martes, 29 de noviembre de 2016

Hoy empieza el III Foro Solar Español

fotovoltaicas 2.0: la nueva oportunidad del sector. Es el lema elegido para la tercera edición del Foro Solar, que será abierto por el comisario europeo de Acción por el Clima y Energía, Miguel Arias Cañete. 

Después, Keisuke Sadamori, director de Mercados Energéticos y Seguridad, de la Agencia Internacional de la Energía (AIE) analizará las perspectivas de la fotovoltaica a medio y largo plazo. Y Teresa Ribera, directora del Instituto de Desarrollo Sostenible y Relaciones Internacionales, evaluará los resultados de la COP22 de Marrakech y lo que el Acuerdo de París puede suponer para la industria fotovoltaica global.

¿Qué oportunidades presenta el nuevo entorno de desarrollo de la energía fotovoltaica? ¿Es rentable construir plantas fotovoltaicas a mercado en España? ¿Cómo se puede restaurar la seguridad jurídica? ¿Cómo deben definirse las subastas para ser eficientes en la asignación de precio y en la garantía de capacidad instalada? ¿Cuál es el papel de los ayuntamientos en el desarrollo del autoconsumo? Son algunas de las preguntas a las que tratarán de responder el elenco de expertos que se darán cita en Madrid el 29 y 30 de noviembre.

lunes, 28 de noviembre de 2016

Hazardous Waste Disposal and Recycling Programs in Ventura County

The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) website highlights common products that we use in our daily lives that contain potentially hazardous ingredients, thus requiring special care when disposed of.

Items that are banned from the trash are as follows:

Lights, Batteries and Electronics

  •  Fluorescent light bulbs and tubes ("old school" incandescent bulbs can be thrown in the trash.)

  •  Batteries of all types and sizes, AAA, AA, C, D, button cell, 9-volt, etc., both rechargeable and single use, as well as lead-acid batteries such as car batteries

  •  Computer and television monitors including cathode ray tube (CRT), liquid crystal diode (LCD), and plasma monitors

  •  Electronic devices including computers, printers, VCRs, cell phones, telephones, radios and microwave ovens

Household and Landscape Chemicals

  •  Flammables and poisons such as oil-based paints and reactive and explosive materials

  •  Acids, oxidizers, and bases including some pool chemicals and cleaners

  •  Pesticides and herbicides

  •  Paints and Solvents - latex paint, oil-based paint, non-empty aerosol paint and solvent cans, and solvents such as paint thinners, nail polish remover, etc.

  •  Building materials that contain asbestos and wood treated with chromium copper arsenate.

  •  Automobile items including antifreeze, batteries, motor oil and filters and tires (tires are not considered hazardous but are banned from the trash for other reasons)

  •  Items Containing Mercury including electrical switches and relays in old appliances, old style thermostats, pilot light sensors in some gas appliances, some gauges and mercury thermometers

  •  Other items such as propane tanks, hypodermic needles, syringes, etc.

So what to do with these items? Recycle and reuse them! Here are some local Ventura County resident options:

The City of Thousand Oaks has a Hazardous Waste Disposal program at THIS LINK.

City of Thousand Oaks battery recycling centers at THIS LINK.

Fluorescent light bulbs can also be brought to any Home Depot store for disposal.

Local computer and electronics recycling centers at THIS LINK.

City of Simi Valley hazardous Waste Drop-Off Program 6 Saturdays during the year www.ci.simi-valley.ca.us/index.aspx?page=243

Household battery recycling centers www.simivalley.org/index.aspx?recordid=1723&page=17

City of Camarillo twice a month hazardous waste drop-off events www.ci.camarillo.ca.us/i3.aspx?p=1022

City of Camarillo battery recycling center www.ci.camarillo.ca.us/i3.aspx?p=184

Cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme household hazardous waste collection events www.oxnard.org/household-hazardous-waste

Cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme Antifreeze, Batteries, Oil and Paint Recycling www.ci.port-hueneme.ca.us/index.aspx?NID=1022

City of Moorpark hazardous waste drop-off events www.moorparkca.gov/150/Hazardous-Waste

Ventura County needle collection facilities www.moorparkca.gov/179/Needle-Sharps-Disposal

City of Ventura hazardous waste collection events www.cityofventura.net/HHW

City of Ojai hazardous waste collection options pwa.ventura.org/water-sanitation-department/household-hazardous-waste

Cities of Santa Paula and Fillmore hazardous waste collection and battery recycling www.ci.santa-paula.ca.us/PubWorks/Recycling-WasteManagement.pdf

Hazardous waste collection in Agoura, Calabasas and Malibu www.ci.agoura-hills.ca.us/government/departments/solid-waste-management/household-hazardous-waste-e-waste-disposal

Gov't to construct $30M e-waste facility at Agbogbloshie

Gov't to construct $30M e-waste facility at Agbogbloshie

The Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency are set to commission the construction of a recycling facility at Agbogbloshie in the Greater Accra Region.

Estimated at $30 million for the first phase, the facility is expected to recycle all waste electrical and electronic equipment to final products in an environmentally sound manner, relieving the people of Accra and its environs, specifically Agbogbloshie community of toxic pollutants generated from the burning of e-waste.

According to Mr. Francis Bullen Gavor, Project Consultant, "One of Africa's Biggest E-waste Dump- Agbogbloshie in recent times has been cited among the top ten most polluted sites in the world. It is therefore important to find innovative ways to manage the e-waste generated in our various communities. With this new facility, harmful elements associated with waste products will be captured and processed safely, thereby preserving critical ecological components."

Touching on additional benefits, Mr. Gavor indicated that the facility together with its entire value chain is expected to generate over 400,000 jobs for Ghanaians.

"The facility will hire existing Workers of the Agbogbloshie Scrap Yard and others who will undergo in-depth retraining to enable them undertake proper recycling."

