Thermal Power Storage and Future : Energy Storage Series 3

 

This is Series 3 where we look into companies which could shape future in thermal energy storage and crystal ball gazing of the sector per se. 😊

Click here for Series 1 where we had set the introduction to energy storage.

Click here for Series 2 - we look into companies/concepts which could shape future in battery and hydro.

Another strong contender has been thermal energy storage has a pretty unique opportunity to be extremely low cost. The breakthrough grid-scale storage solutions must last at least two to three decades and deliver long duration energy discharge.

It's still an emerging technology in this space, but it has the potential to store energy for longer than flow batteries with a smaller footprint than gravity-based systems.

Berkeley, California-based Antora Energy, founded in 2017, is taking on this challenge. Basically, when there's excess electricity on the grid, that's used to heat up Antora's cheap carbon blocks, which are insulated inside a container. When needed, that heat is then converted back into electricity using a heat engine.

Typically, this could be a steam or gas turbine. But some say this tech is just too expensive and has prevented thermal storage solutions from working out in the past. So Antora has developed a novel type of heat engine called a thermophotovoltaic heat engine, or TPV for short, which is basically just a solar cell, but instead of capturing sunlight and converting that to electricity, this solar cell captures light radiated from the hot storage medium and converts that to electricity.

So it's electricity in, electricity out, and it's stored in ultra-cheap raw materials as heat in the meantime.

Recently, Antora received funding from DARPA, Fifty Years and a joint venture between the Department of Energy and Shell, who are excited by the company's potential to provide days or weeks-long storage.

This could be the solution currently unsolved by lithium ion batteries and that will sort of enable the next wave of integration of renewables on the grid.

It's still early days for Antora and Energy Vault though, and there's definitely other creative solutions in the mix.

For example, Toronto-based Hydrostor is converting surplus electricity into compressed air (A-CAES) and Highview Power is pursuing cryogenic storage in a commercial-scale 50 Megawatt/250 Megawatt-hour plant in England.

They are using excess energy to cool down air to the point where it liquefies. These ideas may seem far out, but investment is pouring in and projects are being piloted around the world. While these companies are all vying to be the cheapest, safest and longest lasting, many also recognize that this is a market with many niches, and therefore the potential for multiple winners.

In the residential and commercial areas, you're gonna have a certain type of technology. A lot of it will probably be battery-based.

I think as you get to utility-scale and grid-scale, you're going to see some batteries, you're going to see other types of compressed air and liquid air solutions, and then you're going to see some of the gravity solutions that could be scaled.

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Overall, the battery energy storage market is predicted to reach US$12 billion by 2025, and likely reach 134.6 GW by 2030 from 8.5 GW annual capacity additions in 2020. 

A'int it fantastic ?

But as always, it's going to be tough to get even the most promising ideas to market. No matter if the raw materials were dirt cheap (which will spark off another story sometime), the initial cost of a first system is essentially astronomical.

Of course, government policies and incentives will play a major role as well. There is a production tax credit on wind and investment tax credit on solar. The Battery tech also needs to be treated with some push similar to the solar or wind till it takes off. 

I strongly believe that eventually they market need of energy storage will push research focus automatically in the sector and we would see a rerating if the projection of market size actualization sooner than later :)

With the right mix of incentives and ingenuity, we're hopefully headed towards a future with a plethora of storage technologies.

The future is not going to be a mirror of the past. We've got to do something that's radically different from everything that's been done up until now.

Battery Chemistry and Gravity : Energy Storage Series 2

As the immediacy of the climate crisis becomes ever more apparent, batteries hold the key to transitioning to a renewable-fueled world. Renewables will play a greater role in power generation, but without effective energy storage techniques, it’s an incomplete puzzle.

Chemical engineers have always been fascinated by the periodic table since our introductory days to materials, right from the days of ‘Baghdad battery’ almost 2000 years ago which was made up of ceramic jar, a tube of copper, and an iron rod and a lot of mystery around 'presence of acid' to today’s new age. 

