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Uber appoint former Expedia boss Dara Khosrowshahi as CEO
 Uber has chosen Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of travel company Expedia, to be its new boss, ending a contentious search that has been marred by boardroom spats and leaks.

The announcement, made on Sunday, comes as the ride-hailing service fights allegations of sexism and racism that led to the ousting of its founder, Travis Kalanick.

Khosrowshahi, a 48-year-old Iranian American who has led Expedia for 12 years, was a surprise appointment who beat Meg Whitman, the chief executive of HP Enterprise, and Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of General Electric, for the job.

The Expedia CEO has been critical of Donald Trump, tweeting in the wake of his Charlottesville remarks: “I keep waiting for the moment when our Prez will rise to the expectations of his office and he fails, repeatedly.”

Earlier on Sunday, Immelt said via Twitter that he had “decided not to pursue a leadership position at Uber”, while expressing “immense respect” for the cab-hailing company and its founders.

I have decided not to pursue a leadership position at Uber. I have immense respect for the company & founders - Travis, Garrett and Ryan. — Jeff Immelt (@JeffImmelt) August 27, 2017

Immelt stepped down as CEO at GE this year after 16 years running the industrial conglomerate. The 61-year-old did not say why he had pulled out, but the New York Times said that he would not likely have received enough votes from the Uber board to edge ahead of rival candidates.

Uber’s eight-member board met over the weekend to decide on a new CEO, the New York Times said. The shortlist of candidates had narrowed to three people – Whitman, Immelt and Khosrowshahi.

Whitman, 61, had previously said she planned to stay at HP and described speculation over her departure from the IT services group as a “distraction”. She tweeted last week: “We have a lot of work still to do at HPE.”

(3/3) We have a lot of work still to do at HPE and I am not going anywhere. Uber's CEO will not be Meg Whitman. — Meg Whitman (@MegWhitman) July 28, 2017

Uber had been searching for an experienced executive to fill the vacuum left at the top by the departure of co-founder Kalanick in June, and to restore confidence in the business following months of chaos.

Khosrowshahi will have to reform the company’s workplace culture following accusations of sexual discrimination and harassment, recruit new executives including a chief financial officer and chief operating officer, and deal with numerous legal wrangles. They include an intellectual property dispute with Waymo, Google’s self-driving car spinoff.

Kalanick resigned in June following pressure from investors, just one week after taking an indefinite leave of absence. That leave of absence was not enough for a group of investors who own more than a quarter of Uber’s stock and account for about 40% of voting shares, giving them enough leverage to force out Kalanick when they demanded that he quite the role.

The San Francisco-based company had asked the former US attorney general Eric Holder to conduct an investigation into the company’s workplace culture. The long list of recommendations for reform included reviewing and reducing Kalanick’s role in the company. Uber is reeling from allegations of workplace discrimination and sexual harassment, revelations of a secret programme to evade law enforcement, lawsuits and other legal challenges brought by drivers, bans on its UberPop service of unlicensed drivers in several countries and a string of departures of high-level executives.

Travis Kalanick resigned as Uber chief executive in June amid mounting shareholder pressure. Photograph: Will Oliver/EPA

The pressure on Uber and Kalanick became critical after a former employee published a blog post in February describing a workplace rife with gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

The venture capitalist David Bonderman resigned from Uber’s board of directors in June after making a sexist comment at the all-staff meeting where the Holder report’s recommendations were presented. At least 20 employees were fired over incidents of harassment, retaliation, discrimination and bullying, dozens more were disciplined and a number of complaints remain under investigation by Holder’s law firm, Perkins Coie.

Kalanick came under fire for his leadership style when Bloomberg released a video of him berating an Uber driver after the driver had complained about the difficulty making a living with Uber’s falling pay rates. Kalanick apologised for his behaviour in a statement that conceded he needed “leadership help”, and he announced his intention to hire a chief operating officer to assist him in the management of the company.

A number of senior executives have quit the company recently, including president Jeff Jones, who said he left because working at Uber was incompatible with his values; senior vice-president of engineering Amit Singhal; head of policy and communications Rachel Whetstone, vice-president of product and growth Ed Baker and head of finance Gautam Gupta.

Output: Uber has chosen former Expedia chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi as its CEO, filling the vacuum left by co-founder Travis Kalanick in June. Khosrowshahi, a 48-year-old Iranian American who led Expedia for 12 years, was a surprise appointment who beat the likes of Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of General Electric, and Meg Whitman, the chief executive of HP Enterprise, for the job. Khosrowshahi will be tasked with reforming the company’s workplace culture, recruiting new executives, and dealing with multiple legal battles.


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Number of UK drivers without insurance soars due to high premiums
 The number of compensation claims lodged against uninsured drivers has risen for the first time in a decade.

The rise was revealed yesterday by the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB), which compensates victims of uninsured drivers and hit and run accidents.

It fuels fears that spiralling motor insurance premiums, driven by government tax hikes and controversial reforms to serious personal injury compensation, may be putting off more drivers from taking out insurance.

The MIB said that in the year to July the number of cases submitted to the bureau rose almost 10 per cent from 10,000 to 11,000, having declined from 25,000 in 2004.

It expects to pay out £256million this year from the fees it collects from insurers. This equates to around £15 added to the cost of the average motor insurance policy.

The MIB said that in the year to July the number of cases submitted to the bureau rose almost 10 per cent from 10,000 to 11,000, having declined from 25,000 in 2004 (stock photo)

Seizures of uninsured vehicles are also on the increase, with 145,000 taken off the road in 2016.

Around 58,000 were crushed, or more than 1,000 a week, according to the MIB, which runs the insurance database used by police to check the status of vehicles.

The bureau said it has launched an investigation into why this has happened and has teamed up with the criminology department of the University of Leicester.

Ashton West, chief executive of the MIB, said the latest figures highlight ‘the devastating impact of uninsured driving on communities and families up and down the country’

He added: ’Whilst we recognise there are a number of factors that could be impacting this increase in claims, increasing insurance costs may be tempting people to take the risk of driving without insurance.’

Motor insurance premiums have risen to record levels, with the average premium jumping by 11 per cent to £484 over the last year.

According to official statistics there are around a million uninsured vehicles on the road, compared with around 38million insured vehicles (stock photo)

Younger drivers pay almost £1,000 on average, according to the Association of British Insurers.

The steep increase in insurance bills has been driven in part by successive rises in Insurance Premium Tax, which has doubled from 6 per cent to 12 per cent in two years.

Insurers have passed the costs onto customers by hiking their premiums.

Government reforms to the ‘discount rate’ used to calculate compensation for victims of life changing injuries have also pushed up pay-outs, and caused insurers to increase premiums.

Earlier this month car insurer Admiral said this would cost the average motorist up to £60 more a year – with young drivers facing a £250 increase.

The government is now consulting on the controversial reforms and has come under fierce pressure from the insurance industry to reverse the changes.

Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: ‘The fear is that this surge is an unintended consequence of recent sharp rises in insurance premium tax which have resulted in big increases in premiums for all motorists, especially the young.

‘If more drivers are trying to dodge soaring costs by not taking out any insurance at all then law-abiding road users will be left to pick up the bill as they see the price of their own policies go up further still.’

There are around a million uninsured vehicles on the road, compared with around 38million insured vehicles.

But there are no figures indicating whether the number of uninsured drivers has gone up or down last year.

The MIB said another potential cause of the rise in claims against uninsured drivers could be the influence of aggressive personal injury claims firms, which encourage victims of motor accidents to pursue compensation.

Output: Compensation claims made against UK drivers without insurance has soared 10%, marking the first increase in a decade, reveals the Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB). It fears rising motor insurance premiums, driven by reforms and government tax hikes, is putting drivers off taking out policies. Motor insurance premiums have surged to record levels, with the average premium rising by 11% to £484 in 2016. The MIB, which compensates victims of uninsured drivers and hit and run accidents, is expecting to pay out around £256m this year from fees collected from insurers, which equates to about £15 added to the cost of the average motor insurance policy.


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Hong Kong residents to get Google Wi-Fi via telecoms tie up
 Wide availability of Google Wifi technology expected to help drive adoption of more ‘smart home technologies’ across the city

Output: Google has joined forces with Hong Kong telecoms network operator HKT to offer an advanced mesh Wi-Fi home router solution, Google Wi-Fi, to the city’s residents. The system should help to eliminate “dead zones” for dual-band Wi-Fi in customers’ homes, using various Wi-Fi points that can be installed in different rooms to help strengthen the signal. HKT recently launched an ultra-fast broadband system for Hong Kong citizens through its Netvigator service. Google’s Wi-Fi option is also available in Singapore through telecoms firm StarHub.


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EC demand-response regulations ‘incompatible’ with markets: DNV
 In a study commissioned by the EURELECTRIC industry association, DNV GL has found that a financial model proposed by the European Commission could limit the effectiveness of demand response as a way to ensure a reliable and economically stable energy system.

The EU directive aims to stimulate the use of demand response in all member states, by bringing a new player; an aggregator, into the electricity value chain. An aggregator is responsible for combining consumer loads and generated electricity, to be traded on the electricity market.

The criticisms, found in DNV GL’s report Demand Response Activation by Independent Aggregators as Proposed in the Draft Electricity Directive, center on the fact the draft currently prohibits financial compensation to stakeholders who are left at a disadvantage by the independent actions of an aggregator.

