Category Archives: Resource Based Economy

Home of Canada's first and only rare earths mine, Northwest Territories is rich in minerals critical to clean energy revolution North of 60 Mining News July 1, 2022

Rare earths from the Nechalacho Mine being delivered into the supply chain marks the opening of a new critical minerals chapter in the story of mining in Northwest Territories a saga that includes a 1930s gold rush to the territory's capital, a whole new town to support the Pine Point zinc mine, and the unlikely discovery of world-class diamond deposits in the famed Lac de Gras region.

"We have an opportunity to add to our rich and long-standing mining story," Northwest Territories Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment Caroline Wawzonek said during the Yellowknife Geoscience Forum last November.

Building upon the economic foundation that the mining of gold, zinc, and diamonds has provided for Northwest Territories' economy for nearly a century, this North of 60 jurisdiction is now looking at a future that includes being a reliable and responsible source of the bismuth, beryllium, cobalt, copper, gallium, germanium, lithium, nickel, rare earths, tungsten, vanadium, and other metals critical to low-carbon energy, electric vehicles, and digital technologies.

"From our beginnings in base metals like zinc, lead, and gold, we progressed to becoming the birthplace of ethically sourced diamonds in the 1990s," Wawzonek said during a June 17 address at the Arctic Development Expo in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. "The breadth of our mineral potential is expanding even further, thanks to the presence of green economy metals like rare earth minerals, lithium, nickel, and cobalt needed to meet the demand of clean technologies along with many other resources recognized as critical or strategic minerals and metals."

The International Energy Agency forecasts that the annual supplies of minerals and metals being fed into the burgeoning EV and battery storage sectors will need to expand by 30 times between 2020 and 2040 to build the renewable energy infrastructure and electric vehicles necessary to achieve global climate goals.

This has industry and governments investing heavily into ensuring there are abundant, reliable, and responsibly mined supplies of the raw material needed to build the renewable energy revolution a list of critical minerals and metals that Northwest Territories could help supply.

Wawzonek told North of 60 Mining News that NWT hosts known deposits and occurrences with 23 of 31 minerals that have been deemed critical by the Canadian government, and this vast northern territory, which is roughly twice the size of Texas, remains largely underexplored.

Above and beyond being a reliable North American source of these critical minerals often imported from places like China, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Russia, the permitting system in NWT ensures that the mined commodities produced in the territory meet high environmental, social, and governance standards.

What sets the NWT permitting system apart is indigenous involvement throughout the process, which allows NWT's First People to consider both the impacts and benefits of a proposed mining project. This process, which requires a recommendation by an indigenous review board prior to government approval, has been criticized for adding time to the permitting process.

The NWT industry minister, however, contends that having ingenious involvement built directly into the process results in consensus building with residents and a permitted mining project that has ESG at its very core.

"We are world leaders in these measures, well known for our environmental oversight, Indigenous representation in regulatory processes, and the recognition of traditional knowledge," she said. "In fact, the NWT model; the ESG-I, with its unique approach to collaborative and consensus-based legislative development, resource royalty sharing, and socio-economic and benefit agreements, is anchored by the critical leadership of NWT Indigenous Governments in resource exploration and development in Canada."

Canada's first REE mine

The newly developed Nechalacho Mine is an operating example of the advantages NWT has to offer, both in terms of rich critical minerals potential and the strength of the ESG-I model in the territory.

In addition to being the first rare earths mine in all of Canada, Nechalacho boasts environmental advantages and a relationship with local indigenous companies that bolster the ESG score of this producer of a group of elements critical to EVs, wind turbines, and a broad array of other modern industrial and consumer products.

Australia-based Vital Metals Ltd., which operates Nechalacho Mine through its Canadian subsidiary Cheetah Resources Corp., is working hard to ensure that as many benefits as possible from mining rare earths at Nechalacho are realized by NWT businesses and people.

"It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a community to build a project. A community of indigenous and non-indigenous suppliers, employees, and not-for-profits," said Cheetah Resources Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Affairs David Connelly. "Without this community, the Nechalacho rare earth project could not exist, and the NWT would not host Canada's first rare earth mine."

Cheetah believes the money it spends with local businesses is "sticky," meaning that it leads to additional benefits in the territory. As such, the company acquires roughly 90% of its goods and services from NWT businesses, excluding machinery not made or sold locally.

NWT suppliers use the "sticky dollars" received from the goods and services provided at Nechalacho to pay their local employees, buy from other NWT suppliers, pay rent to local landlords, donate to community charities, and pay municipal, school, and territorial taxes and fees.

In addition to doing business with as many local businesses as possible, Cheetah has set the standard for indigenous hire more than 75% of the workers at Nechalacho in 2021 were Canada's First People.

The ability to achieve such a high First Nation hire rate has a lot to do with contracting Det'on Cho Nahanni Construction Ltd., a Northwest Territories-based First Nations company, to carry out the mining and earthworks at Nechalacho.

"The Yellowknives Dene First Nation is pleased to be the first Indigenous group in Canada to be responsible for mineral extraction on their traditional territory," said Yellowknives Dene First Nations Chief Ernest Betsina. "When indigenous people conduct the mining operations, they are better able to control the process, resulting in better safeguarding of the environment."

When it comes to safeguarding the environment, Nechalacho boasts advantages that set it apart from competitors it is near-surface, very high-grade, and needs minimal processing to produce a concentrated ore product ready to ship for processing.

The ore dug up by Det'on Cho Nahanni Construction is simply crushed and fed through an ore sorter that discards the non-mineralized rocks creating a high-grade ore without the need for water or chemicals. This sorted ore concentrate is bagged and shipped to Saskatchewan where it is processed into mixed rare earths carbonate.

Vital began feeding the first Nechalacho ore through a dense media separation plant at its new rare earth extraction facility in Saskatchewan earlier this month.

"We have been a rare earth miner for more than 12 months and now we can commence production of rare earth carbonate," said Vital Metals Managing Director Geoff Atkins. "We are excited to have reached this milestone at Saskatoon despite the challenges surrounding supply chains and logistics across the world."

Mixed rare earth carbonates produced in Saskatchewan will be shipped to separate facilities for the final separation into the individual rare earth oxides needed for EV motors, wind turbine generators, speakers, computer hard drives, medical imaging devices, and a plethora of other high-tech devices.

Putting NWT at the front end of a supply chain critical to the transition to low-carbon energy and transportation.

"It sends a signal that Canada is indeed a serious player in the international drive toward a sustainable, reliable, responsibly mined source of critical rare earth elements independent of China and also of Russia," said Wawzonek.

Bridging the gap

Like the rest of Canada's North and Alaska, NWT is a vast and remote land with limited transportation and energy infrastructure. This often makes the economics of mining even high-grade deposits, especially those that produce a concentrate that must be shipped elsewhere for processing, out of reach.

The territory, which has been working to bridge this gap between its rich mineral resources and the markets that need them, hopes the federal government's C$3.8 billion (US$3 billion) budget to support Canada's critical minerals strategy includes funds to continue this effort.

The recently completed 97-kilometer (60 miles) Tlicho Highway to the community of Whati is an example of recent efforts to extend infrastructure closer to the territory's critical mineral potential.

Funded by a partnership between the federal, territorial, and Tlicho First Nations governments, this recently completed project extends road access to within 50 kilometers (30 miles) of Fortune Minerals Ltd.'s NICO cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper project, which will need road access to deliver concentrates to market.