We are looking at all materials available on the earth, which can provide the competitive advantage, chemically and logically, we need to look at cost competitive elements for a more sustainable production and consumption.

This is the Series 2 where we look into companies which could shape future in battery and hydro.

Click here for Series 1 where we had set the introduction to energy storage.

Click here for Series 3 where we look into companies which could shape future in thermal and crystal ball gazing. 😊

There are dozens of chemistry being looked at today. There are hundreds of companies working on scaling up and manufacturing new battery technology. Lithium ion has done remarkable things for technology and much has been talked about it but I would like to focus on other alternatives rather than lithium in this series.

A main alternative being explored is a flow battery, which looks into vanadium redox, polysulfide bromide, and zinc bromide chemistry.

One of the ways of using chemical (vanadium) flow storage technology is to use electrolyte across an ion exchange membrane. The advantages of this type of storage are safety, scalability and long term operations. Vanadium electrolyte used in this battery is non-flammable and allows the battery to operate at room temperature.

British startup RedT Energy produces storage machines that use proprietary redox flow technology to store energy in liquids without degrading. Inflow energy storage electrolyte is stored in tanks, outside of the cell stack making storage solutions scalable, as more electrolytes or stacks can be added on a modular basis. Moreover, these batteries have a long lifespan of over two decades.

Another one for the future is the zinc-iron flow batteries. These batteries are suitable for utility scale wind and solar applications. They are non-explosive, non-flammable, non-toxic, recyclable at the end of their life, and made from globally abundant materials. 

ViZn Energy is deploying a zinc-redox flow battery solution. Its batteries experience zero capacity fade over 20 years and are warranted for up to two cycles per day, giving them significantly more usable output than competitive batteries. The zinc-iron chemistry uses globally abundant materials and is non-flammable, non-toxic, and 100% recyclable at the end of its life.

Unlike lithium ion, flow batteries store liquid electrolyte in external tanks, implying that the energy from the electrolyte and the actual source of power generation are decoupled. The electrolyte is stored within the battery itself. 

Electrolyte chemistries vary, but across the board, these aqueous systems don't pose a fire risk and most don't face the same issues with capacity fade. Once they scale up their manufacturing, these companies say they'll be price competitive with lithium ion.

Primus Power has been working in this space since 2009, and uses a zinc bromide chemistry. It's raised over millions of dollars in funding, including a number of government grants from agencies like the Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission.

Primus's modular EnergyPod provides 25 kilowatts of power, enough to power five to seven homes for five hours during times of peak energy demand and for 12 to 15 hours during off-peak hours. The secret is in simplicity. Primus is able to separate the electrochemical species by taking advantage of the density differences between the zinc bromine and the bromine itself, and the more aqueous portion of that electrolyte.

Another interesting company is ESS Inc, an Oregon-based manufacturer of iron flow batteries, founded in 2011. They're basically batteries in a shipping container and they can provide anywhere from100 kilowatts of power for four hours to 33 kilowatts for 12 hours, using an electrolyte made entirely of iron, salt and water.

ESS is backed by some major players like SoftBank Energy, the Bill Gates-led investor fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and insurance company Munich Re. Its systems, called Energy Warehouses. It's also in the process of developing its Energy Center, which is aimed at utility-scale applications in the 100 MW plus range. That would be 1,000 times more power than a single Energy Warehouse. A lot is to be seen … with hopeful intent.

But for all their potential, flow battery companies like Primus and ESS Inc still aren't really designed to store energy for days or weeks on end.

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Many of those flow battery technologies still suffer from the same fundamental materials cost challenges that make them incapable of getting to tens or hundreds of hours of energy storage capacity. 

Other non-lithium ion endeavors, such as the M.I.T spinoff Ambri, face the same problem with longer-duration storage and Form energy, a battery company with an undisclosed chemistry, is targeting the weeks or months long storage market, but commercialization remains far off.  

Let's look at one of the most basic and ideally one of the oldest ways of stored energy process - Pumped Hydro.

