Two small companies believe that
they are on the verge of a breakthrough that had eluded scientists for decades
according to Clive Cookson in an article in Financial Times, dated December 29th,
2019.
This fusion breakthrough would
deliver clean and cheap energy by harnessing the nuclear fusion reaction that
powers the sun. The two companies use different approaches to generate the
fusion reaction.
The failure of sustained attempts to develop fusion power since the 1950’s has not deterred investors from backing scientists at Tokamak Energy and First Light Fusion, two private laboratories based in Oxfordshire, England.
Investors have injected £50 million
into Tokamak Energy and £25 million into First Light Fusion. They are seeking
to deliver a working reactor ready for commercialization by 2030.
This would be 10 years earlier than the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which runs the state-funded programme. Back in the 1950’s, the UKAEA built the Zeta fusion reactor, which was hailed at the time as a British technological achievement. It closed in 1968 having failed to produce any useful energy.
The UKAEA is working on a new generation of fusion reactors based on the “tokamak” design that originated in the Soviet Union in the 1050’s. This reaction vessel holds the fuel—a plasma of super-heated deuterium and tritium –in place with powerful magnets while raising its temperature above 100mC so that atomic nuclei fuse and release vast amounts of energy.
The UKAEA is working on the design
for its next-generation Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production reactor, known
as Step, for which the British government has announced £220 million of public
investment.
“The Step reactor will be an
innovative plan for a commercially-driven fusion power station, offering the
realistic prospect of constructing by 2024,” said Ian Chapman, UKAEA chief
executive.
The two private companies have even
more ambitious schedules.
“We are on course for 100mC, the
temperature at which fusion could begin by next March, 2020,“ said David
Kingham, executive vice-chairman of Tokamak Energy. Its target is to generate
fusion power by 2025 and have a commercial plant by 2030.
First Light Fusion, spun out of
Oxford University eight years ago, is
pioneering a different approach. Instead of the reactants within a strong
magnetic field and super-heating them, it aims to achieve the extreme
conditions required to initiate fusion by firing a large number of small copper
projectiles simultaneously at hypersonic speed into a tiny capsule containing
the deuterium and tritium fuel.
First Light Fusion’s pulsed fusion reactor
“While magnetic fusion is like a
furnace that is always on, our projectile fusion is a pulsed process that
transfers energy from each shot into liquid lithium coolant, ” said Nick
Hawker, First Light chief executive.
He said the company expected to demonstrate in early 2020 that the system achieves fusion and aim for “gain”, which is when the reactor generates more energy than is used to spark the reaction, by 2024.
“We understand that government labs
need to be more cautious in their schedules,” said Mr Kingham. “We envisage
having a 150MW device that we can license to people who are good at building
power plants.”
First Light is already working with
the engineering company Mott MacDonald on a commercial reactor design, with the
aim of having a fusion plant powering the grid by the early 2030s. “I am very
supportive of the private fusion companies and UKAEA is committed to working
with them to help develop their technology,” said Mr Chapman. “The promise of
fusion is so huge that there will always be a place for innovation in design.”
Meanwhile, the UKAEA continues to
manage the country’s involvement in big international fusion projects. At
Culham, England, it hosts the Joint
European Torus or JET, the world’s largest and most powerful tokamak reactor and
the focus of the EU’s fusion research programme. JET has been operating since
1983.
A highlight came in 1997 when it was
fuelled with a deuterium-tritium reaction mixture and achieved a world record
for fusion power of 16 megawatts in 1997, though this was less than the energy
put in to heat up the plasma. In recent years, experiments at JET have assisted
the design and construction of ITER, a large-scale fusion machine with a
reaction vessel 10 metres high (compared with 4.3 metres for JET) which is
being built by a global consortium of governments in southern France.
Beset with delays and cost overruns — the current estimate is US$22 billion— ITER is now set to start operating in 2025. The schedule calls for JET to operate at least until 2024, including more runs with deuterium-tritium fuel, though this programme will depend on the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU and Euratom. Although no one knows exactly when commercial fusion power will arrive — and in what form — Mr Chapman expressed total confidence in its eventual arrival. “We will have fusion,” he said, “and Oxfordshire will be closely involved in making it happen.”
Chinese scientists say
they have completed construction of a nuclear fusion reactor that will take
them on the mammoth pursuit of a virtually unlimited source of power.
The machine, based at
the Southwestern Institute of Physics in Chengdu, the capital city of southwest
China’s Sichuan province, will become operational in 2020.
China is among several
states working on projects to achieve nuclear fusion, the atomic reaction that
takes place in the sun and in hydrogen bombs.
The Chinese device
consists of a doughnut-shaped chamber called a tokamak, which is similar to the
EU-funded Joint European Torus in the UK.
The potential prize is
an invaluable contribution to reducing planet-warming emissions. Fusion
reactions release no carbon dioxide. Their fuel, derived from water, is
abundant.
Experiments in China’s
reactor will provide a dress rehearsal for work on ITER.
The Chinese are one of
seven main partners – alongside the EU, Japan, Russia, the US, India and South
Korea – in ITER, the world’s most expensive international science project, at
£15.5 billion.
All partners have
agreed to contribute pieces of the reactor, with the central ITER organisation
responsible for coordinating construction. The EU owns 45 per cent of the
project and the other partners nine per cent each.
ITER promises to
produce net fusion power sometime after 2035.
Volkswagen battery charging robot, courtesy of Volkswagen
Electric car charging stations remain a major hurdle for electric vehicle (EV) adoption, but maybe, just maybe, robots could help overcome that.
Volkswagen (VW) last week revealed its concept for a totally autonomous EV charging robot. Essentially, this little robot wanders around parking garages, parking lots and the like and brings a mobile charging pack, called the “battery wagon,” to electric cars as needed.
When a robot detects that a vehicle is in range and with a low battery, it will tow a storage device next to the car, open the socket flap, connect the plug and leave the device next to the car while it charges before returning to a central station.
The robot doesn’t hang around. VW said the machine
leaves the charging device with the EV and the robot heads out to find other
cars that need battery juicing.
The totally autonomous machine features cameras, sensors and lasers to meander its way around parking lots. With its capabilities, VW said it can carry multiple battery wagons at once. Each of them houses 25 kWh worth of energy each. DC fast charging allows the cars to receive up to 50 kW.
Depending on the size of the garage or lot, an
operator could deploy a handful of these robots to motor around and charge cars
as needed. It’s a pretty wonderful solution to charging infrastructure needs —
especially in large cities. Robots and their battery wagons would forego the
need to build physical (and stationary) charging stations.
Of course, the robots would need to take the
battery wagons somewhere to charge them, too. However, if they can couple and
decouple from an EV’s charging port, they can surely perform manoeuvres needed
to charge the battery wagons.
Mark Moller, head of development at VW Group
components, said; “The mobile charging robot will start a revolution… as we
bring the charging infrastructure the car and not the other way around. We are
making almost every car park electric, without any complex infrastructure
measures.”
Our Conclusion
We think this is a good solution to the worries about the shortage of public charging points. We believe this battery charging robot will lead to a number of business ventures, such as mobile charging in public places and roaming charging robots delivering battery juicing at residential areas. Car washing facility can also offer battery juicing for EV while it is being washed.
This could mean the ubiquitous
petrol stations would be replaced much faster.
India had overtaken France and UK to become the fifth largest economy in 2019. It will rank fourth in 2026.
The decade of 2020 will be in days. According to
Centre for Economic and Business Research, by the end of the decade of 2020,
there will be significant changes in the World Economic League Table.
In its 2020 World Economic League Table 2020 report, the highlights are as follows:
• The USA in 2019 reached 24.8% of world GDP, its largest share of the world economy since 2007. And the US is now expected to remain the world’s largest economy throughout the 2020s and is to be overtaken by China only in 2033, three years later than we forecast two years ago.
• We do not expect China to go into recession in 2020 and, although Chinese
growth will slow as a result of demographics and greater concentration on
quality of life, we expect China to become the world’s largest economy in 2033.
• India has decisively overtaken both France and the UK to become the world’s
fifth largest economy in 2019. It is expected to overtake Germany to become
fourth largest in 2026 and Japan to become the third largest in 2034. India is
also set to reach a GDP of $5 trillion by 2026 – 2 years later than the current
government target.
• The latest revised data suggests that despite Brexit, the French economy
failed to overtake the UK economy in the 2016-19 period. We now expect that by
2034 the UK economy will be a quarter larger than the French economy.
• Two ‘Western’ economies with particular success in attracting skilled migrants, Canada and Australia, should continue to rise in the rankings. By 2034 Canada is predicted to be the 8th largest economy and Australia the 13th largest.
• Because of its success in diversifying into tech, Russia is expected to do far better than any other energy dependent economy in a world of weak oil prices, falling only one place from 11th to 12th by 2034.
• Korea is set to become one of the world’s top ten economies in 2027.
• Indonesia is set to be on the verge of entering the group of the world’s top
ten economies by 2034, reaching 11th place in the table.
• Three rapidly growing Asian economies are the fastest risers in the table
amongst the larger economies. The Philippines rises from 38th place in 2019 to
22nd place in 2034; Bangladesh from 41st to 26th and Malaysia from 35th to
28th.
Malaysia will rank 28th largest in 2034 from 35th in 2019
• Poland enters the world’s top 20 economies in 2031, reaching 19th place.
• Weakening oil prices through the 2020s will push Saudi Arabia out of the
world’s 20 largest economies by 2028, eventually sinking to 21st in the
rankings by 2034.
The latest edition of the World Economic League
Table, the WELT 2020, is produced by international economic forecasters, the
London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) at a time of
significant change in the world order and increasing global economic
uncertainty. It is Cebr’s 11th annual world economic outlook report.
This edition of the World Economic League Table (WELT) shows some interesting
moves as the world’s richest powers jockey for position.
The WELT tracks the size of different economies across the globe and projects
changes over the next 15 years, up to 2034.
The past year, 2019, has been a bad year for the world economy with the weakest
GDP growth since the recession year of 2009. But the clouds started to lift
towards the end of the year and we predict that expansionary fiscal and
monetary policy around the world will cause growth to accelerate in 2020.