Located about 150 road-kilometers (95 miles) north of Hay River and the northern end of the rail system in NWT, NICO is a near-development stage project that includes an intriguing mix of critical and precious metals.

According to a 2020 plan, a mine at NICO and an associated refinery would produce an average of 1,800 metric tons of battery-grade cobalt sulfate; 1,700 metric tons of bismuth; 300 metric tons of copper; and 47,000 oz of gold annually over the first 14 years of mining.

This mix of metals in NWT makes NICO an intriguing prospect for those wanting to see more critical minerals mined and refined in North America.

According to an annual minerals report published by the U.S. Geological Survey in February, DRC accounted for roughly 69% of the cobalt mined during 2021.

"This country has a high-risk index for doing business owing to poor infrastructure, resource nationalism, a high perception of corruption, and a lack of transparency as well as wars," USGS wrote about DRC in a 2018 report on cobalt.

Russia, the world's second-largest producer, accounted for another 6%.

This creates a dilemma for companies that need cobalt for the lithium-ion batteries powering EVs and a wide range of devices that make the world greener and more convenient.

The bismuth also found in abundance at NICO is an increasingly important ingredient as a substitute for lead in non-toxic alloys for water pipes and in semiconductors for solar power and potentially green hydrogen production.

Read more about research into bismuth's use in hydrogen production at Solar fuel made from artificial leaves in the June 15, 2022 edition of Metal Tech News.

Bismuth, however, is one of the rarest elements in Earth's crust and is seldom found in economically recoverable concentrations.

In fact, it is estimated that NICO accounts for 12% of the world's bismuth reserves deposits where it has been shown economic feasibility for recovering the metal.

When you throw in the copper and gold, NICO offers a mix of metals increasingly critical to an electric-centric world and a monetary metal traditionally seen as a safe-haven asset in times of financial or political uncertainty.

NICO, however, requires a road to deliver concentrates to Fortune's planned refinery in Alberta and onward to the renewable energy and other supply chains that need the metals to be produced.

Fortune plans to construct an industrial access road that will link the mine to the new Tlicho Highway, which will enable metal concentrates to be trucked to a railhead south of Great Slave Lake for delivery to the planned Alberta refinery.

NWT hopes that Ottawa will support further infrastructure development to critical minerals enriched areas of the territory.

"To transition into the next chapter of our storied mining history with our rich critical mineral potential, we need strong partners at the federal level and continue to make the case for significant infrastructure investment. By doing this, we will be able to capitalize on our true economic potential," said Northwest Territories Premier Caroline Cochrane.

The C$3.8 billion (US$3 billion) federal budget to support the development of critical minerals across Canada includes C$1.5 billion (US$1.2 billion) specifically designated for infrastructure investments to unlock new mineral projects in critical regions.

Fireweed Metals

One of the most exciting new developments on the NWT critical minerals front was the territorial government's decision to sell the Mactung tungsten project to Fireweed Zinc Ltd. for C$15 million (US$11.8 million).

Stradling the NWT-Yukon border, Mactung hosts 33 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.88% tungsten trioxide, making it one of the largest known undeveloped, high-grade tungsten-skarn deposits in the world.

Despite Mactung's world-class size and grade, along with being advanced well into permitting, the former owner of the project, North American Tungsten, fell into financial difficulties and filed for creditor protection before it could develop the mine that would have produced roughly 6,450 metric tons of tungsten per year

NWT government acquired Mactung in 2015 and obtained a Class 4 Mining Land Use Approval for the tungsten mine project in 2020.

In June, Fireweed agreed to buy this advanced tungsten exploration project that borders the northeast side of its Macmillan Pass zinc-lead-silver property from the territorial government.

"We now have not only one of the largest undeveloped zinc resources in the world at our Macmillan Pass Project, but also one of the world's largest and highest-grade undeveloped tungsten projects at the advanced stage Mactung Project," said Fireweed CEO Brandon Macdonald.

Fireweed's agreement to buy Mactung comes only a month after it staked Gayna River, another NWT project enriched with critical minerals.

Lying roughly 180 kilometers north of Mactung, Gayna River is a highly prospective zinc-gallium-germanium-lead-silver project that was discovered in the 1970s and is the target of more than 28,000 meters of drilling completed by Rio Tinto.

To reflect the new critical mineral diversity offered by Mactung and Gayna River, the company has changed its name to Fireweed Metals Corp.

"Our projects host major deposits of zinc and tungsten, each with unique supply dynamics and compelling demand growth," said Fireweed Metals CEO Macdonald. "With both zinc and tungsten being designated as critical minerals by Canada, the US, and the EU, Fireweed is positioned to be a significant critical minerals player on the world stage and to help enable the transition to a sustainable low-carbon economy."

Government of Northwest Territories

For the territorial government, the deal with Fireweed represents another page in the next chapter of NWT's mining story a chapter where the northern Canada territory is a reliable and responsible supplier of the critical minerals required to build a technologically driven future powered by low-carbon energy.

"The NWT is a vibrant jurisdiction with opportunities in abundance. We are looking for new partnerships across a variety of ventures and areas of development," said Wawzonek. "We continue to build on our best practices and our strengths, and we are looking to welcome like-minded investors and partners. We are ready to raise our bar once again and are likely one of the best positioned jurisdictions to do that at this moment in time."

Over his more than 14 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

Email: [emailprotected] Phone: (907) 726-1095https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-lasley-ab073b12/

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NWT mining future takes a critical turn - North of 60 Mining News

It seems that even the most astute U.S. commentators and analysts are somewhat out of date in their attitude towards the American policy of provoking China and a possible anti-Chinese international alliance whilst working on many visible levels to demonstrate overwhelming power through NATO.

The position of the liberals seems to be that any such policy is in breach of good common sense, especially because it is dangerously rhetorical and possibly ephemeral given the parlous present state of the U.S. economy. This is well-represented in a recent paper by Joseph Stiglitz.

Part of this is of course very true but mundane, for the American economy has been a woeful, if a major component of the world system since 2008, and possibly since the early 1970s. Certainly, from 2014 to 2019 the annual growth rate of the world economy was 3.4%, but the U.S. economy grew at 2.4%. The American trading pattern is at best moribund. It is the only major capitalist economy whose major trading partners are its next-door neighbors, Canada and Mexico.

Referring back to Stiglitz, if the U.S. economy were indeed stable, growing, and favoring the increased prosperity of the great majority of its 330 million people, then the present bellicosity would not arise so readily. Indeed, it might split the nation and throw out presidents.

The failure of productivity growth at the heart of the real economy combined with the enormous direction of capital and property towards speculative land, property, and resource investments has led to gigantism in financial flows in close association with tragically low real economic growth and increasing income and wealth maldistribution. But here we are concerned with the immediate global political impact of this, which is the development of the now ingrained policy of universal political distraction wherein civil society is waylaid and directed to the populist, nationalist, and very immediate and emotional arena of foreign policy.

Where the latter might have more traditionally been an outcome of professional diplomacy geared to problems of international power and status over the long-term, it has now increasingly passed into the hands of opportunist political leaders and their advisors, who take every favorable chance to get the measure of modern political man by aiming the attention of all people to the problems caused by the recalcitrant foreigners. The latter no longer need be carefully demarcated as ideological, territorial, or commercial antagonists.

Given the emergency condition of the economy, enmity on economic grounds (obviously China, previously Japan) might even be forgiven. But that is not the argument here. In contrast, to say the rhetoric against Japan in the 1980s and 1990s, centered on trade and investment, the present anti-Eastern moves are far more inchoate. This is because a cloudy vagueness is all the better for disguising what is happening. U.S. civil society is being distracted from the central problems of internal socioeconomic disarray and directed towards a focus on the problems caused by the others. In this regard, the Ukraine war is a welcome addition to the global stance.