When fully implemented, it will ensure the value-chain management of e-waste and electrical equipment in an environmentally sound manner thus turning the current challenges of E-waste management in the country into green business opportunities for the people of Ghana.

domingo, 27 de noviembre de 2016

The European Space Agency's (ESA) plans to send another lander to Mars in 2020 are already $425 million over budget, according to a Friday announcement.



The European Space Agency's (ESA) plans to send another lander to Mars in 2020 are already $425 million over budget, according to a Friday announcement.

ESA will spend the cash on its planned ExoMars rover, which will travel across the Martian surface to search for signs of life. ESA previously budgeted about $1.6 billion for the project, meaning that the agency is more than 25 percent over budget. Funding concerns are already delaying ESA's plans for a Mars rover by more than two years.

To continued planned exploration, the ESA needs "a bit over 400 million euros for the project, which includes all the technical work needed to take the vehicle up to the launch phase," David Parker, ESA's Director of Human Spaceflight and Robotic Exploration, told reporters.

The rover will collect and analyze rock samples before transmitting the data back to Earth. ExoMars will be the first European mission to actually be capable of moving accross the Mars surface. The ESA previously sent spacecraft to orbit Mars, but failed to land a probe on the Red Planet.

ESA needs more money largely because the agency's lander, dubbed Schiaparelli, was destroyed in late October while landing on the Red Planet. Schiaparelli stopped communicating with mission control about one minute before its planned touchdown, reportedly due to parachute malfunction. The resulting crash created a 50-by-130-foot crater visible as a dark patch about 3.4 miles west of its intended landing site.

Not to be outdone, China also plans on sending a small 400-pound rover to Mars in 2020 as part of its ambitious, military-run, multibillion dollar space program. NASA will be launching its own $2.1 billion dollar nuclear isotope-powered Mars 2020 rover as well.

NASA is currently operating two rovers on Mars, dubbed "Opportunity" and "Curiosity." America's space agency successfully landed seven different probes on Mars and only crashed two. The Soviet space program failed three times in a row to land probes on Mars.

No country besides the U.S. has successfully operated a probe on Mars for longer than 14.5 seconds.

 

sábado, 26 de noviembre de 2016

As uncertainty builds, is now the time to buy gold or gold stocks?

Global political and economic uncertainty has increased significantly over the past 12 months. The rise of Donald Trump, right-wing political parties across Europe, Brexit, China's continuing economic problems and Russia's sabre-rattling have all added together to make the world a difficult place for investors to navigate.

p>And against this backdrop, the allure of gold as a safe haven has only increased.

However, holding physical gold has many drawbacks. Yes, the price of the metal may rise during periods of economic and political uncertainty, but during periods of relative calm, the price of gold tends to languish. What's more, owning physical gold can cost you money.

Time to invest?

Owning gold mining stocks is an alternative to holding the physical product. Miners have two advantages over physical gold. For a start, they're leveraged to the price of gold with production costs usually far below the market price. A small increase in the market price may translate into a substantial increase in profit for a miner. Also as companies, gold miners look to return profits to shareholders. So rather than paying to own physical gold, you can pocket a nice dividend with gold mining shares.

Having said all of the above, investing in gold miners is no different from investing in any other business; you need to do your due diligence before taking a position. Some gold miners are drowning in debt with high production costs and labour issues while others are cash rich, well run and extremely attractive investments.

A top gold pick

Randgold Resources (LSE: RRS) is one such company. The firm has grown over the past two decades from a tiddler to one of the world's largest gold miners. It will only take on projects with a 20% internal rate of return based on a gold price of $1,000 per ounce. This strict investment policy means the miner hasn't commissioned expensive projects and has a cash-rich balance sheet.

At the beginning of November, it reported an 18% quarter on quarter increase in net cash generated by operations pushing the group's cash balance to $361.1m. Randgold is forecast to record a rise in profitability of 50% in the current year and a further 33% next year. The shares trade at a forward P/E of 24 although they support a low dividend yield of 1%.

Rising star

Centamin (LSE: CEY) is trying to become the next Randgold. The company is having hit a record this year and being on track to produce 520,000-540,000 ounces of gold, up from the 439,072 ounces in 2015.

Centamin's all-in sustaining cash cost for the period is expected to be in the range of $720-$750 per ounce down from $885 per ounce last year. At the end of the third quarter, the company had cash and liquid assets worth $417m. Pre-tax profit for the first nine months of 2016 came in at $208m, up from last year's $54m.

The City is forecasting earnings per share growth of 119% for the full-year and based on these estimates shares in the company currently trade at a forward P/E of 8 and support a more attractive dividend yield of 3%.

Make money, not mistakes

A recent study conducted by financial research firm DALBAR found that the average investor realised an annual return of only 3.7% a year over the past three decades, underperforming the wider market by around 5.3% annually thanks to poor investment decisions.

To help you streamline your investment process, realise and understand the most common investor mis-steps, the Motley Fool has put together this new free report entitled The Worst Mistakes Investors Make.

The report is a collection of Foolish wisdom, which should help you avoid needlessly losing too many more profits. Click here to download your copy today.

Rupert Hargreaves has no position in any shares mentioned. The Motley Fool UK has no position in any of the shares mentioned. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

Where Will Silver Wheaton Stock Be in 10 years? - The Motley Fool

Where Will Silver Wheaton Stock Be in 10 years? - The Motley Fool

Image source: Getty Images.

There's little question Silver Wheaton (NYSE:SLW) remains a premier precious metals stock. As the largest pure precious metals streaming company in the world, it expects to produce an equivalent of 54 million silver ounces of silver and 265,000 ounces of gold this year. Yet the prices of silver and gold have only recently begun to recover, and remain well below the highs they hit back in 2011.

Any sudden shock to the markets can cause silver and gold to rise or fall dramatically, which would impact the value of Silver Wheaton's streaming deals - and its share price. With this variable in mind, we asked three of our regular precious metals contributors why investors should buy - or avoid - this blue-chip metals stock right now. Here's what they had to say.

