pharmaceutical
Puerto Rico’s slow-motion medical disaster.
Hurricane Maria left a ruined island and 16 Puerto Rico residents dead. But public health experts worry that figure could climb higher in the coming weeks, as many on the island fail to get medicines or treatment they need for chronic diseases.
Hurricane Maria left a ruined island and 16 Puerto Rico residents dead. But public health experts worry that figure could climb higher in the coming weeks, as many on the island fail to get medicines or treatment they need for chronic diseases. Roads are blocked, supplies are stuck at the ports, and only 11 of Puerto Rico’s 69 hospitals are open. Doctors at one children’s hospital were forced to discharge 40 patients this week when their generator ran out of diesel fuel.
But the immediate need for treatment is only the beginning of the island's public health challenges. With the island’s entire power grid knocked out, Puerto Rico’s massive pharmaceutical manufacturing industry—which provides 30 percent of the island’s gross domestic product and 90,000 jobs—has been shut down. FDA administrator Scott Gottlieb announced this week that his agency is trying to shift production to the mainland US to prevent shortages of cancer drugs, immunosuppressants for transplant patients, and medical devices for diabetes patients. Bringing Puerto Rico back online will make a big difference for people living both on—and off—the island.
In the short term, energy is essential to keeping patients alive. Medicines like insulin to treat diabetes or tetanus vaccines need to be kept cool. That means either in a refrigerator at 45 degrees Fahrenheit (for seasonal flu or tetanus vaccines) or at room temperature, which is about 72 degrees (for insulin). But without air conditioning, Puerto Rico’s tropical climate is hitting the upper 80s this week. “Refrigeration and cold storage are really big issues, and will be for the forseeable future,” says one former federal emergency response official who asked not to be identified.
The patients most affected by the failing cold chain will be those with chronic conditions. One-fifth of Puerto Rico's population has some kind of disability, including half of those above age 65. Its 3.5 million residents have the highest prevalence of diabetes in the United States—nearly 13 percent compared to 8.7 percent on the US mainland. That helps make Puerto Rico the most vulnerable US territory to a natural disaster like Hurricane Maria, according to a recent study by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers .
Federal health officials say they are already seeing patients come into emergency clinics with chronic disease related problems. “People with the most dire need are dialysis patients,” says Lt. Cmdr. Garrett Martin-Yeboah of the US Public Health Service and the national clinical pharmacist to the Department of Health and Human Service’s assistant secretary for emergency preparedness and response. “They are on a good number of prescription medications. Because of the volume of medications and tenuousness of their condition, those are some of the patients we are concerned about.”
The immediate refrigeration problem is solvable. Martin-Yeboah said a squad of federal emergency care doctors who were stationed on the island before Maria struck brought battery-powered mini-fridges that can run four days without power. They also brought their own diesel generators—though a week after the storm left, there is still not enough fuel to run them. “There are some challenges in Puerto Rico with fuel and things like that,” says Martin-Yeboah, who coordinates medicines and supplies for HHS doctors. “We’ve had to go to the airport to retrieve medical supplies,” she says. “Our suppliers can get them to Puerto Rico, but can’t get it to the site.”
The Navy hospital ship Comfort, which was finally dispatched this week, may also help in the short-term, especially for trauma patients. The converted supertanker will bring 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms, a CAT-scan, and radiology capabilities to Puerto Rico. Meanwhie, emergency responders are using ham radios to reach some communities and even considering air-dropping medicines into villages, according to Nicolette Louissaint, executive director of Healthcare Ready, a group that coordinates post-disaster medical supply chain between public agencies and private suppliers such as pharmacies and drug manufacturers.
“The most important part is how we support the patients,” Louissant says. “These disaster responses are massive logistical operations. We have to do unusual things. Folks are looking at how you can get up to the mountains, and what solutions to move medicines to people but also people to medicines.”
Louissant noted that less than 10 percent of the island’s pharmacies were open as of Wednesday. Overall, there is no panic over medicines, according to health officials working in Puerto Rico. But they are prepared for the situation to worsen if conditions don’t improve quickly. Chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease and diabetes are often not counted in the final toll of natural disasters like Hurricane Maria. “These people end up dying from things that are preventable under ordinary circumstances,” said the former federal emergency official. “That’s what is going to start happening.”
But long-term, the effects of Puerto Rico's collapse may ripple far beyond the island. Twelve of the top 20 global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have manufacturing facilities on the island, according to the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company. As a result, Puerto Rico manufactures seven of the top 10 drugs sold globally including AstraZeneca's cholesterol treatment Crestor, Abbvie arthritis drug Humira, and Johnson & Johnson-owned HIV drug Prezista, USA Today reported. Those three companies have said supplies of their drugs are in good shape and drugmakers are working to get production up and running. Still, Puerto Rico officials say it may be months before the island's power grid is fixed.
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Niki Ashton has a plan to fix Trudeau's 'patchwork' of green funding.
It's time for direct federal government intervention to drive Canada's transition to a greener economy, says NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton.
It's time for direct federal government intervention to drive Canada's transition to a greener economy, says NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton.
After six months of campaigning, Ashton is entering the final stages of her bid to lead Canada's New Democrats against three leadership rivals: Quebec member of Parliament Guy Caron, Ontario MP Charlie Angus and Jagmeet Singh, a member of the Ontario legislature.
Online voting began Sept. 18 and the 1st ballot results are to be announced this Sunday, Oct. 1.
Ashton, who spoke to National Observer on Monday morning at Planet Coffee in Ottawa, has called for the creation of a new crown corporation called Green Canada that would direct federal funding to invest in climate change adaptation and an economic transition.
"We are where we are in terms of climate change because of the kind of economic system that we have," Ashton said, after ordering a cookie and juice at the popular coffee shop in Ottawa's ByWard Market in the middle of a late-September heat wave.
"It’s clear to me as we sit here in 30+ C weather, and given the summer we’ve had where we’ve seen extreme weather phenomena, that the time is now to act. We need to pull out all the stops, and that includes significantly upping not just federal investment, but also making a clear role for federal investment through a crown corporation."
She said that guiding a green transition was too important a job to be left to the private sector — or even an existing federal organization such as Sustainable Development Technology Canada. These "patchwork approaches to funding" aren't working, she said.
In the wide-ranging interview, Ashton also weighed in on the German election, on Singh and a recent controversy surrounding Manitoba NDP leader Wab Kinew, and on the issues of populism, free tuition, public ownership, tax reform, systemic racism and gender-based violence.
The following interview has been edited for length and style:
One of your key messages is talking about a bold vision, the need to reject the status quo. People describe populism as centering on big, bold claims and rejecting the establishment too. As we saw in Germany this weekend, populism continues to be on the rise. Yet something tells me you don't identify with this movement. How do you champion a bold vision while staying away from populism?
“I come from the prairies, and there is such a thing as prairie populism. Tommy Douglas and our pioneers really adhered to that philosophy. What we’re seeing today, though, is a very dangerous, divisive kind of politics.
"We saw in the German election, the far right has gotten the most support its ever gotten since the end of the Second World War. It’s extremely troubling to see that. There is a silver lining in seeing the way in which Die Linke, the left-wing party, has received a fair bit of support.
"But still, what’s clear here is the rise of the right in a number of countries — the U.S., the U.K., Germany, elsewhere — and I think it’s something that we are apt to seeing here [in Canada]. To a certain extent, we saw the way in which the Conservative leadership race was inspired by Trump-like politics and Trump-like ideas.
"I believe that that’s all the more reason for us in the NDP to put forward a bold vision that takes on the big challenges of our time — inequality, climate change — but brings people together, rather than dividing them or scapegoating, or using the politics of hate and division, which Trump uses.