Currently, about 70-80% of the world's energy storage comes from pumped hydro.

When there's excess energy on the grid, it's used to pump water uphill to a high-elevation reservoir. Then when there's energy demand, the water is released, driving a turbine as it flows into a reservoir below. The flaw in the system is that it requires a lot of land, disrupts the environment and the natural working of the geography and can function in specific geographies.

My gut feel says that in the next decade we are going to explore this energy storage process in the places where the geology and the environmental features support it.

Energy Vault, a Swiss gravity-based storage company founded in 2017, was inspired by the concept but thinks it can offer more. Instead of moving water, Energy Vault uses cranes and wires to move heavy (35ton) bricks up and down, depending on energy needs, in a process that's automated with machine vision software. The system tower crane utilizes excess solar or wind to drive motors and generators that lift and stack the bricks in a specific sequence. Then when the power is needed from the grid, that same system will lower the bricks and discharge the electricity.

It can store energy at around half the cost of existing grid-scale storage solutions on a low levelized cost of energy basis, including operations and maintenance costs and parts replacement and can run to 3 to 4 decades with high efficiency and almost zero degradation. This system is sized for utility-scale operation.

A standard installation could include 20 towers, providing a total of 350 megawatt hours of storage capacity, enough to power around 40,000 homes for 24 hours. The trick for this segment will be scale at very large deployments of multiple systems so that they'll have that power on demand for weeks if not months.

It has received funding of $110M from SoftBank Vision Fund, and it's building out a test facility in Milan, Italy in 9months and less than $2 million and a plant for Tata Power for 35MWh.

https://www.ft.com/content/5b06a392-be9b-11e9-89e2-41e555e96722

End of Series 2.

In the next series, let’s look into thermal store energy and some crystal ball gazing into the future.

Future of Energy Storage - Oorja, Huolì, Energie, Sakti Series 1

The art of Storage has meant different things across different cultures and timelines in the history of mankind.

Storage was looked as a way to secure basic necessities, and people looked to this concept as a way to utilize abundance in the times of scarcity. This could have a larger connotation being obsessed with ‘saving for a rainy day’ and utilizing the future needs in an optimal way. It was not until the latest century, that scientific scrutiny was finally applied to concept of abundance and storage.

Energy is a key source in the makeup of the universe and matter and storage is a key variable towards the solving the equation of limitless energy equation.

Energy or Oorja /Huolì/ energie/ energia/ sakti/ energiya - these words combined are known to more than 4.5 Billion people in different language around the world but the essence is the universal underlying need of E- mc2. Humans will take E in whatever form we get it. 😊

I will break the whole narrative in to three series as the content is long for readers and as a thinker for me to keep them in rapt attention.

Series 1 is what you are reading

Click here for Series 2 - we look into companies which could shape future in battery and hydro.

Click here for Series 3 - we look into companies which could shape future in thermal and crystal ball gazing. 😊 

As the race for climate action escalated (Al Gore campaign) in the start of the century, the need for an alternative structure becomes all the more important and essential.

The last decade of action has led to the pricing efficiency of the renewables, solar panels and wind farms panels have reached all-time lows, leading to gigawatts (GWs) worth of renewable energy generation.

But some say say, “What would you do when the wind isn't always blowing and the sun isn't always shining.”

On a bright sunny day or a whistling windy day, we've got a super abundance of electricity, in other scenarios, the renewables are still catching up on delivery expectations.

The real issue is to ensure there's always energy on demand no matter the time of day or weather, is one of the biggest challenges in the industry. That’s brings up to come up with a good way to store energy and draw it as and when needs arises.

Globally, the wind energy market will hit 8.5 % CAGR till 2025 and install nearly 325 GW, reaching close to 980 GW by the timeline. No small feat considering we were have taken 20 years to reach at 651 GW at the end of 2019.

Solar PV generation is estimated to have increased 720 TWh in 2019, overtaking bio energy to be third largest renewable electricity technology.