Solid precious-metal fundamentals and cheap access to financing should yield great results

Sean Williams: Pardon my bias as a Silver Wheaton shareholder, but I believe this streaming giant could have the potential to double or even triple over the next decade. Sound crazy? There are two particular reasons why I feel this way.

To begin with, the underlying fundamentals for precious metals still look strong, even if we've witnessed recent weakness in gold and silver prices. Opportunity costs for owning gold and silver should remain relatively low even if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates a couple of times. Low interest rates mean low yields for bonds and bank CDs, meaning trading out of these near-guaranteed returns for gold or silver may make sense. It's tough to see interest rates rising substantially after more than eight year of near record-low rates.

Supply and demand fundamentals also favor physical gold and silver. Supply has been growing at a snail's pace while investment demand has surged in recent quarters, which is usually a recipe for higher prices. Meanwhile, we're likely to see significant growth in silver demand from the solar industry, which could positively impact silver's per ounce price.

Silver Gold Troy Ounce Ingot Precious Metals Getty

Image source: Getty Images.

As for Silver Wheaton itself, its real advantage is the diversity of its streaming deals and the relative predictability of its cash flow. Silver Wheaton typically works out very long-term or life-of-mine deals with its mining company partners in exchange for upfront cash they can use to develop or expand their operations. The result is no residual mining costs for Silver Wheaton and a gross margins that hit $946 an ounce for gold and more than $15 an ounce for silver during the third quarter. It would take a near plummeting of gold and silver prices for Silver Wheaton to lose money.

Furthermore, interest rates being kept near record lows has given Silver Wheaton access to capital at a pretty inexpensive rate. With the assumption that it'll be difficult for multiple rate hikes to be implemented without a substantially adverse effect on the economy, the company should keep its access to relatively cheap capital for some time to come.

With industry-leading margins and a dividend to boot, Silver Wheaton has what could aptly be described as the best business model within the mining industry. A doubling or tripling of its valuation could be in the cards by 2026.

An even more diversified streamer

Rich Duprey: As the world's largest "streaming" player, with an enterprise value in excess of $11 billion, Silver Wheaton is arguably the premier pure play on silver. While it cut its teeth doing deals valued at around $100 million, it now has agreements with mining giants like Barrick Gold, Glencore, Goldcorp, and Vale, that run upwards of $1 billion or more. They provide the streamer with an estimated equivalent silver production this year of around 54 million ounces and 265,000 ounces of gold, but its future may be in making more deals with small, junior miners for around $20 million or so. Having more of them will allow Silver Wheaton to leverage them into larger financial gains.

The silver market, of course, has fallen hard over the past few years after the price of silver peaked at $50 per ounce in 2011. Today, it trades at a little over $18 per ounce. According to Reuters, that's also reduced the overall size of the deal market available, as well as the size of individual transactions. Just last year, there were $5 billion worth of deals up for grabs, with some individual ones valued as much as $1 billion. Today, the market for deals is around $2 billion and they're going for around $300 million to $500 million each.

Silver Ingots

Image source: Getty Images.

But that's OK for Silver Wheaton, because if it's able to attract more players to the market that might otherwise be frozen out due to their size or speculative nature, it could pay off handsomely down the road. Junior miners don't have the same access to financing that their larger brethren do, so they would likely be willing to give up a portion of their future production to Silver Wheaton at lower prices than they might be able to get on the market in exchange for cash in advance they can use to ramp up their growth.

Pocketing greater numbers of the smaller deals should serve the silver streamer well in the decade ahead, as there looks to be a structural shift in favor of higher silver prices coming in the future.

Same great company, just much bigger

Matt DiLallo: I do not think that the Silver Wheaton of tomorrow will be all that different from today's version, except it will be even bigger and likely generate a lot more cash flow. Driving that view is the fact that the company has already locked in a steady supply of low-cost gold and silver thanks to its streaming contracts. In fact, the company's current portfolio has more than 25 years of mine life left. Because of that, it has a clear line of sight to deliver about 55 million ounces of silver equivalent production per year through 2020. Even better, it only has to pay $4.52 per ounce for silver and $403 per ounce for gold for this production, which should enable it to generate a substantial amount of cash flow in almost any market environment.

That said, while there's a tremendous amount of stability in the near-term, Silver Wheaton has material optionality built into its portfolio via projects currently under development by its partners. These new mines could push its silver equivalent production up to as much as 80 million ounces annually in the years ahead.

Image source: Flickr via Eric Golub.

On top of that built-in growth, Silver Wheaton will almost certainly continue reinvesting a substantial portion of its cash flow and capital resources to acquire additional gold and silver streams. In the past year alone, the company has invested more than $1.8 billion in three different precious metal streaming deals. Given the capital intensive nature of the mining industry, Silver Wheaton should continue to have a steady supply of acquisition opportunities.

Bottom line, a decade from now, Silver Wheaton will undoubtedly be a much larger company given the embedded growth of its portfolio and the abundant acquisition opportunities that lie ahead. If I had to venture a guess, I would not be surprised to see it producing more than 100 million silver equivalent ounces per year at that time, or nearly twice its current output.

The silver lining to it all

The consensus seems to be that wherever Silver Wheaton lands a decade from now, it's sure to be on a plane higher than its current level. While forecasting too far into the future may be a fool's errand, investors can still use broad trends to gauge where a stock is headed. It seems safe to say there is still much value to be mined from this precious metals play.

Why Latin America and China Are Beating the U.S. in Renewable Energy - The Motley Fool

Why Latin America and China Are Beating the U.S. in Renewable Energy - The Motley Fool

Wind and solar energy have come a long way in the last decade and are now competitive with fossil fuels in a large percentage of the world. An analysis by investment bankLazard estimates that as of last fall, the cost to build an industry-leading solar plant ($50 to $60 per MWh) or wind farm ($32 to $77 per MWh) was less than building a gas combined cycle ($52 to $78 per MWH) or coal plant ($65 to $150 per MWh). And since last fall, the cost of wind and solar plants have fallen even further, now approaching $30 per MWh in competitive bids. You may think this dynamic would lead to a windfall of projects for U.S. developers like SunPower(NASDAQ:SPWR), First Solar(NASDAQ:FSLR), and the new solar developments of the Tesla Motors(NASDAQ:TSLA)-SolarCity combo. But they're all struggling to find growth, and 2017 looks like a down year for most of the industry.