The report recommends that EU Member States be allowed to make their own decision regarding demand response compensation, based on their individual market circumstances, and recommends several possible financial models, which DNV GL says would have significant benefits over the current ‘no compensation only’ proposal.

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The recommended models include requiring the independent aggregator to compensate the supplier – which would prevent inefficient activations of, placing charges on system users to cover compensation to suppliers or requiring flexible consumers to pay for the amount of energy that would have prevented the need for demand response to be activated.

“The EU is right to encourage the establishment of independent aggregators to enable more people to benefit from demand response,” says Andreas Schröter, DNV GL’s Executive Vice President for Central Europe and the Mediterranean. “Yet by disadvantaging players affected by aggregator-triggered demand response actions, the draft directive effectively makes it possible for aggregators to get a free ride at the expense of others. This could mean consumers are faced with higher tariffs for demand response, limiting its attractiveness and uptake.”

Output: The European Commission's (EC's) draft proposal on demand response regulations does not abide by market principles, a study from energy consultant DNV GL has found. The directive's aim to stimulate the use of demand response by introducing an aggregator into the electricity value chain could limit financial compensation to suppliers and raise tariffs for customers, DNV GL said. However, by requiring the independent aggregator to compensate the supplier, consumers are more likely to receive the fair benefits of demand supply, said Andreas Schröter, executive VP for Central Europe and the Mediterranean.


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Long-distance ridesharing app Buckle Up launched in Australia
 You’ve been there. A lengthy solo drive. Four empty car seats. Nothing but your auxiliary cord for company. Entrepreneur Seb Lindner found himself in that situation driving from Melbourne to the Blue Mountains earlier this year. After failed attempts to fill his car with passengers by advertising empty seats on Gumtree and in closed Facebook groups, Linder identified the need for a safe platform to connect drivers and passengers on the road. In September, Linder will launch Buckle Up – a ridesharing app and platform with a mission to ease congestion, while connecting like-minded travellers and festival-goers on the road.

“I wanted to tackle the bigger issue of transport and its inefficiency,” Lindner explains. “With so many spare seats on the road and drivers travelling long distances solo, I wanted to make it easy for people to find drivers or passengers in the one place.”

To begin with, Lindner hopes to attract those travelling to music festivals and sporting events outside major cities, such as Meredith Music Festival, Falls Festival, and Beyond the Valley. Once the app gains momentum, Buckle Up will expand nationally to connect passengers travelling interstate. Lindner underscores that there will be a strict verification process involved, and security measures in place. First, each rider and driver must sign up via Facebook. All users will be required to upload contact details that will be verified with a photo submission of a driver's licence and vehicle registration number. While these security measures might seem to be a lengthy process, each step is integral to keep the network as safe as possible. “In the early stages of the app, each user will be manually verified and approved by the Buckle Up team, so we can keep an eye on each driver or passenger and flag anything of concern,” he said. As an extra safety measure, Buckle Up will insure both passengers and drivers for any liability in case of damage to the car, a crash or an emergency.

Output: Long-distance ridesharing app Buckle Up is set to launch in Australia next month. The app was founded by entrepreneur Seb Lindner after he failed to find a fellow passenger for a long car journey between Melbourne and the Blue Mountains. It will have a strict verification process and security measures to keep users safe. Lindner first hopes to attract people travelling to festivals and sporting events outside major cities, before expanding to include those travelling interstate.


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Whatsapp launches verified business accounts programme
 Facebook-owned WhatsApp has launched a pilot that will let businesses communicate with the messaging service’s one billion daily users, with reports suggesting it will launch a dedicated app for small-to-medium businesses (SMB).

Facebook is in the early phases of building a 'business ecosystem' around its sister messenger services / WhatsApp

More than three years have passed since Facebook agreed to purchase the messaging service for $19bn, and it has now given the first clear indication about how it intends to monetize WhatsApp, with the launch of a verified business accounts program.

The scheme was announced in a blog post (see below) with the pilot currently limited to a small number of SMBs, although no details related to paid-for opportunities (if any) are currently available at present.

The post also doesn't outline a rollout schedule for the program, but it does explain that WhatsApp users can ascertain if a business has received verification by a “yellow message inside a chat.”

In addition, it states that if a user has already included a business' details in their address book, it will appear under the given name within WhatsApp, otherwise the commercial entity will be identified by a name it has chosen for itself.

WhatsApp users can also block specific businesses from contacting them, but will not be able to delete specific messages within a chat once they have started communicating with them, according to the post.

The post contains little further information, but WaBetaInfo has published an article containing an analysis suggesting the scheme will let participants set their business hours, automate responses, and that a specific Android version of WhatsApp will be available to SMBs.

Further, Business Insider points to a job listing for a technical specialist specifically catering for the SMB offering.

Speaking on Facebook’s most recent earnings call, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told financial analysts that over 250 million people now use WhatsApp Stories daily, and that over a billion use the messaging service each day.

“We're also working to build a business ecosystem around Messenger and WhatsApp. Messenger and WhatsApp both have large communities, and they're growing quickly, with 1 billion people now using WhatsApp daily. It is still early on the monetization side here,” he said according to a Seeking Alpha transcription.

Facebook chief financial officer, David Wehner, later went on to comment on its separate approaches to monetizing Facebook Messenger (which has already started rolling out an advertising offering) and WhatsApp.

“WhatsApp has demonstrated significant engagement with crossing 1 billion daily actives,” he said. “We're focused on growing the user base, first and foremost. And then secondly, it's about building organic connections between businesses and consumers. And then third, it's about how do we build monetization around those relationships.

Wehner added: “And I think there, we're further along with Messenger than we are with WhatsApp. And so, I think you see us rolling out the global beta there with ads. So, I think we'll watch and learn from that. And as we learn things, we can apply them in other areas.”

Earlier this year it was revealed that WhatsApp was in talks with the State Bank of India, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and a number of other financial institutions to integrate payments with the messaging service.

Output: Whatsapp has launched a verified business accounts scheme in the latest attempt to monetise the Facebook-owned messaging service. The pilot programme is currently available to a limited number of small- to medium-sized enterprises and will mean users can tell if a business has been verified by a "yellow message inside a chat". Analysis also suggests that the programme will let participants set their business hours and automate responses.


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Tesla uses polymer paste to stick its solar tiles together
 One of the biggest questions facing Tesla’s new Solar Roof product is how it will overcome the technical and cost-effectiveness challenges that have prevented other building-integrated photovoltaic contenders from breaking into the rooftop solar market.

This week, Tesla was granted a patent that could help answer some of those questions. The patent, first reported by CB Insights, is for a “method for curing conductive paste applied to two adjacent photovoltaic structures” -- i.e., solar cells arranged in a “cascading” or overlapping structure, just like Tesla’s Solar Roof.

While it’s not clear if Tesla is using the methods described in the patent for its current Solar Roof production, the concept has been kicking around for some time. The patent application was first filed by SolarCity in May 2016, six months before its $2.6 billion acquisition by Tesla.

It’s also a much different approach than the standing-seam metal roof developed by SolarCity's R&D unit, code-named “Steel Pulse,” that Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly called a “piece of shit” when he first saw it last spring. Tesla abandoned that project and switched to overlapping solar tiles, a product that was unveiled to the public in October -- although that demo wasn’t actually wired up to generate electricity.

Tesla started taking orders in May, and announced the first working installations in August, with Musk and Tesla CTO JB Straubel getting the first ones. It also started releasing pricing data, with an average price of $21.85 per square foot, which is cost-competitive with standard tile or slate roofing products, but still more expensive than today’s solar panels on a cost-per-watt basis.

Tiled solar panels also face a core challenge -- getting electricity to flow from one tile to the next efficiently, while protecting against rain, wind, heat and the other rooftop conditions that can erode a system’s performance over time.

“Yield and cost of creating the cell-to-cell contact is one of the challenges of the cascaded, or overlapping, cell design,” MJ Shiao, head of Americas research at GTM Research, noted. “If there's a more efficient and reliable way of doing that, it'll help lower the cost and improve the viability of the design.”

Tesla’s new patent attacks the challenge by using a polymer paste to connect the conducting busbars of one shingle to another. This paste both bonds the two overlapping structures physically, and allows electricity to flow from cell to cell, and is meant to be more flexible and resistant to temperature changes than soldered metal connections between cells.

But its primary innovations center around how it creates this bond between panels, which requires heat ranging from 200 to 600 degrees Celsius, by moving them along a conveyor belt, rather than using a batch or stationary process. It’s what Tesla calls an “exemplary inline thermal curing system,” and according to its patent, it’s better than the two other options available today: convection ovens and heating surfaces.

The problem with convection ovens is that “the heating efficiency of such approaches is typically low, because most of the heat may escape to the environment,” the patent states. What’s more, “air must be circulated to ensure that there is effective and even convection occurring on the strips,” and “an uneven airflow can result in temperature non-uniformity on the strips.”

Heating surfaces provides more uniformity, but because they need to be cool before the solar cells are placed on them, “heating up and cooling down can take a long time, thus reducing the throughput of the fabrication system,” it noted. “In addition, heating and cooling of a large thermal mass can consume a large amount of energy, and can cause large thermal stresses to be applied to the tool.”

Tesla’s patent describes the two main parts of the system -- the carrier of the solar wafers that runs underneath, and the heating element that sits above. The wafer carrier includes polybenzimidazole (PBI) plastic, a kind of plastic with very low thermal conductivity, to “ensure that the heat emitted from the heater is mostly trapped between the heater and the substrate carrier and, thus, can efficiently cure the conductive paste.” It also includes a “number of components separated by air gaps to allow an individual component to expand when heated.”