In 2019, any lingering ‘feel-good factor’ from the upswing of the global
economy in 2017 has largely dispersed and has been replaced by renewed
volatility and uncertainty. Trade tensions have come to the fore with the US
and China imposing substantial tariffs on each other’s export sectors.
Perhaps the most unexpected element in this report is the ongoing strength of
the US economy, though we expect that 2019 will prove the high water mark as
the problems of the trade war and the deficit impinge. But in 2011 the US
economy was 21.2% of world GDP. In 2019 its share had risen to 24.8%, its
highest share since 2007. And it is now forecast to remain the world’s largest
economy throughout the 2020s, only being overtaken by China in 2033.
China, on the other hand, has had a particularly difficult 2019 with growth
slowing and Beijing property prices falling. At the end of the year, however,
growth seems to have started to recover and the prospects for 2020 are
improving. Where China has been particularly successful is in reorienting
policy – its success in virtually abolishing extreme poverty over the past two
decades deserves to be applauded while the focus of policy has now shifted onto
improved environmental performance. We still expect China to become the world’s
largest economy in 2033.
Indian data revisions mean that 2019 was the year when the country’s economy
finally overtook the UK and France (as predicted in WELT 2019). But slow growth
during the year has increased pressure for more radical economic reforms. Our
prediction that India will overtake Germany and then Japan to become the
world’s third largest economy in 2034 assumes success in implementing such
reforms.
In Europe, revised data means that even after the sharp fall in sterling after
the Brexit referendum, the United Kingdom just managed to stay ahead of France.
We now predict that by 2034 the UK economy will be a quarter larger than the
French economy.
One of the persistent themes of this report is that countries that are
successful in attracting skilled migrants tend to grow faster. And reflecting
this, Canada and Australia, which are two of the most successful countries at
attracting inward migration, are predicted to rise in the rankings, Canada to
8th and Australia to 13th by 2034.
We have had a chance this year to conduct an in-depth study of the prospects
for the Russian economy. Our conclusion is that they are having some success in
diversifying from energy to tech and as a result, despite our prediction of
weak oil prices in the late 2020s and 2030s, we expect Russia only to drop one
place in the rankings to 12th by 2034.
Poland is expected to join the ranks of the world’s top 20 economies, reaching
19th position in 2031.
In the long run, many Asian economies will rise
through the ranks of the WELT as these countries cash in on their demographic
dividends. The two most prominent examples are the Philippines, which will
enter the top 25 largest economies reaching 22nd place in 2034, and Bangladesh,
which will rise to 25th.
Cebr Deputy Chairman Douglas McWilliams said: “The World Economic League Table
2020 tracks relative economic progress. The biggest surprise is how well the US
economy has managed to do, reaching its highest share of world GDP for 12 years.
Though our view is that it has reached its high water mark and moving forward
the deficit and its trade disputes will start to hold it back. Still, this is a
remarkable performance for an old world economy. ”
“The battle for the top spots in the WELT league table remains fiercely
contested,” said Kay Daniel Neufeld, Head of Macroeconomics at Cebr. He added:
“In December, the US and China agreed on a de-escalation in trade tensions
between the two economic juggernauts.
Whether the conflict, which has been weighing
heavily on global growth, can be entirely solved in 2020 remains to be seen. We
expect growth in China to slow further throughout the year as the country
manages not only the fallout from the trade war but also its transition towards
a consumption-driven economy offering a higher standard of living. This has
delayed its ascent to the top spot in the league table until 2033. Meanwhile,
Japan, Germany and India will battle for third position over the next 15
years.”
“Despite the rapid ascent of countries such as India and Indonesia, it is
striking how little an impact this will have on the US and China’s dominant
roles in the global economy. Indeed, their share of world GDP is forecast to
rise to 42% by 2034. The 2020s are set to be a decade marked by continued
tensions between the US and China on multiple fronts ranging from trade to
tech, which will cast a long shadow over the rest of the global economy.” said
Pablo Shah, Senior Economist at Cebr.
Note:
The World Economic League Table (WELT) is an annual calculation by Cebr jointly published by Cebr and Global Construction Perspectives. The base data for 2019 is taken from the IMF World Economic Outlook and the GDP forecast draws on Cebr’s Global Prospects model to forecast growth, inflation and exchange rates.
Cebr is a leading independent commercial economics consultancy based in London. The report has been produced by the Cebr team of economists led by Cebr’s Deputy Chairman, Douglas McWilliams.
Chickpeas with curry leaf: a traditional source of protein in Malaysia, often sold at a local night market
For a year now, I and my wife had not visited fast food outlets
and steakhouses in my town, Seremban, Negeri Sembilan Malaysia. I eat also a
lot noodle-based dishes, such as Mee Kari and Mee Laksa, two popular Malaysian
dishes. I ask for the ingredients to contain lots of vegetables and fishballs.
I also consume more fruits such as banana and dragon fruits. My local
pharmacist also suggests taking supplements containing zinc and iron.
An article in Times 2 of the Times London on November 25th,
2019, caught my attention. It reported that more Britons are taking meat off
the weekly menu. According to a YouGov poll, one in four
people in the UK planned to eat less meat throughout 2019, while the
annual Waitrose Food and Drink Report reckoned that a third of
Britons have dabbled in meat reduction, some having removed it from their diet
for health, environmental and cost reasons. Last week David
Attenborough told The Times he too was cutting down.
“I can’t remember when I last had a piece of red meat,” he said.
The health benefits are
many. Government
guidelines, which were updated last
year, say people should “on average eat no more than 70g red and processed meat
a day” and the risk of bowel cancer is known. Cutting down, though, needs
careful planning. Just how easy is it to replace meat and not miss out on the
nutrients it provides? The articles noted some expert advice.
IRON How much we need Men — 8.7mg daily; women age 11-50 — 14.8mg; women age 50+ — 8.7mg daily Amount in 100g red meat 2.7mg
There
are two types of iron in food: haem and non-haem
iron. Haem iron is only found in meat, chicken and fish, and is
easily absorbed. Non-haem iron is also found in plant foods, such as
vegetables, cereals, beans and lentils, but is not absorbed as well by the body.
As
a building block for haemoglobin, iron is responsible for ferrying oxygen round
the body and supplying energy. It plays a role in many metabolic processes
including breathing, DNA synthesis and immune function. In the diet, the best
and most easily absorbed form is the haem iron found in meat, offal, clams and
oysters. Non-haem iron, found in eggs, bread, beans, pulses, leafy green
vegetables and seeds, is in a form that is more difficult for the body to
absorb. Some substances in plant foods, such as oxalic acid, also inhibit the
absorption of iron, and for that reason it is important to get it from a
variety of sources if you are cutting down on meat. “There are studies showing
that our bodies do get better at absorbing non-haem iron from plant sources
over time,” Dr Megan Rossi, a research fellow in nutrition at King’s College
London, says. “There’s also some emerging research showing that our bodies
somehow extract a little more iron from plant foods if our stores are low,
although we don’t yet know how this works.”
Offset it by eating
100g of cooked kidney beans (2mg iron), baked beans in tomato sauce (1.4mg) or
chickpeas (2mg) are all good plant sources of iron. A handful (30g) each of
dried figs provide about 1.1mg iron, dried apricots (1mg) and almonds (0.9mg)
will add to your daily tally as will a tablespoon of sesame seeds (1.6mg) or a
tablespoon of sunflower seeds (1mg iron). Boiled or steamed broccoli (1mg iron
per 100g) is a good choice, although spinach (with 1.6mg iron per 100g) “has a
relatively poor level of bio-availability due to its high levels of oxalic
acid, which binds with iron and blocks its absorption in the gut”, says Nichola
Ludlam-Raine, a dietician and spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association.
Vitamin C helps to increase the absorption of non-haem iron, “which means it’s essential
to eat a piece of fruit or have some vegetables alongside a plant-based source
of iron”, she says.
VITAMIN B12 How much we need 1.5mcg daily Amount in 100g red meat 3mcg
Vitamin B12 is important for healthy blood and nerve function,
and works with folate to synthesise our DNA. It also helps to break down
protein and fat so that our bodies can use them for energy. It’s the nutrient
of most concern for people cutting out meat products because it is not found
naturally in fruit, vegetables and grains, so anyone reducing their meat intake
risks not getting enough of it. “People following a full vegan diet would need
to make sure they obtain their daily vitamin B12 requirement through fortified
products such as milk alternative or nutrition yeast or take a separate dietary
supplement,” Ludlam-Raine says.
Offset it by eating
Dairy products contain it — a glass of milk provides 1.24mcg, and a slice of
cheese (20g) 0.4mcg, a pot of yoghurt 1mcg and an egg 0.6mcg of vitamin B12.
Fortified yeast extracts, soya milk and breakfast cereals also provide varying
amounts. Tempeh, made from fermented soya beans, and mushrooms are sometimes
reported to contain B12, but there’s no firm evidence that they are a reliable
source.
PROTEIN How much we need 0.75g of protein per kg bodyweight a day (or approximately 50g for most adults) as a minimum to prevent muscle wastage; those following more active lifestyles are likely to require more than 1g of protein per kg of bodyweight a day. Amount in 100g red meat 34g
Animal protein provides the essential amino acids needed by the
body to produce muscle and other tissue, hormones, neurotransmitters and the
cells and antibodies that boost the immune system. Vegetable protein sources
don’t have all of these essential amino acids, but you can obtain them as long
as you eat a variety of foods in combination. “It’s not an exact science and
what matters is that you’re eating a variety of different sources over an
entire day and week as opposed to obsessing about the protein content of each
meal,” Ludlam-Raine says. Good sources of plant protein include nuts, seeds,
pulses, mycoprotein and soya products and there are smaller amounts in grains.