The low cost of renewable energy is great, and if a utility is building a new plant, wind and solar would likely be an economical choice. But the key word in that sentence is "new." Most power plants in the U.S. aren't new, so renewable energy is competing against coal plants built in the 1950s, and consumption isn't growing, so there's no need for more generation. In developing countries in Latin America or Asia, the dynamic is different. They need all the energy they can get, and renewables are competitive. And that's why they'll likely dominate the U.S. in renewable energy over the next decade.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why renewables have a hard time competing on cost alone

Wind and solar energy is competitive with natural gas, coal, or nuclear when utilities are looking for new generation. But the charts below show why renewable energy has a hard time competing against existing power plants. Natural gas and coal costs are $20 to $25 per MWh, which is nearly impossible for new wind or solar plants to compete with.

Image source: U.S. Energy Information Administration.

If you look closely at when plants were built, it's easy to see why. Below is a chart showing when coal plants in the U.S. were built, and you can see that the vast majority are over 30 years old, and some are over half a century old. This gives them a very low cost basis for generating power.

Image source: U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The problem is that wind and solar need to replace these old plants because U.S. electricity consumption simply isn't growing. According to the EIA, retail sales of electricity will actually decline from 10.31 billion kWh in 2014 to 10.28 billion kWh in 2017.

Why renewables are booming in emerging markets

While U.S. electricity consumption is stagnant, Latin America and China are growing. According to the EIA, China's electricity demand more than doubled between 2005 and 2013, and Mexico's demand grew 25% from 2004 to 2014. This growth is a big reason China is the world's leader in wind and solar energy, and why Latin America has seen a flood of new renewable projects announced this year. Countries across Latin America like Chile, Argentina, and Brazil are also seeing increased electricity demand, which is a big driver of their renewable energy growth.

What separates the growth is renewables in these isn't that they have more of a desire to build wind and solar. It's that they're in need of new electricity generation, and wind and solar are cost-competitive ways to get that energy. The U.S doesn't need new electricity generation, so wind and solar aren't competing with new coal or natural gas plants, they're competing with plants that were built decades ago and have a much lower cost basis.

Where the U.S. can win in renewable energy

You can see that in places where there isn't a structure driving renewable energy development at the utility scale, it will be challenging to move projects forward. But that doesn't mean there aren't opportunities, and three growth drivers are worth watching.

Corporate customers are increasingly buying wind and solar energy to power their facilities. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and dozens of other major corporations are buying energy directly from power plants, which will drive more adoption.

Customers are demanding choice as well, driving structures like community solar and renewable energy purchasing options from utilities. Despite sometimes having higher prices than a traditional electricity bill, these structures have increased in popularity.

Consumer generation of electricity on-site will also be a key component to renewable energy growth. This is residential rooftop solar and solar or wind power installed on-site at corporations. The cost of these installations aren't compared to the coal or natural gas costs I highlighted above, they're compared to the retail rate, which averages 13 cents per kWh in the U.S. It's a much more compelling economic value to install solar on your roof given the higher cost base comparison.

Will the U.S. continue to fall behind?

The structural challenges in building more renewable energy in the U.S. will be a challenge for developers like First Solar, SunPower, and now Tesla. But there are opportunities around the world in places where demand for energy is rising, and renewable energy provides a viable solution. Don't be surprised if that's where a lot of these companies grow next.

5 Reasons Nigeria Has Become a Dumping Ground For Electronic Waste

Wikipedia describes electronic waste or e-waste as discarded electrical or electronic devices. It added that they are used electronics which are destined for reuse, resale, salvage, recycling or disposal are also considered e-waste. Surprisingly, these discarded electronic devices don’t end up in China, The United States of America, Indonesia, and England. They come straight to Africa and route it to Nigeria. So, why is Nigeria an attractive destination for e-waste? Jumia Travel, identifies 5 reasons.

We love cheap products

Cheap products and some Nigerians are like Siamese twins. They are inseparable. Funny enough, some sellers will encourage you to buy a fairly used product rather than a new one. This, according to them, is because the fairly used one is better when it comes to quality. This is perhaps why we have fairly used gadgets flooding the country. Also, they are very cheap. For some Nigerians, it’s cost over quality. In a recent report, “Nigeria dangerously consumes technologies which have 90% foreign input and a paltry 10% local input.”

Non-performing government agencies

The acting head of the Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) Paul Angya said recently SON has no opportunity to inspect goods brought in through Nigerian seaports which account for over 90% of goods brought into the country as the agency is not allowed to operate in the ports thereby making smugglers of fake products have a field day. If 90% of goods entering this country are not checked, you can only imagine how many of them are e-waste. We also have Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency and The National Standards and Regulations Environmental Agency. They are arguably lame duck government bodies.

Corruption

It is no gainsaying corruption has eaten into the fabric of the Nigerian society. The customs and even SON who are in charge of checking these products may simply turn a blind eye to these e-wastes as far as you can rub their palms or make them happy!

We don’t manufacture anything

A country that doesn’t manufacture anything opens the door for anything to come in including e-waste. This is why the recession is shattering the economy. We only rely on importers to import everything we use in this country.

Anything sells in Nigeria

If Nigerians can buy drugs in commercial buses, then what else can’t they buy? We have the population. So, since anything sells in Nigeria and the business environment is poorly regulated, then e-waste will continue to be dumped in the country despite the toxic dangers inherent in them. And trust Nigerians, they will gladly buy!

jueves, 24 de noviembre de 2016

Gold from mine muck surprises on the upside





BENONI (miningweekly.com) - The recovery of gold from mine waste at Goldplat Recovery in Benoni generates a surprisingly high level of revenue while simultaneously protecting the environment and providing hundreds of valuable jobs.