“He [Trump] will talk about economic inequality, but then he’ll blame immigrants, or Muslims, or he’ll use the politics of hate. I think that’s why it’s really critical that we speak to these issues that clearly are on the minds of people, and are clearly affecting their day-to-day lives. But that our vision is one that’s inclusive, that’s tolerant, that’s unifying."
Would you call yourself a prairie populist?
“I’m definitely inspired by prairie populism, the kind that we saw in the [Co-operative Commonwealth Federation] and the NDP. We put out an email yesterday that did a version of Mouseland for our campaign. It’s really premised on the fact that Tommy Douglas talked a lot about bold ideas. We took the language and inserted some of our messages.
"It’s safe to say that we’re the campaign that’s talked the most about getting back to our roots, reconnecting with our principles, reflecting on the past and building from there to head into the future."
An image from the version of Mouseland, the fable famously told by Tommy Douglas, that was put out by Niki Ashton's campaign. Mouseland is about mice who keep trying to solve their problems by electing two different kinds of cats to lead them, until one mouse wonders why they don't elect fellow mice instead. Image via Niki Ashton Facebook
Your plan has three big themes — economic justice, social justice, environmental justice. Starting with economic justice, let’s talk about your campaign’s support for free tuition. Ontario and New Brunswick already have policies in place for lower-income families. How is your idea different?
“What we’re proposing is universal, so not income-based. The model we’re looking at is what you have in a number of European countries.
"For us, [it’s about] two things: one is the recognition that education is a right, and secondly that the costs of education are a major contributor to the kind of inter-generational inequality we’re seeing today.
"As a millennial, I’ve spent a fair bit of time talking about the rise of precarious work, but also inter-generational inequality facing millennials, and there’s no question that sky-high tuition fees and high student debt figure prominently in the kind of instability that our generation is facing.
"When two-thirds of jobs in Canada today require a post-secondary education, we shouldn’t be indebting a generation for simply doing what we’ve asked of them. So what our campaign has said is, if we’re going to tackle inter-generational inequality, a key piece is eliminating tuition fees."
Not income-based, and every province — free for everybody, then?
“Yes. We’ve said that the framework would be a post-secondary education act, like the Canada Health Act, and formalizing clear federal transfers in pursuit of free tuition. What we’re saying is, it needs to be universal.”
NDP leadership hopeful Niki Ashton on Sept. 17, 2017. Ashton wants to see a post-secondary education act similar to the Canada Health Act that would "formalize" federal transfers to fund universal tuition. Photo by Andrew Meade
You also talk about more public ownership. Could you give some examples of what you’d like to see owned by the public?
“First of all, one of the things we’ve said is if we’re going to talk about economic justice, one of the areas we need to tackle is the neo-liberal agenda, which has pushed privatization, deregulation and outsourcing. It has clearly not contributed to greater wealth redistribution.
"What we’re saying is, yes, we need to fight privatization, but that’s also not enough. We also need to propose public ownership. We’ve proposed public ownership in three key areas.
"One, in the banking sector, through the creation of a postal bank. Secondly, in the health sector, through the creation of a crown corporation that can be involved in the purchasing and distribution of pharmaceuticals, and that would be in conjunction with [a national] pharmacare program.
"The third would be in the energy sector — 20 years ago people would talk about nationalizing oil. What we’re saying is, there needs to be a public entity when it comes to investing in the green transition.
"That’s actually part of our environmental justice platform: we’ve proposed a crown corporation called Green Canada, that would direct funding towards the green transition and work with citizens’ advisory boards, to best invest in adaptation and transition.”
We'll talk more about Green Canada in a bit. First — when we talk about economic justice, we often talk about tax fairness. I’m interested in what you think of the Liberals’ tax reform agenda?
“First, I would say that our tax reform plan has been recognized as one of the most progressive in a generation. There’s no question that if we’re going to tackle inequality, we need significant tax reform.
"Working-class and middle-class Canadians are paying their fair share of tax. It’s the rich and corporations who are getting away without paying their fair share, legally or otherwise. I do believe that the Liberal proposal is a beginning at addressing tax reform. It is problematic in certain aspects.
"But what’s most problematic is that they’re not going after the big tax cheats. They’re not closing the stock-option loophole. The KPMG scandal points to the fact that they’re not going after the kind of tax-evasion that so many Canadians are enraged about.
"They’re not upping the corporate tax rate — a lower corporate tax rate as we’ve seen in Canada hasn’t actually brought the sort of wealth creation that (former prime minister) Stephen Harper promised us it would.
"Really what I’d say is, it misses the major point, and as more and more Canadians are feeling squeezed, there’s a real sense of, if we’re going to be fair, let’s make sure that those that are getting away [without] paying taxes, particularly those that are getting away in nefarious ways are being held to account.”
NDP leadership hopeful Niki Ashton on Sept. 17, 2017. Ashton says she wonders why Finance Minister Bill Morneau hasn't talked as much about stock-options and tax evasion as he has about tax fairness when it comes to income sprinking. Photo by Andrew Meade
You talk about the Liberals “out-lefting” the NDP. Is this an example of something where the Liberals are trying to capture left-wing votes that should belong to the NDP?
“I think that it’s definitely a more populist way of doing politics.
"But again, some of the rhetoric you hear from the Liberals, even on this proposed tax plan, there’s a fair bit of — how can we say — I mean, you hear [Finance Minister] Bill Morneau talk about it, he’s very focused on this. He feels very strongly about it. I wonder why he doesn’t feel as strongly about closing the stock-option loophole, or going after major tax evaders.
"So I do believe a fair bit of it is a feigned kind of outrage when in fact we’re leaving the wealthiest off the hook."
You brought up Green Canada. You obviously know about Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which does seem to do similar things as what you’re proposing. How will Green Canada be different?
“One of the things that we recognize is that the federal government is not pulling its weight when it comes to investment in the green transition.
"We have a government that talks a good talk on climate change, and yet goes and approves pipelines that will take us further away from meeting our climate change commitments. We’re also not seeing the kind of partnerships [we need] in the green transition.
"So what we’ve said is there needs to be a clear body that directs that funding, and it should not be left up to the private sector. We are where we are in terms of climate change because of the kind of economic system that we have.
"So instead, we ought to have a crown corporation that’s publicly controlled, but again with an advisory capacity for grassroots involvement, and that would in turn work with other entities, whether it’s provinces, municipalities, First Nations, to invest in climate change adaptation and transition.
Why the belief in crown corporations? Some people are a bit hesitant to go all in, given some past problems, but you seem to have a fundamental belief in them.
“Where I come from, in Manitoba, we have a lot of strong crown corporations. Crown corporations allow for us to provide a public good, all the while benefiting the public in their economic model. It’s not a for-profit situation.
"I think in the case of climate change, we’ve seen the way in which leaving it up to foundations, patchwork approaches to funding isn’t actually working.
"I would argue that there are many on the ground — whether it’s First Nations; I know this from my constituency, or provincial governments, like Ontario, Alberta and others — that are keen to move full-steam ahead, that require a strong federal partner, and we’re not seeing that right now.
"I believe that a crown corporation would be a way of clearly formalizing that capacity, and ultimately the goal of this entity would be to move full-steam ahead, investing in the transition."
Some say the market is functioning abnormally because of artificial factors — an example that's often raised is fossil fuel subsidies — and that if you fix those, the market itself will accelerate the low-carbon transition because it will make the most economic sense. You don’t seem to believe that.
“I definitely agree we should get rid of fossil fuel subsidies, another example of the way in which our tax and subsidization policies are not working. But I believe that we need to go a lot further.
"It’s clear to me as we sit here in 30+ C weather, and given the summer we’ve had where we’ve seen extreme weather phenomena, that the time is now to act. We need to pull out all the stops, and that includes significantly upping not just federal investment, but also making a clear role for federal investment through a crown corporation.
Finally, on social justice. Several of your policies are focused on police, like talking about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and restorative justice, having the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls investigate police, or providing training for police for racial justice. Why such a focus?
