Is the Golden Era for renewables around the corner? www.rt.com

In the past few years, there has been a lively debate about the increasing role of renewables at the expense of fossil fuels, particularly in power generation.
Some say that renewables are not an existential threat and believe that they might take only a small piece of the pie by 2040, due to high costs and vital government subsidies. On the other hand, others believe that costs are declining fast, and it may take a significant share in power generation, knocking not just coal, but also natural gas off the throne.

The fact remains that things are changing quite fast due to technological advancements. The breakeven cost of various renewable energy sources has come down significantly, and wind and solar energy are leading the charge. Total global cumulative wind power capacity reached 540 gigawatt (GW) at the end of 2017, up from 93 GW in 2007. Meanwhile, solar went up from 100 GW in 2012 to close to 405 GW in 2017, a four-fold increase. Photovoltaic(PV)solar even surpassed nuclear generation capacity (403 GW in 2017).

The role of renewables is only marginal in the total energy mix, but growing fast, and in the next few decades, it is likely to become a tough competitor for oil and gas. Surely, sources that are economically viable, easily accessible and environmentally friendly will sneak their way to the top of podium by 2040.

Renewable Capacity Outperformed

In the past, the high cost of renewable energy generation constrained investments in the sector. However, due to technological advancements, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) reduction for PV solar and wind energy have boosted the competitiveness of these sources against well-established power generation technologies, such as coal and natural gas. In 2017, the US average LCOE without subsidy for PV without tracking was $54/MWh, with onshore wind at $51/MWh, versus gas-fired generation at $49, coal $66 and nuclear at $174/MWh. The continuous declining trend in costs of renewable energy led to an upsurge in capacity and investments.

In 2017, 260 GW of net power generating capacity was added. The renewable industry invested $280 billion in 2017, adding 150 GW of solar (98 GW) and wind (52 GW); both added 58 percent as compared to 28 percent of gas (38 GW) and coal (35 GW). Large hydro and nuclear respectively added 19 and 11 GW.

Inherent Problem

Despite declining LCOE, the real issue with renewables is what happens when the sun is not shining and wind is not blowing. The intermittent nature of the power flow from either solar or wind remains a problem. Therefore, renewable energy continues to rely on the grid to meet any shortfalls or peak demand.

Tesla installed the world's largest lithium-ion battery in South Australia in December 2017, which would prevent a reoccurrence of a notorious incident that took place in 2016 when the entire state lost power. The significant decline in battery prices and other cost cutting measures will further help the renewable sector to grow independent from government subsidies and without relying on grid support.

Bright Outlook For Renewable

The dominance of fossil fuels which in 2017 made up about 85 percent of the total energy mix seems to be challenged by two contenders: the penetration of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources. These together are supported by a change in mindset of the public which is increasingly concerned about greenhouse gas emissions and the environment in general. The next couple of decades will be challenging for the oil, coal, and natural gas sectors, particularly in the transport and power sectors. Coal is already in decline, and next could be natural gas.

According to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) study, solar and wind will gain a large share of global installed capacity by 2040 as compared to 2016. The share of both will rise immensely from 12 percent in 2016 to 46 percent in 2040 while the role of fossil fuels in power generation is expected to shrink.

Surely we cannot eliminate fossil fuels usage in our daily lives, it will remain an integral part of our life for a long time to come. Yet the golden era of renewables is just around the corner as preference and cost favor renewables over fossil fuels, a development that will improve the quality of life of many segments in society.

EU to assess if Mongolia is eligible for Budget Support www.montsame.mn

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Officials from the EU institutions visited Ulaanbaatar from 23 to 27 April to assess if Mongolia is eligible for an EU Budget Support Operation. Budget Support involves direct financial transfers to the national budget of the partner country and is basedon policy dialogue, performance assessment and capacity building. This approach respects partner countries' ownership of development policies and reforms, focusing on results for people and sustainable development.

Increasing direct participation by Turquoise Hill management on Oyu Tolgoi matters www.gogo.mn

Turquoise Hill Board of Directors provides update on shareholder correspondence.

Xanadu Mines focused on large new copper-gold discovery in Mongolia www.proactiveinvestors.com.au

Xanadu Mines Ltd (ASX:XAM) has three projects located within two of Mongola’s porphyry copper belts.

Its flagship asset is the 76.5% owned Kharmagtai Copper Project in the South Gobi region of Mongolia where the company is aggressively drilling out a major new copper-gold discovery.

While the exploration focus is rightfully on Kharmagtai, Xanadu also owns the advanced Red Mountain Copper Gold Project and early stage Yellow Mountain Copper Project.

An emerging cluster of porphyry deposits at Kharmagtai
The Kharmagtai project hosts three porphyry deposits within a largely under-explored porphyry copper-gold district.

