trend is set to increase due to a number of factors: The EU climate change targets for reducing its greenhouse emissions, transforming the EU carbon-based fuel (coal) police towards a low carbon economy by 2050.  With targets for the reductions of greenhouse emissions is set for 2020 and 2030. Germany’s plant to phase out all coal power stations by 2038.  And the increased effici...

Ecocrops internationa l reports that the Stations would orbit 22,000 miles from Earth and would weigh over 1,000 tons, that is 600 tons more than the International Space Station.  They plan to deploy small and medium stations between 2021 and 2025 and a megawatt level satellite in 2030. Space-based solar power has two major advantages over Earth-based solar power:  due to the orbit they can collect energy 24 hours a day, and they collect more energy as the sunlight is not filtered by the Earth’s atmosphere. Under the plans, huge satellites would be put into orbit to collect the sunlight with huge solar rays.  Once the energy is collected it would be sent back to receiving stations on earth as microwaves.  On Earth, these microwaves would be converted to electricity and fed into the grid. Due to the huge size of the satellites, the Chinese are proposing to fabricate with 3D printer technology and then assemble in the Earth orbit with robots. Pang Zhihao, a re...

Due to greater use of renewable power ( wood pellets ) Drax Group Plc recorded a 9% rise in full-year earnings. The company reported a profit of £13.8 million for the full year to December 31, 2018. Compared to a pre-tax loss of £204 million for the previous year. Operating the UK’s largest power station in North Yorkshire it generated revenues of £4.23 billion in the period as opposed to £3.86 billion in 2017. Drax was previously powered by coal but they converted four of its six coal-fired plants to use biomass wood pellets.  With wood pellets making up 75% of the company’s feedstock, energy in 2018 up by 65% from the previous year. Will Gardiner, CEO of Drax Group, said: “Drax is now one of the leading generators of flexible, low carbon and renewable electricity in the UK. “As the grid decarbonizes, our ability to support intermittent renewables will become increasingly important as we strive to deliver our purpose of enabling a zero carbon, lower cost energy future.” ...

Drax’s wood pellet power station has started to capture all C02 produced from the combustion of its wood pellets feedstock. A small demonstration plant located in a facility near Selby, North Yorkshire is capturing the C02 by using an amine-free solvent-based process called C-capture. C-capture was developed by the University of Leeds in conjunction with Drax who invested £400,000 in developing the plant. The Director of Engineering of C-Capture. Said “Working at this scale is really where the engineering gets interesting. The challenge now is to get all the information we need to design and build a capture plant 10,000 times bigger. It’s only really when we get to those sorts of scales that we can start to have an impact on the climate.”  James Grainger of Ecocrops Internationa l said the implication for the wood pellet market is enormous as it will change wood pellets from being carbon neutral fuel source to being carbon positive fuel source. www.ecocropsinternational....

Insolight a new solar business has developed new solar panels that offer yield s of up to 29% as compared to many panels on the market today which offer yields of around 17 to 19%.  They are achieved this by using an optical system that concentrates the light on tiny cells, similar to space satellites' panels systems. It’s the latest in a line of big improvements from the solar industry, which has seen a number of innovative launches amid lowering costs. The startup, which outlined its technology to its former university on Tuesday, decided to use highly efficient cells normally used to power satellites. These cells are expensive, so to keep costs down the team developed a layer of optical lenses, held in place with a frame and covered by protective glass, that focuses the light onto the cells by a factor of 100. That means the cells themselves, which measure one square millimeter each, only take up around half a percent of the surface area of the panel. Horizontal movements ...

Shell already spends up to 2 billion a year on low carbon energy and is looking to increase this to $4 billion a year, with a move to look to a future beyond oil and gas. Maaten Wetselaar the new head of the Gas & New Energy Units which already generate a third of the company’s revenue said he wants to increase the company’s investment in low carbon energy. In an interview with the Guardian, he stated “I would like my current business to be financially credible enough for not only the company but shareholders, to want to double it and look at more’. Shell is following in the trail of other Oil Majors such as British Petroleum which changed its name to BP (Beyond Petroleum) Norway’s state oil company has rebranded as Equinor to reflect its move towards becoming a “broad energy company”, France’s Total has gone big on batteries, and BP has returned to solar six years after exiting the sector. Shell is considered an industry leader on the switch, having invested in gas, sola...