“That’s a particular focus in our racial justice program. We do have a pretty extensive social justice platform — we were the first ones to have a gender justice, LGBTQ justice. I think we might be the only ones with a disability justice platform.
“But in terms of racial justice, we focused on three areas: one is policing, another is public safety and another is immigration. What’s clear to me is that — as I’ve worked with many racial justice activists — systemic racism is alive and well in all those three areas. That’s why we wanted to have a clearly comprehensive platform in taking on systemic racism in those three areas.
“I would say that in terms of the policing piece, there’s a lot more that we ought to be doing. I will acknowledge that the police — I’m talking about the RCMP here — that there has been an openness to dealing with sexual harassment for example, but we need to go a lot further on that front, and we also need to be giving a clear directive on the need to address systemic racism within the force.
“I find it unacceptable that the [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women] Inquiry does not include involving the police and investigating the role of the police in contributing to violence against Indigenous women. It’s also clear to me — and I’ve been an advocate for the Inquiry for a long time — but also an advocate on issues around sexual harassment and the police — the reporting mechanism needs to be far more impartial and accessible.
“We’ve made a very clear call for putting an end to carding, which is a tool to intimidate and obviously target racialized communities, Indigenous communities, and there’s a huge movement afoot to put a stop to it in city police forces, but we’ve said we should be looking at that nationally as well."
I believe survivors. Leaders should step up and do the same. https://t.co/iADwnj3p38
— Niki Ashton (@nikiashton) September 20, 2017
You told The National Post that you were “troubled” by a quote you read from Jagmeet Singh speaking positively of Wab Kinew’s commitment to fighting gender-based violence. Do you think Singh doesn’t believe survivors?
“I guess what me and many are saying, and I’ve been in touch with a number of young women on this issue, is it’s not enough to just say that gender-based violence matters. We need to deal with it — we need a platform.
"When an issue is in front of us, it’s absolutely essential that we make a clear statement that we believe survivors. I’ve done that; I think there’s a disconnect in celebrating, as he has done, Wab Kinew’s — well, there’s a disconnect between what he was quoted as saying in the media, where he was very positive about Wab Kinew’s approach to gender-based violence, and I found that to be a very clear statement.
"I then heard that he’d indicated that he believed survivors. There’s a disconnect between those two things. Because as we know, Wab Kinew has consistently denied Tara Hart’s experience.
"There’s a difference between using the general message of, I believe survivors, and actually in the moment, when the issue is in front of us, doing so. As I’ve said on numerous occasions, I believe Tara Hart, and I believe survivors that come forward.
"I will say that Tara Hart and her family are from my constituency, and the issue of violence against Indigenous women is something that I feel very strongly about — violence against all women.
"And I don’t believe there’s room to equivocate on these issues. I understand that he’s gone on to say a few more things — I haven’t followed all of it. But in that one instance, or that one interview, I felt, and others have felt as well, that there was a significant disconnect
What do you think about the narrative now that this has become a wedge in the leadership race?
“I don’t know about a wedge. I think, in the post-Jian Ghomeshi era, the question of believing survivors has become central to how we move forward on sexual violence and on gender-based violence, and for the NDP, a progressive party, a party that believes in feminist values, this is central to who we are.
"I’m a proud feminist, I’ve been a feminist activist for a long time, and when the issue comes up, it needs to be brought up, people need to take a stand.
"I would say that there’s a lot of other issues in this leadership [race], and I have found at times that there isn’t much focus on policy — in my case much more focused on my pregnancy than policy.
"But on something like this, like I said I think it’s important that people know where their leadership candidates are."
A promotional banner for Niki Ashton's 2011 NDP leadership bid. Her campaign used the slogan "new politics" to describe a progressive, diverse vision of the NDP that brings Canadians together. Internet Archive screenshot
You’re the campaign veteran in this race. How have you seen the campaign so far, in relation to the last campaign?
"I have found a much greater appetite, within this race, amongst members, prospective members, to talk about policy and vision. I think in the last race there was a lot of pressure to be back in Parliament, fighting Stephen Harper, winning government, as we were Official Opposition.
“This time around, it’s clear to me that many on the ground feel like the NDP lost its way, the 2015 election was very troubling, and there’s again incredible interest in getting the party back on track.
"And I’ve seen, and we’ve seen it through our campaign, by putting forward a bold and principled agenda, that people have gravitated, mobilized, been inspired, gotten involved — both members, people that left the NDP for a long time, and also young people who signed up for the first time.
“I would say that that’s something that I didn’t see in the same way in the last leadership [race], but I think has made for a very inspiring race, and very dynamic as well. The fact that we get to talk about ideas, that we get to talk about vision and a way forward, that’s what this should be all about I believe.
That’s interesting. On one hand, you’re suggesting that overall, the race has been more policy-driven, but on the other hand, you’ve found there sometimes isn’t much focus on your campaign’s policy.
“Yes. I would say the mainstream media — maybe with the exception of National Observer — but if you Google, the ratio of articles about me being pregnant, to any and all policies that we’ve put forward — I would say that there’s almost been parallel [campaigns].
"The mainstream media’s focused a fair bit on pregnancy, and I would say even like Jagmeet Singh’s outfits, some of the superficial stuff. Whereas grassroots members want to get in there and have a discussion about what we believe in, the kind of vision we want to put forward, and how we take on the two biggest challenges of our time, growing inequality and climate change.
“One of the things that I’ve also seen is, not just in terms of vision, but also movement-building. Yes, it’s important to win elections, but we have to look beyond just our work in Parliament, we have to look at building a movement for change, working with social movements, working with activists on the ground.
"That’s something that’s been really important for our campaign from the beginning. That’s a long-term commitment, and I’m seeing a lot of people that share NDP values wanting to be a part of that."
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U.S. Department of the Interior/flickr
Sally Jewell defends Interior Department legacy.
As Obama’s policies are rolled back, his last Interior secretary reviews what’s at stake.
Sally Jewell was Interior secretary under President Barack Obama from April 2013 until his term ended in January 2017. At the department, the former CEO of Recreational Equipment Inc. undertook a “forward-looking reform agenda,” emphasizing science-based land and water conservation, renewable energy development on public land, and better relations with Native American tribal nations. High Country News recently caught up with Jewell as she prepared for a fellowship at the Institute of Politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School, where she will educate students in economics and environmental sustainability.
High Country News: Which of your achievements as Interior secretary are you most proud of?
Sally Jewell: We really built, I think, a strong nation-to-nation relationship with Indian Country across the board — Alaska Natives, American Indians, and we have a pathway to recognition for the first time with Native Hawaiians, which is the only Indigenous group in the United States that has not had any form of federal recognition.
That took the form of prioritizing settling lawsuits against the federal government for not upholding our trust and treaty responsibilities. In some cases these lawsuits have been going on for decades and costing the tribes a lot of money, and the federal government had not upheld its trust and treaty obligations. We also focused a lot on: What’s the pathway to the future for Native Americans, and where are we falling short? One of the areas we’re falling short is in tribal education. The Bureau of Indian Education just has been dealt a pretty tough hand in terms of educating Native youth, many of whom are disconnected — it’s a long commute to school on oftentimes very rough roads, sometimes it’s too far out, and they have to be in boarding schools. And the family situations, there are a variety — fully supportive families and families that struggle. All of that’s really tough, and we worked very hard to see what’s wrong with the way we’re structured; how do we make better use of the funding we do have to better serve tribal youth? And there was a big effort there. It’s unfinished business and it’s something I will continue to engage in in the future, but it’s an area I think we made good progress, at least in raising awareness, getting support from Congress, getting additional funding.