During April, Xanadu discovered another porphyry centre, Zaraa, with the first hole intersecting 800 metres of mineralisation.

Zaraa, the focus of aggressive exploration, is showing strong early potential to add to the project’s JORC resource at the Stockwork Hill, White Hill and Copper Hill deposits.

As of March 2015, the JORC resource measured 203.4 million tonnes grading 0.34% copper and 0.33 g/t gold for 1.5 million pounds of copper and 2.2 million ounces of gold.
Porphyry copper deposits typically occur in clusters and recent exploration at Kharmagtai has revealed the project could host multiple additional porphyry-style deposits.

The discovery diamond hole KHDDH462 drilled at the Zaraa porphyry was terminated in mineralisation at 1,386.4 metres depth.

The hole intersected over 800 metres of near-continuous copper and gold mineralisation making it the longest exploration intersection of gold and copper recorded by Xanadu at Kharmagtai.

Xanadu’s managing director and CEO Dr Andrew Stewart said: “While Kharmagtai already is one of the world's most exciting new copper and gold discoveries, hole KHDDH462 is consistent with our long-held view that the Kharmagtai mineralised system contains significantly more gold and copper than we have delineated to date under JORC standards.

“We are particularly pleased to see this outstanding intersection in hole KHDDH462, right where our geological modelling predicted.

“Our strategy is clear: to add tonnes and grade to the existing resources by discovering additional high-grade deposits within the Kharmagtai Copper-Gold Project."

As at early-May 2018, two diamond rigs were drilling two step out holes to the discovery hole at Zaraa.

Wider step-out holes will be drilled aiming to discover copper-gold mineralisation closer to surface and to aid in delineating the size and shape of the porphyry system.

19 porphyry targets to test at Kharmagtai
Four new porphyry centres have now been discovered by Xanadu under shallow cover east of the existing resources.

The current strategy is to test all 19 targets identified before focusing exploration on the highest quality porphyry centres.

Growing global demand for new copper projects
The emerging Kharmagtai project is being advanced during a period of growing demand for new copper projects.

Market commentators continue to point to struggling supply from current operations and a weak pipeline of new projects coming online.

BMO Capital Markets in April 2018 said the world’s top copper operations in 2007 are producing 10-15% less today than 2007 and the trend is expected to continue.

Demand for copper is expected to remain strong given China’s infrastructure goals will require copper and it is an important metal in electric vehicles.

China, Japan & Mongolia show World Cup ambitions at FIBA 3x3 Asia Cup www.fiba.basketball

MANILA (FIBA 3x3 World Cup) – China’s women together with Japan and Mongolia’s men had the perfect preparation and boost of confidence for the FIBA 3x3 World Cup after they all won medals at the FIBA 3x3 Asia Cup 2018 in China on April 27 – May 1.

Apostolic Nuncio Alfred Xuereb in Korea and Mongolia to 'build bridges' www.independent.com.mt

