5 spunti per approfondire (34/2023)

La rubrica settimanale con i consigli di lettura di RivistaEnergia.it, dall’Europa e dal mondo. Forse non le notizie più eclatanti, ma proprio per questo interessanti da approfondire. Settimana 34/2023

“The plant supplies about one-third of US demand for enriched uranium and is in the process of boosting output by 15%. It’s the centerpiece of a transatlantic project to rejuvenate production of the fuel to feed the West’s fleet of nuclear reactors, a linchpin of energy security and efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Urenco Ltd. is the only commercial supplier of enriched uranium in North America. Currently, about half of the global supply comes from Russia, an uncomfortable reality for leaders in the US and Europe in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.”

The Race to Ditch Russian Uranium Starts in New Mexico’s Desert
Articolo – Bloomberg

“Now that climate change has raised the Earth’s temperatures to the highest levels in recorded history, with projections showing that they will only climb further, new research shows the impact of heat on workers is spreading across the economy and lowering productivity. Extreme heat is regularly affecting workers beyond expected industries like agriculture and construction. Sizzling temperatures are causing problems for those who work in factories, warehouses and restaurants and also for employees of airlines and telecommunications firms, delivery services and energy companies. Even home health aides are running into trouble.”

Heat Is Costing the U.S. Economy Billions in Lost Productivity
Articolo – The New York Times

“Beks Ship Management, founded over a decade ago, operated in obscurity for years with a small fleet that included only six ships as of 2021. The company began as a side venture by a Turkish textile magnate, Ali Bekmezci, who is better known within Turkey for his factory that makes socks and underwear for Western brands such as H&M. The company has aggressively expanded in the past 2½ years, with its spending spree accelerating since the invasion of Ukraine, acquiring 17 vessels since 2022. The company now owns 41 vessels worth $782.61 million, about 10 times the value of its fleet in 2021, according to Veson Nautical, a shipping-data consulting firm.”

The Ghost Fleet Helping Russia Evade Sanctions and Pursue Its War in Ukraine
Articolo – The Wall Street Journal

“This paper provides a comprehensive global, regional, and country-level update of: (i) efficient fossil fuel prices to reflect supply and environmental costs; and (ii) subsidies implied by charging below efficient fuel prices. Globally, fossil fuel subsidies were $7 trillion in 2022 or 7.1 percent of GDP. Explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) have more than doubled since 2020 but are still only 18 percent of the total subsidy, while nearly 60 percent is due to undercharging for global warming and local air pollution. Differences between efficient prices and retail fuel prices remain large and pervasive. For example, 80 percent of global coal consumption was priced at below half of its efficient level in 2022. Full fossil fuel price reform would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions to an estimated 43 percent below baseline levels in 2030 (in line with keeping global warming to 1.5-2°C), raise revenues worth 3.6 percent of global GDP, and prevent 1.6 million local air pollution deaths per year. Accompanying spreadsheets provide detailed results for 170 countries.”

IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update
Analisi – International Monetary Fund

“The costs of climate change are often estimated in monetary terms, but this raises ethical issues. Here we express them in terms of numbers of people left outside the ‘human climate niche’—defined as the historically highly conserved distribution of relative human population density with respect to mean annual temperature. We show that climate change has already put ~9% of people (>600 million) outside this niche. By end-of-century (2080–2100), current policies leading to around 2.7 °C global warming could leave one-third (22–39%) of people outside the niche. Reducing global warming from 2.7 to 1.5 °C results in a ~5-fold decrease in the population exposed to unprecedented heat (mean annual temperature ≥29 °C). The lifetime emissions of ~3.5 global average citizens today (or ~1.2 average US citizens) expose one future person to unprecedented heat by end-of-century. That person comes from a place where emissions today are around half of the global average. These results highlight the need for more decisive policy action to limit the human costs and inequities of climate change.”

Quantifying the human cost of global warming
Ricerca – Nature Sustainability

della stessa rubrica

5 spunti per approfondire (33/2023), 18 agosto
5 spunti per approfondire (32/2023), 11 agosto
5 spunti per approfondire (31/2023), 4 agosto