Another area where I feel really good about our term was in engaging the next generation broadly. Recognizing that as time marches on and we have new technologies available to us, we see — and there’s been a fair amount of research on this — the growing disconnect between children and nature and in general the great outdoors. We can’t expect future generations to care for these places that we so uniquely have in the U.S. if we don’t introduce them and say, “Hey, these are your public lands, you belong here.” And that’s particularly true for urban youth and youth of color who have not felt welcome, or for whom the outdoors has represented a scary place for a variety of historical reasons. And so we worked hard on doing that and creating this continuum which starts with play — just let kids play unstructured outdoors. Play, then learn, serve, work. We got 100,000 young people working on public land. And we had to raise private money to do that because we didn’t have sufficient money in the federal budget. But I think for all the federal land-management agencies, Youth Conservation Corps crews are very much on their radar and that will continue.
HCN: It looks like the Obama-era outreach to tribes is already starting to erode. The Land Buy-Back Program is not going to be continued after funds from the Cobell Settlement are disbursed. James Cason, the associate deputy secretary for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has suggested the funds be distributed to fewer tribes, especially those with cheap land in rural areas.
SJ: The settlements we did make with tribes, over 100 settlements, those are done and the money is out the door, the water rights settlements we did with tribes, we did a record number, those are out the door and that helps bring certainty to not only tribes but also farmers and ranchers and others, municipalities that depend on that shared water, so I know that tribes are stronger as a result of the time President Obama was in office, and I think that their voice and solidarity has increased during that time. They’ve been around for a very long time, they’ve been dealing with the government a very long time, and it’s fair to say they’ve had their ups and downs, mostly downs. So they’re not going to go anywhere and they’re going to continue to stay engaged and they will hold this government accountable as they should. Secretary Zinke talked about being an adopted son of the Assiniboine Sioux and the Fort Peck reservation. I hope he lives up to that.
HCN: What do you make of the claims that all parties weren’t heard in the designation of Bears Ears National Monument?
SJ: I think that’s nonsense. All parties were heard. We worked very hard, for the entire four years I was there, with Congress and Utah Rep. Rob Bishop’s office on his public lands initiative. And there were many, many players that spent thousands of hours. Congressman Bishop likes to, I’ll say, brag, that he held over 1,000 meetings on the public lands initiative. That was not wasted. We heard many of those comments from his staff as we worked with them on drafting the bill. He talked to me about it in 2013, but he didn’t drop the bill until I was actually visiting the Bears Ears area in Utah and meeting with three county commissioners and tribal members that were pro- and con- monument designation, and when he did drop the bill he changed the language. But there was a tremendous amount (of public input) between the meetings that he held, the meetings that we held, and the four-day visit that I had down there, which was the largest public meeting with, I think, 1,500 or so people, so to say voices weren’t heard is not true. I think that what Rep. Bishop would have preferred is that the voices of a few dominate the voices of the many. And the fact is these are federal public lands, they belong to all Americans, and the voices of the many are appropriate with due respect to people in the local community who we did hear, and whose concerns were addressed in the language of the proclamation when we felt our only choice to protect this was to do a monument because the legislation wasn’t going anywhere.
HCN: REI is pledging to oppose changes to national monuments. Patagonia launched a major ad campaign to support public lands. How effective can outdoor recreation companies be as a political force?
SJ: I think that this whole monuments review has awoken the outdoor recreation industry in recognizing that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Outdoor recreation as an industry is almost as big as automobiles, automobile parts and pharmaceuticals combined. For the entire U.S., it’s $887 billion in consumer spending, $65 billion in federal tax revenue, so when my successor says oil and gas from the Department of Interior generates $12 billion in revenue to the Department of Treasury, OK, that’s great, but it’s a small fraction of what taxes are paid by people enjoying outdoor recreation and tourism; $59 billion on top of that in state and local tax revenues, 7.6 million direct jobs. That’s more than all of the other industries combined that use public lands for other purposes, and it’s not that those other purposes aren’t important, but outdoor recreation and tourism is a very legitimate use of federal public lands, and the industry is finding its voice and making sure people are aware of that.
HCN: What are you expecting to teach at the Kennedy School, and where are you going to go from there?
SJ: I’ve chunked out eight to nine sessions that will address each one of the various aspects that I feel are important in having that economically successful and environmentally sustainable future that I think we all want to leave to our children. And the overarching theme is my favorite proverb — I did not invent it, wish I had — “We don’t inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.” And so how do you create an environment — economic and natural and cultural and historical — that honors the fact you’re handing this over to the next generation and you want to be proud of what you give them?
If you’ve got people that aren’t convinced climate change is real, what needs to be done to help them understand? They may be skeptical of the science, but if you bring it home to them, to where they understand it, you’ve got a different picture. So all of that stuff is important, and I’ll be practicing at Harvard and putting it to use in some way in the next chapter, whatever that might be.
I’ll be staying in the West. Other than three more months in the East, I’m a Westerner.
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In Texas chemical-plant fire, failure of backup measures raises new fears.
Operator Arkema had told the federal government it had ‘mitigation measures in place to reduce any potential impacts’ from an accident.
When the hurricane blew in, workers at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Tex., faced the problem of keeping the plant’s volatile chemicals cold. The plant had 19.5 tons of organic peroxides of various strengths, all of them requiring refrigeration to prevent ignition.
But the power went out, and then the floodwaters came and knocked out the plant’s generators. A liquid nitrogen system faltered. In a last-ditch move, the workers transferred the chemicals to nine huge refrigerated trucks, each with its own generator, and moved the vehicles to a remote section of the plant.
That was doomed to fail, too. Six feet of water swamped the trucks, and the final 11 workers gave up. At 2 a.m. Tuesday, they called for a water evacuation and left the plant to its fate.
Early Thursday, two loud pops signaled an explosive combustion in one of the trucks, and a black plume of smoke spread from the plant, sending 15 police officers and paramedics to the hospital. All eight remaining vehicles are now likely to burn, said Robert W. Royall Jr., assistant chief of emergency operations for the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office.
We are “watching physics at work,” Arkema spokesman Jeff Carr said Thursday. “Probably a couple more tonight.”
While the crisis has not yet equaled the severity of explosions suffered by other Texas chemical plants, the crisis at Crosby has exposed the vulnerability of hundreds of chemical plants in low-lying areas across the U.S. Gulf Coast.
“The Crosby plant’s dangerous situation is a symptom of a bigger problem involving the oil and chemical industry in the gulf region,” said Bill Hoyle, a former senior investigator for the Chemical Safety Board and now an independent safety consultant. “The Crosby plant is a wake-up call for an industry and their safety regulators who have not adequately taken action on lessons from Hurricane Katrina as well as the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.”
Texas has more than 1,300 chemical plants, a large number of them in low-lying areas near the coast that are vulnerable to flooding. Arkema’s Crosby plant was built decades ago, but access to gulf ports and the surge in shale gas operations in Texas and Louisiana have lured scores of new chemical plants to the Gulf Coast region.
Although the fire and blasts have so far not been as dire as many feared, the loss of control of dangerous materials and the igniting of volatile chemicals spread anxiety and triggered an investigation by the Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency.
The plant produced organic peroxides, which are used in a variety of products including pipes, plastics, acrylic paints, countertops and pharmaceuticals. A company spokesman estimated that 19.5 tons of chemicals were at the site. Small amounts can irritate the skin or damage corneas, and in larger amounts could cause liver damage, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). But the company spokesman said “the issue is a combustion event, not a chemical release.”
The Arkema emergency raises anew a host of concerns for chemical manufacturers. After the 1984 tragedy in Bhopal, India, in which a chemical leak from a Union Carbide plant killed more than 2,000 people and injured many thousands more, then-Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) pressed for legislation requiring chemical companies to describe their own worst-case scenarios.