“I want to continue in the footsteps of my predecessors, I will do my small part to build bridges”, says Maltese Mgr Alfred Xuereb the new apostolic nuncio to Korea and Mongolia, a few weeks ahead of his departure for Asia, scheduled for late May.
“I want to get to know the Churches of Korea and Mongolia as much as possible, so that I can love and serve them. I have always admired the enthusiasm of missionaries. I hope to become like them and carry on the evangelizing work, talking about Jesus and welcoming new Christians into the Church,” asianews.it reports.
Already prelate Secretary General of the Secretariat for the Economy and special secretary of Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, last February the Holy See had announced the appointment and elevation at the same time to the titular see of Amantea (CS), with dignity of archbishop.
“These are very intense days,” says the 59-year-old Maltese prelate. “At the moment I am dealing with the logistical aspects of my transfer to South Korea. The task conferred on me by the Holy Father requires great responsibility and I thank him for the trust granted to me. I was very pleased that Msgr. Hyginus Kim Hee-joong, president of the Episcopal Conference of Korea, was in Rome and visited me.
“Speaking of my arrival in the country, he told me: 'We will follow your instructions'. I replied: 'No Excellency, we will learn to get to know each other and help each other in a mutual way. The only instructions will be given by the Holy Father. I want to know the Churches of Korea and Mongolia as deeply as possible, so that I can love and serve them. In doing so, I hope to sanctify myself with them”.
“I want to continue in the footsteps of my predecessors, I will do my small part to build bridges. First of all with the bishops and their collaborators, so that their bond with Peter is ever stronger. But not only, even between the Church and other religions. My motto 'Ut unum sint' is the prayer that Jesus addressed to the Father and it means precisely this: that all be one, so that the world may believe. I trust a lot in this sentence of the testament of Jesus and for this reason I intend to try to build bridges, also on a cultural level “.
The nunciature will see Msgr. Xuereb facing two very different realities. It was only in 1992 that Mongolia accepted the presence of the Catholic Church in the country, where today there are seven parishes, 77 missionaries, a local priest and 1255 baptized. The more than 230 years of the Church in Korea are instead a story of martyrdom and action, from which an active and participatory Catholic community emerged for the reconciliation of the Korean people, close to the marginalized and supporters of democracy and human rights. Moreover, the Korean Church has long supported the mission in Mongolia: the first Mongolian priest in fact studied in the South Korean diocese of Daejeon.
“Despite being a small community of only 1,300 Catholics, the Mongolian Church will have my full attention and I have proposed my diocese of Gozo (Malta) twin with it, so that it can be helped, even from a financial point of view, in pastoral needs and evangelization. I am already in touch with Fr. Giorgio Marengo, a Consolata missionary priest who has been in the country for 15 years, who gave me the wonderful news of the celebration of eight baptisms on Easter night. Since the days of the seminary, I have always admired the enthusiasm of missionaries. I hope to become like them and carry on the evangelizing work, talking about Jesus and welcoming new Christians in the Church “.
In these days, Mgr Xuereb followed with particular interest the positive developments of the inter-Korean summit. In this regard, the new apostolic nuncio states: “By virtue of the mandate given to me by the Pope, I follow the development of the dialogue between the two Koreas with deep attention and I have a great deal of concern for their outcome. The bridges that I want to build are also those that concern harmony and collaboration, not just the lack of conflict between countries. As requested by the Pope, I offer special prayers and invite other people to do the same. Once in Korea, if I can give my practical help, I will do so with all my heart “.
Born in Rabat (Malta) on October 14, 1958, Msgr. Xuereb was ordained priest of the diocese of Gozo on May 26, 1984. After completing his studies in Theology, he began his administrative service at the secretariat of the rector of the Pontifical Lateran University in September 1991. From September 1995, he worked in the Secretariat of State of the Holy See and from November 2000 in the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household. On 12 September 2007, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Msgr. Xuereb second private secretary and Pope Francis, after his election on March 13, 2013, appointed him his particular secretary. On November 28, 2013, he assumed the role of delegate for the Pontifical Commission referent on the Institute for the Works of Religion and for the Pontifical Commission for study and guidance on the organization of the economic-administrative structure of the Holy See. From March 2014 until his appointment as apostolic nuncio to Korea and Mongolia, he served as prelate secretary general of the Secretariat for the Economy.

Urban nomads: Mongolian herders battle new future as leave the land for the city www.reuters.com

ULAANBAATAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - With about 100 sheep and goats, Jugder Samdan makes just enough to scrape by as a nomadic herder in Mongolia, basking in the sun as he watches over his animals, but he worries about the future.

Samdan has seen major changes during his 70 plus years on the vast semi-arid grassland, or steppe, in central Mongolia’s Arkhangai province, with shifts in politics and society impacting one of the world’s last remaining nomadic cultures.

But what most concerns Samdan and fellow herders is climate change, as droughts, harsh winters, and over-grazing threaten traditional livelihoods and drives younger people to the over-crowded capital, fuelling pollution, crime and mental illness.

“Everybody moves to the city,” Samdan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation wrapped in a felt jacket outside his ger, a traditional white, circular herder’s tent or yurt made of felt.

“There are too many people there.”

About one quarter of Mongolians still live a traditional nomadic life in the Central Asian country sandwiched between Russia and China which has four times the land mass of Germany but is thinly-populated with about three million people.

But life is changing fast and about 68,000 herders a year have moved to the city since 2001, according to Ulaanbaatar’s Deputy Mayor Batbayasgalan Jantsan, setting up sprawling informal ger districts lacking facilities like water and power.

The population of Ulaanbaatar has almost doubled in the last 10 years to 1.4 million people, according to the Mongolian National Statistics Office, with about 55 percent of the city’s population - or 750,000 people - living in ger districts.

“That’s almost an entire province,” said Jantsan in an interview in his office in central Ulaanbaatar, a city shrouded in a dense smog during winter months due to air pollution.

As winter temperatures can drop below minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), ger dwellers burn raw coal to stay warm, driving pollution levels eight to 14 times higher than global guidelines, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Air pollution is estimated by the WHO to cause more than 4,000 deaths a year in Mongolia and is now one of the nation’s most challenging issues, with the burning of coal accounting for 80 percent of air pollution from November to April.

“It’s a threat to national security,” said Jantsan.

LIFE TRANSITION
Bazarragchaa Altantsetseg, a land use specialist at land consultancy Vector Maps LLC, said dwellings were traditionally designed to move in Mongolia and it was not after Soviet control in 1921 that fixed properties became more prevalent.