Offset it by eating
Fish and seafood are the next best protein providers after meat — canned tuna provides
23.5g, salmon 24.2g and prawns 22.6g — and, if eaten with a single boiled egg,
which provides 13g, would match the amount in meat. Dairy foods are also a good
supplier, but soya milk contains about the same amount of protein as cow’s with
8g in a 250ml glass. If plants are to be your main source of protein, it’s
important to eat a combination of different sources (including cereals and
pulses) so that you get all of the amino acids you need. Half a can of baked
beans (9.7g protein) served with 2 slices of wholemeal toast (5g protein) plus
5 tablespoons quinoa (8g protein), a handful of walnuts or hazelnuts (8g
protein) and a 150g pot of soya yoghurt (7g protein) would match your meat
serving.
ZINC How much we need Men — 9.5mg; Women — 7mg a day Amount in 100g red meat 8.2mg
Zinc is needed by the body to function well and is needed for
the formation of new cells and enzymes throughout the body. It is vital for a
healthy immune system and for fertility, but also important for healing wounds.
Offset it by eating
Oysters are the richest source of zinc with 48.3mg in a 100g serving, but we
don’t eat many oysters and meat provides about a third of our total intake of
the mineral. There’s less zinc in plant foods, with beans such lentils, red
kidney beans and chickpeas providing about 1mg per 100g, but legumes also
contain phytates, compounds that can inhibit its absorption. To offset the
shortfall you would need to get zinc from different sources, such as a serving
of red kidney beans (1mg), a jacket potato or baked sweet potato (1mg), 2
slices of wholemeal bread (0.9mg) and a 100g bar of 70-85 per cent dark
chocolate, which contains 3.3mg. Three tablespoons of mixed nuts or seeds daily
will provide up to 2.5mg zinc, so add to your cereals and salads.
VITAMIN B3 (NIACIN) How much we need Men age 19-50 — 17mg a day and age 50+ — 16mg; Women age 19-50 — 13mg and age 50+ — 12mg Amount in 100g red meat 4.6mg
Like
the other B vitamins, niacin helps the body to release energy from the food
that we eat in addition to keeping the nervous system and skin healthy.
Offset
it by eating
One 165g can of tuna provides 21.9mg of niacin and in a cooked 85g salmon
fillet you will get about 7mg. About ten anchovies provide half the amount of
B3 you need each day, so add them to salads or eat as a snack. Two tablespoons
of peanut butter provides 4.3mg of niacin and a medium avocado 3.5mg.
SELENIUMHow much we need 75mcg for men and 60mcg for women Amount in 100g red meat 10mcg
According to the SACN (Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition), “selenium is essential for a wide range of biochemical functions within the body”. Its presence in food depends on how much selenium there is in soil and it varies significantly in different parts of Europe.
Offset
it by eating
Brazil nuts are among the richest sources of selenium, providing 254mcg per
100g, so a handful would give you 63mcg. An egg provides 27mcg selenium and
100g of canned tuna in sunflower oil 87mcg. You will also find selenium in soya
beans (14mcg per 100g), cod and haddock (30mcg per 100g) and cheese — parmesan
contains 12mcg per 100g and stilton 8mcg. A medium slice of brown bread
provides 1.5mcg of selenium and a medium slice of white bread provides 1.9mcg.
White flour provides 3mcg of selenium per 100g.
Many years ago, a Malaysian herb was touted as a remedy for all types of aliments common among Malaysians. The entrepreneur who promoted the herb made a lot of monies for quite a while.
Now, a similar herb (weed) is being marketed as medicines and wellness products to remedy various types of ailments common among Europeans, Americans and Canadians. The herb (weed) is cannabis.
An interesting article by John Arlidge in the Sunday Times on November 17th, 2019 noted that cannabis-based products are getting a lot of consumers’ attention.
It was reported Mike Abbott used to be a north London policeman who arrested people for smoking marijuana, but at 3.00 pm on a warm Tuesday afternoon he takes me to buy cannabis in Camden Town. “I know it’s legal, but it still feels a bit odd,” he says as he examines the cannabis oils in the LDN CBD store, before recommending I buy the 5% strength bottle. At £35 for just 10 ml, it had better be good.
Abbott
is not just there to help me. He is checking out the competition. He has had
something of a career change after leaving the London Metropolitan police, and
is now in the marijuana business himself. He joined a Manhattan-based medical
cannabis start-up called Columbia Care and has risen to be chairman. The
firm makes and sells cannabis-based medicines, which, under doctors’ orders,
can be used to treat conditions such as epilepsy. Separately, it makes
over-the-counter wellness products — oils and creams — that users say help with
everything from anxiety to irritable bowel syndrome.
It’s tempting to dismiss men like Abbott as potheads with a dream — but that could be a big mistake. Marijuana-based prescription drugs and wellness products are growing like weeds. About one in 10 British adults have tried them, according to surveys conducted this summer by Dynata and YouGov. Some analysts reckon the products are more popular than vitamin C supplements. The consultancy Prohibition Partners claims the sector as a whole could be worth up to £100 billion in Europe within the next 10 years. That would put it on a par with the brewing industry.
Britain is emerging as a cannabis research and development hub, thanks to its strong medical research and pharmaceutical sectors. One Cambridge-based firm, GW Pharmaceuticals, is the world leader in licensed prescription cannabis medicines. It has created two drugs that have been approved for use to treat multiple sclerosis and two severe forms of childhood epilepsy, earning it a market capitalization of more than £3.5 billion. Chris Tovey, its chief operating officer, describes the medical marijuana sector as “amazingly exciting for the UK”.
So
what exactly are the new marijuana products that are generating such high
hopes? First, it’s perhaps best to say what they are not. They are
not about smoking weed. Indeed, most people in the medical and wellness
cannabis business are at pains to distance themselves from bongs and Rizlas
because most argue that the superstrong “skunk” sold illegally by many dealers
contains dangerously high levels of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). That’s
the psychoactive compound in the cannabis plant that gets you high, but which
can also lead to mental health problems such as anxiety and paranoia, and may
increase the risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. For these reasons,
cannabis remains a class B drug in Britain, possession of which can lead to a
jail term of up to five years.
There
are two main types of cannabis product that can be consumed legally in various
countries. At the formal end of the sector are licensed cannabis-based drugs —
usually solutions or oils — that can only be prescribed by specialist doctors.
These contain strictly controlled amounts of THC as well as cannabidiol (CBD),
which is one of more than 100 active chemical compounds found in the cannabis
plant.
Two of the most important cannabis-derived drugs, made by GW Pharma, are Epidiolex, for epilepsy, and Sativex, for multiple sclerosis. Epidiolex is licensed for use in America and, since September, in Europe, including the UK. Sativex is also licensed for use here. Before other cannabis-based drugs can be formally approved in Britain, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence say more evidence of their safety and effectiveness is needed. Nevertheless, some families can obtain a special licence to use them. Charlotte Caldwell, the mother of Billy Caldwell, a 13-year-old boy with severe epilepsy, became a test case last year when she tried to bring cannabis oil from Canada through Heathrow airport to treat her son’s seizures. She was prevented from doing so. But when Billy’s seizures worsened and he was hospitalized, Sajid Javid, then home secretary, granted his family an emergency licence to use the drug.
At the other end of the scale are cannabis wellness products. They contain CBD but zero or minuscule amounts of THC. That makes it legal to sell them over the counter here, in America and in many other countries. They include vape pens, pills, chocolates, truffles, gummies (chewable sweets), marshmallows, beers, lotions, oils, coffee, cosmetics, blemish creams, juices, bath bombs and spring water. There’s even a cannabis hot dog. These products took off in America after the legalization of recreational cannabis in some states created a consumer appetite for all manner of new products and the craze soon crossed the Atlantic.
Their
manufacturers and retailers claim the products are non-toxic, non-addictive and
have few or no side effects. Many retailers — even though the lack of
scientific proof of their effectiveness means they are not supposed to —
suggest to buyers when they visit CBD shops that these products can treat a
large number of ailments including pain, anxiety, depression, diabetic
complications, Crohn’s disease, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, skin
complaints, menstrual pain, arthritis, post-traumatic stress and migraines.
It’s
the idea that extracts from a single plant can create both prescription drugs
that can treat something as life-threatening as epilepsy and also freely
available wellness products for everything from period pain to restless leg
syndrome that is getting everyone so excited. “Cannabis is the most broadly
therapeutically useful substance, more even than aspirin,” argues Cam Battley,
chief corporate officer of Canada-based Aurora Cannabis, the world’s largest
medicinal cannabis company, which has 2,800 employees in 24 countries.
Can
this be possible? Even cannabis evangelists concede much more research is
needed. However, it is beyond doubt that we are biologically primed to respond
to cannabis. We have native cannabinoid receptors in our body, forming something
doctors call the endocannabinoid system. It’s one of the mechanisms our body
uses to regulate how and what we feel — everything from anxiety to physical
pain. Get the balance of THC and CBD right in a powerful prescription drug and
it can be used to treat serious illness. Get the right amount of CBD in a
wellness oil or cream and it can help to create a “full body and mind effect”
to help ease everyday aches and pains. Or so the cannabis enthusiasts say.
Anthony
Atterbury, 51, is one. He was a senior firefighter in the West Midlands, but
had to quit when he contracted multiple sclerosis. “The chronic back and leg
pain was unbelievable,” he frowns. “I had to use a wheelchair. I used to go out
and save people’s lives!” Doctors prescribed antidepressants and painkillers,
“but they left me tired and weak”. Then a friend suggested he try CBD. He
started taking one gummy a day infused with 25mg of CBD. Within three days,
“the pain reduced by 70%. I could stand unaided for the first time in a year.”
It’s
not hard to see why such sufferers, who will try almost anything to relieve
chronic pain, might become cannabis converts. It’s less obvious why
cannabis-based products should have taken off so rapidly in wider society. The
answers emerge when I attend Cannabis Europa, a conference for anyone in the
marijuana game — prescription drug or wellness product — that was held in
London this summer for the second time. Talking to delegates and attending
lectures and business pitches, it soon becomes clear that cannabis combines
three of the most powerful forces in consumer society and modern business.