Arkema, whose slogan is “Innovative Chemistry,” filed one of those reports in June 2014 for its plant in Crosby, warning that in the most catastrophic scenario, 1.1 million people within a 23-mile radius would be affected. In Texas alone, 32 other plants also warned that more than a million people could be affected by a chemical catastrophe, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
But Arkema stressed that “multiple layers of preventive and mitigation measures in use at the Crosby facility make it very unlikely” that a worst-case scenario would occur. And “in the unlikely event that such a release occurs, Arkema, Inc. has mitigation measures in place to reduce any potential impacts.”
This week, however, some layers of preventive measures failed.
“Certainly, we didn’t anticipate having six feet of water in our plant,” Richard Rennard, president of Arkema’s acrylic monomers division, told reporters Thursday.
Hundreds of plants have been shut down since Hurricane Harvey approached Texas last week, posing environmental dangers as they restart their waterlogged facilities.
About 5 percent of Texas facilities registered in the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory Program were plotted in or adjacent to flooded areas observed from satellite imagery through Wednesday, according to a Washington Post analysis. They included factories that produce petroleum, plastics and rubber, and deal with hazardous waste. Of those, 23 deal specifically with chemicals.
Arkema, a spinoff of the French oil giant Total, has more than 30 sites in the United States, and like other operators in the industry, has lobbied federal regulators to delay new regulations designed to improve safety and disclosure at chemical plants.
The company has also run afoul of OSHA regulations.
In February, Arkema’s Crosby plant was initially fined $107,918 for 10 OSHA violations, federal records show. The violations were marked as “serious,” meaning they could cause serious physical injury or worker deaths if not remedied. One included a violation of inspection procedures that were supposed to “follow recognized and generally accepted good engineering practices.”
The government later reduced the fines to about $91,000.
Arkema also agreed to a settlement with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) in January stemming from a leak of a toxic and flammable compound in June 2016, state records show. The plant released 4,800 pounds of isoamylene after workers left a valve partially open for 62 hours, allowing the chemical to drain from a storage tank, according to enforcement records.
A state inspection of the facility months earlier also found seven violations. The TCEQ lists the company’s overall compliance history as “satisfactory,” however. For the June leak, commission imposed a modest fine after concluding that residents and the environment had been exposed to “insignificant amounts” of pollutants.
Even in the current crisis at Crosby, Royall, the Harris County emergency operations official, said that the danger from the Arkema plant was “really relative.”
“If you’re standing right next to something and you had a chemical release, it would probably be pretty dangerous, I think you’d agree,” Royall said. “But we have a mile-and-a-half safety radius, and there’s nobody in that plant.”
The events at the plant cause more worries for residents already dealing with inundated homes. But for some residents, the threat is not extraordinary.
There have been so many plant explosions in the Houston area that resident Robin Boethin cannot keep them straight. She recalled the Texas City refinery explosion in March 2005 — not to be confused with the Texas City disaster of 1947, one of the deadliest industrial accidents in U.S. history. Then there was the Pasadena incident in October 1989, in which gases ignited a series of explosions, killing 23 workers and injuring 300.
“It was a ka-boom type of thing,” she said from the counter of the Rusty Bucket, her antiques shop in Crosby, a few miles from the chemical plant. “It shook the house so bad I called 911. I thought someone was breaking in.”
Boethin and others in Crosby discussed chemical plant explosions and environmental disasters as a way of life in the Houston area, describing the risk of sprawling chemical sites as Californians might discuss the inevitability of the next earthquake.
“There’s danger and everyone knows it,” she said.
In the emergency response plan filed with the EPA in 2014, Arkema sketched out the possible disaster that would follow from the failure of one of its tanks of 2-methylpropene. It wouldn’t exactly be a fire or an explosion, but a fiery combination known in the chemical industry as a “bleve,” short for “boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion.”
In that grave scenario, the sudden release of flammable, toxic vapor could ignite in a fireball with a lethal “thermal radiation dose” that could extend over 1,000 feet — “approaching the yard of the residence nearest to the site.”
At a news conference Thursday, Arkema’s Rennard repeatedly and evenly walked reporters through the steps taken at the plant and the outlook for the coming days.
“We anticipate that all this product is going to degrade,” he said. “Whether it’s today, tomorrow, we just don’t know. It’s impossible to predict that.”
One reporter shouted, “Do you understand people are worried?”
“Of course we understand that,” Rennard said, “and that’s why we want to make sure people respect this one-and-a-half-mile radius. We don’t want people returning back to their homes thinking it’s over. It’s not over.”
Jack Gillum, Aaron C. Davis, Julie Tate, Andrew Ba Tran and Alex Horton contributed to this report. Horton reported from Crosby, Tex.
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Empty seats: Trump’s top science jobs vacant; others tied to industry.
An analysis by Reveal found that of Trump’s 12 nominees and appointees, six have worked for the industries they would regulate or award contracts to.
Seven months into his term, President Donald Trump hasn’t picked anyone to fill 32 of 44 top federal science positions, and half of those he has nominated have significant ties to the industries they would regulate.
Dozens of federal agencies – overseeing issues from the census to endangered species and the nation’s space program – remain without leaders to advise the White House and cabinet secretaries on science, engineering, health and technology. These officials also are responsible for overseeing the work of agency scientists and billions of dollars in spending on research, education and equipment.
The industry-friendly backgrounds and lack of science credentials of some of Trump’s choices, and the extremely slow pace of filling the rest of the vacancies, have raised questions about how the administration is handling the nation’s highest-ranking science positions. Typically, academics, longtime agency staffers or other experts in their fields fill these leadership posts.
An analysis by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found that of Trump’s 12 nominees and appointees, six have worked for the industries they would regulate or award federal contracts to. Two candidates – including Trump’s former national campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis, the president’s choice as the Department of Agriculture’s top scientist – have no scientific background.
So far, only two of Trump’s nominees for top science positions at federal agencies have been confirmed by the Senate. Eight others are awaiting a vote. The eventual nominees for all 32 vacant posts would require confirmation, which could drag on for months.
“Staff can only go so far before they hit these empty seats,” said Cristin Dorgelo, who was chief of staff in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Barack Obama. “I’m most concerned about response to emerging situations, because in those moments, leaders are key, not just for setting the direction of the agencies, but raising up the needs, concerns and gaps to the White House and Congress for attention, action and investment.”
Notable vacancies
No one has been named to permanently fill the four top science posts at the Department of the Interior, including the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for protecting endangered species and managing about 150 million acres of public refuges and wetlands inhabited by more than 2,000 species of birds, mammals, fish and other creatures.
Also empty: top roles at NASA, which manages key climate and earth science data-gathering projects, as well as the space program, and three high-ranking science posts at the Department of Commerce, including a leader for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees fisheries management, climate and ocean research and more.
The Census Bureau, also part of the Commerce Department, has been leaderless since June, when its director resigned after a confrontation with Congress over the budget for the 2020 U.S. census. Census data are critical for guiding how and where the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on health, economic development, education and other services and determining how many seats each state gets in the U.S. House of Representatives.
3 top science leaders confirmed under Obama still hold the posts
The Trump administration also has yet to nominate anyone to fill two undersecretary roles at the USDA that oversee the safety and quality of the nation’s food supply.
Dorgelo said she is especially concerned that vacancies at these key agencies and others, including the Health and Human Services and Defense departments, could hamper the government’s response to major crises, such as the Ebola outbreak.
When the Ebola virus showed up in the United States in 2014, input from these leaders helped the White House “identify immediate technology needs of health workers,” she said. “That led to rapid outreach to the private sector to ask for better innovations, such as the suits those workers would wear. There was a very quick response, from gap identification to creating solutions.”
Critics say the vacancies are evidence of Trump’s lack of interest in incorporating science into policy.
“This administration seems to be a bit different from everything I hear, in that they are much less interested in what the career professionals can contribute, and certainly much less interested in the underlying science that informs policy,” said Andrew Rosenberg, director of The Center for Science and Democracy at the nonprofit advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists.