BP in a recent report predicted a big increase in the demand for wood pellets , wind, and solar power. Further, they stated that the world’s main source of energy within the next twenty years would be from Green Energy sources.  With Green Energy accounting for at least 30% of the world’s electricity supplies by 2040 as compared to today where 10% comes from sustainable  energy sources. In certain regions such as Europe and Asia, this figure could be as 50% by 2040.  In the report, BP stated this speed of growth was without parallel. In comparison, it took oil almost 45 years to go from 1% to 10% of total global energy  However, BP predicts that we are still going to be using lots of oil with its core scenario envisages that the demand for oil will peak by 2030.   With hydrocarbons playing a major role until 2040 which will require a substantial investment.  They predict that the expected global demand for oil and gas to be 130 million barrels ...

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Even mildly pessimistic guidance has investors spooked amid macro headwinds Earnings for S&P 500 companies grew by 25.8% in the third quarter, the strongest performance since the third quarter of 2010, when companies benefited from very attractive, recession-era comparable earnings. Nevertheless, from the start of earnings season to the close of trade Friday, the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.22% has fallen 2.7%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.49% 1.1%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.15% 5.5%. “Third quarter earnings were outstanding both on earnings and revenue growth, the percentage of companies beating expectations, and the magnitude of those beats,” Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors. But the selloff that accompanied these announcements is a testament to the fact that “Wall Street doesn’t care what you’ve done in the past. It’s all about what you’re going to do next quarter,” Arone said. The pairing of r...

BITCOIN experienced a sudden drop in value on Wednesday after a prolonged period of record stability, which many experts said would produce a sharp move in either an upwards or downwards direction. The world’s leading cryptocurrency plummeted to its lowest value in more than a year. The drop came as key volatility indicators hit record low levels. The low volatility was widely touted by crypto experts and analysts as an indication of an imminent price swing. eToro managing director Iqbal V. Gandham told Express.co.uk BTC’s low volatility was “forming a wedge” which meant “sharp move either up or down” was “imminent”. The Crypto UK chair, who advised Treasury Select Committee chair Nicky Morgan on her Digital Currencies Inquiry said: “Bitcoin price is forming a wedge, which indicates a sharp move either up or down.” Mr Gandham’s predictions came to fruition on Wednesday when more than 10 per cent of BTC’s value was wiped out over the course of few hours. As a knock-on effect, t...

Russia is rapidly developing a new reusable nuclear rocket to compete with Musk and SpaceX and It Keldysh Research Centre has now been working on its reusable rocket solution for nearly a decade now, and now it’s ramping up the hype with a new concept video showing how its spacecraft works. Vladimir Koshlakov explained that Elon Musk and SpaceX pose no real threat to the group’s plans because Musk is relying on old technology that will soon be antiquated, while Russia is looking forward to changing the future of spaceflight. Koshlakov, say that their nuclear-powered system will be able to make it to Mars in under seven months and that its reusable rocket stages can be put back into space within 48 hours. “Reusability is the priority, we must develop engines that do not need to be fine-tuned or repaired more than once every ten flights. Also, 48 hours after the rocket returns from space, it must be ready to go again. This is what the market demands.” Since SpaceX is currentl...

With recent events in Paradise with the inferno ravaging the wooded town of Paradise where officials discovered the remains of 13 people, bringing the death toll to 42, the World is asking why does California have so many forest fires? The first is California’s climate. Fire is a very simple thing as long as the forest material is dry enough and there’s a spark then it will burn. California, like much of the West, gets most of its moisture in autumn and winter. Its vegetation then spends much of the summer slowly drying out because of a lack of moisture and warmer temperatures. That vegetation then serves as kindling for fires. California’s Climate has always been fire prone, it has become warmer with temperatures that are about two to three degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they would have been without global warming.  Once the vegetation has dried out it makes it more likely to burn. 2) People Dr Williams a bioclimatologist at Columbia University’s Lamo...