The London AIM-listed Goldplat, a bona fide junior producer from secondary material, last year generated revenue of R350-million (£20-million) by recovering 40 000 oz of gold from several forms of mine muck. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video).

The success of Goldplat, headed by CEO Gerard Kisbey-Green, lies in its many decades of institutional knowledge.

The profitable, debt-free gold recovery services company, guided by COO Hansie van Vreden and long-serving consultant Dr Bob Smith, takes the burden of environmental responsibility and liability off the shoulders of virtually every major gold mining company by turning to positive account mine woodchips, mill grease, liners, fine carbon, concentrate bags and other mine throw-aways and muck.

There are many mines that are still pumping fine carbon on to tailings dumps without realising that gold can be recovered from the fine carbon.

Surprisingly, Goldplat is able to do the proper and profitable gold recovery routine with the help of off-the-shelf equipment and a multiplicity of processing routes that come with years of experience.

The company, which has both gold mining and gold refining licences, is registered with the Precious Metals Regulator and the National Nuclear Regulator.

Recovered is the gold that finds its way into:
• the wood used as support in underground mines, which becomes caught up in the ore being processed;
• steel and rubber mill liners, which are used to protect the mill shell used in mine processing plant;
• mill grease, which when replaced is reprocessed to recover spillages of ore that have stuck to the grease;
• fine carbon, which becomes available when modern processing plants reprocess activated carbon for reuse;
• "vlei" material, surface material in the vicinity of mine processing plant that tends to accumulate in settlement ponds; and
• the clean-up of gold plants and rock dumps.

The multiplier effect elevates the 450-employee "green gold" company to such a height that it even helps to take things a step further for environment-cleaning companies like DRDGold, by taking in their waste materials for further processing and gold recovery.

Steel from mill liners is shotblasted to remove the gold concentrate and rubber mill liners incinerated and gold recovered from the ash.

Gold is also recovered from mine pond sludges and catchment dams, which mines cannot put through their standard leach circuit followed by carbon in pulp (CIP) because of the presence of "preg robbers" or carbon material that preferentially absorbs the gold.

An important consideration is radiation, sometimes caused by mill liners permeating into the ground.

Goldplat then offers the service of removing the material, recovering the gold and perhaps even paying the company something.

While mining companies are environmentally obliged to deal with their own waste arisings, few venture to do what Goldplat offers because of the complexities involved; some who have tried have incurred steep financial losses in the process.

Mining Weekly Online witnessed Goldplat putting waste material through crusher circuits, five different milling circuits and its own CIL circuits at the busy operation on 22 hectares in Benoni, which also has a rotary kiln, fluidised bed incinerator, sizeable elution plant, spiral plants, shotblasting facilities and a smelter that form parts of the many different processing routes.

After testing to establish assay, moisture content, recoverability and size, Goldplat buys the materials from the mine operator when they become available.

The waste residues that emanate from the various processing routes are placed on Goldplat's own on-site "tailings" facility, which has never been classified as a tailings facility but rather as a stock dam.

Over the years, the company has carefully monitored the exact content and location of the metals stocked in the dam and last year an independent consultant found, in a joint ore reserves committee (JORC) resource classification, that the stock dam contains 82 000 oz of gold, as well as significant amounts of silver and uranium, tallying well with Goldplat's own internal records.

That material will be processed once a new deposition site is finalised, the optimal one being a disused openpit right next door, which is itself an environmental problem and a headache for the government because of its use by illegal miners to access underground workings.

There have been many murders and deaths there and Goldplat has been working closely with the government to have that pit allocated to it so that it can deposit the tailings back there once it has reprocessed them.

The business has been built largely through internal profits. The company has not been
to the market for more than a decade and has self-funded its projects and maintenance expenditure.

Cash-flow positive and stable, the company is now keen to enter a growth phase.

"It's a good time to grow and we'll need to raise some capital for that in time," Kisbey-Green told Mining Weekly Online.

But the internal feeling is that it will not raise equity capital while its share price is at current levels.

Some years ago, its share price was 15 p a share. That fell to 1.75 p a share during the financial crisis. It is now back at 6 p a share, but the company is unlikely to raise equity capital until a price of 10 p a share or more is reached.

It is consequently contemplating innovative ways of raising debt or some other funding.

Besides the operation in Benoni, Goldplat has another recovery business at Tema, in Accra, Ghana, for which it is sourcing material from South America and North America.

It also intends sourcing material from the rest of West Africa and East Africa, where it has a contract with a gold mine in Tanzania.

In South Africa, all of the major gold-mining companies, with the exception of Harmony Gold, are Goldplat clients.

Many of these companies are also in West Africa, and some of them are in South America and Australia.

"A nice entry into a new region is to follow our existing clients because they know us, understand us and trust us.

"We've done business with them and have contracts with them, so it's very easy to leverage those relationships into the new regions in the first instance. Then once you've got business going, then you look to the other clients as well," Kisbey-Green commented.

The South African Goldplat Recovery company is 26%-owned by black economic empowerment company NMT Capital, which has three nonexecutive directors on the board, one being the chairperson of the company, Sango Ntsaluba.

Goldplat GM Esau Mokoteli joined the group in April from the AngloGold mine Savuka on the West Wits.

Smith, a founding member of the company, was joined three and a half years ago by COO Van Vreden, formerly of AngloGold Ashanti, where he was a bursar and worked for ten years, including at Sunrise Dam in Western Australia.

Smith pioneered the commercialisation of the carbon-in-pulp (CIP) gold recovery process at Modderfontein 74, which later became Consolidated Modderfontein Mine, as part of Lucas Pouroulis's Golden Dumps company.

"The commercial CIP plant was built on this site," Smith recalled.

Gold Recovery Ghana is considerably smaller than the South African recovery operation.

The Role of Gold in Renewable Energy

There are a number of economic issues that are being raised by the global shift toward more sustainable forms of generating energy. Even if we allow that this transition will be gradual, the implications are still rather significant for markets around the world.