Of course, the U.S. is not alone nations of particular foreign aggression such as the UK and France share the same internal problems on a smaller scale long years of low productivity growth fostering failures in real manufacturing, agriculture, and basic services and infrastructures, whilst increasing the enormous prosperity of a small number of main capitalist players whose power lies not in astute innovativeness but in its opposite in the shelter provided by highly complex financial instruments. The result is a communal capitalist failure of low productivity, growth, and welfare. Thus, GDP per annum in the euro area has grown by only 1.9% between 2014 and 2019, and its position overall in the global Economic Freedom Index has fallen to 69.2 compared to that of Japan at 74.1. It was not so long ago that Western Europeans were contrasting Japans high economic growth with its low degrees of social choice and political freedom.

If we have good reason to think that change is needed, then some recognition of the very simple process that we are now living under deserves more attention. Historically, in most capitalist nations, foreign policy has supposedly resulted as an outcome of international games and strategies. Now we are seeing foreign policy formed on domestic issues, not in order to address them but to direct attention from them. Of course, rational international strategies have often been upset by real threats arising outside this reasoning, normally from within regimes where rational considerations have been overwhelmed by emotional certainties, often along borders that simply get out of hand. But this is not the present global situation in the main.

Large capitalist nations are causing problems on a host of levels, but global opinion is generally under their control. There is no conspiracy. It appears to be a mechanism of this phase of global democratic capitalism, the leadership of which is comprehensively shy of anything but the most turgid policy possibilities inside their overall political economies. The U.S. case is simply the most obvious and the most important its military capability alone is staggering in any comparative context; its natural resource base remains unbelievably rich and beneficent. It also has the power to influence the course of action of many other nations, including those of NATO but by no means bounded by any formal organization.

We might add a note of amelioration. Compared to many democratic capitalist nations, American governments of whatever political persuasion do face intransigent institutional problems in developing any radical socioeconomic policy package. Very rarely has any White House had a commanding majority in the U.S. Congress, so any important legislation can be blocked at a variety of interstices. Seemingly progressive regimes, perhaps daring enough to go beyond the neoliberal consensus, such as those of Clinton and Obama (and indeed Tony Blair in Britain, Lionel Jospin in France, or Felipe Gonzlez in Spain), have time and again turned their backs on any new deal packages for basic reform yet failed to evolve alternative policies of either economic growth or social welfare that might have founded sustained progressive changes for civil society.

This is not simply a story of absolute power corrupting absolutely. It is a matter of choices within highly constrained policy regimes. Where a combination of central political institutions and much-vaunted constitutional regulations continue to permit power to adhere to oil and agricultural interests, defense contractors and the military, and financial oligopolies, then decisive innovation beyond the box in either polity or economy becomes crippled.

As long as distraction is cheaper than reform it will remain favored within the power elites of populist democracy. Where distraction in the direction of the foreign other is established, it surely will become increasingly difficult to shift. When future presidential and other electoral contests are based on the question of who looks the hardest of warriors, then checks and balances will move from being one annoying arena of distraction to being obsolete.

If you're interested in writing for International Policy Digest - please send us an email via submissions@intpolicydigest.org

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Distraction Capitalism 101. The Basic Engine of US Foreign Policy - International Policy Digest

In the not-so-distant future, the average, middle-income American may wake up on a chilly spring morning in a home warmed by solar panels, then travel in an electric vehicle to work in a building where the computers and lights are powered by wind. Clean energy technologies, such as wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles and batteries for energy storage are the backbone of future energy systems we need to grow our economy and reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

These clean energy technologies all rely on a handful of critical minerals including cobalt, lithium, nickel and rare earths. As these technologies become even more prevalent in our society as we transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to carbon neutrality, demand for critical minerals is projected to increase upward of 500 percent by 2050.

The Biden-Harris administration is seizing this enormous economic growth and job creation opportunity by increasing domestic mining, processing and recycling. But even with strong domestic actions, resource-rich developing countries will be essential to meeting demand. Both our energy future and the success of major U.S. companies depends on securing reliable critical mineral supply chains. A recent analysis commissioned by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) found minerals needed for clean energy including cobalt, graphite, lithium and aluminum in over 70 countries where we work.

To secure our energy future while promoting our values, the United States together with the global community must redouble our efforts to promote transparency, accountability and good governance in the extractive sector. Costly supply chain disruptions are more likely to occur when sourcing minerals from countries with weak governance, or where corruption and conflict are common. China dominates global mineral supply chains and has moved aggressively to control production in resource-rich developing countries with poor governance records.

Chinas overseas lending has come under international scrutiny over allegations of a lack of transparency, excessive debt levels, non-competitive processes and weak environment, labor and human rights standards. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), for example, the government is reviewing $6 billion dollars of China-backed investments over concerns that the deals have failed to generate the local benefits promised. In efforts to combat corruption, illicit activities and human rights abuses at home as well as abroad, the United States is increasingly sanctioning bad actors in the DRC and elsewhere, such as the mining tycoon Dan Gertler, whose reported abuses in the DRC exacted an enormous human and economic toll, according to the U.S. Treasurys Office.

The United States government is implementing a variety of measures to secure minerals including increasing domestic and allied production and processing capacity, investing in minerals recycling, and we even have a national stockpile of critical minerals. The new Minerals Security Partnership, announced on June 14 by the United States and other countries with high critical minerals investment and offtake potential, complements these efforts by helping catalyze additional investment across the full value chain, supporting the ability of countries to reap the full economic benefit of their geological resources. It also aims to raise environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) standards and promote recycling.

USAIDs recent Mining and the Green Energy Transition report examines the challenges and opportunities posed by the green energy mining boom in developing countries. New mining investments in countries such as the DRC, Indonesia and Peru have the potential to be a source of wealth and jobs for their people, but they also pose increased risks of pollution, conflict, corruption and human rights and labor violations.

We must mine better, fairer and cleaner. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it will also help the United States and our partners secure reliable mineral supply chains. Here are two things we can do:

First, make mineral supply chains more responsible, transparent and accountable. The Biden-Harris administration has made countering corruption a core U.S. national security issue and released the first-ever U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption. USAID can help. We have over 20 years of experience establishing ethical supply chains for diamonds, gold and other conflict minerals, increasing civil society oversight as well as improving benefit sharing for local communities. We also have two decades of experience supporting the implementation of global transparency and anti-corruption standards such as the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative. We must build on and amplify our anti-corruption work to ensure the energy transition works for everyones futures.

Second, strengthen our partnerships with the private sector. It must be part of the solution. For example, a decade ago USAID and the Department of State co-founded the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade, which includes major American companies such as Apple, Ford, Google and Intel as well as civil society groups. Among its successes, the Public-Private Alliance laid the groundwork for the very first traceable, conflict-free gold supply chain from the DRC. In 2017, the Department of Labor joined the alliance and together we began addressing more labor and human rights issues in mineral supply chains. We are currently expanding the scope of the Public-Private Alliance to address green energy minerals directly.

Our best chance to tackle the most severe impacts of the climate crisis lies in rapid deployment of clean energy technologies, but they must not be sourced at the expense of human and labor rights, sustainable development goals, accountable governance, human health or environmental integrity. With thoughtful, strategic approaches we can avoid a new green resource curse while tackling climate change, creating new jobs and protecting the environment.