The heating element that sits above the conveyor belt also has a number of features, including a “radiation block” with “a substantially dark colored coating” to improve its efficiency, that “can include an anodizing coating or a high-emissivity coating,” with a thickness of between 1 and 100 microns.

“A well-designed system that can efficiently heat the strips without damaging the photovoltaic junctions can reduce the time needed for curing the conductive paste to a period between 25 and 60 seconds,” the patent notes.

By the way, Tesla’s tempered glass solar shingles are using a hybrid of technology from Panasonic and Silevo, which SolarCity bought for $200 million in 2014. That is not the same technology as most of the building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products we’ve seen come and go over the past decade or so, which have used lower-efficiency thin-film solar materials that have been unable to compete with polysilicon solar panels.

Energy Conversion Devices went bankrupt chasing the dream of flexible BIPV through its Uni-Solar subsidiary. Even Dow Chemical wasn’t able to make a go with its Powerhouse line of roof shingles with built-in thin-film PV -- it discontinued the product last year.

Output: Tesla has been granted a patent for a “method for curing conductive paste applied to two adjacent photovoltaic structures”, like Tesla's Solar Roof. Tiled solar panels such as those in SolarCity's design face a significant challenge in getting electricity to flow efficiently from one tile to the next, all the while protecting the solar cell against the elements. Tesla's new patent tackles the issue by using a polymer paste to connect the conducting busbars of one shingle to another, allowing the electricity to flow from cell to cell.


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Google accused of pressurising US think tank
 In his book “Zero to One,” the tech investor Peter Thiel writes that companies like Google lie to protect themselves. “They know that bragging about their great monopoly invites being audited, scrutinized and attacked. Since they very much want their profits to continue unmolested, they tend to do whatever they can to conceal their monopoly — usually by exaggerating the power of their (nonexistent) competition,” he explains. There’s evidence that this kind of exaggeration is carried out by numerous scholars and think tanks funded by Google. According to a 2017 Wall Street Journal investigative report, “Over the past decade, Google has helped finance hundreds of research papers to defend against regulatory challenges of its market dominance, paying $5,000 to $400,000 for the work.”

But as the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog discovered in February 2009 when it investigated Google’s handling of consumer privacy, the funding from Google comes with strings attached. As the group noted on its website, Google’s director of policy communications, Bob Boorstin, emailed the Rose Foundation (a major funder of Consumer Watchdog) complaining about Consumer Watchdog and asking the charity to consider “whether there might be better groups in which to place your trust and resources.” Mr. Boorstin later apologized for his attempts to cripple a Google critic, but there is no evidence that the use of this kind of tactic has ended.

The Wall Street Journal’s report found that since 2009, Google had directly funded 100 papers written by academics and 100 papers that came through think tanks funded by Google. These papers make their way to the congressional committees and regulatory agencies that are charged with overseeing Google’s business, like the Federal Trade Commission.

Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” suggested that the company valued transparency. But the extent of its influence is anything but transparent. Occasionally this is revealed to the public, such as when the infamous Google Shill List came out during a lawsuit brought by Oracle. Google was forced to disclose that it provided major funding to important organizations like Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

So when these supposedly neutral organizations weigh in on issues that involve Google, you should take their advocacy with a grain of salt. In the coming months, privacy legislation put forward by Representative Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, and modifications to the Safe Harbor provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act advocated by Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, will come before Congress. Google does not want either of these laws to pass, and you can be sure that papers from major think tanks will be part of the policy discussion.

Output: Google is facing criticism for its influence over US think tank the New America Foundation. The criticism comes following the firing of scholar Barry Lynn, who wrote an article on New America’s website supporting the imposition of a $2.7bn fine on Google by the European Union for anti-trust breaches. The president of New America, Anne-Marie Slaughter, denies this was the reason for Lynn’s sacking.


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Zero-waste Totnes supermarket to expand to London and Birmingham
 An eco-friendly-couple say they have launched zero-waste supermarket where all packaging is completely banned.

Big Happiness Interview: From 'clipping' to fika breaks, try these hacks for a good day

28-year-old Richard Eckersley and his wife Nicola, 27, sell a range of up to 200 pesticide-free products in their store, Earth.Food.Love.

You don’t have to worry about 5p carrier bags – as customers are expected to take their own pots, jars and sandwich bags in order to carry anything home.

The shop opened earlier this year in Totnes, Devon, and has been so successful that the green-thinking couple are now planning to open stores in both London and Birmingham to encourage more people to think of the economy.

The couple came up with the idea after they discovered Unperfekthaus – a German anti-waste outlet – while enjoying a trip to Berlin.

Richard said: ‘We walked in and immediately thought, why doesn’t this exist in the UK?

‘We came back to the UK and decided to open our own sustainable store. We wanted to go somewhere that we felt would make a difference to the local community – that’s why we moved to Devon.’

The motto of the shop – which stocks grains, pastas, and even maple syrup – is to deliver goods that are ‘ethical, wholesome and organic’, meaning products such as alcohol and milk are completely off the menu.

Everyday supermarket items such as packets of crisps are also on a strict banned list, as they can have up to seven layers of packaging.

But this doesn’t seem to deter customers – as the shop stocks products that people are absolutely loving.

‘By far our most popular attraction of the shop is the ‘grind-your-own’ nut butter machines,’ explained Richard.

‘Filled with both almonds and peanuts, you can re-use your nut butter jar again and again and again, each time filling it with delicious, sticky goodness that’s been ground right in front of you.’

Alongside nut butter, Earth.Food.Love stocks items that are locally sourced and biked over by local farmers, such as regionally-grown oats.

The store’s Zero Waste Lifestyle collection also includes sanitary products, metal shavers that you just need to swap the blade on, and bamboo toothbrushes that have bristles you can replace.

Shoppers have to take their own containers which they then fill, weigh and label and pay for what they are buying by the gram – though the store keeps a supply of compostable paper bags for first-time customers and people who have turned up without their own containers.

Despite the sales, Richard and Nicola say they didn’t set up the shop to make money.

Richard said: ‘It’s not about price for us. We don’t want to stock items just for the sake of it, it has to be ethical.

‘At the same time, we don’t want to compete with local farms – there are many around here that sell fresh produce already.

‘We’re adding products all of time, but the supplier has to be right for us.’

He continued: ‘We want to live in a world where consuming doesn’t have to cost the earth.

‘We believe returning to these simple ways will benefit not only our health, but the planets too.’

Alongside selling organic, packaging-free products, the shop is also aiding the economy by featuring ethical energy supplied by Gloucestershire-based Ecotricity, who produce clean, renewable gas and electricity.

This as a whole has encouraged more and more customers to enter the shop, not just to search for products, but to experience something wholesome.

Richard said: ‘This week we’ve had an influx of tourists popping in to see what the shop is all about – they’re fascinated.

‘But we have a lot of local residents too – they come in with their own boxes and bags and stock up on what they need.’

Since opening, Richard says the store has inspired many shoppers – and upon realising this, he and Nicola have produced their very own guide to ‘setting up your own zero waste shop’, which covers location, budget, suppliers, how to find dispensers and even advice on what to stock.

‘In setting up a zero waste shop, you are creating such a huge shift in the way people shop that you are directly influencing positive change, and for that, you should be proud,’ said Richard.

‘Remember that it only takes one person to make one change, and the ripple will be felt through the entire ocean.’

MORE : The verdict on vegan halloumi

MORE : A Nirvana-themed vegan café is opening in Glasgow

Output: A zero-waste shop in Totnes in the UK has been so successful that its owners are contemplating opening new shops in Birmingham and London. Earth.Food.Love sells up to 200 pesticide-free, ethical products, as well as sustainable sanitary products, shavers and toothbrushes, and requires customers to bring their own bags and containers for produce. Compostable paper bags are available for first-time visitors. Nicola and Richard Eckersley set up their shop after visiting Unperfekthaus, an anti-waste outlet in Berlin. The couple have now produced a guide to “setting up your own zero waste shop”.


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Solar-plus-storage beats standalone PV by 2020: NREL
 With so few utility-scale solar-plus-storage projects actually built, we don’t have much data on how their economics work.

Now those companies considering it -- a group that includes all major solar developers -- have a bit more insight, thanks to Paul Denholm and his colleagues at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Their new analysis models the benefit-cost ratio of several solar and storage configurations under present circumstances and projected cases in 2020.

In today’s market, under the assumptions of the model, standalone PV beats any of the hybrid combinations. Fast-forward to 2020 with an assumed 15 percent solar penetration, and DC-coupled PV-plus-storage with the federal Investment Tax Credit takes the lead.

In a 2020 scenario with 24 percent solar penetration, standalone PV plummets in value and all types of solar-plus-storage take the lead.

The real-world economics will change from place to place, but the trend here is clear: As the share of variable solar generation increases, so will the payoff for siting storage in the same place.

That evidence suggests the data is catching up to the aspirations of the storage industry, which Denholm has been tracking for the last 15 years.

“The hype might actually be real,” he said. “If these somewhat conservative projections do come true, then yes, by 2020 solar-plus-storage will be a cost-competitive source of dispatchable energy.”

Not just cost

It’s easy enough to calculate levelized cost of energy for a solar-plus-storage system, and it will always be more expensive than standalone solar. But that metric fails to capture the additional value that can be gained by adding storage.

If the developer needs to deliver power for the evening peak, a storage-assisted PV plant will be significantly more valuable than the alternative.