FRANKFURT Volkswagen plans to sell electric cars for less than 20,000 euros which would be $22,836 and protect German jobs by converting more than three factories to make rivals to Tesla's models. Tesla's currently in the early stages of ramping up the production of the Model 3, and despite the heavily advertised $35,000 price tag, that car can easily wind up costing closer to around $40,000 or $50,000, depending on options.  Plans for Volkswagen electric car, known as the MEB and with a volume of 200,000 vehicles, are due to be discussed at a board meeting on Nov. 16 in Germany. The Wolfs burg Car Manufacture declined to comment on the plans, is also expected to discuss alliances with the battery cell manufacturer SK Innovation and one of their biggest rivals Ford. Volkswagen strategy comes as cities start to ban diesel engine vehicles, which will come fully into place by 2022, forcing other car-makers to think of new ways to s...

As the Chinese President tries to reassure the private sector that they have nothing to fear from the state as he offers them tax breaks, troubling figures have been released showing that nearly a fifth of all homes in China lay empty. The equates to tens of millions of homes with nobody living in them and even more worryingly no income being produced by the properties. In soon to be published figures as much as 22 per cent of homes is currently not in use, according to Professor Gan Li, who runs the main nationwide study. That adds up to more than 50 million empty homes, he said. This has many experts fearing that homeowners will panic sell if the property market starts showing signs of weakness. Property speculation is seen as a major risk to Chineses social and financial stability. “There’s no other single country with such a high vacancy rate,” said Gan, of Chengdu’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. “Should any crack emerge in the property market, the...

Americans went to the polls Tuesday when the two states voted on legalizing recreational marijuana and another two more deciding the fate of medicinal marijuana. Weed stocks are going through the roof at the moment. So far in the United States of America, 10 states allow recreational use of marijuana and 32 states allow the use of medical marijuana. But government bodies can not use the drug. At the start of October this year, Canada became the second country after Uruguay to legalize the recreational use of marijuana which has also seen the stock rise heavily. Weed stocks were surging Monday and Tuesday as Americans in four  Different states will determine the fate of marijuana use at a state level. Voters in North Dakota and Michigan and are considering the full recreational use of marijuana for people over the age of 21, which is the age people can drink Alcohol in the United States of America. In the meantime, Utah is voting for the medical use of Marijuana. He...

Looking at some individual stocks, Vopak rose 5 %after reporting higher results, which wasn't expected. Siemens healthcare also jumped 2.7 % on its current earnings release. European banks were under scrutiny after the latest results of stress tests. Barclays bank and Lloyd's Bank had the lowest capital ratios in the scenario. According to KPMG, this was due to Newly set accounting rules and high levels of unsecured debts Both stocks were pretty much flat. The European Stoxx 600 was flat as well with the various sectors taking different directions. Financial services and industrial Services were down by about 0.6 %, whereas telecommunications had risen by almost 1 %. Italian banks were under pressure in early deals this morning. Though they eased past them. Analysts believe the macro assumptions for Italy were a little too optimistic. Banco BPM and Intesa Sanpaolo dropped about 2 %. Ubi Banca fell 1.4 %. Meanwhile, eurozone finance ministers are gathering in Brussels fo...

By EcoCrops International on 29 Oct 2018 at 8:00 PM After being slapped with a $20 Million fine for Tweeting he was going to take Tesla private without any backing you would have thought that Musk would stop firing off words on Tweeter at all hours of the day or night. However, on Friday evening in a thread about criticism and his like ratios on the Twitter platform, the CEO of Tesla Musk claimed that his ill-fated 420 tweet in August was worth the forty million in fines that the regulators levied on him and Tesla in response. Why? The likes. This month a Federal Judge approved Elon Musk and Tesla’s settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission after it successfully argued that they had made false and misleading statements in regards to going private.  In addition to paying out $40 million in fines, Elon was compelled to step down as the Tesla’s Chairman for at least three years. Tesla was also required to reign in Musk’s communications with investors. A ...

According to sources that have spoken to Bloomberg China is considering a move to reduce car purchase tax form 10 per cent to as little as 5 per cent, a 50 per cent drop. The move is in response to China's ailing automotive market which is heading for its first decline in car sales in almost two decades, which some are saying is a direct result of the US trade war. China has seen outstanding growth in the automotive market thanks to the increasing income of the Chinese middle classes. The proposal has been good news for carmakers across the globe with Volkswagen AG seeing their share price increase by a staggering 6.9 per cent, the biggest intraday move since July 2016. Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. rallied in U.S. trading, while BMW AG and Daimler AG gained in Germany. This is helping to steady the world’s largest automotive market, which is facing its first decline in more than two decades as a trade war with the U.S. hits at consumer spending power. The t...