The Russians also had a major impact on herding. The state owned the nation’s herd and grazing land, with herders paid a wage for working in collective farms. The herd wsa kept at about 25 million in line with land capacity assessments.

But that changed after Mongolia became a parliamentary democracy in 1990 and privatization followed, prompting a surge in numbers with the herd hitting 56 million in 2015, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

“Since 1990 everything was chaos ... everyone wanted to have the land ... and animals,” Altantsetseg said.

Some herders have welcomed the new post-Soviet system.

“The conditions are fair for everyone. Compared to the previous regime you can work hard to have a better life, you can grow your herd and get a car,” Samdan said.

But the dramatic increase in the herd has brought problems of over-grazing exacerbated by desertification, as witnessed by Samdan’s daughter Altantsetseg Jugdur, aged in her 30s.

“When I was a child ... you couldn’t see the animals in the grass. Now look at what we have. Only dust and soil,” she said.

Herders’ accounts of climate change are backed by data with a 2014 report from Japan’s Ministry of the Environment stating Mongolia’s annual mean temperature rose by 2.14 percent between 1940 and 2008 with drier weather leading to more dust storms.

The report also highlighted an increasing frequency of cold and snow damage from so-called dzuds since the early 1990s - the name for a severe winter that comes after a summer drought.

“If there is grass beneath the snow then the animals will survive. When there is no grass beneath the snow then it is dzud,” explained herder Altangerel Dolgor.

DEATH ON THE STEPPE
Mongolia’s recent winter killed more than 700,000 livestock left weak after a drought last year, the highest toll since 2011, according to the country’s statistics bureau.

The steppe around Tuvshruulekh is littered with animals that have frozen to death. Stray dogs and groups of vultures dot the landscape scavenging the frozen carcasses.

Samdan said he can read the signs of climate change around him. Lizards are appearing for the first time while some plants are disappearing, including those used in traditional medicines.

“Before we used to have a leaf which we would boil and drink for stomach problems. Now I can’t find it anymore,” he said.

But it is not just the damage to livestock and the land concerning herders but social changes.

Bayarmaa Vanchindorj, deputy director of the National Mental Health Center, said there has been rising numbers of cases of addiction, depression, trafficking and sexual abuse of children.

Thousands of Mongolians protested in front of parliament in Ulaanbaatar in March to demand more action to prevent child abuse after the widely-reported rape of a young boy.

“Mongolians for many centuries roamed unlimited spaces of their own free will. So I think urbanization took its toll on people’s minds,” she said.

Narantuya Nijir is one example. She lost all her livestock in a 2010 dzud and now lives in a ger in her landlord’s yard at the edge of Ulaanbaatar where the city meets the open pasture.

“It’s quite difficult living in someone else’s yard. Even when they don’t give us a hard time we worry a lot,” she said.

Up the road lives Samdan’s son Chudur with his young family. He has adapted to city life better, having bought a small plot of land where he has just built a small house, in the process learning the skills to start a small double-glazing business.

Back on the steppe Samdan concedes herding is a tough life but his pleas for young people to stay go unheeded.

His 16-year-old grandson Tsendmandakh Altantsetseg has no romantic view of the traditional nomadic life.

“Nature is changing. The grasslands are turning into deserts. Rivers and streams are disappearing,” he said.

“I’m planning to go to university in the city after I graduate. I’ll follow my profession, work in the city and build a life there.”

Reporting by Max Baring, Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Twitter tells 330 million users to change their passwords www.bbc.com

Twitter has warned its 330 million users to change their passwords after a glitch exposed some in plain text on its internal network.

Russia cuts oil exports to Europe & ramps up trade with China www.rt.com

China has significantly boosted oil imports from Russia, while the latter has been selling less crude to Europe. An analyst told RT that Beijing has become a more preferable partner in the oil trade for Moscow.
RT’s source in Russia’s largest oil exporter Transneft has said that since January 1, the country is pumping more oil to China, while exports to Europe have plunged. Earlier, Bloomberg reported that Russia will have shipped 19 percent less oil through its ports on the Baltic and Black Seas in the first five months of 2018, and sold 43 percent more oil to China through March.

North Korea to provide supplies & workforce for new motorway bridge to Russia www.rt.com

Pyongyang is all set to provide workers and supplies for the construction of a bridge across the border with Russia, according to the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East.
“In June, both Russian and North Korean technical experts are set to hold consultations on building a motorway bridge between the two countries,” Deputy Minister Aleksandr Krutikov told RIA Novosti. “North Korea is to provide the project with workforce as well as with construction materials, while Russia will give the necessary equipment and building supplies.”