And it's not stopping there. It’s on an accelerated path to install and change the research technology to Perovskite solar cells. Each of the sector warranting a story of their own and creating an impression on the energy timeline of Earth.

We know today that solar PV and wind are the least expensive way to generate electricity and others are now catching up..  In particular, the price of solar photovoltaics has plummeted far faster than all forecasts predicted, after China flooded the market with cheap panels in the late 2000s.

Every money manager/ investor/ govt did not believe that solar was going to ever stand on its own without subsidies. Today as solar has gotten cheaper, so too have lithium ion batteries, the technology that powers electric vehicles, our cell phones and laptops.

And thanks to improved manufacturing techniques and economies of scale, costs have fallen 90% since 2010.

Now, wind or solar plus battery storage is often times more economical than thermal power plants, that is, power plants that only fire when demand is high.

One of the current option also revolves around lithium ion batteries. Currently, the prices of lithium ion is dropping though with the usage scale which it can amass, it will remain too expensive for most grid-scale applications.

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In order to be economically viable for grid scale levels, we need to look at a further cost reduction of atleast 10 to 15x. Currently, lithium ion batteries just can't store more than four to five hours worth of energy at a price point that would make sense. There are a lot of research which are currently in pipeline but not yet feasible on economical and viable scale of mass production yet.

Plus, they pose a fire risk and their ability to hold a charge reduces drastically over time. To address this, there are cadre of entrepreneurs experimenting with a variety of different solutions. 

Now we're seeing flow batteries, which are liquid batteries, and we're seeing other forms of storage that are not chemical or battery-based storage. Honestly, one can’t but be amazed with the scale of research which is currently happening in this space and these each has serious potential with far reaching implications changing the way we will look into stored energy in the decades to come.

But this doesn't mean lithium ion is necessarily economical for other grid applications. The cost structure wouldn't coming down to the point where it can serve those tens to hundreds of hours applications. 

Basically, the market is ripe for competition.

End of Series 1.

In the next series, let’s look into which technologies could prevail, but the undeniable holy grail will be to figure out a better way to store energy.

Time to Step down, or Step out : Jeff Bezos' strategy directive to Andy Jazzy

The latest news of Jeff Bezos stepping down and handing over the reins has started a fresh debate about how to take the mother away from the baby. if you were worrying about taking a side, its one the toughest topics to sit on the fence, experiencing it, a different matter altogether.

And yes! we are here only talking about entrepreneurial behemoth succession planning. So please put the right cap :)

The biggest challenge in succession planning is the timing of it. Though the PR agencies make it look like a planned process of handing reigns down for the Googles, Apples and the Microsofts, as it is important to take note of how entrepreneur led behemoths are setting up examples of leadership and legacy behind them. The godlike image of the Founder never wanes. So lets look a bit under the veil.   

Case example Microsoft (Bill) stepping down while anti-trust allegations were on, or Sundai Pichai appearing before the US Congress in his second year. We could se a similar story scripted for Amazon now. Amazon is now currently facing the antitrust law issues and the multiple other such as low wage for warehouse, or the Seattle tax issue.

The successors to these behemoths are always handed down these public appearances and inquiries and their frequent brush with the lawmakers, which hurt their public image and take focus away from the business at hand.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) bases these antitrust laws fundamentally on the Sherman Act of 1890. In my naive opinion, I strongly feel with such fast changing times the means and nature of business these measures need to change and adapt too. Another topic for another time.

The shoes which these founders leave are too big to fill and messy to sort out. The enigma and stature which the leaders leave behind for the successor to live upto is too much to handle. 

Its the outgoing leaders responsibility to make the public impressions smooth or the world ends up the something like the Ballmer era where markets get too critical of every move or decision and the pressure to deliver is unsurmountable, while the Founder moves to self actualization pursuits in public eye and into the realm of god mode.

Now coming to Amazon, it will be interesting too see someone being brought from the AWS program at the helm. The market for the cloud is searing up after the pandemic and the pie keeps getting larger. It was an obvious decision to get someone from AWS as it will be seeing double digit growth for the next decade. 