Gillian Caldwell serves as the chief climate officer and is responsible for directing and overseeing all climate and environment work across USAID. She previously served as the CEO of Global Witness. She launched and led 1Sky from 2007 to 2010, a cross-sector campaign with over 600 allied organizations to pass legislation in the U.S. to address the climate crisis. She worked as a consultant for more than 70 non-profits, foundations and universities on strategic planning and organizational development.

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Green energy minerals: Key role in the race for climate action - The Hill

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The boom times only look that way in hindsight. We may come to remember 2021 as the sweet spot between the initial shock COVID-19 dealt to the world economy and the twin perils of inflation and rising interest rates that threaten recession in 2022.

Both literally and figuratively, 2021 was a year for healing. The deployment of vaccines dramatically defanged the pandemics lethal bite, even as new coronavirus variants found ways around our defences. Meanwhile the British Columbia economy played catch-up on the ground lost in 2020, growing an estimated 5 percent and returning the province effectively to full employment.

Credit where its due: public policy had a lot to do with it. Government stimulus, initially focused on individuals, shifted to small business and hard-hit sectors with nary a word about austerity. Meanwhile, central banks kept overnight lending rates near all-time lows. Money could be had seemingly for free.

In 2021 we began to notice the consequences, though, first with a spring spike in lumber prices as the long under-capitalized forest industry struggled to meet house-bound consumers sudden passion for home improvement. Then supply-chain issues popped up across the global economy as companies reconfigured their sources of inputs to ward off pandemic-related disruptions and geopolitical realignments of an increasingly bipolar world.

By fall, it would manifest itself as across-the-board inflation. Indeed, disruption to the free flow of goods felt all the more acute here in British Columbia, where catastrophic weather events had a material effect on the economy. Not only would a once-in-a-millennium heat dome in June result in close to 600 fatalitiesmaking it the most deadly weather event in Canadian historyan unprecedented tornado struck Vancouvers Point Grey. A succession of atmospheric rivers of rain in November precipitated flooding and washouts that, for more than a week, severed all direct highway and rail transport between the southwest coast and the rest of Canada. Gasoline sales were subject to rationing for weeks.

But remember, these were the good times.

For B.C.s natural resource companies and their suppliers, 2021 was a tremendous year. As you can see in the Top 100 list, forest and mining companies posted revenue and profit gains well into the double digits. In the case of West Fraser Timber, where revenues shot up 140 percent, higher wood prices and volume sales were further leveraged by consolidation, as the company digested its takeover of Toronto-based sheet board manufacturer Norbord Inc.

Likewise, copper producer First Quantum Minerals evidenced impeccable timing in ramping up its massive Cobre Panama mine in Central America, just as a world fixated on electric vehicles took a run on the sublimely conductive metal. It was a similar story at perennial Top 100 heavyweights Teck Resources, Canfor Corp. and Finning International. Thanks to the commodities boom, the number of B.C.-based companies in the 12 figures doubled year-over-year, to four. Slower-growing Crown corporations, traditionally prominent among the provinces corporate titans, were all but banished from the top 10 as a result.

Meanwhile, B.C.s secular growth stories kept on doing their thing. Consumer-focused Lululemon Athletica, Premium Brands and upstart Article (parent name: TradeMango Solutions) all posted double-digit revenue growth again last year. Fresh off their initial public offerings over the previous two years, customer service automation company Telus International, web content distributor BBTV Holdings and health sciences startup AbCellera Biologics all crashed the list for the first time. Propelled by its ambitious acquisition of CRH Medical, Well Health Technologies almost made the cut on the back of a stupendous 500% year-over-year revenue surge. (It appears on our Next 10 list.)

READ MORE: The 2021 Top 100: Go Home, and Go Big

Not every sector thrived, of course. Continued COVID-related restrictions and public aversion to meetings and travel took their toll on the likes of past Top 100 inductees Coast Hotels and Wall Financial. Restaurant franchise networks like A&W Food Services, The Keg and Boston Pizza had another challenging year that left them off the list. A concerted push into e-commerce could not overcome the loss of foot traffic in Aritzia stores. Crown-owned transportation companies were not immune either, with Translink, BC Transit, BC Ferries and the Vancouver Airport Authority all operating well below capacity, though in the first three cases still big enough to be included in the Top 100. BC Lottery Corp. suffered from the loss of casino revenues, while the hobbled Great Canadian Gaming, a long-time Top 100 alumnus, was finally snapped up by New Yorks Apollo Global Management.

Other B.C. companies taken out last yearthough under happier circumstancesincluded gold producer Pretium Resources, bought by Newcrest Mining of Australia, and wood pellet manufacturer Pinnacle Renewable Energy, now part of United Kingdom-based Drax Group. Energy shipper Teekay LNG Partners became the property of New York-headquartered alternative investment firm Stonepeak.

Just when its revenues gained serious traction, pot grower Tilray moved its headquarters from Nanaimo to Leamington, Ont., where its merger partner Aphria is based. Formerly Prince George-based BID Group relocated to Mirabel, Quebec. Capstone Mining Corp. merged with Bermuda-based Mantos Copper late in the year to become Capstone Copper, with the headquarters consolidated in Vancouver.

All in all, the big got bigger, though perhaps fewer in number. The aggregate 16.7 percent jump in Top 100 revenues to more than $225 billiona recordbelies the fact the cut-off for the No. 100 company barely budged, at just over $340 million. Most of the $32 billion in additional revenues since 2020 came from a few giant resource companies, in other words.

Since mid-2020, B.C.s economy has received a well-timed boost from higher prices for many resource-based goodsnotably natural gas, lumber and pulp, metals and minerals, and some parts of the agri-food complex. Buoyant commodity markets served as a helpful tailwind for the provincial economy as we came out of the COVID recession, Business Council of B.C. senior policy advisor Jock Finlayson and chief economist Ken Peacock wrote in a year-end commentary in January. Their outlook came with a subtle warning, though: In 2022, slower economic growthglobally and in North Americawill reduce the contribution of commodities to B.C.s rebound.

As we know too well from experience, commodity booms come and go. Continuing to build and diversify B.C.s economy will require nurturing the leadership and innovation of a next generation of corporate titans.

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The 2022 Top 100: Anything but Normal - BCBusiness

Digital solutions have vast potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but they can also lead to a higher environmental burden. The Joint Research Centres recent foresight report: Towards a green and digital future identified the key requirements that the EU needs to meet to make sure the green and digital transitions reinforce each other.

The Joint Research Centres (JRC) report [link] published on 29 June analysed how current and future digital technologies could help the European Union to reach climate neutrality in the next decades. The report informed the European Commissions Communication: 2022 Strategic Foresight Report [link]: Twinning the green and digital transitions in the new geopolitical context.

Researchers took a closer look at five sectors that are among the highest greenhouse gas emitters in the EU: agriculture, buildings and construction, energy, energy-intensive industries, and transport and mobility. They drew up two case studies for each sector to show how digital technologies could help to make them more sustainable. They also examined how economic, social and political factors will influence the green and digital transitions.

Based on this analysis, the report derives key requirements for the success of the European Unions green and digital transitions.

In the next weeks, we will be covering stories of how the Commissions scientists at the JRC are helping to make a success of the green and digital transitions. We are launching this mini-campaign with this piece, taking seven insights from our new foresight report.

Lets see what we need to achieve in the next decades for a climate-neutral and digitally empowered Europe.