We have already begun to see changes related to the emergence of “green technology,” including when it comes to the precious metals. What you may not realize, however, is that gold—in addition to silver, platinum, and palladium—could play a key role in possible renewable energy technologies.

Catalytic Converters

One area of focus for environmentalists has undoubtedly been the effect of automobile emissions on pollution and the climate. The primary mechanism in car exhaust systems for reducing such emissions is a device called a catalytic converter. Its main components are made of platinum and palladium.

However, new research by the World Gold Council (WGC) suggests that “Gold can [also] act as a catalyst (a material that accelerates chemical reactions without being consumed in the process) effective in reducing hazardous vehicular emissions.”

Moreover, the WGC has shown that using “gold alongside . . . platinum and palladium . . . can reduce the cost of the devices.” While this new technology using gold made its debut on the international markets in 2011, the council is continuing to support manufacturers in adoptingcatalytic converters that include gold.

With automobile demand around the world remaining strong, a sharp rise in platinum or palladium prices could make using a small amount of gold in catalytic converters an attractive alternative. This is particularly relevant with tightening supplies of these two Platinum Group Metals.

Solar Panels

solar-workers-panels-installation

Harnessing solar energy is another promising green technology that could mitigate our reliance upon burning fossil fuels. Silver is an important component of solar cells. The steep rise in orders for solar panels over the next five years have therefore forecast greater industrial demand for silver in the future.

Interestingly, scientists and engineers are now finding that gold nanoparticles have the potential to improve the efficiency of solar cells as fuel cell catalysts. More research could reveal other key industrial uses for gold in protecting the environment. For instance, the treatment of contaminated groundwater may soon involve gold. Researchers at Rice University have successfully removed chlorinated compounds from water with the help of gold and palladium as catalysts.

With the goal of maintaining a clean air and water supply in focus, more possibilities for the usefulness of gold in reaching environmental initiatives will likely continue to come to light.

Gold is getting slammed

aQPWMarkets Insider

Gold slumped on Wednesday after the durable goods report showed that US business spending continued to rebound last month.

Orders for things built to last such as appliances rose 4.8%, the Census Bureau said, while business capital goods orders increased by 0.4%, more than forecast.

Gold has been hit by expectations that the policies of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will boost economic growth as well as strong U.S. data that has supported the case for an interest rate rise.

The precious metal was earlier weighed down by a strong dollar, though some analysts said that bullion could receive support from European political risks in the coming months.

Gold futures were down 2%, or $25.13 an ounce, to $1,188 at 11:38 a.m. ET. Spot gold fell below $1,200 for the first time since February.

Gold has shed about 10 percent from a peak hit in the aftermath of the U.S. election two weeks ago.

"It's been a pretty dreadful time forgold. Everything that's good for growth has been negative for gold," said Robin Bhar, head of metals research at Societe Generale in London.

With traders pricing in a 100 percent chance of a December rate increase, according to the CME Group's FedWatch Tool, gold's decline may be bottoming out, Bhar added.

"I suspect that maybe 70 percent of the rate rise is priced into the market, and when it comes through, you may have 'sell the rumor and buy the fact'," he said.

The U.S. Federal Reserve next meets Dec. 13-14.

Uncertainty surrounding Italy's constitutional referendum on Dec. 4 and French and German elections next year could support gold through safe-haven buying, Bhar said.

"Seasonally, as we move towards Christmas, New Year and Chinese New Year, that should see some physical support."

Gold is highly sensitive to rising interest rates, which lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets such as bullion while boosting the dollar, in which it is priced. The dollar was steady on Wednesday near a recent 13-1/2 year peak.

While Trump's victory has spurred safe-haven buying of physical gold in Europe, traditional bullion holders in the United States are standing pat.

Another analyst believes that gold is vulnerable to more losses in the short term.

"We suspect that the precious metal will be under further pressure, likely taking out $1,200 support in fairly short order," INTL FCStone analyst Edward Meir said in a note.

Silver fell 0.7 percent to $16.52 an ounce and platinum shed 0.2 percent to $934.95.

Palladium gained 0.2 percent to $741.30, having touched its highest since early June at $749.40 in the previous session.

Why Are Investors Dumping Gold? Another Victim Of A Strong U.S. Dollar

Why Are Investors Dumping Gold? Another Victim Of A Strong U.S. Dollar

Gold rises as a safe haven when investors fear a recession, inflation increases or the U.S. dollar plummets, making the precious metal cheaper for foreign investors.

Well, none of these things are happening right now. Indeed, quite the opposite is happening. Gold prices fell to their lowest level in nine months. What's driving gold's decline?

Gold prices hit a nine-month low

Gold prices hit a nine-month low. Source: MetalMiner analysis of @stockcharts.com data.

The Case For A Bull Stock Market

To be honest, I've been pretty skeptical of the U.S. stock market. Market indexes have traded sideways for almost two years. Still, they have avoided a severe bear market. The day Donald Trump was elected, markets opened sharply lower as fear consumed traders. But stock markets love to do the unexpected and indexes are now back to trading in record territory.

S&P 500 surges following Trump victory

The S&P 500 surges following the Trump victory. Source: MetalMiner analysis of @stockcharts.com data.

Such action is a hint that equity trading desks and large funds aren't finished buying stocks yet. The question is: will Donald Trump's presidency for the next four years be just what the doctor prescribed to keep this aging bull stock market going, even after seven-plus years of gains behind its back? Could the rise in equities even accelerate?

That's too big of a guess. However, going back in history we noticed that in 1982, the stock market was on what it looked like the cusp of a major bull market. But soon after, the new president - Ronald Reagan - slashed taxes and unleashed a super bull market that lasted until the year 2000.

Not saying that history will precisely repeat itself, but the investing crowd is already making some strong bets even before Trump becomes president in January. So far, that hasn't helped gold as a safe haven.

The US Dollar Hits a 13-year High

Perhaps, the biggest factor driving gold prices south is a surging dollar.