The major issues being with the current scope of workers issues including the recent directive to pay $62 Mn for the tips for delivery drivers and reemergence of 'starvation wages' consideration of warehouse employees could very quickly spell political trouble for Andy Jassy.

The sheer number of expected employees to touch 1.4 million by 2022 with a strong robotics presence in its workforce. Its going to one strategic move to handle the balance of firing and hiring, pay hikes and move to robotics maintenance for future workforce.

Jassy being from the AWS makes it very interesting to see the counter move of Google by making Bikram Singh Bedi its India head. Bikram set up and led the India AWS since 2012. Google will be looking to tip the balance in the most hottest ground of Cloud battle and more Google announcements could be expected in the next few months.

Another interesting aspect will be to see if the 'Shipment Zero' project remains with Bezos or go for Jazzy to handle. That could be a major outcry if not managed well for the next 5 years. Similarly, Project Kuiper will be closely watched by investors in the next 5 years

Amazon's Chinese market exit will also be interesting to be followed as Amazon sits out of one of the most lucrative markets of the world. It will worth observing how long will that be the case and different geopolitical pressure which Amazon (Jazzy) might have to balance to get the lobbying going.

Interesting times....

The making of Middle-East Proxy War

US and Iran have been going through a long process of negotiations of a nuclear agreement by which US was going to lift sanctions and develop peacefully free of advent of nuclear programs and enrichment.

In the last two years, the trump admin imposed primary and secondary sanctions to cripple and have an no last resort negotiation tactics with Iran. The nail on the coffin has been the authorized drone killing of Qassim Soleimani, the Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has the potentiality of starting a war. This operation was not a covert or a secret mission and has been very open invitation to Iran for a challenge. This action can be deemed clear to have taken a different path than the dialogue and has taken the challenge to Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader for Iran. 

Iran has avoided the Al Kurds force, which is responsible for the Iran’s overseas clandestine operations, for the last 4 decades, there has been no direct confrontation with Iran and Israel for that time. The strike also killed the Iraqi miltia commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was the deputy leader of the Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi which will leave a vacuum in the organizational hierarchy of the militia.

The direct confrontation of Iran in the Middle east with Saudi Arabia or US and its allies is totally out of question as it has avoided so for the last 4 decades. Interestingly, this will lead to a birth of an intensified proxy war being fought in the realms of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Lebanon to a certain extent.

The possible options of eventuality are expected to revolve around below areas in the coming decade.

1. Trump’s plan is concrete to bring back the troops home as it has happened in Syria and complete the peace process handover to Afghanistan, while recalling the troops is a sure shot speculation which might materialize within a quarter. The response to this action and the discussion with Taliban and Afghanistan triangle will have a possibility of an unhappy “divorce settlement”, it will also lead to the spill-over effect of the regional unrest. Make no mistake there will be an increased unrest and possibly a regime change in the region. Trump’s re-election campaign could also be around the ‘Deal of the century’ for a peace breaking treaty in the region for Israel and Palestine. This will surely result in some serious escalation resulting in unrest in the Gaza strip. It will be interesting to note the policy of the countries influencing the geopolitical mood of the region. A lot will also be revolving around the re-election campaign of Trump in the upcoming US November 2020.

2. The US administration will have to prepare for a scenario of increased cold war in the Middle East, which it has be a strong part of considering the geopolitical influence of Middle east in the global politics of energy. Its external political strategy around the Saudis will be tested in the wake of increased risk of military deployment of US forces in the coming years.

3. Covert operations. An increase in covert operations will be seen from both the blocks fueling the cold war, which will require increasing funding to be deployed in the area. It is to be seen how the US would want to balance the attention of resources and political maneuvering between Middle East and rising African countries in the coming decade. The increasing focus of the Chinese into Africa and its operations would become geopolitical issue for US and its allies to manage the rising Africa, its aspirational growth and the opportunity to be an ally and access to the markets of Africa and be part of the largest growing population for the next decade.