Climate neutrality by 2050 will require giant leaps in innovation and a complex technological ecosystem with many interlinked solutions. Artificial intelligence, Internet of things, 5G and blockchain and next-generation computing technologies will help us manage this increased complexity.

A prime example is the energy system, which will have to cope with a much higher number of producers and a much more volatile input due to the higher share of solar and wind energy. Demand will have to adapt dynamically to the ever-changing supply. Smart appliances will help us decide when to charge our car or wash our dishes and clothes.

For this complex system to work, green-digital solutions will have to be interoperable and work reliably and securely. A functioning innovation and data ecosystems are necessary to develop and implement the solutions needed for the green and digital transitions.

Digital technologies come with significant climate and environmental burdens stemming from both their use and manufacturing. Data centres, artificial intelligence and blockchain use ever increasing amounts of electricity, materials and water.

In addition, the digital technologies depend heavily on the availability of rare earth materials since most digital devices are either not recycled or very difficult to recycle. Consequently, eWaste is the fastest growing waste category.

To ensure that green-digital technologies have an overall positive environmental effect, research and innovation has to optimise their environmental performance throughout their whole life cycle. In addition, regulations could support the uptake of more environmentally friendly technologies.

Besides the efforts of businesses, society can also play a decisive role in advancing the green transition. If people are more and more ready to change their habits to live a sustainable life, that will make a big difference. Science based information and labels may help to change consumption habits.

Giving up on owning private cars and upgrading the governance of transport and mobility systems, for example by making Mobility-as-a-Service widely available, could help to make transport more efficient and cut emissions. Eating less meat and thereby lowering its production could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and land use in the agriculture sector. Moving out of or reshaping family homes once children have grown up would save energy and lower the demand for additional housing.

These changes cannot come top-down. Inclusive debates could raise awareness and commitment, examine the ways forward and make us more open to change.

Data is essential for a sustainable society. It can unlock large efficiency gains in resource use across many different sectors. Data is necessary for a circular economy. It is key to ensure transparency of products and value chains and to reveal unsustainable practices.

For this to happen, enterprises, governments and end users need to be willing and able to share their data. They should be informed on how their data will help to achieve climate, environmental and social objectives. Data owners should have peace of mind knowing that their data is being used ethically thanks to strict legal requirements.

For example, farmers should enjoy the direct benefits of their data, instead of suffering disadvantages due to data monopolies of big accumulators, like corporate providers of farming equipment.

Everyone should be empowered to benefit from their data. Standards could help to ensure that the collected data is interoperable and of high quality. Privacy rules need to protect end users. Finally, cybersecurity as a crosscutting technology priority could guarantee the security of shared data.

Standards, rules, and regulations will play a crucial role in driving the green and digital transitions. They will channel investment into green-digital solutions, prevent the misuse of market power, and ensure interoperability between new and older generations of technology.

Market structures that also include small and medium-size companies are key for high levels of competition and innovation. Standards can help to ensure that big players, who for example provide crucial digital platforms, cannot keep new and innovative enterprises out of the market. Moreover, data ownership rules could help to avoid data monopolies.

Support to smaller players would help them implement green-digital solutions and ensure a diversity of players in the market.

By indicating which economic activities are sustainable, governments and financial actors could help to unlock the public and private investments that are necessary for successful twin transitions. Policy coherence will be necessary across the different sectors, regions, and levels of governments.

To ensure widespread acceptance of the green and digital transitions, lower-income and more vulnerable parts of society should also actively benefit from the transitions. Those who face energy poverty and lack digital skills or connectivity are at a heavy disadvantage. The transitions should improve their situation instead of bringing additional hardships.

For example, subsidies to buy electric cars may benefit only those who can afford expensive cars, while those who are not in such a privileged position also contribute to these subsidies through their taxes. However, through shared mobility, like car sharing apps, those who would not be able to buy electric cars can also use them.

For fair and inclusive transitions, policy measures should be attentive to the specific needs and situation of lower-income and vulnerable groups of society. One crucial measure is to help citizens gain the skills with which they can succeed in the growing green and digital market segments.

New green-digital technologies and sustainable business models often compete with already established ones, with a large customer base which is a challenge for their competitiveness and uptake. This means that the transition to a sustainable and circular economy may require special financial and regulatory support.

Enabling markets could be the answer to this problem. Enabling markets would follow strict green standards and internalise environmental and societal costs of pollution or emissions. This would mean that all market actors have an incentive to think long-term, invest in green-digital technologies and avoid solutions that do not have a future in a green Europe.

Building on the findings of the JRC report, the European Commission has adopted the Communication 2022 Strategic Foresight Report: Twinning the green and digital transitions in the new geopolitical context, which identifies key areas where political action is needed to reinforce the synergies between the twin transitions.

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A green and digital future: 7 insights from strategic foresight - EU Science Hub

Between 2012 and 2021, industrys contribution to the Ghana Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew from $11.9 billion to $18.7 billion, driven upwards by an upsurge in the value-added of manufacturing in GDP.

This almost tripled to 6.6%, from 2.5%, the African Development Bank has stated in its brief on Ghana.

Likewise, gross fixed capital formation strengthened from $7.4 billion in 2012 to $12.2 billion in 2021 (constant 2010 prices), a 65% increase. The increase for all African Development Fund countries was 49%.

In the same period, the economic diversification index increased from 0.77 to 0.81.

Finally, Ghanas score on the logistics performance index rose from 2.51 to 2.57 over the same time.

Despite these achievements, however, AfDB said the countrys global competitiveness index score dropped from 3.79 in 2012 to 3.58 in 2021.

Over 20122021, Ghanas industrialisation was guided by the Ghana Industrial Policy of 2011, which was complemented by the Made-in-Ghana Policy and a 10-point agenda for industrialisation as of 2016.

These policies were implemented through various programmes, including the Industrial Sector Support Programme 20112015, followed by the National Industrial Revitalisation Programme, which includes the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme and such flagship projects as One District One Factory and One Region One Park.

Drawing on Ghanas comparative advantages and market potential, the strategic focus of the countrys industrial policies, the AfDB, said is in twofold.

One is to promote local content in resource-based industries on one hand, and to develop manufacturing activities including the processing segments of modernised agricultural value chainson the other. The private sector is expected to spearhead the work.

Way forward

With the right policies in place, the AfDB said industrialisation in Ghana will diversify the economy and generate more wealth.

It will also create a greater number of better jobs, largely in the private sector. That is why the Banks country strategy for 20192023 includes a pillar on industrialisation and private sector development.

It was under this pillar that in November 2021, the Bank approved $40 million to capitalise

Development Bank Ghana, a newly established institution that seeks to overcome an important constraint to private-sector-led industrialisation.

It concluded that Development Bank Ghana will supply long-term, affordable finance to micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises operating in agribusiness, manufacturing, information and communication technologies, and high-value service.

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Industry contribution to Ghana's GDP grew by 57% to $18.7bn in 2021 - AfDB - Myjoyonline

The trail of digital dust that companies and individuals leave behind is a valuable resource for enforcement agencies, according to a presentation shedding light on the underground economy at the recent Government Analytics Leadership Forum, held virtually on successive Tuesdays in early May.

Were hurtling toward a paperless society, said Dan Fort, the former chief of the U.S. Internal Revenue Services criminal investigations unit (NCIU). But online commerce leaves behind a trail of information, much of it readily accessible on open source platforms, that can provide insight into business practices and uncover reporting anomalies that expose underreporting of income and other noncompliance.