Trump’s cabinet secretaries “are coming in with a mandate to do something that is sometimes in opposition to the agencies they’ve been tasked to lead – to effectively hand the agency over to private interests,” he said. “So they’re not looking for science advice, because they’ve already been told what to do.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
No scientific expertise
Trump has named two people with no science background to science posts. Both are awaiting final confirmation by the Senate.
David Wright was nominated to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the five-person board responsible for regulating the nuclear power industry and ensuring the safety of nuclear facilities. He studied political science and communications in the mid-1970s and worked for 25 years in public relations, advertising and events planning before serving on South Carolina’s public utility commission.
Clovis, the administration’s nominee for the USDA undersecretary for research, education and economics, would oversee about $2 billion in annual funding for scientific research and about another $1 billion for education.
Clovis is a former professor of business administration at Iowa’s Morningside College. But prior to becoming co-chairman of Trump’s national campaign, he was better known as a right-wing political activist who – via his Sioux City talk radio show – promoted fringe conspiracy theories, including “birtherism,” which falsely claimed that Obama was born in Kenya.
Clovis also has proclaimed himself a skeptic on climate change. At the USDA, he would oversee billions of dollars of federally funded science and education on safeguarding the food supply amid rising temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns.
44 vacant top science leadership positions; 42 require Senate confirmation
Critics say the lack of deep science backgrounds for some candidates means there would be few people in authority capable of informing politicians about an array of complex issues.
“Some positions, such as the undersecretary for research at the Department of Agriculture, benefit very much from robust science backgrounds. Ideally, you get a person who has a mix of both scientific background and experience and policy background,” Dorgelo said. “It’s not possible to hire people with that mix for all positions, but it’s important to hires in key positions, such as that one at the USDA.”
If political appointees have scientific expertise, “they’re able to have a seat at the political policymaking table to make sure science has a voice,” she said.
So far, two of the administration’s top science positions have been filled by experts: Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, Georgia’s public health commissioner, was appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Tony Tooke, a forester who has worked for the U.S. Forest Service since he was 18, was named its new chief.
Industry ties
Six of the Trump administration’s science nominees have close relationships with the industries they will be dealing with on behalf of the public. Their scientific experience varies.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, confirmed in May as head of the Food and Drug Administration, has worked extensively as a consultant and investor to pharmaceutical and medical firms. The FDA is the agency that reviews and approves new drugs and medical devices.
Gottlieb has served on an advisory board for pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and as a venture partner with New Enterprise Associates, a venture capital firm that appears to have invested in dozens of biotech, pharmaceutical and medical equipment startups. He also served as an FDA deputy commissioner under President George W. Bush.
At the Energy Department, Paul Dabbar will coordinate about $5 billion in research and development if he is confirmed as undersecretary for science. He has an undergraduate degree in marine engineering and served as an officer on a nuclear submarine. But for the past 21 years, he has focused on investment banking, working on multibillion-dollar merger and acquisition deals between energy firms as a managing director at JPMorganChase & Co. Dabbar currently sits on the Energy Department’s Environmental Management Advisory Board.
10 people nominated by Trump to top science positions; 2 confirmed by Senate so far
If confirmed as assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Brett Giroir will be the top public health adviser to Secretary Tom Price and be responsible for oversight of diverse public health issues, from infectious diseases and vaccinations to family planning and reproductive services.
Giroir would oversee federal protection of the rights and welfare of human subjects in clinical trials – such as those conducted by Houston-based biopharmaceutical firm ViraCyte, where he was named CEO in 2016. He also would direct 6,700 commissioned officers in the U.S. Public Health Service, a medical corps that responds to humanitarian crises, natural disasters such as hurricanes and industrial accidents in the U.S. and overseas.
Giroir’s national profile rose in 2014, when then-Texas Gov. and current Energy Secretary Rick Perry tapped him to lead the state’s Ebola response. At the time, Giroir was the CEO of the Health Science Center at Texas A&M; University, spearheading public-private partnerships to tackle emerging public health threats, from chemical biowarfare to infectious pandemics. Giroir directed the science office at the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency from 2004 to 2008.
Ellen Lord, confirmed Aug. 1 as the Defense Department’s undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, worked for more than three decades at Textron Systems, a Fortune 500 Defense Department contractor. She joined the company as a chemist in 1984, rising through the firm’s executive ranks to become president and CEO in 2012.
The undersecretary historically directs the Pentagon on how and where to spend its billions of dollars for research, development, energy and equipment. But initially, Lord will oversee a Congress-mandated split of its responsibilities into two offices. Reports suggest she will seek reappointment to the new acquisitions role that results.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group, has endorsed both of the Trump administration’s nominees to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
David Wright, an energy industry consultant, has held several positions aligned with the nuclear power industry. These include chairman of the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, a group of utility commissioners and industries that has advocated for a nuclear waste storage site at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, and president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
The other commission nominee, Annie Caputo, was an executive assistant and legislative affairs manager for Exelon Corp., the nation’s largest utility and largest operator of nuclear power plants, from 1998 to 2005. She worked for a year as an engineer with Commonwealth Edison after earning an undergraduate degree in nuclear engineering in 1996. She currently is a policy aide for House and Senate Republicans on committees overseeing the industry.
Roots in conservative think tanks
Three of Trump’s science nominees have worked with the nation’s leading conservative think tanks.
Gottlieb was a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute when he was confirmed as head of the FDA. The institute advocates for free enterprise and limited government authority. One of its campaigns is to overturn FDA regulations on electronic cigarettes.
Economist Stephen Parente, nominated as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, would manage Medicare and some elements of the Affordable Care Act if confirmed. He has written critical reviews of the act for the right-leaning think tank American Action Forum, including analyses of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s “A Better Way” replacement proposal. Parente is a health economist at the University of Minnesota, where he is the Minnesota insurance industry chair of health finance.
2 science leaders appointed by Cabinet secretaries
Kevin Hassett, nominated to lead the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, was a professor at Columbia University in New York and an economic adviser for the Federal Reserve Board in the 1990s. He advised the Republican presidential campaigns of George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney. He is currently the director of research for domestic policy for the American Enterprise Institute, an outspoken opponent of federal policies to combat climate change. Hassett, however, has endorsed carbon taxes as a more effective incentive to reduce greenhouse gas pollution than cap and trade.
Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists said he is worried but not surprised that there are so many science vacancies and that many of the nominees have ties to the industries they would oversee.
“There seems to be very little interest in utilizing those resources or advisory bodies. Even the external advisory bodies have really ground to a halt,” he said. “The philosophy of this administration is that the most important thing we can do is deregulate.”
This story was edited by Marla Cone and Amy Pyle and copy edited by Nadia Wynter and Nikki Frick.
Emily Gertz can be reached at ejgertz@emilygertz.com. Follow her on Twitter: @ejgertz.
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After electric cars, what more will it take for batteries to change the face of energy?
The belief that electric vehicles are going to be a big business very soon is ever more widely held.
ABOUT three-quarters of the way along one of the snaking production lines in Nissan’s Sunderland plant, a worker bolts fuel tanks into the chassis of countless Qashqais—the “urban crossover” SUVs which are the bulk of the factory’s output. But every so often something else passes along the line: an electric vehicle called a Leaf. The fuel-tank bolter changes his rhythm to add a set of lithium-ion battery packs to the floor of the Leaf. His movements are so well choreographed with the swishing robotic arms around him that he makes the shift from the internal combustion engine to the battery-charged electric vehicle look almost seamless.
Until recently, it was a transition that many found unthinkable. The internal combustion engine has been the main way of powering vehicles on land and at sea for most of the past century. That is quite the head start. Though Leafs are the world’s biggest-selling electric vehicle, the Sunderland plant, Britain’s biggest car factory, only made 17,500 of them last year. It made 310,000 Qashqais. And the Qashqais, unlike the Leafs, were profitable. Nissan has so far lost money on every Leaf it has made.