The authors instead use a benefit-to-cost ratio found by dividing the annualized energy revenue and capacity value of the system by its annualized capital and operating expenses.

The system modeled is located in Southern California and wields 50 megawatts-AC of PV capacity with 30 megawatts of 4-hour duration storage.

The researchers focused specifically on this asset’s value for energy and capacity, essentially pitting it against a gas peaker plant. They excluded other uses for storage, like ancillary services or transmission and distribution deferral, meaning the storage can likely deliver even more value than what was modeled here.

Market distortion

Here’s what the results look like for today’s grid:

Benefit/cost outcomes for PV+storage using 2014 electricity prices and 2016 estimated PV and battery costs. (Image credit: NREL)

The Investment Tax Credit is working some mischief here.

Notice that without the ITC, the “tightly coupled” DC system, which only charges the batteries from the PV array, ranks among the worst paybacks. That configuration sacrifices revenue from arbitraging cheap grid power.

When you add the 30 percent ITC, which is available to storage that only charges from renewable sources, the tight DC system jumps to second best, after standalone PV.

That’s evidence of market distortion at work. Congress has not passed a standalone ITC for storage. The policy on the books drives developers toward charging their storage from solar alone, even when it might make more sense to charge from cheap grid power at night, for instance.

“You’re probably not incentivizing the optimal way of using that resource for the ultimate benefit,” Denholm said.

That raises the chances of stranded assets. What if the industry chases the ITC, only to be stuck with a bunch of arbitrarily limited storage systems when the ITC runs out?

That’s not a concern, Denholm said, because in most cases, it is possible to unlock grid charging with some tweaks to the storage hardware and software.

The future is hybrid

Standalone PV wins out in the current market context (as modeled; there are certainly cases where it already triumphs), which features 6 percent solar penetration. The future holds a different outcome.

There’s a well-established body of literature on the declining marginal value of additional solar power. As the amount of solar generation hitting the grid increases, so does the value of storing that power for use in the evening peak.

The 2020 case with a 30 percent investment tax credit. (Image credit: NREL)

Projecting storage and solar costs in 2020 with 15 percent solar penetration, the authors find standalone solar losing its edge. The nonexclusive DC-coupled solar-plus-storage beats it, and the tight DC-coupled system with the ITC takes first place, with its benefits almost doubling its costs.

At 24 percent solar penetration, standalone PV’s benefit-to-cost ratio sinks below 1, meaning that costs outweigh benefits. In that scenario, any combination of solar and storage beats the standalone solar.

In the same 2020 scenarios run without any ITC, all forms of solar-plus-storage beat standalone solar at 15 and 24 percent penetration.

In those cases, the unrestricted DC-coupled system has the best value proposition, but it’s very close to the tightly coupled system. That’s because in that grid, much of the power charging the storage will be from solar; the value of flexible charging is not as pronounced as it is today.

The study fits into the broader body of work documenting how storage can make itself useful as the grid approaches higher renewable energy penetrations. It also jibes with the market conditions we’ve seen so far: A lot of people are talking about pairing these two resources, but few have done it outside of the island grid context. Large-scale projects going through bidding right now would come on-line around 2020.

In that light, there’s a case to be made for building the hybrid systems before the ITC runs out, knowing that the operational value is only going to grow as solar penetration rises. Once that tax credit is gobbled up, the system can always be changed to operate more flexibly (some might say sensibly) down the road.

Join GTM for a deep dive into the budding domestic energy storage market at the U.S. Energy Storage Summit 2017. Utilities, financiers, regulators, technology innovators, and storage practitioners will all come together for two full days of data-intensive presentations, analyst-led panel sessions with industry leaders, and extensive, high-level networking. Learn more here.

Output: Should solar penetration reach 15% by 2020, DC-coupled photovoltaic (PV) solar-plus-storage with the US Investment Tax Credit is cheaper than standalone PV solar, according to research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). By 2020, with solar penetration at 24%, all types of solar-plus storage beat standalone PV. While the actual economics vary according to location, as the share of variable solar generation increases, so will the value of connected energy storage.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Ballard’s Q2 shows fuel cell technology could finally be profitable
 Publicly listed fuel cell companies have yet to post a profitable year. But Canada’s Ballard Power Systems recently announced the next best thing: positive adjusted EBITDA over the trailing 12-month period ending on June 30.

So, is this another false start for fuel cells, or does it portend profits will soon come to the sector?

Ballard was founded in 1979, making this its 38th year of operations and 22nd as a public company. Its North American-listed compatriots -- Plug Power, Hydrogenics and FuelCell Energy -- have been publicly listed for almost as long. Last year, FuelCell Energy CEO Chip Bottone said the company was "within striking distance" of profitability, but that goal has yet to be realized. Bloom Energy, meanwhile, remains a private company.

Outgoing GTM editor Eric Wesoff recently noted that there has not been a profitable fuel cell company in his lifetime. Wesoff’s Wall has proven as insurmountable as the one in the popular dragon-infused TV series Game of Thrones, preventing fuel cell firms from crossing into profitable territory for centuries -- although not for lack of trying. Could the wall soon be breached?

Ballard Q2 earnings report showed Positive H1 adjusted EBITDA (TTM figures not listed)

Ballard’s trailing 12 months’ (TTM) adjusted EBITDA of $0.6 million was based on revenues of $100 million and gross margins of 34 percent. With net losses in this period below $10 million, revenue growth of one-third would put it on the cusp of profitability. The company’s goals to increase revenues by 50 percent and gross margins by 6 percent over calendar-year 2016 (reiterated in its Q2 report) may be designed with this in mind.

Though it provides technical services to four global auto OEMs, Ballard’s rising fortunes appear largely tied to China’s enthusiasm for hybrid battery/fuel cell platforms for heavy-duty transport (buses, trucks and light rail), which mirrors the country’s interest in batteries for light-duty passenger vehicles. These hybrids supplement battery propulsion with modestly sized fuel cell stacks which serve as zero-emission range extenders.

The company has signed $29 million in contracts to deploy 600 fuel cell engines for Broad-Ocean, a leading Chinese motor manufacturer that has taken a 9.9 percent ownership stake. Ballard has also supplied fuel cells to Yinlong Energy, a battery-electric bus manufacturer (2017 target production: 35,000) that aims for 20 percent of its sales to incorporate fuel cells by 2020. Finally, its joint venture fuel-cell production facility in Guangdong province is contracted to purchase $150 million of membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs, a fuel cell subcomponent) from Ballard over a five-year period, on a take-or-pay basis. While these sums would amount to a rounding error for other industries, they are significant for the fuel cell sector.

The transformative potential of the Chinese market is underscored by other fuel cell firms’ announcements. Hydrogenics received a $21 million private placement from Hejili, a Chinese limited partnership, and a $50 million contract with Blue-G, a division of Yixing Electric Auto, covering 1,000 fuel cell stacks. Plug Power, fresh off major transactions with Amazon and Walmart, is also testing fuel cell range extenders in China, and their fuel cell forklifts will likely find a receptive market there as well.

For its part, FuelCell Energy, whose high-temperature molten carbonate fuel cells make it more of a competitor to Bloom Energy, has found its core market in South Korea, where 170 megawatts of its installations have been sited. (From its press releases, privately held Bloom Energy’s installation base appears to have recently topped 200 megawatts.)

Freedom from fossil hydrogen

While FuelCell Energy and Bloom can run their systems on biogas, the proton exchange membrane fuel cells used by Ballard, Hydrogenics and Plug Power require pure hydrogen, which would need to be renewably generated for fuel cells to be a climate solution. And with water electrolysis accounting for only about 1 percent of worldwide hydrogen production -- steam methane reforming with its byproduct carbon dioxide being the dominant process -- the “renewable hydrogen” era remains many, many moons away.

Whether despite or due to this challenge, electrolyzer vendors have innovated to achieve significant cost reductions in recent years. Norway’s Nel Hydrogen has recently claimed that cheap electricity and high electrolyzer utilization (and admittedly, fuel taxes) will allow it to provide hydrogen at a lower cost than gasoline in some jurisdictions (see slide 9 in this Nel presentation).

While this claim may remain untested for some time, given the paucity of fuel-cell vehicle deployments, Nel has signed a framework agreement with SunPower (see slide 22) for renewable hydrogen production, and has moved forward with a framework agreement for a 100-megawatt electrolysis/power-to-gas plant in France, which will inject hydrogen into the natural gas network. The project is valued at 450 million Norwegian kroner, or about $55 million at current exchange rates, with the possibility of eventual expansion to 700 megawatts.

Nel is also developing an intriguing 400-megawatt electrolyzer concept with an unnamed industrial customer to undercut the cost of fossil hydrogen.

Source: Nel Hydrogen, Nel ASA presentation (May 2017), slide 26

While overambitious announcements have continued to characterize the hydrogen and fuel cell sectors, Nel’s competitors have also announced higher-capacity electrolyzer platforms (see here and here) in response to client demand, which suggests the economics may be beginning to show promise.

Of course, even cheaply generated renewable hydrogen would be of limited value unless it could be easily transported, which leads us to Japanese engineering firm Chiyoda and its plan to import hydrogen from Brunei.

The mother of all flow batteries

By 2020 (presumably in time for the Tokyo Olympics), Chiyoda plans to ship toluene to Brunei, where it will be reacted with hydrogen produced from natural gas to generate methylcyclohexane (MCH). The MCH will be shipped back to Japan, where the hydrogen will be removed, leaving toluene, which will be sent back to Brunei.