Open source datagovernment web sites, publicly available records of building permits and contracts, databases like LexisNexis, e-commerce, and many other publicly accessible recordshavent been seen as relevant by enforcement agencies until recently, according to Dan Childers of SAS Institutes Global Security Intelligence Practice.

New Economy elements such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are also readily accessible thanks to blockchain technologies, another ripe source for investigative data. The challenge: Its impossible to sort through by hand. Enter analytics.

(Note: This session took place shortly before the May 2022 crash of crypto and NFT markets wiped out billions in valuation.)

Increasingly, open source intelligence (OSINT) is being used not just to support investigations, but to launch them. An NCIU-devised algorithm applied to the short-term rental market (think Airbnb or Vacation Rentals By Owner) in one state of 13 million people was 99 per cent effective at matching revenue to income tax returns, revealed that revenue was underreported by 20 percent. In a billion dollar short-term rental market, that translates to a tax loss of roughly US$40 million. In a post-pandemic world, government budgets are likely to be tight and lost taxes dollars will have an impact.

Fort said the future of revenue investigation relies on cross agency partnership bringing together: criminal investigators, subject matter experts, agents, and analysts, digital intake of documents, advanced analytics, and employee skills development. But the role of human insight wont be diminished. This is a key concept, that advanced analytics and automation are meant to supplement the work of human and not replace them.

The Fraud TriangleOpportunity, Motivation and Rationalizationhas become a diamond, with New Economy practices and changing attitudes toward government adding Boldness as a corner.

They think its a negotiation when they get caught, Marc Tass, an award-winning lecturer at the University of Ottawas Faculty of Law and at the Telfer Executive MBA program, told a panel discussion on disrupting financial crime. Tass said his students are much more in tune with the new financial crimes landscape than so-called experts, and many have an ambivalent attitude toward it.

Phil Thibodeau, former assistant commissioner to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic revealed how many people are willing to commit financial crime. Wide-spread anti-government sentiment, as evidenced by so-called Freedom Convoys and widespread protests of government restrictions, poses a significant risk on the financial crimes front.

New types of economic instruments, like cryptocurrency and NFTs, are complicating the investigative aspect of financial crimes, said Jessica Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence. Investigators may not be aware theyre dealing with a cryptocurrency case until three or four months into an investigation. That bolsters a case for an integrated investigative unit and centres of excellence in New Economy investigative techniques as proposed by the current government, though what shape that might take isnt clear. What is clear, however, is that criminal fraudsters will always try to hide in the shadows created by the gaps between government agencies and any inability to capture and share data.

All agreed that the lack of a Beneficial Ownership Registry in Canada opens the country up to money laundering, making Canada, as Tass put it, the snow-washing capital of the world.

Advanced analytics are essential in helping governments better manage their programs and in fighting fraud. Yet, it is important that governments use these resources efficiently to avoid waste.

While technology companies enthusiastically trumpet the benefits of their enterprise products, their marketing tends to gloss over the real costs of its ongoing use. Thanks to SAS Institutes acquisition of former partner Boemska, Viya customers now have more visibility into session management and can precisely determine what tasks and users are taking up computing resources in the analytics environment.

SAS products had been a bit of a black box, said Christopher Blake, SAS product director for cloud acceleration. The newly branded Enterprise Session Monitor (ESM) monitors all SAS systems in a single instance, regardless of whether theyre on-premises or Web-based. It provides visibility into disk, CPU and cache usage, and its root-cause analysis features can show what sessions are causing workload issues. ESM can terminate sessions that are hung or causing problems.

This visibility can be used for cost control and chargeback, and has both operational and strategic roles. Operationally, ESM can manage workflow and store usage information for later analysis; strategically, it can help plan for seasonal and peak usage, planning and scaling cloud-based workloads, and for capacity and resource planning.

As governments undertake their digital transformation journey, a key component is cloud migration. More governments are embracing the cloud and virtual servers to handle the scale of Big Data and the compute power for advanced analytic models that use artificial intelligence and machine learning. This is driving partnerships between cloud providers and data analytics providers.

SAS and Microsoft Corp. have partnered to help customers move their analytics workload to the cloud. SAS has selected Microsoft Azure as the preferred platform for cloud migration, and SAS is tuning its cloud-native Viya offering for optimal compatibility with Azure while tailoring applications to the platform.

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'Digital Dust,' and tracking the true costs of analytics in an increasingly paperless society - IT World Canada

There is more than one way to approach reducing your Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) in manufacturing.

Beginning in 1765, the first industrial revolution transformed our economy by using coal to change the way goods were produced and manufactured. Since then, the second industrial revolution was driven by gas in 1870 before being followed by nuclear power in 1969.

Currently, we are driving through the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) as we see a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy such as solar and wind power. These revolutions show how quickly the manufacturing industry changes dependent on the source of power. Currently, Industry 4.0 is helping manufacturing cut greenhouse gas emissions from the use of renewable energy.

Industry 4.0 is already happening. Its transforming the way manufacturing operations are carried out. However, the use of renewable energy is a by-product created by the drive of the digital revolution. The momentum that is shifting Industry 4.0 comes from the acceleration of digital technology.

Industry 4.0 is creating cyber-physical systems that can network a production process enabling value creation and real-time optimisation. The main factor driving the revolution is the advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The complex algorithms involved in AI use the data collected from cyber-physical systems, resulting in smart manufacturing.

The impact that Industry 4.0 will have on manufacturing will be astronomical as operations can be automatically optimised to produce increased profit margins. However, the use of AI and smart manufacturing can also benefit the environment.

The first step to reducing emissions is always understanding. To reduce a manufacturing processs emissions, a company must know their emissions in the first place. Thus, quantitating a baseline for GHG emissions is vital. Smart manufacturing can make this process simple by automatically collecting utility data such as electricity, natural gas and water usage.

Furthermore, AI-based tools can help establish Scope 3 emissions from a companys supply chain. A smart manufacturing process will have its digital twin represented in the Internet of Things and so an entire supply chain could be modelled in the digital twin making data collection simple.

Once a baseline has been calculated, smart manufacturing can be used to reduce emissions using methods such as digital twin optimisation and predictive maintenance. Each method highlights the future of smart manufacturing. To begin, digital twin optimisation enables virtual replicas of industrial processes that can easily be optimised to their most efficient performance. Digital twins allow more testing and iteration creating smart strategies based on both profits and carbon reduction strategies. Whereas predictive maintenance can save both costs and carbon emissions by preventing unnecessary maintenance tasks.

Predictive maintenance is becoming increasingly popular as it saves companies costs in performing scheduled maintenance, or costs in fixing broken equipment. The AI-based tool uses machine learning to learn how historical sensor data maps to historical maintenance records. Once a machine learning algorithm is trained using the historical data, it can successfully predict when maintenance is required based on live sensor readings in a plant. Predictive maintenance accurately models the wear and tear of machinery that is currently in use.

Naturally, at first you need to look at reducing your demand; reducing energy demand and reducing demand on resources such as use of materials and water. You can also look at reducing waste. This includes wasted energy in the form of inefficient machinery, wasted materials, and wasted water. Addressing all of these types of waste will reduce your carbon emissions.

Naturally, you will want to look at efficient maintenance scheduling; reducing time spent and spares used, increasing serviceability, decreasing downtime, making optimal use of your human resource and optimising any travel between sites that resource may need to undertake. But there is still more;

In terms of sustainability one option is the use of materials that are considered a waste material from one industry. It could be an input material for another industry. This is true also for energy where process heat might be lost from a manufacturing facility that puts out waste heat which could be captured and used to warm a process or an area of a neighbouring facility. This is known as industrial synergy. Use of, or repurposing of, otherwise wasted materials forms part of the circular economy. Where materials are not thought of as waste but are seen as resources. Industrial synergy goes further than recycling, re-use and re-purposing within your own business. But considers the wider aspect, of a wider community.