4. Systematic planned long process of assassination against US and its allies by cuts by thousand slices strategy. We will be seeing an increased aggression in the militia activities in the lands of Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan and Lebanon. We also might see resurgence of attacks in other Islamic countries such as Afghanistan and North West frontier Pakistan more so following the Sunni-Shiite century old rivalries. The militant groups such as Taliban, Daesh, Hamas, Hezebollah, Al-Qaeda will see a renewed activity and funding to disrupt the region’s peace in the coming decade.

Opinion : The Hoo-Aww-Wei War in the arena of 5G runway

The next decade will see a fervent of activities of gulf escalation, risking international peace and security situation in the region. It will also demand more funding for the humanitarian groups such as UN Programmes and Red Cross and others for field budgets for the times to come. As global economies, we should always remember that such humongous budgets also play a pivotal role in diverting focus from health and education focused developments in the region hampering global growth and well-being for decades. 

While these possibilities play out in reality, It is also important to keep an eye on the developments around the Iran nuclear deal, US decision to pull out of the deal and its ramifications in the Europe. Each of these topics are a strong backdrop and forms a story of its own but the puzzle completes when as an economist/ geopolitical observer you tie them together in the perspective of global power hegemony for decades to come.

Readers please let me know what you would want me to write on. Sometimes with so much going on, I lose focus on the relevance of what readers are interested to read about.

Hoo-Aw-Why (Huawei) war to be fought at 5G runway ?

The recent visit by Mike Pompeo to Britain has one of the critical discussion agenda to completely ban Huawei, the Chinese tech giant, one of the leading telecom technology companies for the 5G technology. His visit is to highlight concerns and to egg Britain to rethink its decision of allowing Huawei a limited role in implement the 5G technology.

The ban is a continued effort to ban US in terms of lobbying its allies to ban Huawei, which it alleges that the Chinese government is using Huawei for spying on citizens. Pompeo is of the view that Chinese govt has a legal mandate to obtain the information of the citizens transiting in the Huawei network. It was also mentioned that Britain new proposal to allow Huawei to build the non-core parts of the 5G infrastructure jeopardizes the intelligence sharing between the 5 EYES security alliance.

Boris Johnson, UK prime minister is of the view that it will work towards providing access to the best of the technology to its citizens, He also added that he doesn’t want to impair Britain relation with US and to compromise its national security infrastructure or imperil the Five Eyes securities cooperation.

The Five Eyes is formed of US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

US has imposed trade restrictions on Huawei. It has further blocked  American companies from dealing with it and has asked for a complete  ban on Huawei in 5G networks.

Australia and New Zealand have followed suit and have banned Huawei,  while Canada is still sitting on the fence on the issue.

Interestingly, EU also has security concerns, although it hasn’t banned  Huawei but it has issues guidelines to its members to restrict 5G technology  from its “high risk suppliers”.

Let’s look at makes Huawei so enigmatic in the world of telecom.

There is an increasingly global alarm being sounded about domination of China in the 5G technology network. Huawei, in the last 15 years, has seen a stupendous rise, which is alluded to the close links to the Chinese govt, the subsidies received from the Chinese government and other assistance offered.

Critics also raise concerns that Huawei has appropriated some western competitive technology which has allowed to take a notch up in the growth curve evolution.

Interestingly, the state of alternative suppliers in the global markets is also a concern. The weakening state of competitors in the global market including the competition from China has weakened them immensely. This can allow Huawei to come with a very low offering price to ride on a monopoly state and wipe out competition to later dominate the market and its pricing.

Huawei had started out focused on the Chinese domestic market which allowed it a perfect petridish of consumer and  business playground to be accentuated on economies of scale and size of the Chinese domestic market.

Huawei has also been a pioneer in the 3G and the 4G technologies. Its commitment to innovation and research is clear from the fact that in 2015, Huawei remained the top patent applicant for the second year, with 3,898 applications.