Call it the mother of all flow batteries.

FIGURE: Development of Large-Scale H2 Storage and Transportation Technology With Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier

Source: Chiyoda

By using the hydrocarbons as a liquid organic hydrogen carrier, or LOHC, Chiyoda aims to circumvent the problems of long-distance hydrogen transport. Though the process may seem something like a Rube Goldberg machine, its overriding advantage is its backward-compatibility with ubiquitous, mature petroleum infrastructure. Given expectations of an eventual peak in liquid fuels demand, LOHC processes could one day offer oil companies a way to stay relevant in a post-petroleum world.

For this pilot project, Chiyoda proposes to transport 210 tons of hydrogen per year to Japan, corresponding to yearly shipments of about 3,500 tons of organic carrier. (By comparison, an oil supertanker can carry upward of 300,000 tons of crude.) A monthly round trip would mean cycling a mere 300 tons of organic carrier between Japan and Brunei, presumably a small enough volume to piggyback off existing shipping flows between the countries.

In terms of energy delivery, 1 kilogram of hydrogen contains about as much chemical energy as a gallon of gasoline, which weighs about 6 pounds (2.75 kilograms). Methylcyclohexane has roughly the same density, and releases about 6 percent hydrogen by weight when converted into toluene. As such, a gallon of methylcyclohexane would yield up 0.17 kilograms of hydrogen, with chemical energy equivalent to one-sixth of a gallon of gasoline. Even factoring in fuel cells’ greater efficiency at converting chemical energy to work, LOHCs might be hard-pressed to deliver one-third as much work-per-tanker as today’s liquid fuels.

Perhaps in part for this reason, funding awards from ARPA-E’s Renewable Energy Fuels Through Utilization of Energy-Dense Liquids (REFUEL) program have focused on ammonia, which consists of 17 percent hydrogen by weight. Ammonia production is a mature industry, with about half a million tons produced each day (global daily oil production amounts to roughly 10 million tons of crude). Unfortunately, ammonia boils at -30 degrees Celsius, has a pungent odor, and is classified in the United States as toxic by inhalation, all of which could impede its success as a widespread hydrogen carrier.

While their time might not come for decades, some form of liquid energy carrier seems likely to play a role in the future: Not all global energy flows can likely be replaced with increased electric transmission capacity. However imperfect the liquid energy carriers of the future may be, their success will probably hinge on compatibility with infrastructure from already globe-spanning industries.

Saluting the supporting cast

Students of the renewables revolution could be forgiven for questioning the relevance of fuel cells, renewable hydrogen and liquid energy carriers, given the ascendance of wind, solar and now battery storage. But emerging technologies deserve attention precisely because they are still emerging and their future is uncertain. The "big three" have enough momentum to saturate their respective markets; their spread and success are largely a given with time.

So while fuel cells, renewable hydrogen, liquid energy carriers, next-generation nuclear and biofuels, efficiency innovations and other technologies may only ever be the supporting cast of the energy transition, their arc is inherently more interesting. The big three may not bring us all the way to a carbon-neutral world on their own, in which case some of these technologies may step into the spotlight, while others remain in the shadows and still more leave the stage.

The twists and turns at the bleeding edge of fuel cell technology make for compelling viewing and engrossing speculation, though for an admittedly smaller audience than the big three enjoy. If and when they breach the wall of profitability, perhaps fuel cells will be taken more seriously.

***

Matthew Klippenstein is a consultant in Vancouver, Canada. He does not own shares or conduct business with any of the companies listed above, but once worked for Ballard Power Systems.

Output: Canada’s Ballard Power Systems recently announced positive adjusted EBITDA over the trailing 12-month period ending on 30 June, suggesting that a publicly listed fuel cell company may eventually post a profitable year. Ballard was founded in 1979 and listed 22 years ago. Its US-listed contemporaries, Plug Power, Hydrogenics and FuelCell Energy, have been public for almost as long. Last year, FuelCell Energy CEO Chip Bottone said the company was "within striking distance" of profitability, but it hasn't reached it yet.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Climate change litigation to increase warn environmental lawyers
 Sign up to the Independent Climate email for the latest advice on saving the planet Get our free Climate email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

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A "wave of legal action" over climate change has already begun and cases will become more likely to succeed as the scientists get better at attributing extreme weather events to global warming, activists have warned.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, lawyers from ClientEarth in London and Earth & Water Law in Washington DC said events previously regarded as “acts of God” could increasingly land humans with a bill for damages.

Companies and their directors, government agencies and others with a duty of care, who fail to disclose relevant information or to plan ahead, could all potentially be in legal trouble.

Several legal cases are already underway in the US with a group of young people suing the US federal government for allegedly creating and enhancing the dangers of climate change; coastal communities in California suing fossil fuel companies over sea-level rise; and the New York attorney general’s office investigating ExxonMobil amid claims the company may have misled shareholders about the financial risk posed by climate change.

The Nature Geoscience article said: “The question is not whether there will be another wave of climate-related litigation — the wave is already in motion.

“The question instead is whether it will be more successful than previous efforts.

“We expect that evidence from attribution science will catalyse future climate change litigation.

“Such cases are likely to involve actors such as local government agencies, built-environment professionals, and companies and their directors alleged to have had duties of care or special knowledge about specific climate-related risk.

“Claims are likely to arise when those actors fail to share or disclose relevant knowledge, or fail to take adaptation actions that would have protected those to whom they owed a duty of care.”

Attributing extreme weather events to climate change is difficult. However, recently researchers have been able to show wildfires and other events were significantly more likely because of the rising temperatures.

And courts in the US and UK, for example, have already accepted evidence based on probability in other cases.

In a statement, the article’s authors, Sophie Marjanac and James Thornton, of ClientEarth, and Lindene Patton, of Earth & Water Law, said: “The science of extreme weather attribution is improving rapidly, and is making important predictions about future weather events.

“This means the legal duties of those responsible for keeping people, the built environment and the natural world safe are changing too.

“Identifying the human influence in events once only understood as ‘acts of god’ will reshape the legal landscape, meaning governments and businesses could be sued if they don’t take action to protect people from floods, heatwaves and other foreseeable climate change risks.”

ClientEarth twice successfully took the UK Government to court over substandard plans to bring air pollution down to within minimum safety limits set by the European Union in a timely fashion.

Following publication of the Government’s third attempt, it has written to Ministers seeking “urgent answers over disturbing holes in court-ordered plans to clean up illegal levels of air pollution”.

In July, chief executives of 92 green organisations voted ClientEarth as the UK’s most effective environmental campaign group.

This article has been corrected to state that the young people suing the US government are doing so on the ground that it helped to cause climate change, rather than failed to take action to address it.

Output: Legal action relating to climate change will escalate and become increasingly successful as scientists become better at attributing extreme weather events to global warming, according to an article in “Nature Geoscience” by UK and US environmental lawyers. Representatives of ClientEarth and Earth & Water Law argue that “the legal duties of those responsible for keeping people, the built environment and the natural world safe” are evolving. Fossil fuel companies are currently being sued by Californian coastal communities in relation to sea-level rises and ExxonMobil is under investigation for misleading shareholders over its exposure to climate change risks.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Solar-plus-storage cheaper than gas peakers by 2025: WoodMac
 A lot can happen in the heat of the moment.

For South Australia, the stress of a statewide blackout last fall prompted two major purchases in the grid-time equivalent of the blink of an eye. The government procured a 100-megawatt/129-megawatt-hour battery from Tesla, which will be the largest in the world, and a 250-megawatt open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) peaker plant.

Those projects show that the government is doing something about grid stability. But Wood Mackenzie, GTM Research and MAKE Consulting wanted to figure out if and when energy storage will start to displace gas peakers for cost-effective peak capacity on sheer economics.

South Australia makes a useful test case for these questions due to the stark changes underway there.

The state closed its last remaining coal plant in May 2016. Wind and solar have risen to 46 percent of generation, and are expected to hit 67 percent by 2025. In September, extreme weather triggered the first statewide blackout since the National Electric Market got started in 1998. This caused a great deal of finger-pointing as to which resources caused the failure.

Another round of blackouts rolled through in February due to load-shedding when high demand coincided with low wind production and limited gas reserves.

In today's market, neither renewables backed by storage nor standalone storage are cost-competitive with OCGTs for peaking power, according to the analysis.

By 2025, solar-plus-storage and standalone storage both beat new and existing OCGTs for meeting peak load. By 2035, renewables and storage will be lower-cost than gas for both baseload and peak power, although some OCGTs may still be needed for emergency backup.

That's heartening news for the storage industry -- and a warning sign for gas.

"A much smaller proportion of gas is used for peaking than for baseload, so it's a much bigger deal for storage and renewables to displace combined cycle gas turbines than peakers," said Shayle Kann, head of GTM Research.

The data suggests a pathway where niche applications like the Tesla project, which is short-duration and intended for grid reliability rather than peak capacity, pave the way for storage to compete with gas peakers more broadly, and even then threaten baseload gas, he added.

Many storage developers today pitch utility-scale batteries as a more flexible alternative to peaker plants, arguing they avoid the risk of stranded assets that comes with purchasing single-use peakers that might not be needed in 10 years. The storage for baseload pitch hasn't really begun, at least not outside of remote or island grids.

Of course, the evolution of grid operations won't be as neat. Overall gas demand is expected to drop more than threefold by 2025, but month-to-month variability will be considerable. The government will also have to weigh how much it wants to pay to maintain some OCGTs as emergency backup power.