For this reason, collaboration outside of your immediate company or even your immediate town is necessary.

There are a number of initiatives facilitating industrial synergy. These improve industrial waste management systems and divert waste from landfills. They also create jobs. They need a diverse network of participating companies at a high level of stakeholder buy-in.

NISP NationalIndustrialSymbiosis Programme, is the best known of these. Originating as 3 pilot schemes in Scotland, West Midlands and Yorkshire & Humberside, it was the worlds first national industrial symbiosis programme. The model has to date been replicated in 20 countries world-wide at a national or regional level. Participating businesses diverted 47 million tonnes of industrial waste from landfill and generated a billion pounds in new sales. Carbon emissions look cut by 42 million tonnes and money was saved by reducing disposal, storage, transport and purchasing costs.

The Western Cape Industrial Symbiosis programme, WISP. Is based on the facilitated approach to industrial symbiosis. WISP was initiated by the Western Cape government of South Africa in 2013. It has a team of facilitators trained by international synergies that worked full time to build the industrial symbiosis network. They identify underutilised resources that could lead to business opportunities for member companies.

Community Resource Information Support platform, CRISP is an innovation project to design and pilot an innovative resource utilisation software. And so, the use of digital data to reduce carbon meets industrial synergy.

Synergy can also lead to incorporation with smart manufacturing using renewable energy without fossil fuels. This can lead us to a clearer view of the potential for clean manufacturing and a step change in low carbon city planning.

In the context of city industrialisation, not only is smart manufacturing essential, but so too are the cities in which industries are located. Through innovative change, both cities and industries offer solutions for deep infrastructural and systematic carbon reductions. Within the urban context, changes towards industry can lead the way in city development and the adoption of smart technology can offer solutions to greenhouse gas reduction within cities.

Cities account for roughly 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions and contribute significantly to climate change as a result. According to the European commission, greenhouse gas emissions can be monitored and reduced within cities through upgraded urban transport networks, upgraded water supply, environmentally friendly water disposal facilities and buildings with high energy efficiency.

Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the UN recognise that cities and their contributions to climate change must be reshaped and adapted to present opportunities as opposed to threats. The complexities of cities however require insight through a multi-governance approach in order to identify areas for change.

Manufacturing provides opportunities both environmentally and socially towards the continued growth and development of industries. Economically speaking, the impact of industrial manufacturing has had historical benefits towards the development of cities in drastic ways, from the employment opportunities for urban workers to the creation of goods and services that bring value to communities and infrastructure.

In adapting current manufacturing processes within industries, the benefits towards cities are vast, and provide environmental, social and governmental opportunities that showcase a more conscientious and sustainable way to live.

Aspects of cities such as public transportation, building construction and road infrastructure can be adapted and developed in line with manufacturing industries. Workers who travel by car can instead reduce emissions and their own cost of living by making use of low carbon infrastructure changes such as trams, buses, and trains. In developing our cities around smart manufacturing, pollution and congestion are set to be a thing of the past.

Crucially however, in order to achieve these fundamental changes to cities, we must recognise the level of collaborative effort that is required between public, private and civil actors in society. Acknowledging this is the first step to developing and creating new potential pathways for the future models of cities, coinciding with manufacturing facilities, factories and industrial units.

About the authors

Dr Torill Bigg, Chief Carbon Reduction Engineer

Dr Bigg (Torill) is a Chartered Chemical Engineer with 20 years experience in the water industry and a passion for environmental protection. Her work is published in Environmental Technology Journal and she is the recipient of a range of awards from Groundwater Quality at Sheffield University, to the prestigious Water Award from the Institute of Chemical Engineers. Torill spearheads Tunley Engineerings work in reducing Carbon Emissions across the globe, utilising her academic, professional and industry experience in finding grounded and cost-effective solutions to the Climate Crisis.

Joshua Farnsworth, Carbon Reduction Engineer

Joshua joined Tunley Engineering as a Carbon Reduction Engineer whilst completing his masters degree in Environmental Science and Climate Change Politics at the University of Sheffield. Having previously completed an undergraduate degree in Political Science and Government from Newcastle University, Joshua specialised in environmental politics and policy, and finished his 3-year course with a dissertation focusing on US environmental politics and governance. With knowledge and expertise in global and national environmental policies and climate change governance, Joshua offers companies and government officials alike a different perspective within the Carbon Reduction Team to expand and explore solutions to the climate crisis.

Aaron Yeardley, Carbon Reduction Engineer

Aaron works as a Carbon Reduction Engineer for Tunley Engineering. He combines his role with completing his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. Aaron specialises in gathering data from clients and performing carbon calculations to present carbon footprints. He then works with the client providing solutions to help reduce their carbon footprint. He utilises his expertise in data analytics, machine learning and python coding to achieve these goals.

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How smart manufacturing and AI can benefit the environment - The Manufacturer

BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Enviva Inc. (NYSE: EVA) (Enviva or the Company) today announced that it has priced $250,000,000 of bonds in the U.S. tax-exempt market (the Bonds or the Tax-Exempt Green Bonds and such offering, the Offering) through the Industrial Development Authority of Sumter County, Alabama (the Issuer). The Tax-Exempt Green Bonds, which will be issued at par, will bear interest at an annual rate of 6.00% and mature in 2052, with the option for holders to redeem at par in 2032. Enviva and the Issuer expect to close the transaction on or about July 15, 2022, subject to customary closing conditions.

Use of Proceeds

Enviva estimates that the net proceeds of this Offering will be $246,000,000, after deducting the underwriters discount and other transaction-related costs. The proceeds of the Offering will be loaned to Enviva pursuant to a Loan and Guaranty Agreement to fund all or a portion of the costs of the acquisition, construction, equipping, and financing of Envivas fully contracted wood pellet production plant to be located in Epes, Alabama, and to pay costs and expenses of the Offering.

Designation

Consistent with Envivas Green Finance Framework, the Bonds are designated as Green Bonds because the proceeds will be used to finance the construction of a fully contracted wood pellet production plant that will produce a low-carbon, sustainable, renewable, drop-in substitute for fossil fuels to help decarbonize industries and the global economy. Envivas Green Finance Framework, which guides issuances of its Green Bonds, was developed in alignment with the Green Bond Principles (2021) as published by the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) and the Green Loan Principles (2021) published by the Loan Market Association (LMA) and the Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA).

The Bonds have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), or under the securities laws of any other jurisdiction, on the basis of the Bonds being exempt securities pursuant to Section 3(a)(2) of the Securities Act.

This news release is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, including the Bonds, nor shall there be any sale of any such securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

Other Notable Financing

Enviva also announced that it has amended and restated its senior secured revolving credit facility (the Amended & Restated Credit Facility) in a transaction that closed on June 30, 2022. The Amended & Restated Credit Facility extends the maturity to June 2027 from April 2026 and includes other improved terms and conditions as compared to the terms of the credit facility prior to the amendment that more appropriately reflect the conversion of the Company from a master limited partnership to a corporation at the end of 2021, and the implications of the increased scale, diversification, and accelerating growth plans of Enviva, while continuing to maintain the conservative financial policies to which the Company is committed.