The
first is disruptive technology. The conference hall on the South Bank was
crammed with scrappy young entrepreneurs dreaming of getting rich by creating
the perfect “cure all”. That’s the reverse of the norm. The drugs market tends
to be the preserve of giants such as GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca because it
usually takes years and billions of pounds to develop, test and patent drugs.
Cannabis is more of a level playing field because the plant occurs naturally,
which means almost anyone can get a licence to extract oil from its leaves and
create a CBD product without infringing patent law. Finding backers is easy,
especially in London, where venture capitalists are always looking to invest in
“the new, new thing”. There’s big money to be made. The mark-up on CBD-infused
products over “normal” ones — CBD water versus mineral water, for instance —
can be tenfold.
The
second force the cannabis sector is harnessing is women. They drive
three-quarters of health and wellness spending and anecdotal evidence suggests
that rises to 80% when it comes to CBD. Women are also behind two-thirds of
wellness marijuana retail start-ups. Outside the conference I meet Floriane von
der Forst and Marisa Schwab, who set up a CBD retail brand called the Chillery
in London last year after getting bored of working for big corporations. “Women
find the most uses for cannabis products because they help with problems many
think conventional companies have failed to solve,” Schwab says. She lists some
of them: stress, sleep issues, chronic pain and skincare. “It also aids
relaxation, which can help with sex,” von der Forst adds with a smile.
The
third force is the growing consumer desire for “natural” products. Makers and
retailers at the conference stress the earthy properties of cannabis,
especially in wellness products. They boast of “single origin”, “small batch”
treatments. This plays well with younger consumers who increasingly crave
“clean”, environmentally friendly wellness and are turning away from the
traditional “toxic” products that many older consumers use to take the edge off
the stresses and strains of modern life — alcohol, tobacco and sleeping pills.
“Plants not pills is the oft-heard mantra,” says George McBride, founder and
CEO of Hanway Associates, a consultancy that advises entrepreneurs in the
medical and wellness cannabis sectors.
All
the hype, the notion that prescription and wellness marijuana products are
right for now, raises a tricky question, however. Could all these products —
apart from the most rigorously tested cannabis medicines — merely be the latest
fad imported from America: the new avocado toast? Do they — can they — really do
all the things their proponents claim?
Philip
McGuire at King’s College London has some of the answers. The professor of
psychiatry and cognitive neuroscience works in the perfect spot for his
studies. The nearest Tube station to KCL is Brixton, where the concourse smells
like a 1960s student party. He has been conducting clinical trials on the
effect of CBD on patients with psychosis, or people who are vulnerable to
psychosis, for more than a decade. He describes the results as very
encouraging. “We’ve done two phase II trials and in both we found that CBD
reduced psychotic symptoms,” he says. Better yet, there were none of the common
side effects of mental health treatments, such as weight gain or loss of
libido. “That’s a big deal.” He adds that there’s evidence that CBD-based
prescription drugs may be useful for treating anxiety. “One of my colleagues,
Professor Jose Crippa, did this sadistic experiment where he told people, ‘OK,
you have to give a lecture that will be videotaped and then analysed by a
psychologist.’ Very stressful. Giving people CBD beforehand reduced their
anxiety.” Other studies suggest CBD reduces drug-seeking behaviour. A
breakthrough drug here could be hugely significant in tackling the opioid abuse
epidemic.
So
far, so exciting. But there are many issues to resolve before anyone can be
sure that cannabis products deliver what their backers claim. Product standards
and consistency in the wellness sector are woeful to non-existent. The Centre
for Medicinal Cannabis, a trade body, suggests that more than half of the most
popular CBD oils sold at high-street chemists, in health shops and online in
Britain do not contain the level of CBD promised on the label. One product sold
at a high-street shop was found to contain no CBD at all.
Some
scientists worry that consumers may confuse low- or no-dose products with
high-dose pharmaceutical ones. “The promise of new drugs could be spoilt by
people trying high-street treatments that contain a minuscule amount of CBD and
saying, ‘I tried cannabis products. They’re useless. Forget it,’ ” McGuire
says.
Other
scientists take a tougher line: they argue further research will show that the
trumpeted benefits of CBD, outside of government-approved medicines, are merely
hot air. Dr Andrew Moore, who has spent 40 years researching pain and pain
management at Oxford University, warns that the studies conducted on cannabis
wellness products so far are limited, poor quality, unreliable and fail to
prove that CBD can do what people claim. “I devoutly want it to be a silver
bullet, but I think it is snake oil,” he says. “The science isn’t there and the
higher quality the research is, the more it demonstrates that these things do
not cure people’s ills. It doesn’t work.”
Moore
dismisses conferences such as Cannabis Europa as “more like religious events
than medical conventions” that “generate appalling froth”. He goes on to issue
a telling warning: “We don’t know what the long-term effects of using these
treatments may be. Look how long it took us to work out how bad tobacco is for
us — three generations. We could be making the same mistake.” Worryingly, the
US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration, warned recently that CBD could
cause liver damage and has ruled that it is illegal to sell any food or drink
to which CBD has been added. An Australian study published last month found
some positive results for pharmaceutical THC/CBD products, but overall “little
evidence” that they were effective for treating mental disorders. If Moore’s
fears are realised, a large number of entrepreneurs and investors might find
out the hard way that cannabis is another speculative bubble: the wellness
version of Bitcoin.
With
so much uncertainty, what does the future hold? One thing is clear: the hype is
unlikely to abate. Indeed, the cannabis industry is attracting some powerful
new backers. The investment arm of the Church of England recently relaxed a
self-imposed ban and is investing in medical marijuana. Edward Mason, head of
responsible investment for the Church Commissioners’ fund, which is part of the
church’s £12.6bn investment portfolio, says: “We are content with it being used
for proper medicinal purposes.” That sounds like approval, of sorts, from on
high.
The
language of Cannabis
CBD: Cannabidiol is one of 100-plus active chemical compounds found in the cannabis plant. By itself it does not cause a “high”. It may help treat conditions such as chronic pain, insomnia and anxiety, although scientists say more evidence is needed. It is found in wellness products, mainly oils and creams, plus some licensed prescription drugs that can help treat epilepsy and multiple sclerosis
THC: Delta-9-tetrahydro-cannabinol is the principal psychoactive compound found in cannabis leaves. It creates a high, but if consumed in large quantities can also cause anxiety or more serious mental health problems. Barring some licensed prescription drugs, products containing more than 0.2% are illegal in the UK
Bog: Bog is a filtration device generally used for smoking cannabis, tobaccos or other herbal substances.
Rizla: Rizla is a brand of rolling papers and other related paraphernalia in which tobacco or cannabis is rolled to make handmade joints or cigarettes.
Skunk: Skunk is a
selection of selectively bred cannabis
strains, which scent comes from naturally
occurring acids that are reminiscent of barnyard animals. It also acts as natural
insecticide.
Business Overview of Aurora Cannabis Inc. (extracted from its annual report)
Aurora was incorporated under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) on December 21, 2006 as Milk Capital Corp. Effective October 2, 2014, the Company changed its name to Aurora Cannabis Inc. The Company’s shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (“NYSE”) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) under the trading symbol “ACB”, and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (“FSE”) under the trading symbol “21P”. The Company’s head office and principal address is Suite 500 – 10355 Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T5J 1Y6. The Company’s registered and records office address is Suite 1500 – 1055 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC.
Aurora is one of the world’s largest and fastest growing cannabis companies. The Company has grown both organically and via strategic acquisitions with the vision of creating a world-class cultivation platform producing consistent high-quality cannabis for both the global medical and the Canadian consumer use markets. Underpinning this vision is Aurora’s differentiated, purpose-built growing facilities, which we believe are the most technologically advanced indoor agricultural growing facilities in the world. These facilities consistently produce high-quality cannabis at scale, with lower risk of crop failure which allows the Company to achieve industry-leading cash costs to produce per gram. We also recognize the need for robust research into the myriad of potential medical uses of cannabis, and as such, have built a leading plant and human science team. With leadership established in the Canadian market, the Company is rapidly growing its international footprint to address the growing number of jurisdictions legalizing medical cannabis use and, to a lesser extent thus far, for adult consumer use around the world. Aurora has established operations in 25 countries around the globe and expects to increase this international footprint as government legislation permits.
The Company’s principal strategic business lines are focused
on the production, distribution and sale of cannabis and hemp products in
Canada and internationally. Aurora currently views its primary market
opportunities as follows:
• Global Medical Cannabis Market:
Production, distribution and sale of pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products in countries around the world where permitted by government legislation. Currently, there are 50 countries around the world which have implemented some form of access to cannabis for medical purposes, and Aurora’s current principal markets include Canada, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Poland and Australia;
• Global Consumer Use Cannabis Market:
Currently, only Canada and Uruguay have approved regulated consumer use of cannabis. Aurora has established operations in both countries. However, the Company believes that the increasing popularity of medical cannabis globally will eventually lead to increased legalization of adult-use consumer markets. Aurora believes its investment in international infrastructure and leading global market position today uniquely positions the Company to capture these opportunities as legalization evolves globally; and
• Global Hemp and Hemp-Derived Cannabidiol (“CBD”) Market:
The Company expects consumer demand for products including hemp or CBD derived from hemp plants to be an exciting growth opportunity in the coming years. In order to capitalize on this market potential, the Company has begun to establish Aurora Hemp – an integrated business unit to execute the global hemp strategy. Aurora Hemp will address both food-based hemp opportunities as well as hemp-derived CBD market opportunities. At the core of this CBD strategy is a commitment to scientific research to examine the use of CBD-derived from hemp as an effective treatment for pain, inflammation, wound-healing and recovery driven by the Company’s partnership with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (“UFC”). The Company believes that the most important near-term market opportunity for hemp and hemp-derived CBD is in the U.S. The Company expects to invest in growing its hemp-market infrastructure in the U.S. both organically and via acquisition as market opportunities develop.