"If you got rid of gas entirely, you run a risk of an anomalous scenario where there's very little solar generation or wind and you don't have anything dispatchable to replace it," Kann said.

For regular operations in 2025, the amount of storage needed to displace gas peakers is surprisingly manageable.

The yearly maximum residual demand for gas falls in February, when the wind generation doesn't fully cover the evening peak. By adding 400 megawatts/1,600 megawatt-hours of energy storage, though, the grid could fully displace imports or gas peakers in meeting the evening peak demand, according to the analysis.

The key there is the 4-hour duration. Short-duration batteries like those used in the Tesla project cannot bulk-shift enough power to displace peakers.

That is a lot of megawatt-hours in today's terms. But 100-megawatt projects are becoming more frequent, and won't seem as massive by the mid-2020s. The economics are expected to improve, thanks to declining battery costs and cheaper costs to charge.

South Australia's grid is unique in how much renewable energy it already has, but these trends should bear out in similar markets where the grid transition pushes out coal and leaves renewables, gas and storage.

Then the question won't be whether renewables and storage out-compete gas power, but rather how to ensure cost-effective reliability when those market forces arrive.

Greentech Media’s two-day U.S. Power & Renewables 2017 conference in Austin, Texas this November will bring together the solar expertise of GTM Research, the wind energy analysis of MAKE, and the broader energy and utilities expertise of Wood Mackenzie, for an end-to-end view across the entire energy market value chain.

Output: By 2025, solar-plus-storage and standalone storage will be cheaper than new and existing open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) peaker plants for meeting peak load, according to analysis by Wood Mackenzie, GTM Research and MAKE Consulting. By 2035, renewables and storage will also be cheaper than gas for baseload power, they said. The research was carried out after a state-wide blackout in South Australia led to the purchase of a 100 MW/129 MWh battery from Tesla and a 250 MW OCGT peaker plant.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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University of Saskatchewan patents syngas-creating catalyst
 CLS scientists Yongfeng Hu and Hui Wang. Credit: University of Saskatchewan

CO2 and methane are the most significant greenhouse gases resulting from human activity, said Hui Wang, professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan.

Capturing CO2 and methane emissions from industrial sources and reusing them could reduce the threat on the world's ecosystem by slowing climate change, said Wang, the principal researcher of a paper published in Catalyst Today.

CO2 and methane can be triggered to undergo chemical reactions with each other to create synthesis gas or syngas. Syngas is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which can be used to synthesize a variety of liquid fuels or ammonia.

This reaction between CO2 and methane, also called 'dry reforming of methane,' has not been fully scaled-up for commercial use due to lack of an inexpensive and industrially viable catalyst. Catalysts are used to speed up chemical reactions.

Wang's research group has patented a technology to make a highly active, stable dry-reforming catalyst from cheap metals including nickel, cobalt, magnesium and aluminum. The current technology provides for making a catalyst in powder form, but the goal of the project is to make the powder form into a sphere-shaped catalyst, which is easier to handle in industrial operations.

To do this, Wang and his research team used commercially available aluminum-oxide spheres and impregnated them with "layers" of the catalyst metals. Several sets of these catalyst balls were made using different techniques to impregnate them with solutions of salt forms of the metals in order to study which technique gave the best results.

The X-ray absorption spectroscopy facility at CLS enabled the researchers to identify, at the atomic level, which procedures for impregnating the spheres created the best characteristics of an industrial catalyst.

"Without the CLS we couldn't have been able to fully understand this," Wang said.

The work is an important step toward creating a shaped-catalyst for commercializing the CO2 reforming of CH4 technology.

Output: Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan have patented a catalyst for synthesising carbon dioxide and methane. The resulting syngas can be used to synthesise liquid fuels or ammonia. The catalyst is made using cheap materials including nickel, cobalt, magnesium and aluminium. Although currently in a powder form, the researchers intend to make the catalyst sphere-shaped to enable it to handle industrial operations more easily.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

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Romeo Power raises $30m for world's densest battery packs
 By Jonny Tiernan

L.A.-based battery company Romeo Power claims to make “the world’s most dense battery packs,” and it’s a claim that has led it to generate $30 million in seed funding, without involving venture capitalists. All of the investment came from the management team, unnamed family officers, and people who have invested in the previous startups CEO Mark Patterson has been involved with. Now that’s a gesture of faith.

The confidence in the company, which only launched in 2016, comes from a number of quarters. First, Patterson has a proven track record of successfully founding and selling companies, including a fraud detection company, InAuth, that was bought by American Express; second, the 190-person team features a wealth of expertise that has experience working for respected giants such as Tesla, Apple, Samsung, and Amazon, so they know what they are doing; and third, the company’s special method of building the lithium-ion batteries yields at least 25% more energy density than a comparable pack.

$65 Million in Orders Placed

While Romeo doesn’t make its own battery cells (it sources them from the likes of Samsung and LG instead), it has its own unique method of packing them that sets them apart. According to cofounder and CTO, Porter Harris, the company selects the best cells for a particular application (in a tablet computer or electric car, for example), and then picks out the right container and materials to house and connect them, and then keep the whole thing cool with its own firmware, software, thermal system, and battery system.

It’s a method that has drawn in a huge level of sales already, with orders totaling $65 million scheduled for delivery in 2018. Its customer list includes motorcycle and forklift manufacturers, robotics companies, automakers, and more. Patterson is aware of the runaway success, as he acknowledged in a statement. “We’ve seen incredible momentum in a short period, and we’re scaling manufacturing as fast as we can to meet demand,” he said. “There’s a massive market opportunity for energy storage technologies.”

Patterson is right about the market opportunity, as even the EV market alone is estimated to reach $32 billion by 2020. With this massively increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries, we can expect Romeo Power to keep charging along.

Sign up for Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Former Tesla Battery Expert Leading Lyten Into New Lithium-Sulfur Battery Era — Podcast: I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ... Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps —— grow. So ...

Output: LA battery provider Romeo Power has raised $30m in seed funding, without any input from venture capitalists. The company claims to manufacture the world’s most energy-dense battery packs, providing 25% more energy than comparable devices. The company, founded in 2016, has $65m worth of orders due to be delivered in 2018, attracting interest from automakers, robotics firms, and forklift and motorcycle manufacturers, amongst others.


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Wealth manager Equilibrium unveils one-stop-shop investment app
 Wealth management company Equilibrium is on the brink of launching its new one-stop-shop online finance portal MyEQ.

The Wilmslow-based firm manages over £700 million of assets for over 850 families and has developed and trialled the cutting-edge portal for their benefit.

Equilibrium Asset Management clients can access MyEQ through laptops, phones, desktops or tablets – and view their own investment portfolio in one place.

Gaynor Rigby, Equilibrium managing partner, said the multi-functional portal will give users a snapshot into their finances, with the added ability to keep track of investments, see a true picture of their net worth and even calculate property values.

“We are proud to be launching the online portal MyEQ. Equilibrium has been providing expertise on wealth and investment management for more than 20 years to our valued customers – and MyEQ is a natural addition to our offer,” she said.

“We hope that this will provide an even greater level of customer experience by creating a quick and easy way to access everything from data to documents.

“MyEQ is an exciting product and is essentially a modern-day personal digital financial filing cabinet that will enable our clients to monitor their financial lives minute-by-minute and day-by-day should they want to.”

Rigby added: “It’s important to mention that MyEQ is a financial peace of mind in your pocket. The portal makes sure that your data is safeguarded by using bank-level security and 128-bit encryption.

“The online portal also provides secure communications with a client’s adviser and allows clients to get a grip on their calendars, not forgetting important financial dates such as premiums due, income receivable, insurance renewals and policy maturities.”

Output: Equilibrium is about to launch a one-stop-shop online dashboard service for its wealthy clients on which they can see all their investments in one place. The Manchester-based wealth manager's MyEQ will be accessible through laptops, phones, desktop computers and tablets, and will allow investors to see a snapshot of their assets' worth and also to calculate property values. Equilibrium manages £700m of assets owned by 850 families.


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Orange County needs to invest in senior care
 Orange County seniors need our support now more than ever. With the impending cuts in health care on the national level, we will see an increase in the number of seniors requiring care. For Orange County, that means we need to see more from our Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, or PACE. It is a program that is not currently reaching enough of our senior population, but could provide vital benefits for all participants.

Over the next two decades, California’s senior population is expected to grow by nearly two-thirds. Indeed, by 2035, nearly one in four Californians will be age 60 or older, and today in Orange County, 622,907 of our residents are already there.

In fact, of all 58 counties in California, Orange County has the second-highest number of minority seniors, Medi-Cal-eligible seniors, and non-English-speaking seniors. Therefore, in addition to the vulnerability of old age, many of our seniors face other sources of discrimination and disadvantages due to their ethnicity or language capabilities.

I present these numbers to you because our seniors are a significant portion of our community and population here in Orange County — and the fastest-growing age group in the County — and they are not receiving the care they deserve. It is up to us to respond to the needs of this population.

With health care costs making up the majority of senior expenses, seniors on a fixed income regularly struggle to make ends meet. The average 65-year-old couple with Medicare insurance coverage would still need an average of $276,000 to cover projected medical expenses during the combined remainder of their lives, and that doesn’t even cover most long-term care expenses.

While Medi-Cal and the Affordable Care Act have provided vital safety nets and support for these seniors, our cities and counties need to take further steps to protect this population as seniors face potential changes to their current health care status.