Dollar Index rises to the highest levels in 13 years

The US dollar Index rises to its highest levels in 13 years. Source: MetalMiner analysis of @stockcharts.com data.

The U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the performance of the dollar against a basket of currencies, continues to rise following President-Elect Donald Trump's victory.

Investors expect Trump's proposals to boost fiscal spending, cut taxes and loosen regulation. They also believe he will accelerate economic growth and boost inflation, bolstering the case for the Federal Reserve to raise U.S. interest rates. Expectations for an interest-rate hike in December's meeting have risen to more than 90%, up from 30% at the beginning of the month. Higher rates make the currency more attractive for yield-seeking investors.

A rising dollar depresses commodity prices, especially precious metals. It does have less of an effect on more economically-sensitive groups like energy and industrial metals. Indeed, industrial metals are on the rise despite a strong dollar. This is because the dollar is rising on expectations of higher rates down the road but, at the same time, metal prices are getting an additional boost because of Trump's plans to spend big on the nation's infrastructure. However, gold's demand won't be affected by infrastructure spending. As a result, investors are left without reasons to buy gold at this moment.

sábado, 19 de noviembre de 2016

Leaked map reveals chronic mercury epidemic in Peru

Leaked map reveals chronic mercury epidemic in Peru

People living upriver from gold-mining are the most contaminated, according to US-based scientists

 Fish from the River Madre de Dios in Peru. Fish consumption is considered one of the two main ways mercury contamination has spread among local inhabitants - including those living upriver from gold-mining. Photograph: Cris Bouroncle

Ask about the fish in restaurants in the centre of Puerto Maldonado, the biggest town in Peru’s south-east Amazon, and you’ll hear all kinds of things. Some people will shake their heads and say there isn’t any fish on the menu “because of the contamination” or “out of protocol”. Others might say there is fish available, before sometimes hastily clarifying that it comes from farms along the Inter-Oceanica Highway running to Brazil, or from the Pacific coast, or even, according to one chef, all the way from Vietnam.

Why such problems with the fish in this part of the Amazon? Answer: alluvial gold and the mercury required to extract it. The gold-rush in the 8.5m hectare Madre de Dios region began in the 1980s and, by 2012, miners had destroyed more than 50,000 hectares of forest, effectively dumping 100s of tons of mercury into the rivers while doing so. In May this year Peru’s outgoing government announced a pathetic 60-day “declaration of emergency”.


An image of a unpublished map obtained by the Guardian, based on “preliminary results” from studies of local inhabitants by the Duke Global Health Institute in the US, provides some idea of how widely-spread and severe the mercury contamination is across Madre de Dios. Arguably the map’s most alarming revelation is that the most contaminated area of all is upstream from the mining: the stretch of the River Madre de Dios between towns called Boca Colorado and Boca Manu, a significant part of which is in the buffer zone of the Manu national park, which Unesco calls the most biodiverse place on earth.

“It is noteworthy that some areas with high averages of mercury are upriver from the mining zones,” states the map, which was shown to Health Ministry officials earlier this year.

The map suggests the second worse-hit area is insidethe Manu park itself, immediately upriver from Boca Manu, along the River Manu’s left bank. The right bank is affected too. William Pan, the study’s lead researcher, told the Guardian “we didn’t sample people in Manu national park”, but explains the map on the basis that his teams have sampled several communities “along that bend of the river (Rio Manu/Rio Madre de Dios)” and “the map smoothing method creates a 10km buffer around the study sites and the exposure is extrapolated”.

According to US-based scientists, the people living upriver from gold-mining in Peru’s Madre de Dios region are the most contaminated by mercury. The worst-affected areas are shaded in red, the second-worst in orange, the third worst yellow. “µg/kg” should read “mg/kg.”
 According to US-based scientists, the people living upriver from gold-mining in Peru’s Madre de Dios region are the most contaminated by mercury. The worst-affected areas are shaded in red, the second-worst in orange, the third worst yellow. “µg/kg” should read “mg/kg.” Photograph: Anon.

How come people upstream are the most contaminated? Or maybe the mercury there has little or nothing to do with gold? As acknowledged by a 2011 report by the Environment Ministry, titled Gold-mining and Mercury Contamination in Madre de Dios: a Time-Bomb, mercury stored naturally in Amazon soil and vegetation is released when the forest is cut down or burnt and then leaches into the water.

as “very high” and says Madre de Dios is experiencing a “chronic mercury epidemic.” The contamination upstream was, he says, “the most surprising finding of our human Hg [mercury] assessment.”

“The communities near the confluence of Rio Manu and Rio Madre de Dios have the highest exposures in the region,” Pan told the Guardian. “When we tested fish, water and sediment, none of the values were high. So we were surprised when people were detected with high levels. We have several hypotheses that we are evaluating.”

According to Pan, those hypotheses are the people in that region migrate downriver to work in the mining, and that they are more dependent than the rest of Madre de Dios on local agriculture, fish and meat because there are no roads. Another is that “due to reliance on fish consumption, they are likely eat larger fish, which will have more Hg just naturally”.

Pan says the map was “supposed to be confidential with the Ministry of Health” because it is “unpublished data and we have not fully analysed all the samples,” calling it “very crude” and far from final. He told the Guardian it is based on three distinct studies conducted between May 2014 and June 2016, and the final results will include samples from almost 72 sites. He says the Health Ministry has “real monetary constraints right now due to expenditures of the prior ministry”.

Previous research by Pan and colleagues argued that mercury contamination is generating “significant health risks” for communities in Madre de Dios “hundreds of kilometres” downstream from the mining, particularly among children and indigenous people.

“Children living within the central portion of the [Madre de Dios] watershed cannot safely consume carnivorous fish without exceeding recommended international [mercury] body burdens,” stated an article by Pan et al in Environmental Science in January 2015. “Deforestation and mercury release are an immediate threat to both local and distant downstream communities, many of which do not benefit economically from [the mining].”