About Enviva

Enviva Inc. (NYSE: EVA) is the worlds largest producer of industrial wood pellets, a renewable and sustainable energy source produced by aggregating a natural resource, wood fiber, and processing it into a transportable form, wood pellets. Enviva owns and operates ten plants with a combined production capacity of approximately 6.2 million metric tons per year in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi, and is starting construction on its 11th plant, which will be located in Epes, Alabama. Enviva sells most of its wood pellets through long-term, take-or-pay off-take contracts with primarily creditworthy customers in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Japan, helping to accelerate the energy transition and to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors like steel, cement, lime, chemicals, and aviation fuels. Enviva exports its wood pellets to global markets through its deep-water marine terminals at the Port of Chesapeake, Virginia, the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Port of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and from third-party deep-water marine terminals in Savannah, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama, and Panama City, Florida.

Cautionary Note Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

The information included herein and in any oral statements made in connection herewith include forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of present or historical fact included herein, are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the completion, timing, and size of the proposed Offering and the anticipated use of proceeds thereof. When used herein, including any oral statements made in connection herewith, the words could, should, will, may, believe, anticipate, intend, estimate, expect, project, the negative of such terms, and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such identifying words. These forward-looking statements are based on managements current expectations and assumptions about future events and are based on currently available information as to the outcome and timing of future events. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, Enviva disclaims any duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements, all of which are expressly qualified by the statements in this section, to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. Enviva cautions you that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the control of Enviva. These risks include, but are not limited to: (i) economic and market conditions during the course of the Offering; (ii) our ability to use the proceeds of the Offering in compliance with the conditions of the Bonds and Green Bond principles; and (iii) other factors, as described in Envivas filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), including the detailed factors discussed under the heading Risk Factors in Envivas Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, as supplemented in the Companys Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2022.

Should one or more of the risks or uncertainties described herein and in any oral statements made in connection therewith occur, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results and plans could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning these and other factors that may impact Envivas expectations and projections can be found in Envivas periodic filings with the SEC. Envivas SEC filings are available publicly on the SECs website at http://www.sec.gov.

Continued here:

Enviva Prices $250 Million in Tax-Exempt Green Bonds - Business Wire

Revelations by US cybersecurity firm Mandiant that China had resorted to cyberwar tactics in an effort to protect its stranglehold on the strategically-important rare earths industry comes as no surprise.

The dirty tricks campaign has been loading up chatrooms and websites with disinformation about competitor western world projects, with the clear implication being China is out to protect its dominance of the industry, as it would.

It was a smiling Deng Xiaoping who said back in 1987 that the Middle East has its oil and China has its rare earths. Later in 1992, he commented that the rare earths industry was of extremely important strategic influence and that China had to make the fullest use of the countrys advantage in rare earths.

Come 2010, Beijing did just that by imposing a ban on rare earth exports to Japan over an East China Sea dispute. And later on, Beijing introduced a moving feast of export quotas to keep the west on edge, and to ensure Chinas needs were foremost.

So here we are decades later and China is now said to be choking up TikTok and Instagram with disinformation designed to undercut the western worlds efforts to wean itself off dependence on China for its rare earths needs.

Long considered critical, rare earths have become even more so because of the mega trend of decarbonisation. Electric vehicles and wind turbines are big components of the push, and both happen to be big end-users of rare earths.

None of that has been lost on the western world.

It is why Australian taxpayers are providing soft financing for Ilukas (ASX: ILU) $1.2 billion Eneabba rare earths refinery in WA and why US taxpayers recently stumped up $US120m for a rare earths separation plant to be built by Lynas (ASX: LYC) somewhere on the Gulf coast.

But there is so much more to do, not just from a geopolitical standpoint, but also from a sheer demand standpoint. Slice and dice the forecasts out there and there is consensus that Lynas-scale capacity (its the biggest outside of China) will need to be built every 1.5 years for at least the next 20 years.

Lynas is an $8 billion company.

Despite the pressure for more and more rare earths, particularly non-Chinese rare earths, Lynas and the rest of the ASX rare earths space have been beaten up in the last three months along with the rest of the market.

Lynas is down 20% while the explorers/developers are down 50% or more. Rare earth prices have come off a touch in the same period on general recession fears but remain elevated.

And given the non-China supply imperative and the emerging deficit in the supply of the particular EV and wind turbine rare earths, it is hard to see the bullish outlook changing anytime soon. It suggests that the ASX rare earths space has moved into oversold territory.

That came through in a $12.50 price target Macquarie put on Lynas last week. Lynas closed on Thursday at $8.73.

Rare earth explorers with strong newsflow ahead of them offer leverage to the thematic that the sectors best years are ahead. There are 15 rare earth explorers and would-be developers worth their salt on the ASX.

But here are three with newsflow ahead of them:

It has just gone into a trading halt pending a resource update for its Koppamurra ionic clay-hosted rare earths discovery in southeast South Australia, straddling the border with Victoria.

AR3 joined the ASX lists in June last year, raising $12m at 30c a share. It traded up to $1.35 but is now back at a more sedate 37.5c.

The resource update could well trigger a re-rate. It is the nature of clay-hosted deposits (like those mined in China) that the mineralisation can be shallow, consistent and laterally extensive.

As it is, Koppamurra already ranks as a large-scale discovery based on its maiden resource estimate. The upgrade could take it to another level still.

In a neat piece of timing, PVW got in ahead of the general market sell-off to pull in $9.5 million from a placement at 40c a share to chase down the idea that its Tanami (heavy) rare earths project in WAs Kimberley region could be something special.

It closed on Thursday at 24c notwithstanding the news that it has just kicked off a 35,000m drilling program.

The drilling campaign follows on from rock chip sampling which returned up to 12.45% in total rare earth oxides in October last year, which is more encouragement than anyone needs to roll in the drill rigs.

The bigger picture is that there could be some real scale to the discovery as the project area covers an 18km stretch of prospective unconformity.

RareX was a 14c stock earlier in the year but is now back at 5.3c. It too got in ahead of the broad market sell-off by raising $10m at 9c a share.

It means it is funded for a drilling program to grow the resource base at its Cummins Range project near Halls Creek in the East Kimberley region of WA.

It is the same style of mineralisation as Lynas Mt Weld operation and would currently be categorised as being of moderate size.

But success in confirming primary mineralisation to a depth of 500m, compared with the 100m limit of the current (oxide) resource estimate, means the scale of the resource could comfortably double, if not more. It is what the drilling program is all about.

A resource update is likely before the end of the year and would lead into early development studies.

Volts (VRC) $2 million placement at 1.6c a share wasnt the biggest fundraising exercise of the week but it was certainly the most interesting.

The funds are earmarked for a restart of its Zavalievsky graphite mine in Ukraine, in the west of the country, well away from the invading Russians.

Investors in juniors of any description are generally derring-do types. But hats off to them for supporting the type of project that Ukraine wants and needs to be restarted to repair its economy.

Investors (and the companys chairman) who took up the stock are also backing the idea that Zavalievsky can be a key link in Volts bigger ambitions to become a significant integrated graphite producer from its projects in Ukraine and Tanzania.

Graphite is the forgotten anode side of the batteries powering the EV revolution. But as the revolution gathers pace, it too is enjoying price strength on growing demand from the battery sector, with Europe in particular needing new non-China supply options.

If you're not an existing Livewire subscriber you can sign up to get free access to investment ideas and strategies from Australia's leading investors.

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China's "dirty tricks campaign" speaks volumes about the bullish outlook for vital rare earths - Livewire Markets