Here in Orange County, we have taken such steps in the form of PACE. PACE is a Medicare and Medi-Cal program designed to coordinate and provide all needed preventative, primary, acute and long-term care; social services and rehabilitative services to seniors through one comprehensive program. Furthermore, it does this while helping seniors to continue to live independently, and with dignity, in their communities.

PACE gives seniors an option outside of nursing home care that still provides everything an aging family member might need, including primary care, specialty services, meals, prescription drugs, dental care, recreational therapy and, most importantly, transportation to and from the facilities.

However, Orange County does not have enough of these facilities, and while I am confident that the handful of seniors who have used the program here have benefited from them, it is simply not enough. The thousands of seniors in our county need help, and PACE can give it to them. We need more such programs in Orange County.

As the CEO of the Orange County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, I regularly see the disadvantages that our minorities suffer as they enter old age — a vulnerable time for all of us, even under the best of circumstances. PACE offers all the services that ensure a good quality of life for seniors. It is critical that we develop more of these comprehensive centers in our community to serve the needs of Orange County’s elderly.

As a local business advocate serving the Hispanic community, I ask our community and our county to step up for our seniors and support an expansion of PACE programs in Orange County.

Reuben D. Franco is CEO of the Orange County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Output: Orange County seniors are likely to require increased care as federal funding looks likely to be cut and the senior population being due to expand by two-thirds in the next 20 years. The county's Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) could be the solution for older residents, however, with the right support. The program is a Medicare and Medi-Cal system that coordinates primary, preventative, acute and long-term care for seniors, as well as overseeing social and rehabilitative services. It also helps older citizens to live independently and gain community support. PACE offers options aside from nursing home care that can still cover all necessary facets of older living, such as primary care, specialized care, food, prescription drugs, oral care, transportation for care and recreational therapy sessions. However, Orange County is lacking support for PACE and other similar services that could radically improve the lives of seniors. Health care costs for the average 65 year old couple, even with Medicare coverage, is around $276,000, and does not cover long term care costs. Not only that, but older residents also face discrimination based on ethnicity and language capacity, making the provision of adequate services even more vital. Providing the present 622,907 residents aged 60 or over with adequate care is important, but even more necessary is the extension of current services for the aging population of the future.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Trump rejects Chinese offer to cut steel overcapacity
 US President reported to have dismissed offer of 150 million-tonne reduction despite support from some of his senior advisers

Output: US President Donald Trump has rejected the Chinese government's proposal to cut steel overcapacity by 150 million tonnes by 2022, according to sources familiar with the matter. Despite several senior advisers' support of the deal, Trump instead urged advisers to find ways to impose tariffs on imports from China, the sources added. Last week, American steel industry executives urged Trump to impose immediate import restrictions.


Instruction: create a high quality summary of the given input

Input:
Germany won't meet 2020 emissions target as coal replaces nuclear
 This article first appeared on the BNEF mobile app and the Bloomberg Terminal.

Decision after Fukushima disaster has helped coal plants

Chance of more government action grows as 2020 target looms

German nuclear, coal generation and emissions

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Germany’s nuclear phaseout, brought about by Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2011 after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, has left the country unable to wean itself off of the dirty coal and lignite power produced by the likes of RWE, Uniper and EnBW. With the anticipated nuclear closings through 2023, the country needs to keep the firm capacity provided by coal to guarantee security of supply. As a result, Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects it will not meet its 2020 emissions target, despite nearly 50% of generating capacity being wind and solar. As it becomes more apparent the target will be missed, and given the precedent of the lignite reserve, the risk of further intervention grows.

Clients can access the full report here.

BNEF Shorts are research excerpts available only on the BNEF mobile app and the Bloomberg Terminal, highlighting key findings from our reports. If you would like to learn more about our services, please contact us.

Output: Germany is unlikely to achieve its 2020 emission-reduction targets because it is replacing baseload power from nuclear facilities with coal-burning plants, according to analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Germany decided to phase out its dependence on nuclear energy following the Fukushima disaster in 2011, forcing the nation to depend more heavily on coal. As a result, Germany's CO2 emissions won't fall fast enough to meet its obligations under the Paris climate accords, even though it generates almost 50% of its energy from renewable sources.


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VCs back immigrant founded start-ups in US
 Though these firms, which include Unshackled Ventures, One Way Ventures, and One VC, were not created in direct response to Trump’s actions, their focus on aiding immigrants is particularly timely and vital now. “As immigration issues pop up, we’re seeing VCs answer the call and offer immigration counsel [to their portfolio companies],” says Jeff Farrah, vice president of government affairs at the National Venture Capital Association, a Washington, D.C., trade group.

Yingzhe “Regi” Fu is one beneficiary of this trend. He approached Unshackled Ventures in early 2016, a few months before he was due to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, with a master’s in mechanical engineering. As a Chinese citizen who wanted to stay in the U.S. and help some school friends launch a home-automation-technology startup, Fu essentially had two choices: he could seek employment with a large American company that would sponsor his visa or he could convince Unshackled Ventures to support his work authorization so he could concentrate on his startup.

After several rounds of pitches, the firm agreed to sponsor Fu and provided his startup with office space, strategic advice, and access to a network of experts in exchange for a small equity stake. Today, Fu is able to work full-time on Togg, which just began deploying its smart-sensor product inside homes. “I’m very grateful for what I have right now,” he says. “I can focus on building my company and not worry about the immigration process too much.”

Since Unshackled Ventures began investing in 2015, it has helped its portfolio company founders, who hail from 16 countries, obtain seven different types of visas through a close partnership with an immigration law firm. Often, the process requires the Palo Alto-based fund to hire its entrepreneurs using H-1B visas, which lets non-Americans who have specialized technology knowledge work in the U.S. for up to six years. In order to provide that service and give its companies hands-on coaching, Unshackled Ventures limits its investments to eight to 10 companies a year, says founding partner Nitin Pachisia. (The firm typically invests up to $300,000 in a company during an angel/pre-seed round and asks for 8 to 15 percent ownership in return.)

One Way Ventures also plans to assist entrepreneurs with immigration issues when it begins investing in companies in October. However, the Boston-based fund will focus on more-established companies that are raising seed and Series A funding, and founding partner Semyon Dukach says he will likely refer people to lawyers rather than sponsor their visas. (San Francisco-based One VC has made several seed-stage investments while raising its first fund, but declined interview requests because it has yet to officially launch.)

Firms that specialize in immigrant-founded startups do so for several reasons. Typically, the VCs are immigrants themselves, know firsthand how tedious and unpredictable the visa process can be, and want to help people in similar situations. One of Unshackled Ventures’s founding partners grew up in India; the other is the son of Indian immigrants. One Way Ventures’s founding partners are from Russia and Brazil; One VC’s managing director is also Brazilian.

Some of these investors think focusing on immigrants gives them a greater sense of mission and deeper connection to their work. They also tend to believe that immigrants make better entrepreneurs. The VCs attribute this to the personal qualities that compel people to emigrate, as well as those they develop while navigating a new country. “We think there’s an overall thread between immigrant founders that’s amazing, whether it’s because of their work ethic, determination, grit, or hunger,” says One Way Ventures founding partner Eveline Buchatskiy.

Naturally, these VCs also have financial incentives. They view immigrant entrepreneurs as smart investments, in part because other VCs consider them risky, leaving them underfunded and undervalued compared to their peers. One Way and Unshackled Ventures also point to statistics that indicate how successful these startups can be, such as a 2016 study by the National Foundation for American Policy that found that immigrants founded or cofounded half of the U.S.-based “unicorn” startups that were then valued at $1 billion or more, including Instacart, Slack, SpaceX, and Uber.

Unshackled Ventures’s portfolio also shows encouraging results, with more than half of the 17 companies it has backed already generating revenue. The firm says its invested capital has doubled in value over the past three years, reaping an internal rate of return twice as high as the national average for similar-aged funds.

The Trump administration’s fixation on immigration may further boost returns. Pachisia says inquiries and referrals to Unshackled Ventures have tripled since the 2016 presidential election. One Way Ventures is still raising capital for its first fund, but has already received a number of e-mails from interested entrepreneurs. “Immigrants’ rights in general are being reduced right now, so this whole issue is getting more attention,” says Dukach.

Output: Venture capitalists in the US are providing support to start-ups created by immigrants. Such start-ups have been threatened by the Trump administration’s decision to delay a ruling that would have permitted overseas entrepreneurs to remain in the country for five years. Unshackled Ventures, which started to invest in 2015, has supported founders from 16 different countries to obtain visas by working in partnership with an immigration law firm. Immigrants founded or co-founded 50% of US-based “unicorn” start-ups worth at least $1bn, according to a 2016 study.


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Input:
Renewable projects likely to face a squeeze on debt ratios
 By Angus McCrone, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Chief Editor. This article first appeared in BNEF’s ‘New Energy Deals’ publication, available to clients on the web and on the Bloomberg Terminal.

The new era of unsubsidized wind and solar projects will mean developers facing a smaller pool of potential lenders, resulting in “a squeeze” on the debt ratios that they have enjoyed up to now, according to BNP Paribas.

The French bank, which is one of the largest providers of project finance debt for renewable energy plants, with a target to double cumulative lending to 15 billion euros between 2015 and 2020, predicted that projects would be subject to more conservative financing structures in the unsubsidized future. Mark Muldowney, managing director, energy and infrastructure for BNP Paribas, told BNEF in an interview: “There would be a squeeze on the average ratios that the banks have used in the past.” He added: “On the debt-equity ratio, this could fall from 80:20 to two-thirds-one-third, but it would be case by case.”