ABOUT three-quarters of the way along one of the snaking production lines in Nissan’s Sunderland plant, a worker bolts fuel tanks into the chassis of countless Qashqais—the “urban crossover” SUVs which are the bulk of the factory’s output. But every so often something else passes along the line: an electric vehicle called a Leaf. The fuel-tank bolter changes his rhythm to add a set of lithium-ion battery packs to the floor of the Leaf. His movements are so well choreographed with the swishing robotic arms around him that he makes the shift from the internal combustion engine to the battery-charged electric vehicle look almost seamless.
Until recently, it was a transition that many found unthinkable. The internal combustion engine has been the main way of powering vehicles on land and at sea for most of the past century. That is quite the head start. Though Leafs are the world’s biggest-selling electric vehicle, the Sunderland plant, Britain’s biggest car factory, only made 17,500 of them last year. It made 310,000 Qashqais. And the Qashqais, unlike the Leafs, were profitable. Nissan has so far lost money on every Leaf it has made.
Many forecasters reckon that the lifetime costs of owning and driving an electric car will be comparable to those for a fuel burner within a few years, leading sales of the electric cars to soar in the 2020s and to claim the majority sometime during the 2030s. China, which accounted for roughly half the electric vehicles sold last year, wants to see 2m electric and plug-in hybrid cars on its roads by 2020, and 7m within a decade. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), a consultancy, notes that forecasts from oil companies have a lot more electric vehicles in them than they did a few years ago; OPEC now expects 266m such vehicles to be on the street by 2040 (see chart 1). Britain and France have both said that, by that time, new cars completely reliant on internal combustion engines will be illegal.
That this is even conceivable is a tribute to the remarkable expansion of the lithium-ion battery business—and to the belief that it is set to get much bigger. The first such batteries went on sale just 26 years ago, in Sony’s CCD-TR1 camcorder. The product was a hit: the batteries even more so, spreading to computers, phones, cordless power tools, e-cigarettes and beyond. The more gadgets the world has become hooked on, the more lithium-ion batteries it has needed. Last year consumer products accounted for the production of lithium-ion batteries with a total storage capacity of about 45 gigawatt-hours (GWh). To put that in context, if all those batteries were charged up they could provide Britain, which uses on average about 34GW of electricity, with about an hour and 20 minutes of juice.
In the same year production of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles reached just over half that capacity: 25GWh. But Sam Jaffe of Cairn ERA, a battery consultancy, expects demand for vehicle batteries to overtake that from consumer electronics as early as next year, marking a pivotal moment for the industry. Huge expansion is under way. The top five manufacturers—Japan’s Panasonic, South Korea’s LG Chem and Samsung SDI, and China’s BYD and CATL—are ramping up capital expenditure with a view to almost tripling capacity by 2020 (see chart 2). The vast $5bn gigafactory Tesla is building with Panasonic in Nevada is thought to already be producing about 4GWh a year. Tesla says it will produce 35GWh in 2018. Just four years ago, that would have been enough for all applications across the whole world.
The gigafactory is not just for cars. Hearing of electricity blackouts in South Australia, Elon Musk, Tesla’s founder, tweeted to the state’s premier in March that by the end of the year Tesla could provide enough battery storage to make sure that the grid never fell over again. At the gigafactory they are now hard at work cramming 129 megawatt-hours (MWh) of capacity into a facility designed to keep their boss’s word. When installed on the other side of the Pacific, it will be the biggest such grid-based system in the world; but many more are on the way. Industrial-scale lithium-ion battery packs—essentially lots of the battery packs used in cars wired together, their chemistry and electronics tweaked to support quicker charging and discharging—are increasingly popular with grid operators looking for ways to smooth out the effects of intermittent power supplies such as solar and wind. Smaller battery packs are being bought by consumers who want independence from the grid—or, indeed, to store the electricity they produce for themselves so that it can be sold into the grid at the most lucrative time of day or night. Batteries are becoming an integral part of the low-emissions future.
The chance to change
The fundamental operating principles of the lithium-ion battery are easily understood. When the battery is charging an electric potential pulls lithium ions into the recesses of a graphite-based electrode; when it is in use these ions migrate back through a liquid electrolyte to a much more complex electrode made of compounds containing lithium and other metals—the cathode. The fundamental operating principles of the battery business, on the other hand, are considerably more opaque, thanks to an almost paranoid taste for secrecy among suppliers and the baffling economics of the Asian conglomerates that lead the market.
All the big producers are adding capacity in part because it drives down unit costs, as the past few years have shown (see chart 3). Lithium-ion cells (the basic components of batteries) cost over $1,000 a kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2010; last year they were in the $130-200 range. GM says it is paying $145 per kWh to LG Chem for the cells that make up the 60kWh battery for the Bolt (the pack, thanks to labour, materials and electronics, costs more than the sum of its cells). Tesla says that cells for the Model 3 are cheaper. Lower costs are not the only improvements; large amounts of R&D; investment have led to better power density (more storage per kilogram) and better durability (more discharge-then-recharge cycles). The Bolt comes with a battery warranty of eight years.
But getting prices down this way has not just produced cheaper, better batteries. It has also resulted in significant overcapacity. Cairn ERA estimates that last year the manufacturing capacity for lithium-ion batteries exceeded demand by about a third. Both it and BNEF say that the battery manufacturers are either losing money or making only wafer-thin profits on every electric-vehicle battery they produce. Despite the seeming glut, though, they all have plans to expand, in part to drive prices even lower. Mr Jaffe explains their thinking as that of the “traditional Asian conglomerate model”: sacrificing margins for market share. This may be a sound strategy given the ever-greater hopes for electric vehicles in the near future. But at the moment it is also one that looks rather unnerving. Although Mr Jaffe believes that increased demand for both electric vehicles and stationary storage will justify the rush to expand, he accepts that, for now, “It feels like a gold rush—but there’s no gold.”
There are, though, other valuable metals in the picture. Making more batteries means acquiring more lithium, as well as various other metals, including cobalt, for the cathodes. These make up about 60% of the cost of a cell. Being assured of a constant supply of them is as much a strategic consideration for battery-makers as mastering electrochemistry. Since 2015 lithium prices have quadrupled, says Simon Moores of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a consultancy. Cobalt’s price has more than doubled over the same period; prices of chemicals containing nickel, also used in cathodes, are rising too.
There are, though, other valuable metals in the picture. Making more batteries means acquiring more lithium, as well as various other metals, including cobalt, for the cathodes. These make up about 60% of the cost of a cell. Being assured of a constant supply of them is as much a strategic consideration for battery-makers as mastering electrochemistry. Since 2015 lithium prices have quadrupled, says Simon Moores of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a consultancy. Cobalt’s price has more than doubled over the same period; prices of chemicals containing nickel, also used in cathodes, are rising too.
New supplies of lithium should not be too hard to find; there are thought to be at least 210m tonnes of the stuff, says Mr Moores, compared with current annual production of 180,000 tonnes. New fields are being opened up. In July SQM of Chile, the world’s biggest lithium producer, said it would invest $110m in a lithium joint venture in Western Australia. Cobalt is more tricky. Not only are supplies scarcer, but a lot comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. This raises both ethical problems (production can rely on child labour) and business ones (no one wants to depend on warlords for a vital resource). LG Chem has said it is trying to reduce the cobalt component of its battery cells, while continuing to improve their performance. Further down the road, recycling the metals from old batteries could make the industry much more sustainable.
One of the reasons manufacturers are confidently piling on capacity despite costlier raw materials is that, at the moment, little else can compete with their wares. Other battery technologies that sound as if, in principle, they might have advantages are often touted—but none of them enjoys the decades of development that have turned lithium-ion devices from an intriguing idea into a dominant technology. This work has generated a huge amount of knowledge about the fine details of manufacturability, the choice of electrolytes and the ever more sophisticated nanotechnology of the metallic cathodes.