Global Hemp and Hemp-Derived Cannabidiol (“CBD”) Market: The Company expects consumer demand for products including hemp or CBD derived from hemp plants to be an exciting growth opportunity in the coming years. In order to capitalize on this market potential, the Company has begun to establish Aurora Hemp – an integrated business unit to execute the global hemp strategy. Aurora Hemp will address both food-based hemp opportunities as well as hemp-derived CBD market opportunities. At the core of this CBD strategy is a commitment to scientific research to examine the use of CBD-derived from hemp as an effective treatment for pain, inflammation, wound-healing and recovery driven by the Company’s partnership with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (“UFC”). The Company believes that the most important near-term market opportunity for hemp and hemp-derived CBD is in the U.S. The Company expects to invest in growing its hemp-market infrastructure in the U.S. both organically and via acquisition as market opportunities develop.
The U.S. represents
the largest cannabis and hemp-derived CBD market globally and as such, Aurora
is committed to establishing a substantial operating footprint in the U.S. As
part of the U.S. market strategy, we are considering how various state and
federal regulations will affect the Company’s business prospects. A number of
alternatives to grow our presence in the U.S. market are under evaluation and
the Company is committed to only engage in activities which are permissible
under both state and federal laws. We believe there are currently market
opportunities that are legal at both state and federal levels that can add
operating cash flows and become critical pillars of Aurora’s strategy and
long-term success.
Market Capitalization of the Four Largest Cannabis Companies
Copper prices have declined more than 20 per cent since June last year, according to Neil Hume, who noted in Financial Tines dated October 5th, 2019.
Cooper has long been seen as a health check for the global economy
because of its wide range of industrial uses. As a result of its excellent
electrical conductivity, copper’s most common use is in electrical equipment
such as wiring and motors. As it corrodes slowly, copper is used in roofing,
guttering, and as rainspouts on building. It is also used in plumbing and
cookware.
Neil Hume noted that copper was trading close to a two-year low of US$5,625 per tonne in early October 2019. Rates published so far last month have pointed to deterioration in global manufacturing activity as the US-China trade war continues.
Copper, which is used in almost all constriction projects and white goods, can offer powerful indication unmatched by other commodities and raw materials. That also makes selling the metal as a default mechanism for investors who have bearish views on growth and China, the biggest consumer of copper. Citigroup analysts have estimated that copper demand would grow only 0.2 per cent in 2019 because of lower grid spending and in car sales. Since the US started the trade dispute with China in June last year, the price of copper has fallen more than 20 per cent. According to data from www.mcarotrends.net , the yearly closing prices of copper from 2010 to 2019 are as follows.
Year
Average closing prices (US per tonne)
2019
6,005
2018
6,466
2017
6,201
2016
4,852
2015
5,449
2014
6,847
2013
7,360
2012
7,959
2011
8,827
2010
7,575
“Copper has endured the most frustrating 2019 out of all the base metals,”
noted Deutsche Bank analyst Nick Snowdon. This year’s near 2 per cent fall in
global mine supply would usually have led to higher prices, Mr Snowdon said.
But a combination of “sluggish demand” outside China and a significant reduction
in the country’s inventory “has limited tightening effect for most of the year”,
he said.
Neil Hume noted that analysts and investors are bullish on copper in the long term, arguing that it will play a role in the shift to a low-carbon economy. It is noted that a wind turbine capable of generating a megawatt of power, which is enough to supply 500 homes, requites more than three tonnes of copper. The metal is also needed in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, as well as their motors, inverters and charging parts. At the same time, it is difficult for mining companies to find long, high-grade copper projects. According to the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2017, the major producers of copper are:
Country
Production (Tonnes)
Australia
920,000
Canada
620,000
Chile
5,330,000
China
1,860,000
Congo
850,000
Indonesia
650,000
Mexico
755,000
Peru
2,390,000
US
1,270,000
Zambia
755,000
Other countries
4,300,000
19,700,000
It is for that reason that analysts forecast a significant gap to open up
between supply and demand by the middle of the next decade unless new projects
come on stream.
Investors beware
A few years ago, during the height of copper prices, we were approached by a company to invest by purchasing copper recovered from construction wastes collected in Middle East. We were guaranteed high returns. Now, a friend and the company are embroiled in a court to recover the investment of US$50,000. Copper prices move up and down with the state of the world economy. The friend was convinced by the company that China, the biggest user of copper, would continue to grow at a pace.
We note that high copper prices will lead to disruption of communication lines when thieves steal copper cables. We would experience sudden loss of telecommunication services. Ten year ago, our remote factory experienced regular stoppages of service because thieves have stolen copper cables, every time the copper price spiked.
Three countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand
produce the majority of the world’s palm oil production. In addition, palm oil
is one of the major edible oils traded in the global oils and fats market. Palm
oil and its products have extensively been used in the food as well as the
manufacturing industries. In terms of supply, the oil palm is known to be the most
efficient producer of oil compared with other oil crops. A report by staff of
Malaysian Palm Oil Board [1] notes that palm oil production is strongly
influenced by weather patterns.
According to a report on potential impact of climate change
on oil palm cultivation [2], funded by University of York, United Kingdom,
global weather patterns and sea levels are changing because of increasing
temperatures caused by human activities releasing greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide has been the main cause of global warming to
date, mainly released into the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels and land
use change such as deforestation, although other greenhouse gases such as
methane are also significant contributors [3]. Greenhouse gas emissions and
temperatures will continue to increase throughout the 21st century.
This will cause higher frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such
as heat waves, drought and sudden heavy rainfalls. Sea levels are also
continually rising with temperature increase.
How will climate change affect where oil palm is grown?
Oil palm requires high temperature, rainfall and sunlight
levels as shown in the table below.
Key components of climate which determine the suitability of
location for growing oil palm
Component of climate
Optimal range for oil palm
Range of extreme values which oil palm tolerates
Temperature
Mean annual temperature of 24-330C
15-380C. Cold-tolerant varieties may tolerate 120C
Rainfall (mean annual rainfall)
2,000-2500 mm
1,250-6,000 mm
Seasonality of rainfall
Minimal: no months with less than 100 mm rainfall
Up to 6 months with less than 100 mm rainfall; tolerates temporary flooding
Sunlight (solar radiation)
15-17 MJm-2per day
7-21 MJm-2per day
Source: [2]
Oil palm yield is limited by the length of annual dry
season, so areas with constantly high rainfall throughput the year have
particularly high yields, such as in parts of Southeast Asia. Although much of
the tropics is climatically suitable for oil palm, there is relatively low
availability of land for planting globally, given other land uses and
restrictions such as no planting on high carbon stock areas [4].
Where will oil palm grow in the future?
Climate change will directly affect where oil palm is grown,
because the locations of areas suitable for growing oil palm will shift over
the 21st century [5]. Temperatures will become too high, and drought
risk will increase, so by 2100, there will likely be around three-quarters less
land which is highly suitable for growing oil palm [6]. A particularly severe
loss of suitable land is predicted for Thailand, Columbia, and Nigeria, which
are all significant oil palm growing nations, and parts of Indonesia and
Malaysia will also become less suitable.
Currently, areas at high elevation and latitude (far from
the Equator) too cold for growing oil palm, but as temperatures become warmer,
those may become newly suitable [5]. However, this will not be sufficient to
compensate for the total loss of suitable areas for growing oil palm. Warner
temperatures, and in some instances wetter climates, will improve the
suitability of areas such as northern Argentina, parts of southern Brazil,
South Africa, Madagascar, and highland areas of Malaysia and Indonesia
throughout the 21st century [6].
How will climate change affect oil palm yield?
Climate change will have multiple effects on oil palm yield,
depending on the specific climatic conditions at a location, and changes to
pests and diseases of oil as shown below.
How factors which determine oil palm yield will change over
the 21st century, how this will effect oil palm yield
Factors which affect oil palm yield
Expected changes over the 21st century
Impacts on palm oil yield
Rainfall: total per year
Depends on location. May increase or decrease
Gain in yield likely if total rainfall increases provided this does not cause prolonged flooding. Loss of yield likely if total rainfall decreases.
Rainfall: seasonality
Rainfall will become less regular: dry periods will become more intense and flooding will occur more regularly.
Severe loss of yield.
Temperature
Increase
Loss of yield likely (mainly because soils become drier.
Carbon dioxide
Increase
Gain in yield
Sea levels
Increase
Severe loss of yield in costal plantations
Pests and diseases
Various changes
Uncertain
Pollination
Various changes
Uncertain
Source:
[2]
However, we do not know how the combination of these effects
will affect oil palm yield overall, and whether
the positive effects on oil palm yield will compensate for the negative
effects.
Impacts on changes in rainfall
The most important factor determining oil palm yield is the
availability of water in the soil, which largely depends on rainfall, but is
also affected by the temperature and other factors such as soil type. When
there is less rainfall, there is also greater risk of fire, as seen during the
recent El Nino events in Indonesia, which is a hazard for workers, in terms of
air quality, and causes loss of yield [7].
Although there is low confidence in predictions of future
rainfall in specific locations, there is more confidence in changes at a large
scale. The risks of drought and flooding will increase across the tropics
throughput the 21st century given that the effects of ENSO (El Nino
and La Nina events) will become more intense [8]. Please also see [1] for
explanation of the ENSO.
Drought frequency and intensity will increase in parts of
West Africa over the coming decades and will become more likely in parts of Southeast
Asia, where annual dry periods are predicted to become more intense [9].
Low-lying areas are also at risk of yield loss due to flooding [10].
Impacts of increasing temperature
As temperatures become warmer, soil water evaporated more
quickly, so the impacts of dry periods become intense. The impacts of higher
temperatures alone are likely to be less severe, but projections for Southeast
Asia in 2100 suggest that temperatures will become too high for oil palm [5]. A
small rise in temperature may improve oil palm yield, as seen on the west coast
of Sabah, Malaysia [10].
Impacts of increasing carbon dioxide levels
Yields could improve by up to 75 per cent in 2100 due to
higher carbon dioxide levels although this depends on the increase in
temperature [5]. It is unsure whether increasing carbon dioxide levels will
offset losses in oil palm yield lead caused by climate change, because the
combined effects of these are not understood [11].