There would also be implications for the tenors on project finance loans, and for the pricing of that debt, he said. In the last year debt pricing has declined, but this trend could go into reverse as subsidies disappear. Muldowney reported that he is seeing more financing proposals crossing his desk from battery project developers: “To finance a battery project with debt, you would want a contracted revenue stream and you would not want to take much risk on the medium-term value of batteries.”

Read the Q&A below:

Q: What trends are you seeing in clean energy project finance at the moment?

A: This doesn’t feel like 2007 all over again. For instance, there hasn’t been an enormous return of the syndication market, which is what you would expect if things were getting very frothy.

There has not been an obvious move in debt-equity ratios in the last year, but pricing has drifted down gently, by 25 basis points or a little more. This reflects the fact that banks remain liquid and want to be involved in the renewable energy project finance market. The reduction has been across Europe, including the U.K., where we have not yet seen any Brexit issue for financing.

We are doubling our commitment to renewables over the next few years, with a target to increase cumulative exposure for BNP Paribas to 15 billion euros in 2020. There is still a lot of desire on the part of banks to be involved in this market, and interest from institutions to come into it. However, there will of course be new challenges in the unsubsidized era.

Q: How would you expect the project finance lending market to change as we move to an era of no subsidies?

A: If we are moving into a world of merchant deals or PPAs and no subsidies, there is likely to be a smaller pool of equity providers and fewer banks, and lower leverage.

The last time there was a lot of financing on a merchant basis was at the end of the last century, with combined-cycle gas turbine plants. That ended unhappily for a lot of investors and banks, because of a fall in electricity prices. I think there is enough collective memory in the banking market to avoid a rush into a large amount of merchant debt. For some renewable technologies, it should be a bit easier to get project finance on merchant deals than it is for CCGT plants, with their fuel cost uncertainties. If you have a wind or solar project and can fix the costs of production at a rate that is competitive with whatever the market can produce, you should be able to get some debt on a merchant basis, although it will be less than you got in the subsidized era.

For a merchant deal, in principle you would have more equity, and that would need to be coming from people who have a view on future power prices.

There would be a squeeze on the average ratios that the banks have used in the past. There is no shortage of banking capital at the moment, and this is now seen as a mature sector, but unsubsidized deals would be difficult for marginal lenders. On the debt-equity ratio, this could fall from 80:20 to two- thirds-one-third, but it would be case by case.

If you assume a debt service coverage ratio of 1.2 on P90 wind at the moment, then a move to 1.15 on P90 wind would help to sustain high gearing levels. But the history in the U.K. has been that coverage ratios on the merchant revenue elements of deals have actually risen sharply towards 1.7 to 1.8. You will also see an increase in bank margins as merchant risk rises, but for many lenders increased pricing will not be enough to compensate for greater risk. There might also be a move towards shorter tenors. For a wind or solar project that is unsubsidized but underpinned by some sort of PPA, similar considerations would apply. If the PPA was for just a short period, you would expect the banks to insist on much higher ratios for debt service, and some increase in margins also.

Q: One of the issues in terms of financing new projects is that it is difficult to hedge power prices out for more than a few years, so there is a lack of certainty on revenues – unless the developer has managed to negotiate a PPA with a corporate customer or a utility. Is there scope for new players to provide electricity price hedging instruments?

A: There is far less liquidity in the power hedging market than a few years ago. There used to be financial investors and utilities providing medium-term liquidity on power prices for a few years out. These markets are not liquid. Getting cover for more than three years out is very hard.

Utilities are the people who logically could provide the hedging, but the accounting treatment of long-term hedges is difficult. But they could provide floors, and that would be very helpful from a debt perspective. Then you can firm up transactions without taking strong views on the peaks.

Corporate PPAs could provide some of the long-term hedging of electricity prices for developers and their investors and banks. However, so far, corporate PPAs have been much more talked about than done. In the future, hedging is likely to come from a combination of utilities as the intermediating parties, and large electricity users. There is no sign of third parties such as the financial sector coming in to offer hedges on the power price.

Q: Are you seeing potential deals in ‘flexible capacity’ such as battery storage or gas-fired generation?

A: Quite a few battery deals are crossing my desk, but they tend to be quite small, at 20-40 million euros or so. They have gone for all-equity deals so far. To finance a battery project with debt, you would want a contracted revenue stream and you would not want to take much risk on the medium-term value of batteries. It would need a 4-5 year contract with the grid. Otherwise, it would be a speculative project, saying that at the moment it can sell frequency services to the grid. We wouldn’t back it on that basis.

In the U.K., you would expect to see more gas projects. Quite a lot of them have been developed, for instance by Americans interested in the sector, but it is difficult to get a lot of debt into these projects. Bidding in capacity market auctions has not favored new CCGT so far.

Q: There is quite a bit of talk at the moment about pumped hydro, with people proposing new ideas such as seawater pumped hydro or pumped hydro in disused coal mines. Would BNP Paribas be interested in helping to finance a pumped hydro project?

A: Pumped hydro projects were originally built in the U.K. to deal with a big shock such as the Sizewell nuclear plant going down. The idea was that they could provide electricity with just a few seconds’ notice. For us to lend to a pumped hydro project now, the question marks would be over the uncertainty of revenues and the length of time to build. They are like giant battery projects, so you would have to look at returns relative to the likely future costs of batteries. I suspect they would look quite expensive by comparison. If the grid is happy to contract for services from the pumped hydro project, then fine. But I think they would struggle to get finance if it was on a merchant power basis.

Output: Wind and solar energy project developers are facing more conservative financing, according to BNP Paribas. A new era of unsubsidised projects will mean there is a smaller pool of possible lenders, leading to lower debt ratios, the bank said. BNP Paribas is one of the largest providers of project finance debt for renewable energy schemes and aims to double cumulative lending to €15bn ($18bn) by 2020.


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China Unicom to develop range of IoT services with Ayla Networks
 China Unicom has announced signing an Internet of Things (IoT) collaboration deal with Ayla Networks that will see the two companies develop various consumer and enterprise solutions.

Plans already in the works for their IoT collaboration include solutions across smart homes, smart hotels, connected cars, artificial intelligence (AI), and intelligent cold chain technology.

Building such solutions will "enhance" Ayla's IoT platform ecosystem, Ayla Networks co-founder Phillip Chang said, with China Unicom adding that Ayla is an "ideal partner" for its IoT program due to its global scale.

"Ayla's IoT platform provides comprehensive device, cloud, and mobile app connectivity for any kind of product," China Unicom said.

"The Ayla platform not only speeds manufacturers' time to market for connected products, it also handles the intricacies of IoT security, performance, scalability, and interoperability."

Chang said Ayla Networks and China Unicom's work will see them focus on mobile IoT solutions.

"With China Unicom's comprehensive high-quality information and communications services, we are particularly excited about developing mobile IoT solutions," Chang said.

Ayla Networks, which received a funding boost from global networking giant Cisco back in 2014, spruiks its offering as the industry's only end-to-end complete platform for IoT solutions.

In addition to its Ayla Agile IoT Platform, Ayla also has a mobile app platform; an IoT design kit including hardware, software, access to developers, and support; and an insights offering -- meaning it provides connectivity, security, and analytics solutions.

Also working for customers including Fujitsu, Hisense, and United Technologies, Ayla Networks has helped developed such products as smart air conditioning, heating, and ceiling fans; connected thermostats; smart smoke and carbon monoxide detectors; a connected weather station; Wi-Fi door locks; smart lighting; and connected water heaters.

China Unicom in June launched its Global IoT Connectivity Cooperation Initiative, inviting partners to help develop enterprise and consumer IoT solutions.

The Chinese carrier has also been working on improving its mobile network, last week announcing the launch of a commercial gigabit-speed 4G LTE network, which is now live in Beijing, Guangdong, Shandong, and Hainan while trials are ongoing in the Sichuan, Shanxi, Hubei, Jilin, and Jiangsu provinces.

The 979Mbps peak-speed network is enabled through the combination of Ericsson's three LTE-Broadcast (LTE-B)-enabling solutions: Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (eMBMS); High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC H.265); and MPEG Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG DASH).

"To accelerate the development of China Unicom's video strategy, Ericsson supported China Unicom with eMBMS in the high-speed train scenario so that passengers could enjoy high-definition video without buffering on the network," Ericsson explained.

China Unicom has similarly been working with ZTE on 5G New Radio (NR) field trials, in July attaining rates of up to 2Gbps for single-user equipment.

ZTE made use of its pre-commercial sub-6GHz 5G base station at the 3.5GHz frequency with 100MHz bandwidth alongside Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology during the trial with China Unicom's Guangdong branch.

Competitor provider China Telecom launched its own open IoT platform with Ericsson in July, powered by the networking giant's global Device Connection Platform.

Output: State-owned telecoms company China Unicom has partnered with California-based Ayla Networks to develop a range of IoT services. The deal is expected to lead to a range of new consumer and business applications including smart hotels, connected cars, artificial intelligence and intelligent cold chain technology for transporting goods at low temperatures. Ayla received funding from Cisco in 2014 and offers a mobile app platform, an IoT design kit and access to developers and support services. It works with clients including Fujitsu, Hisense and United Technologies. Unicom competitor China Telecom launched its own IoT platform with Ericsson in July.