Huawei invested over US$15 billion in 2018. In the next five years, the invest is planned at US$100 billion. Huawei is one of the world’s largest patent holders. We have been granted 87,805 patents and 11,152 core technology patents were granted by the United States.

5G : Are you being watched or is it the New World Order ? 

This issue has also to be evaluated at a perspective of political and power play of technological control. The 5G technologies limits are still being evaluated as the scope of the connectivity are still being assessed as this could be the blood of the next generation technology superhighway which would be holding very sensitive information. It’s being dubbed as dual use technology which will have commercial and security applications.

The whole issue started in October 2012, when Mike Rogers, Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence presented a report to the congress about the “Investigative Report on the U.S. National Security Issues Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE” which led to questions around the Chinese mobile phones being used by US defense contractors.
The ownership structure of Huawei also did not help the cause as it being an employee-owned company also raised red flags on questions of its relations to the Chinese government.

Beijing passed laws on counter espionage (2014) and a National Intelligence (2017) respectively. This legislation allows the Communist Party to compel Chinese companies to turn over information and open their systems to the country’s intelligence and security apparatus.

It would be interesting to watch out the new political alignment which emerges post Brexit with the Chinese govt. It could also test the UK-US relations in that scenario and can might have a bearing too post US presidential elections this year.

The countries who are going to appoint companies of non-state origin need to work on establishing control points in software and hardware setup and make a clear demarcation in role identifying of the companies the core or the non-core parts setup of the 5G technology.

The risks cannot be eliminated in today scenario and we need to think of mitigation and process control measures from the perspective of hardware and software connect points.
The third-party audit supervision proposal of Huawei brings strong line of transparency and such a thing should be relevantly made the industry standard in terms of transparency.

America's wireless companies are investing an estimated $275 billion into building 5G networks. This will create three million new jobs and  add $500 billion to the economy. In fact, it’s estimated that one out of every 100 Americans will benefit from a new 5G job. The world is looking towards the likes of Ericsson and Nokia to present a competitive front to Huawei, but companies are finding it difficult to match the continuous focus on R&D investment by the Chinese tech giant.

I leave the readers to decide and evaluate if we are witnessing a matter of security concerns or are we witnessing a regional polarization, or the case of commercial interests mixed with political influencing at play or are we seeing a rise of a IOT enabled surveillance system which could be the ‘eye’ of Earth.

Sources and Bibliography

Investigative Report on the U.S. National Security Issues :

https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=96

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2017/05/06/data-is-giving-rise-to-a-new-economy

https://www.wipo.int/edocs/infogdocs/en/ipfactsandfigures2018/

https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/5g/what-is-5g

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-lawmaking-spy-idUSKBN0IL2N520141101

Trade Wars leading to demise of post WWII global trade structure ...

Global geopolitics and policy making are playing their hand through the consumption of soyabeans, washing machines and PIGS.

Yes, you heard it right.

The story began with the Trade with Trump strategy and has seen US at loggerheads with most of its EXIM trade partners threating NAFTA and incapacity of WTO to resolve global egos marred with Trump-o-nomics and Xinomics.

In July 2018, US slapped tariffs in Chinese goods ranging from consumer goods and food products including tobacco, chemicals, and metals, citing reasons for unfair market practices. The situation has seen escalation since the discussions of product dumping and undercutting. 

Currently, US is looking at impacting $1 - 3 Trillion of imports and in a wake to try and promote the local production and growth. Let’s look at the some of the interesting commodities which might have an economical global impact in terms of growth, innovation and food!

A steep 30% tariff on Solar panels is going to impact the already regressive agenda of renewable energy globally. China is the largest manufacturer of solar panels and with the current 30% tariffs to be reduced to 15% after 4 years might impact the uptick in renewable energy coming in from solar power.

Almost 75% of the solar panel installation in the US comes from Asian countries and the tariffs are going to impact the innovation investment proposals for the solar industry in the US and the world.