Impacts of rising sea levels
In Malaysia, up to 100,000 hectares of coastal plantations
could be flooded in the future [12]. Coastal plantations can be managed to
reduce flood risk, but the costs of this will increase in tandem with the rise
in sea levels.
Impacts of changes in pests and diseases
Differing environmental conditions may be less suitable for
pests and diseases of oil palm, which would allow yield to improve. However,
there is particular uncertainty regarding pests and diseases in possible new
locations for oil palm. When conditions are sub-optimal for oil palm such as
when temperatures are high or there is limited water availability, palms may be
less able to resist pests and diseases, causing yield loss.
Impacts of changes in pollination
Oil palm in Southeast Asia is primarily pollinated by a
single species of weevil, Elaeidobius kamerunicus. The pollination
activity this species changes with climate, so it is possible that the rate of
pollination of oil palm in Southeast Asia will decrease under climate change [13].
Additionally, climate change could put Elaeidobius kamerunicus and other
pollinators at greater risks of disease (in a similar way, that oil palm may
have greater risk of disease). Just a small number of individual Elaeidobius
kamerunicus were introduced to
Southeast Asia from West Africa, so all individuals in Southeast Asia are
genetically similar [13]. There is a
risk that a disease which infects Elaeidobius kamerunicus in Southeast
Asia could quickly and severely reduce the population, causing a sudden drop in
yield. Please also see our book, The palm oil multinationals from Malaysia, available
on Amazon.com.
Where should oil palm be planted?
The changes to locations where oil palm can be grown, and
the potential yield losses in current plantations will enable oil palm to
expand into new areas over the 21st century. This will increase the
risk of deforestation of suitable areas for planting. In particular, areas at
high elevation will become suitable for growing oil palm, but in many tropical
regions, the majority of large areas of forests are also at high elevation [14]. These large
areas of forest at high elevation are particularly important for tropical biodiversity under climate
change, because they are cooler than lowlands, so species can shift to these
locations to avoid high temperatures [15].
For new oil palm plantations to be viable in the long-term, they should be located where there is low risk of negative impacts from climate change, and ideally where conditions for may improve. There is currently limited knowledge of where such areas coincide with low forest cover, to enable planting without deforestation. The report suggests that the most suitable areas are likely in South America and South Africa, such as southern Brazil, and South Africa, because in Southeast Asia, highland areas will become suitable, but these areas are generally forested [6]. An analysis [16] shown below demonstrates the averages of four data sets illustrating trends in the change of suitable climate more clearly.
Areas (km2)
Scenario
Unsuitable
Marginal
Suitable
Highly suitable
Current
3.32 x 105
6.12 x 103
7.91 x 103
1.79 x 106
2030
2.27 x 105
1.01 x 104
3.41 x 104
1.87 x 106
2070
1.39 x 105
5.67 x 104
2.71 x 105
1.67 x 106
2100
1.29 x 105
4.76 x 105
5.33 x 105
1.00 x 106
Source; [16]
Conclusion
Climate variability does significantly influence the palm
oil production patterns in Malaysia and Indonesia, the two leading palm oil
producing countries in the world. Climate change may expand the areas suitable
for oil palm growing such as in South America and South Africa.
References
[1] Nur Nadia Kamil
and Syuhadatu Fatimah Omar. Climate variability and its impact on the palm oil
industry.
[2] Susannah Fleiss, Lead Author (2017). Potential impacts
of climate change on oil palm cultivation; A science-for- policy paper by the
SENsoSor programme.
[3] IPCC ,2013. Summary for Policy Makers. In: Climate
Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the
Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
[4] Pirker, J., Mosnier, A., Kraxner, F., Havlik, P. and
Obersteiner, M. (2016). What are the limits to oil palm expansion? Global
Environmental Change, 40, 73-81.
[5] Corley, R.H.V. and Tinker, P.B.H. (2015). The oil palm.5th
edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
[6] Paterson, R., Kumar, L., Shabini, F. and Lima, N.
(2017). World climate suitability projection to 2050 and 2100 for growing oil
palm. The Journal of Agriculture Science, 155(5), 689-702.
[7] Noojipady, P., Morton, D.C., Schroeder, W., Carlson,
K.M, Hunag, C., Gibbs, H.K, Burns, D., Walker, N.F., and Prince, S.D. (2017).
Managing fire risk during drought: the influence of certification and El nino
on fire-driven forest conversion for oil palm in Southeast Asia. Earth System
Dynamics, 8 (3), 749.
[8] Christensen, J. H., K. Krishna Kumar, E. Aldrian, S.-I.
An, I.F.A. Cavalcanti, M. de Castro, W. Dong, P. Goswami, A. Hall, J.K.
Kayanga, A. Kitoh, J. Kossin, N.-C. Lau, J. Renwick, D. B. Spephenson, S.-P.
Xie and T. Zhou (2013). Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future
Regional Climate Change. In; Climate Change 2013: The Physicak Science Basis.
Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
[9] Chotamonsak, C., Salathe, E.P., Kreasuwan, J., Chantara,
S. and Siriwitayakorn, K. (2011). Projected climate change over Southeast Asia
simulated using a WRF regional climate model Atmospheric Science Letters,
12(2), 213-219.
[10] Wen, P.P. and Sidik, M. J. (2011). Impacts of rainfall,
temperature and recent El Ninos on fisheries and agricultural products in the
West Coast of Sbah (2000-2010). Borneo Science, 28.
[11] Long, S.P., Ainsworth, E.A., Leakey, A.D., Nosberger,
J. and Ort, D.R. (2006). Food for thought: lower-than-expected crop yield
stimulation with rising CO2 concentration. Science,312 (5782), 1918-1921.
[12] Siwar, C., Ahmed, F. and Begum, R.A. (2013). Climate
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Professor David Sinclair, who could help us live till 150 years
My mother in-law is 85 years old and watches her diet carefully. She sees her physician at a Malaysian government clinic regularly. My wife takes care of her well-being like any daughter would do. She is the oldest among her siblings, who grew during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War. She also saw how the British rubber planters lived in her small town of Rantau, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. In the 1960’s she saw at every evening British rubber planters and their wives congregated at a club house in the centre of the town till the early hours. We hope she can live till 100 years.
We read an interesting article by Damian Whitworth in the Times London on September 30th on advances made in the area of ageing. He reported research works done by geneticist David Sinclair, who is a longevity expert who believes we will soon be able to boost our genes to defy the ageing process
He interviewed David Sinclair who is a professor at the Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, USA. He is a 50-year old and believes that the pioneering work he and other human biologists are doing could help him to live for another 80 years. He is an author of a book, Lifespan: Why We Age-and Why We Don’t Have.
The following is an extract of the interview.
David Sinclair, an expert on ageing, has some
extremely eye-catching things to say about how long we might live and what that means for
the future of our species. He would like to see the 22nd century. “That
would mean making it to my 132nd year. To me, that is a remote chance, but not
beyond the laws of biology or way off our current trajectory,” he writes
in Lifespan, his new book about how medical science is changing our
futures.
Jeanne Calment, who is believed to have lived
longer than any other recorded person, died in France at the age of 122 in
1997. By the turn of the next century a 122-year-old will be thought of as
having led a full life, but not a particularly long one, Sinclair says. Hitting
150 may not be out of reach. And then? “There is no biological law that says we
must age.” We are, he says, about to “redefine what it means to be human, for
this is not just the start of a revolution; it is the start of an evolution”.
Sinclair runs a laboratory at Harvard Medical School, where he is a professor in the department of genetics and a co-director of the Center for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging. He runs a sister laboratory at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where he grew up. He made his name in the mid-2000s when he demonstrated that the natural chemical resveratrol mimicked calorie-restriction in yeast and made the cells live longer. In 2013 he made headlines with his work to stimulate longevity genes in mice so that the effects of ageing were reversed and old mice found new vitality.
I had been expecting, after reading his book with
its bold claims, to encounter a grand figure, but Sinclair is relaxed and
understated in conversation. Clearly, though, he is not shy of making the sorts
of assertions of which many scientists are usually wary.
“Well, the world, in my view, is sleeping on the job,” he says. “I’ve just spent the last two years seeing results in my laboratory and in my colleagues’ laboratories that I thought I’d never see; finding that there’s a back-up hard drive of youthfulness. In 50 years’ time it’s really impossible to imagine the kinds of advances that’ll be possible.”
Sinclair works on sirtuins, which have been dubbed
“longevity genes”. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, made by almost every
cell in the body. They control health, fitness and survival, and require a
molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD). The diminishment of
NAD as we age is understood to be a primary reason why our bodies develop
diseases when we are older. Longevity genes can be activated by exercise,
intermittent fasting, low-protein diets and exposure to cold temperatures,
Sinclair says. “But over time, diet and exercise are not sufficient. We need
more than that.”
That’s where science comes in. NAD increases the
activity of all seven sirtuins. Sinclair’s research has found that old mice
that were fed nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), an NAD-boosting molecule, suddenly
started running ultra-marathons.
NAD boosters extend the lives of mice. There are
indications that NAD boosters may restore the fertility of old mice, and
positive signs from another trial in mares. The implications are enormous if
women can look forward to extending their fertility window. Sinclair is careful
to say that what happens in mice might not necessarily happen in humans, but
“if that works in women the way it’s working in mice and in horses, then women
can start to think differently about their lives”.
Sinclair predicts that another key path to
prolonging youth will be cellular reprogramming, in which ageing cells are
reset — like DVDs that have had their scratches removed and lost information
restored. Shinya Yamanaka won the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine in 2012
for discovering that a set of genes could turn adult cells into pluripotent
stem cells, which can become any other cell type. Sinclair’s team is working on
developing this “switch” to reset cells in the petri dish and then, he hopes,
in the body. He envisages a day when we could be administered a specially
engineered virus carrying reprogramming genes that are switched on by an
antibiotic. A person in their forties would feel 35 again. Then 30 and 25.