The law announcing Peru’s declaration of emergency in May stated that many people in Madre de Dios have “higher than the maximum recommended limits” of mercury, which causes “serious, chronic and complex health problems, particularly in children and pregnant women.”

“[M]ercury contamination of the air, water, sediment and fish is the result of inadequate practices by illegal and informal gold-miners during the extraction and working of alluvial gold,” the law stated. “In addition, there are people located beyond the mining extraction zones that are at high risk of being contaminated with mercury because of the high levels of it detected in the environment and in certain fish species, especiallyMota Punteada, which is part of the daily diet of Madre de Dios’s population.”

The social and environmental tragedy unfolding in Madre de Dios has been known about for many years: the Ministry of Environment dubbed it a “time-bomb” five years ago, but the bomb was ticking long before that. Will Peru’s new government, led by president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, now take sincere, sustainable, non-violent steps to address the problem - not just in the Boca Manu region, obviously, but across Madre de Dios and Peru’s Amazon as a whole? What steps can the government take to initiate a massive public health campaign and inform those who are contaminated, or are at risk, and provide access to treatment – and if it doesn’t have the funds do so, who can provide them? What forms of alternative employment can be created, so those who find themselves forced to mine and handle mercury have other options? What steps can those buying, selling, hoarding, working and wearing Peruvian gold take to ensure they stop contributing to the devastation of huge swathes of the Amazon and the contamination of 1,000s of people living there?

The World Health Organization calls mercury “one of the top ten chemicals or groups of chemicals of major public health concern”, and states that human activity, including gold-mining and coal-fired power stations, is the “main cause of mercury releases.”

Peru is one of the world’s biggest gold producers, with the main importers being Canada, India, Switzerland, the UK and the US. A report published in April by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime argued that 28% of all gold in Peru is illegal, with illegal gold-mining across Latin America increasingly controlled by drugs traffickers and “organized crime” groups.

In January Peru ratified the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a legally-binding global treaty which commits parties to regulate artisanal and small-scale mining, among other things, and states that “parties may cooperate with each other” to stop altogether the use of mercury or mercury compounds in such mining. Switzerland has ratified the Convention too, but not Canada, India or the UK.

Peru’s Health Ministry did not respond to questions










viernes, 18 de noviembre de 2016

3 Steps You Must Take Before Recycling Your Old Cell Phone

3 Steps You Must Take Before Recycling Your Old Cell Phone

There's no question that recycling or donating your old cell phone is the responsible, earth-friendly thing to do, but there are a few key precautions to take before handing off a trove of personal information to a total stranger

   

ISTOCK/MIKKELWILLIAM

When you’re ready for a shiny new high-tech phone, it’s a great idea to donate or recycle your old one, because it saves energy and protects natural resources through waste reduction. But first, besides making sure to disconnect your cell service, take these important steps to protect and preserve your personal data.

1. Back it up. If you want to keep files such as music, photos, or documents—basically anything that’s stored on the handset, you’ll need to transfer them. You can back up files to a memory card, or store them online by backing them up to the cloud. The method of backing up files to the cloud can vary by handset, as different manufacturers offer different cloud solutions, so it is always a good idea to either call customer service or do a little research regarding your particular cell phone model.

2. Remove the SIM card and memory card.Once you’ve backed everything up, remove the SIM card and any internal storage such as an SD card. Sometimes contacts and other data can end up being stored on the SIM card, so even if you have disconnected your cell service and don’t need the SIM anymore, it’s always best to remove it before donating or recycling your phone.

3. Perform a factory reset. Once you’re confident that you have everything backed up and saved, it’s time to wipe your phone by performing a factory reset. Consumer Reports recommends that you encrypt your device first, then perform a factory reset—how you do that exactly will vary according to your cell phone’s operating system.


I f you have enough smartphones, you could 'mine' a gold ring


World-Changing Ideas Recycling

If you have enough smartphones, you could 'mine' a gold ring


Smartphones contain gold, but how much? Our infographic explains below, inspired by the e-waste recycling research of Veena Sahajwalla at the University of New South Wales, who presented at our World-Changing Ideas Summit on 15 November.



The London market opened lower, with a fall in the gold price weighing on the shares of mining companies.

NThe London market opened lower, with a fall in the gold price weighing on the shares of mining companies.

The benchmark FTSE 100 share index dropped 41.49 points to 6,753.22.

Shares in Randgold Resources fell nearly 7% while gold and silver miner Fresnillo dropped 5.3%.

The price of gold dropped 1% to $1,203.86 an ounce on Friday, the lowest since May. The gold price has been hit by rising expectations that US interest rates will rise next month.

el Londres mercado abierto más baja, con una caída en el precio del oro de peso en las acciones de empresas mineras. el índice de referencia FTSE 100 compartir índice se redujo 41.49 puntos a 6,753.22. acciones en randgold recursos cayó casi 7%, mientras que el oro y Plata minero Fresnillo cayó 5.3%. el precio del oro se redujo 1% a $ 1,203.86 una onza el viernes, el más bajo desde mayo. el precio del oro ha sido golpeado por el aumento de las expectativas de que nos las tasas de interés subirá mes que viene. el jueves, el presidente de la reserva Federal, Janet yellen, indicó que los Estados Unidos del Banco central podría aumentar las tasas de interés "relativamente pronto". en el FTSE 250, las acciones en electrocomponents saltó 10% después de que el distribuidor de componentes electrónicos informó un 76% de salto en la mitad de año beneficios £ 55.1m, y levantó su objetivo de ahorro de costes. en los mercados de divisas, la libra fue sin cambios en contra del dólar en $ 1.2419, pero se levantó 0.2% en contra del euro a € 1.1709.

On Thursday, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, indicated that the US central bank could raise interest rates "relatively soon".

In the FTSE 250, shares in Electrocomponents jumped 10% after the electronic component distributor reported a 76% jump in half-year profits to £55.1m, and raised its target for cost savings.

On the currency markets, the pound was unchanged against the dollar at $1.2419, but rose 0.2% against the euro to €1.1709.