Kenan Sahin, who heads CAMX Power, an American company that supplies materials for cathodes, says the lithium-ion battery’s cost and weight, its ability to charge and discharge repeatedly, its durability and its safety have all been achieved through an endless process of fine-tuning, rather than eureka moments. He likens battery chemistry to drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry. “It’s really difficult. Whatever you have needs to work at large scale and the side-effects have to be acceptable,” he says. This is all hard for a would-be usurper to emulate. For the foreseeable future, ever-improving lithium-ion technology—perhaps with new solid electrolytes—will make the running, benefiting from yet more refinements the more applications it supports.
Until now, the mainstay has been a cylindrical cell called the 18650, which looks like a rifle shell. It is 65 millimetres long, 18mm in diameter and has an energy density of perhaps 250 watt-hours per kilogram. (The energy density of petrol, for comparison, is about 50 times greater; but the cell can store that much energy hundreds or thousands of times.) Tesla and Panasonic have now developed the 2170, a bit longer and wider; Mr Musk says it will be the most energy-dense battery on the market. The company says that the cost of driving a Model 3, released in late July to rave reviews, will be half that of any of its previous vehicles. At the car’s launch Mr Musk seemed a bit overawed at the prospect of producing 500,000 such vehicles next year: “Welcome to production hell,” he told the assembled workers.
On August 7th Tesla announced plans to sell bonds worth $1.5bn to support its expansion, giving a badly needed breather to the equity market, where it usually raises cash (and where its value has risen by two-thirds over the past year). The company has said that it has 455,000 pre-orders for the Model 3, which, if taken up, would generate enough cashflow by year-end to start shoring up the company’s finances. If it all goes to plan, Mr Musk hopes to see the gigafactory become the largest building in the world, cranking out 100GWh a year—and to be joined by further gigafactories elsewhere; the next would probably be in China.
All this presupposes that electric vehicles really are poised for take-off. There is no doubt that they are getting better and cheaper. But there are other constraints on their use, most notably charging. In Britain 43% of car owners do not have access to off-street parking and thus would not be able to charge cars at home. Nor are domestic supplies always up to the strains of, say, an 11kW charger; using the kettle or immersion heater during the six hours it would take to charge up a 90kWh battery could blow the fuses. The answer will be fast-charging stations, possibly like petrol stations; some car companies are beginning to build them as a way to assuage the “range anxiety” that turns some drivers off electric vehicles. Whether such facilities can expand fast enough to allow the industry’s expansive ambitions to be fulfilled remains an open question.
This uncertainty about the speed at which electric-vehicle usage will grow is one of the things that makes stationary storage an attractive alternative market for the battery-makers. Installations such as the one recently built in a nondescript lot on the outskirts of San Diego, California, by San Diego Gas & Electric (SDGE) have none of the glamour of glistening new models hitting showrooms. It is a 384,000-cell car battery impersonating a trailer park: the dullest Transformer ever. But its ordinariness is part of its beauty, says Caroline Winn, chief operating officer of SDGE; the utility uses it to offer power at times of peak demand. Modular construction meant the 120MWh facility—just a touch smaller than the one Tesla has promised South Australia—was ready to go only eight months after the start of the project. It runs so quietly it is hardly audible. Building a gas turbine to do the same job would have been cheaper but would have taken years, in the unlikely event that local residents had given it the go-ahead in the first place. The battery facility “is a lot prettier than a gas turbine,” Ms Winn says.
The final source of energy
For Tesla and other big battery-makers grid-storage projects are the most attractive part of the electricity market; they offer contracts that use up otherwise surplus capacity in satisfyingly large job lots. But there is also demand for batteries to go “behind the meter”. Tesla serves this market with its Powerwall domestic battery pack, designed to complement the solar panels and solar tiles it offers. Nissan, too, is looking at behind-the-meter applications. It is working with Eaton, an American power-management company, to put “second-life”, or partially used, Leaf batteries into packs that can provide businesses and factories with back-up power, thus replacing polluting diesel generators. The first big customer is the Amsterdam Arena, home to AFC Ajax, a football club.
Such systems do not necessarily compete on price; but governments are providing various incentives for them. In May the New York State regulator gave Con Edison, a utility, the right to allow business customers to install batteries in Brooklyn and Queens to export electricity to the grid. New York, with a rickety grid that dates back over a century to the days of George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla, is struggling to integrate more renewable energy into its supplies, and storage offers it a new way to manage peak power demand. Jason Doling, a state energy official, says the programme should be ideal for high-rise blocks; powering lifts from the battery in mornings and evenings when electricity prices are highest would be a boon.
The New York fire department remains concerned that lithium-ion batteries in buildings pose a fire hazard, however. When they are being installed, it keeps its engines on standby. As the externally combusting fiasco of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 smartphones reminded the world last year, lithium-ion batteries can, if badly or over-ambitiously designed, short circuit in incendiary ways. In general, however, new materials and ceramic coatings for electrodes have made the batteries for cars very safe.
Setting aside concerns about combustion, companies that install batteries for behind-the-meter storage, and indeed for grid storage, say they are hampered by outdated regulation and by insurance problems. This limits the funding available to them, according to Anil Srivastava, who runs Leclanché, a Swiss battery-producer. They also need to find ways to make stationary storage pay. Sometimes, as in San Diego, it is pretty much the only solution to the demands of a regulator: the California Public Utilities Commission was worried about blackouts in Los Angeles in the wake of a leak at the Aliso Canyon gas-storage facility in 2015. When price is more of an object, the batteries need to find more than one service to provide, a procedure known as “revenue stacking”. For example, a system might be designed to offer power to the grid for short-term frequency regulation as well as providing a way of dealing with peak demand.
It sounds complicated. But finding more than one way to sell the same thing is second nature in the battery business, as it fine-tunes its wares for every market and every scale. And though today’s exuberance may look a little scary, in the long run that ability looks likely to see the industry do very nicely indeed.
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If you’ve ever had Lyme disease, blame the anti-vaxxers.
In 1998 the FDA approved a a drug called Lymerix, and it was pretty effective until the chronic Lyme crowd and the anti-vaxxers started ranting:
Lyme disease has been spreading for years, and thanks to global warming it’s poised to explode over the next few years. This map is from New Scientist:
That’s bad. But it turns out there’s a vaccine for Lyme disease. Or I guess I should say, there used to be a vaccine for Lyme disease. In 1998 the FDA approved a a drug called Lymerix, and it was pretty effective until the chronic Lyme crowd and the anti-vaxxers started ranting:
Influenced by now-discredited research purporting to show a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, activists raised the question of whether the Lyme disease vaccine could cause arthritis. Media coverage and the anti-Lyme-vaccination groups gave a voice to those who believed their pain was due to the vaccine, and public support for the vaccine declined.
“The chronic arthritis was not associated with Lyme,” says Stanley Plotkin, an adviser to pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur. “When you’re dealing with adults, all kinds of things happen to them. They get arthritis, they get strokes, heart attacks. So unless you have a control group, you’re in la-la land.”
But there was a control group – the rest of the US population. And when the FDA reviewed the vaccine’s adverse event reports in a retrospective study, they found only 905 reports for 1.4 million doses. Still, the damage was done, and the vaccine was benched.
All of you who have had Lyme disease should know this. You could have avoided it if not for the ravings of the anti-vax nitwits and the gullibility of the mainstream TV talkers who give them a platform. It’s long past time to put an end to this idiocy.
But I won’t leave you without some good news. First, although you can’t vaccinate yourself, you can vaccinate your dog. So there’s that. Second, a French company has developed an even better Lyme vaccination, and it should be ready in 2023. That’s a mere six years. Just be patient, OK?
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