“Theoretically you could reset tissue or the entire
body every ten years,” he says. “We don’t know how many times we can reset, but
that’s one of the exciting areas of the field.” The very significant downside
could be that the process causes cancers. “But I’ve been pleasantly surprised
that we reprogrammed mice with a virus last year and those mice are still fine
— no evidence of any downsides.”
A third part of the approach that Sinclair outlines
in his “information theory of ageing” is attacking senescent, or “zombie”,
cells. These are cells that have stopped dividing, but aren’t dead. They can
cause inflammation, and while restoring them would be a tall order, a class of
drugs — senolytics — are being developed to kill them, which should aid
rejuvenation, according to Sinclair.
He is not a medical doctor, so he won’t give
advice, but he does share details of how his knowledge of the frontline
research on ageing shapes his daily life. His aim is to walk a lot of steps
each day, take the stairs, and lift weights and run at the weekend at the gym,
where he also takes a sauna and dunks in an icy pool. He tries to stay cool
during the day and when sleeping.
His diet is plant-heavy, but he’ll eat meat after
he has done a workout. He tries to miss one meal a day or have one very small
one. His sugar, bread and pasta intake is low, and he gave up desserts a decade
ago. Every few months he has his blood analysed for biomarkers and makes
adjustments to his diet and exercise if anything shows up. He doesn’t smoke and
avoids microwaved plastic, excessive exposure to UV, x-rays and CAT scans.
As well as daily doses of vitamin D, vitamin K and
aspirin, he takes a “triple combo” of anti-ageing supplements. NMN is made by
our cells and found in avocados, broccoli and cabbage. It increases the levels
of NAD in the body, but you’d need to eat an awful lot of avocado toast to
achieve the same effect as the gram that Sinclair takes at breakfast.
Metformin, a derivative of French lilac, is used as
a diabetes medication, but shows signs of prolonging vitality. In studies it
has been seen to increase the lifespan of mice, and among human users it
apparently reduced the likelihood of dementia, cardiovascular disease, cancer,
frailty and depression.
Sinclair takes a gram of that too, along with a
gram of resveratrol in his homemade yoghurt. Resveratrol, which is found in red
wine, protects against many diseases and extended the lifespan of yeast cells
and fruit flies. Is this good news for boozers? Not really. The dose Sinclair
takes “would be the equivalent of about 500 glasses of wine for breakfast”. He
drinks the occasional glass of red wine.
Sinclair was a co-founder of a company that was set
up to test resveratrol, which he promoted as “close to miraculous”. The company
was sold to GlaxoSmithKline, which allegedly ended the research because the
results were underwhelming. Sinclair, who made a reported $8 million from the
sale, says that he would love to “reinvigorate” the programme.
His sprightly 80-year-old father is on the same
regimen as Sinclair, who has even put the three family dogs on NMN. He shows me
the ring he wears that monitors his heart rate, body temperature and movements.
This is just the beginning of the way in which we will monitor ourselves as
companies read our genomes and monitor our glucose, the oxygen levels in our
blood, vitamin balance and hormones, and diagnose neurodegenerative diseases
from subtle changes in our movement long before symptoms are noticeable.
Is there not a danger that all this data will
result in losing some of the fun of life?
“You can combine fun and fact,” Sinclair says.
“It’s not for everybody. A third of the population, at a rough guess, is really
interested in their long-term health and would love to have some additional
incentives.”
He has done some “conservative” maths about what
scientific developments will achieve over the next 50 years. DNA monitoring
will soon be alerting us to diseases long before they become serious, allowing
us to start treating cancer and other conditions earlier — that could give us
an extra ten years of life.
Eating fewer calories and fewer animals, doing more
exercise and getting cold enough to boost the development of “healthy” brown
fat, which research suggests correlates with longevity in rodents, could add
another five years. Molecular treatment to turbo-charge our longevity genes
could add another eight.
Then we could reset our epigenome — the control
systems and cellular structures that govern which genes should be turned on and
off — with molecules or genetic modification, destroy senescent cells with
drugs or vaccinations and replace worn-out organs with those from genetically
altered farm animals or 3D printers. All this might add another decade.
That’s 33 years added to the roughly 81-year life
expectancy of a person in the UK. And we won’t be decrepit old people; we will
be full of vitality.
Yet will a life expectancy of 114 be just for the
rich? Sinclair warns that we stand on the brink of a world in which the wealthy
could ensure that their children, or even their pets, live far longer than the
children of those living in poverty.
“Some of these medicines might be very expensive
initially, though they’ll come down in price.”
And don’t those rejuvenated people eventually
become incapacitated? “They will,” he says, but the research suggests they’ll
die quicker. The expensive people are the ones who are sick for a long time.
Sinclair is unusually energetic, and you can
imagine him carrying that into deep old age. But what if millions and millions
of the rest of us are quite happy to be ancient and fit, but just want to sit
around? “We can’t retire at 65 and live another 65 years,” he says. “It’s just
not tenable. It’s not fair to the younger people. There will have to be
adjustments.”
We’d have to address our levels of consumption to
make living on our planet sustainable and to avoid the environmental crisis
becoming further exacerbated by a growing, ageing population. Our social
security systems can’t support half a life of retirement. “We are flying blind
into one of the most economically destabilising events in the history of the
world,” Sinclair says. He doesn’t have all the solutions.
Critics suggest that there is a temptation for
those in the highly lucrative field of longevity research to over-hype what is
possible, although Sinclair tells me that “income to my family from my
inventions is put back into medical research and innovation”.
Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical
School, this year criticised the publicity on longevity studies. “If you say
you’re a terrific scientist and you have a treatment for ageing, it gets a lot
of attention,” he said on the website Kaiser Health News. “There is financial
incentive and inducement to overpromise before all the research is in.”
What Sinclair says he wants more than anything is
for everyone to expect to meet their great-great-grandchildren. By knowing
future generations, he argues, we will feel more accountable for our actions
today. “It will compel us to confront the challenges that we currently push
down the road,” he says. “To invest in research that won’t just benefit us now,
but people 100 years from now. To worry about the planet’s ecosystems and
climate 200 years from now.”
Note:
Lifespan: Why We Age — and Why We Don’t Have To by David Sinclair is published by Harper
Thorsons.
Founders of the video games company, Riot Games, Brandon Beck (in front) and Mark Merrill
In The Tines London on September 7th, 2019, Simon Parkin analysed the British video games industry. He is the author of A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Secret Game that Won the War, which would be published in November 2019 by Sceptre. The analysis is published below.
When
Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill, the founders of the video game company Riot
Games, began planning its sprawling, multimillion-dollar campus in Los Angeles,
they knew that it had to be luxurious. In the early days Beck, 36, and Merrill,
38, former room-mates at the University of California, were content to
moonlight out of poky office rooms. However, when their first project, League
of Legends, became one of the most widely played games in the world they
had started to compete with Google, Facebook and the like to entice the
brightest and best engineers in the world to work for them. At one point Beck
offered to buy a Ferrari for a programmer whom he was desperate to recruit.
In
2015 the pair installed a vast cafeteria as the centrepiece of the new
complex, with a battalion of chefs cooking cuisines from around the world for
Riot’s 2,500-strong staff. An orange grove was planted near an outdoor chessboard
with human-sized pieces. Rather than fell trees to deter pigeons from gathering
around the campus, Riot hired a falconer to scare them off. No expense, in
other words, was spared.
Such
extravagance is possible in a business that, for the winners at least, can be
unimaginably profitable. Recent figures show that the video-game market in the
UK alone is worth £5.7 billion, more than the nation’s film and music
industries combined. And while film production companies and record labels must
regularly release new products, many games outfits, including Riot, concentrate
on one, which they nurture and grow over many years – more like a social media
company than a Hollywood studio.
Sustaining
a game with millions of players requires a king’s ransom in funds, which often
come from surprising sources. Riot, for instance – in which the Chinese
conglomerate Tencent bought a majority stake for $231 million in 2011 – has
made its fortune principally from the sale of “skins”. These are digital
costumes that change the look of one’s character, much like paying a few pounds
to dress your chess pieces in a different outfits. The outfits bestow no
tactical advantage – they are purely cosmetic. And yet the sale of virtual
fashions is, by all accounts, preposterously profitable. The digital fashion
industry was pioneered by Riot Games, which made an estimated $1.6 billion in
2015, much of which came from the sale of virtual clothing.
Digital
fashion is only one of the factors that make today’s games industry almost
unrecognisable to anyone who grew up playing video games in the Eighties. Where
games once came on temperamental cassettes or cartridges, most now are bought
from digital retailers and stored on hard drives. Socialising was once done
around wooden Pac-Man or Space Invaders cabinets in arcades that smelt of beer
and truancy. Today players can go on month-long quests together, via the
internet, without stepping foot in each other’s countries. While in the
Eighties there were no international video-game tournaments, today young men
and women join well-paid professional teams and live together in luxurious
penthouse training dojos with dieticians and psychologists on hand to improve
their chances of winning glittering prize pots.
Success
came quickly to the video-game medium. In the early Seventies games spilt from
the room-size university mainframe computers on which they were invented into
bars and arcades, where they often made fast fortunes for their creators.
However, the market crashed in 1983, a year after Atari paid $25 million for
the rights to Steven Spielberg’s E.T.; the game was terrible and
duly tanked – thousands of unsold copies were buried in the New Mexico desert.
The
subsequent recovery of the business has been steady and stratospheric,
propelled by advances such as 3D graphics, online play and virtual reality. One
recent market report estimates that consumers will spend $138 billion on games
in 2019. This success has been agitated by scores of video-game companies – and
not just those based in North America. Analysts reckon that Grand Theft
Auto V, which has been at the top of the charts since its release in
September 2013, has earned more revenue than any book or film in history, with
more than 95 million units sold, making $6 billion. GTA’s creators,
Sam and Dan Houser, are the sons of Walter Houser, who co-owned Ronnie Scott’s
jazz club, and the actress Geraldine Moffat. They grew up in London and their
games are principally developed in Edinburgh.