Washing machines has seen tariff pegged at 20- 50%, which has a market of $5.1 Billion in US. Non US companies are holding a more than 50% of the market share because of cheaper and affordable competition. Interestingly, the tariffs on steel and aluminium will be a double whammy for the segment as the pressure of cost is going to mount.

Reports highlight that China exported more than 22 million washing machine units to the US in tune of $3 Billion in 2017.

The companies have been warned earlier too and have started taking action to avoid the situation. LG is already building its first US facility in Tennessee which would be operational by 2019. Samsung’s South Carolina facility is already producing 1 Mn units starting this year. Eventually, the impact is expected pare down with US sales being bolstered up but the wound would sustain for the years to come.

Soyabeans make up to $14.2 Billion of the agri-exports to China from the US. It’s the largest US goods exported to China. Interestingly, this gap is made up by strong supply, as Brazil has harvested a bumper crop this year. The soyabean futures prices have dropped by more than 18% and continues to be a concern in wake of strong supply. China makes up for 1/3 of the global demand for soyabeans as it uses the oilseed for its animal feed, more specifically PIGS !

According to FAO, China produces 60% of the total pork production of the world and 3/4 of the total meat consumption in China and by 2022, these numbers are going to rise by a minimum 50% upside. China imported 93.5 million tonnes of soybeans in 2016/17.

This calls for another stellar story another time but in wake of the tariffs, it’s interesting to see how commodity markets and pricing respond the alternate animal feeds such as canola and sunflower.

Policy makers hopefully keep this in mind, that, these alternatives have a shelf life and an 

traditional history of standard production mean. This means that sudden overconsumption will lead to higher livestock input cost than sustainable pushing inflationary trends in the wind. 

Alternatively, this will spur research and innovation in animal fodder industry involving duckweed and algae, which will spill into newer foodstock manufacturing in world of gastronomy too (humans included).

Coming back to the trade war, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and too a certain extent India is turning out to be major location benefactors of the situation, as lot of manufacturing companies are now moving production out of China and Hong Kong.

Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum are going to be a salvo not directed at cheaper steel but at the trading partners of US. US is the highest importer of steel, almost at 9% of global steel figures and top three steel partners are Canada, Brazil and S. Korea. 

The alleged ‘overcapacity’ stated by Trump is an accusation for China, which it is trying to mitigate by making it difficult for its steel trading allies. 

Statistically speaking, the world has an excess steel production and is going to increase its capacity ferociously in a market which is going to experience marginal demand growth for the next 10 years. The only anomaly could be huge infra investment driving consumption in developing countries or crippling down of supply chain systems by invoking geopolitical manipulation of EXIM market.  

Trump intention to protect American companies run a huge chance of impacting the American production and margins, which were a result of cheaper input cost from cheaper steel. This might end up impacting jobs to the tune of more than a lakh workers across automobile manufacturing and construction.

I feel that there is going to be inevitable impact from the trade war but the damage from it is more in thought process and policy making rather than $ values. 

The major blow would be to the belief systems which helped setup institutions such as WTO and other world bodies and the many regional international free trade pacts and agreements spawned after the WWII. 

The irreparable damage of germination of doubt and toeing the international trade system has served the global trade for more than 7 decades, the shakeup of the belief systems would be a shattering thought.

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In right earnest, hypothetically, if the trade war escalates and goes to a full blown global fallout, we would see the emergence of more bilateral and group trade agreements, moving away from pacts resulting from regional proximity to more common goal trade agreements between nations. Very interesting coalition would be in order. Here is me coming back to the fabric of reality now. :)

There might be some noticeable impact to the global GDP growth, resulting from the fall in investment except the rearrangement and shuffling of the tariffed goods from US to other countries. The commodity prices will take a strong correction but eventually the demand-supply scenarios will pan out. The impact on global commodity prices might be to the tune of a 20% on a YoY scale at best. 

The major blow would be the resultant of this war which might be a spiral down in terms of investment and innovation in new risky ventures in energy products and smart planet and innovation around the efficiency of current products. This is destined to push the global economy and the larger corporations behind by 10-15 years.