The
industry’s ever-expanding commercial clout has not, however, been matched by an
upswing in cultural status. The stereotypical image of the lone teenage boy
twiddling his thumbs in a darkened bedroom has persisted, while a readiness to
blame violent crimes on the influence of games has focused attention on the
baser aspects of a medium that is far richer in theme and substance than
tabloid headlines suggest.
Yet
this image may be shifting. Many who started playing games in their teenage
years have continued to play into adulthood, and the rise of smartphone games
has broadened the demographic of game-players; a 2017 report found that 32.4
million people in the UK play games on a regular basis, and that almost half of
the players of mobile games are women. As game-players age, developers are
increasingly investing in games that appeal to a more mature audience – not in
terms of sex or violence, but via game experiences that explore more complex
subject matter, such as grief and parenthood.
As
the industry has evolved, a raft of hitherto unimagined and hugely lucrative
positions have emerged. Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who is 28 and has hair that is
routinely dyed the colour of toxic waste, is in perhaps the most famous of
these newly coined roles: video-game streamers broadcast their game-playing
live to a global audience via live-streaming services such as Microsoft’s Mixer
or the Amazon-owned Twitch.
The
idea of watching someone else play video games seems counterintuitive, but in
March last year, when Blevins played Fortnite with the
musician Drake, the rapper Travis Scott and the Pittsburgh Steelers athlete
JuJu Smith-Schuster, footage of the play session broke the record for the
most-viewed live event yet staged on the internet. Close to 650,000 viewers
concurrently logged on to watch the match.
Streaming
is making stars of young men and women who, in a previous era, might have
followed a career into traditional broadcasting. Alastair Aiken, the
25-year-old British streamer better known by his online alias Ali-A, is a hero
to British teenagers, who know him principally not from his appearances as a
presenter on CBBC, but for his YouTube videos playing Fortnite,
which have been watched more than 959 million times, earning him up to a
million dollars.
Top-flight
streamers such as Blevins and Aiken often stream for six hours or more at a
time and command influence over millions of young fans (Blevins has 4.7 million
Twitter followers). Blevins, whose six-day honeymoon last August was his first
holiday in eight years, reportedly earned almost $10 million in 2018 through
streaming. He has little time to enjoy his earnings, however – his manager and
wife recently told ESPN that the couple can’t leave their million-dollar home
inside a gated community about an hour outside Chicago without enduring a
Beatles-esque mobbing. Moreover, Blevins feels a pressing need to always be
streaming. A weekend off could cost him tens of thousands of subscribers and
there is an army of streamers – 2.2 million on Twitch, in fact – desperate to
usurp his position at the top.
As
game worlds have increased in fidelity thanks to technological progress, so the
costs – human and financial – of game creation have risen sharply. GTA
V cost an estimated $137 million to make, with an additional $128
million spent on marketing. Some of the top-level members of staff at Rockstar,
the game’s publisher, worked 100 hours a week during the final weeks of its
latest game’s development.
These
figures represent a significant risk to financiers. Then there is the issue of
discoverability. With 300,000 games for sale on Apple’s App Store, convincing
anyone to play your game is as significant a challenge as building it. A host
of angel investors are constantly on the lookout for what might be the next big
thing, but in an industry in which fashions are fickle it can be difficult for
them to know where to place their bets. Last year Jay Chi, who spent 11 years
at the management consulting company McKinsey & Co, leading its global
video-games practice, co-launched the Makers Fund with an initial pot of $180
million to invest in projects with the potential to become the next League
of Legends or Fortnite. (The team is yet to announce the
fund’s performance.)
As
more developers seek to make their games permanent fixtures in players’ lives,
detractors fear that the wider ecosystem suffers, crowding out those whose
aspirations lean towards the artistic or political, rather than the commercial.
Games such as That Dragon, Cancer, an autobiographical game created
by a mother and father that looks at what it is like to live with a child dying
from terminal illness. Or Journey, an elegiac exploration of death
and intimacy in which players drift into and out of one another’s stories,
engaging in fleeting moments of care and tenderness.
These
games explore emotional territory away from the sports-like texture of League
of Legends and Fortnite. They too can prove enormously
successful (the puzzle game Papers, Please sold 1.8 million
copies) and are often more likely to be picked up by critics and awards panels
on the lookout for games that demonstrate the artistic range of the medium, not
just its money-making capability. And yet, while the significant profits are –
this month, at least – to be made in the sale of digital costumes for virtual
avatars, few of the big game publishers are focusing their investment and
efforts on these kinds of personal expression.
This
will, long term, have a restrictive effect on the industry. As Robert Yang, a
professor at New York University’s Game Center, recently put it, the medium is
in the process of reverse-engineering an art form from an entertainment
business. For games to evolve into the art form that they have the potential to
become, he said, “we have to convince funding bodies and governments that games
are worth more than their sales numbers”. This has been a medium defined by
restless change and technological momentum. There are more ways to make a
fortune from games than ever, whether it is building, broadcasting or investing
in them. Care must be taken to ensure that profit-chasing doesn’t hold this,
the most complex, thrilling and arguably engaging medium yet invented, back
from its full potential.
My son, Mohd Harfiq, is a man of fast pace. He rides
mountain bikes during weekends and play video games for most nights. During
week days, he organizes many events, such as youth events and eSport
tournaments. I ask how big is the eSport in Malaysia and globally. He said eSport
is very big!!
My wife, Datin Azimah, is a keen free-to-play game of Candy
Crush. She often “ignores” me for hours when she is playing against other
players on the internet.
Recently, a 16-year old, Kyle Giersdorf, won US$3.0 million at
the Fortnite World Cup tournament in New York. This week, a team of five teenagers
shared US$15.6 million at the Dota 2 International tournament in Shanghai.
According to market research company, SuperData
(superdataresearch.com) , the top ten free-to-play game revenue for 2018 were as follows:
No.
Games
Developer
Revenue US$ million
1
Fortnite
Epic Games
2,400
2
Dungeon Fighter
Nexon
1,500
3
League of Legends, Riot Games
Tencent
1,400
4
Pokemon Go
Niantic
1,300
5
Crossfire
Noewiz Games
1,300
6
Honour of Kings
Tencent
1,300
7
Fate/Grand Order
Aniplex
1,200
8
Candy Crush Saga, King
Activision Blizzard
1,100
9
Monster Strike
Mixi
1,000
10
Clash Royale, Supercell
Tencent
900
The other segment of the digital game industry is the
premium games market, which was about US$17,800 million in 2018, according to
SuperData.
The premium games market by revenue for 2018 was as follows.
No.
Games
Developer
Revenue US$ mill.
1
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
Bluehole
1,028
2
FIFA 18
Electronic Art
790
3
Grand Theft Auto V
Take-Two Interactive
628
4
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII
Activision Blizzard
612
5
Red Dead Redemption 2
Take-Two Interactive
516
6
Call of Duty,WWII
Activision Blizzard
506
7
FIFA 19
Electronic Art
482
8
Monster Hunter, World
Capcom
467
9
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
Ubisoft
440
10
Overwatch
Activision Blizzard
429
The digital games
industry is not only for casual gamers like my wife. There are a large number
of professional gamers who participate in regional tournaments in the US, Asia
and Europe. They can make huge monies by winning major tournaments like the Fortnite
World Cup, its first world cup. The Fortnite World Cup is a 3-day tournament
with a prize pool of money of US$30 million, shared among 200 final participants.
To enter the Fortnite World Cup, about 40 million of Fortnite’s more than 250
million registered players competed in an online qualifying over 10 weeks for
the opportunity to come to New York. The 200 finalists, with an average age of
16 years, came from 34 different countries. Fornite is technically a video
game, and one with a simple premise. At the start, players are dropped onto an
island and shoot at each other until one person is left standing. Each match
lasts about 20 minutes and slowly, the numbers wittle down. A storm approaches,
making the map smaller and smaller. If a player jumps the island, he/she dies.
Fortnite is so popular that it becomes more than just a
game. Today, it’s a social media platform in its own rights, driving pop
culture among teenagers, from clothing to dance crazes. It is at the forefront
of eSports, competitive online gaming that is attracting more sponsors to sell
bigger sponsorships. It is estimated there are more than 250 million users
across the globe.
The main attraction is that the winner in the recent Fortnite World Cup, Kyle Diersdorf, won more money than Egan Bernal, the cyclist who won the Tour of France, a gruelling 21-day riding competition.
eSport have exploded in recent years, helped by the
popularity in Asia, which is more than half of world’s 454 million fans.
eSports generated more than US$500 million in revenue last year according to
consultancy company, New200. Games companies like Epic Games generate most of
their income from virtual outfits to kit out their characters. In addition, the
team that have grown around the games are also having real-world merchandize. A
popular team, 100 Thieves, has created a premium streetwear brand.
Employment of video games industry
According the US Entertainment Software Association (theesa.com), in 2018, the video games industry in the US generated US$43.4 billion. Playing video games has become a leading form of entertainment and an integral part of the American culture. The industry directly employs about 60,000 and indirectly more than 200,000 people. The video games industry employs significant number of people in Japan, South Korea, China and Europe. Tencent of China is the world’s leading games company with millions of players in China. It is also a major investor in Epic Games, the developer/publisher of Fortnite. The video games industry had always been very big in Japan, home of Nintendo and Capcom, initially developers of arcade games. .
Tracking the eSport index
An index has been developed to track the performance of global video gaming and eSport segment. Known as the MVIS Global Video Gaming and eSports index, it includes companies with at least 50 per cent (25% for current components of their revenues from video gaming and/or eSports). These companies may include those that develop video games and related software/hardware, streaming services and are involved in eSport events. The MVIS Global Video Gaming & eSports index covers at least 90 per cent of the investable universe. Currently, the MVIS Global Video Gaming & eSports have 25 components.
My conclusion
The video games and eSport industry is likely to go bigger as children, future gamers, are exposed to video games at early age. In our family gatherings, our young members are usually absorbed with their tablets to play simple video games. I am also quite happy that my wife has yet to purchase virtual outfits using my credit card.
Lastly, this is the only industry that creates teenager
millionaires on a regular basis. Hopefully, not every teenager wants to be
professional gamers at the expense of doctors and engineers!
