<ul class="summary-list"><li>Soaring fertilizer prices as a result of the conflict may mean a food crisis, the fertilizer tycoon warned.</li><li><keyword id="11894337" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="russia" source="Orion">Russia</keyword> has banned some Russian exports, including fertilizers, amid Western sanctions.</li></ul><p>Sanctioned Russian fertilizer and coal tycoon, Andrey Melnichenko, has warned that the Russian invasion of <keyword id="11985141" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ukraine" source="Orion">Ukraine</keyword> will lead to a world food crisis and called for the war to end.</p><p>"The events in Ukraine are truly tragic. We urgently need peace. As Russian by nationality, Belarusian by birth, and Ukrainian by blood, I feel great pain and disbelief witnessing the brotherly peoples are fighting and dying," Melnichenko said in comments sent by his spokesperson to Insider.</p><p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/exclusive-ukraine-war-must-end-russias-fertiliser-coal-king-says-2022-03-14/">Reuters first reported</a> Melnichenko's comments.</p><p>"One of the victims of this crisis will be agriculture and food," Melnichenko also said, adding that the war has "already led to soaring prices in fertilisers which are no longer affordable to farmers."</p><p>The Russian billionaire is the founder of Russia's largest ammonium nitrate and coal producers, EuroChem and SUEK. He is also among the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-oligarch-andrey-melnichenko-578-million-yacht-seized-by-italy-2022-3">Russian oligarchs</a> who have been targeted by Western sanctions due to the conflict. </p><p>Russia's invasion has dramatically pushed up the cost of key agricultural commodities such as wheat and corn, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/collapse-of-ukraines-biggest-food-producer-catastrophic-2022-3">imperiled food supplies.</a></p><p>The war threatens to disrupt production in Ukraine, which is a major exporter of the grains. Russian exports are also expected to be curbed as the packages of sanctions imposed on Russia prevent many firms from conducting business with the country.</p><p>The fallout of the conflict has also seen <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ukraine-inflation-lifting-prices-american-shoppers-gas-wheat-nickel-2022-3#5-fertilizer-5">fertilizer prices soar</a>, adding to farmers' costs, and further <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-russias-invasion-ukraine-means-global-food-supplies-2022-3">inflating food prices</a> that were already sitting at or near record highs as a result of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-russias-invasion-ukraine-means-global-food-supplies-2022-3">t</a>he pandemic. </p><p>Russia is a major producer of fertilizer – including potash, phosphate and nitrogen – accounting for 13% of global production, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/exclusive-ukraine-war-must-end-russias-fertiliser-coal-king-says-2022-03-14/">according to Reuters.</a> Production is heavily reliant on natural gas, the cost of which has also climbed as a result of the conflict in Ukraine.</p><p>Fertilizer prices may also impact the US' ability to offset the loss of Russian and Ukrainian exports. US wheat production <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-russias-invasion-ukraine-means-global-food-supplies-2022-3">ranks second in the world after Russia,</a> but it's unlikely it can make up the shortfall in lost exports. The US wheat crop has already been planted for the year, while energy and fertilizer prices are proving an obstacle for many US farmers, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6faa1318-ca75-4cae-8d78-bc99d24bc1bd">The Financial Times reported.</a></p><p>Earlier this month, Russia's Ministry of Trade and Industry called on the country's fertilizer producers to suspend exports, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/exclusive-ukraine-war-must-end-russias-fertiliser-coal-king-says-2022-03-14/">Reuters reported</a>. </p><p>Melnichenko warned that <keyword id="12878210" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="food-supply" source="Orion">food supply</keyword> chains were already impacted by the pandemic, saying that "now this will lead to even higher food inflation in Europe and likely food shortages in the world's poorest countries."</p><p>Melnichenko is among the billionaire Russian <keyword id="13281691" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="oligarchs" source="Orion">oligarchs</keyword> who have been placed on an EU sanctions list in response to Moscow's decision to invade Ukraine. A spokesperson for Melnichenko previously <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-oligarch-andrey-melnichenko-578-million-yacht-seized-by-italy-2022-3">told Insider</a> that the EU's accusations about his connections to the war in Ukraine are false. </p><p>Due to the sanctions, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-oligarch-andrey-melnichenko-578-million-yacht-seized-by-italy-2022-3">Melnichenko resigned</a> as a member of the board and main beneficiary of both <a href="https://www.eurochemgroup.com/media-announcements/andrey-melnichenko-resigns-from-eurochem-board-of-directors-and-withdraws-as-main-beneficiary/">EuroChem</a> and <a href="http://www.suek.com/media/news/andrey-melnichenko-resigns-from-suek-board-of-directors-stands-down-as-main-beneficiary-/">SUEK</a> last week.</p><p>Eurochem claims to be among the top five fertilizer companies globally, according to Reuters.</p>

Oligarch who founded Russia's largest fertilizer and coal companies warns the world faces food crisis without an end to the conflict in Ukraine

<ul><li>Anand Rathi Wealth, the wealth management company that caters to high and ultra-high net worth individuals is opening its IPO on December 2 and will close on December 6.</li><li>The IPO is completely an offer for sale of 1.2 crore shares by promoters and existing shareholders.</li><li>Shares of the company are already demanding a premium of ₹125 per share ahead of IPO opening date.</li></ul>The wealth management arm of the well-known fintech firm Anand Rathi is all set to go public on stock exchanges.<br /><br />Anand Rathi Wealth, the wealth management company that caters to high and ultra-high net worth individuals (HNIs), is opening its IPO on December 2 and will close on December 6.<br /><br />The IPO is a complete offer for sale of 1.2 crore shares by Anand Rathi Financial Services, Anand Rathi, Pradeep Gupta, Amit Rathi, Priti Gupta, Supriya Rathi, Rawal Family Trust acting through Rakesh Rawal, Jugal Mantri, and Feroze Azeez.<br /><br />The company manages assets under management (AUM) of ₹26,058 crore as on March 31, 2021.<br /><br />In the wealth management space, IIFL Wealth Management leads the sector in terms of highest asset under management (AUM) and profitability. Also, the peer company’s stock, which is listed on exchanges, has gained 43% in 2021 so far and share price stands at ₹1,472.<br /><table style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; table-layout: fixed; width: 468pt;"></colgroup><tbody><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Wealth management players<br /><br /></td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Profitability in FY21<br /><br /></td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">IIFL Wealth Management<br /><br /></td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">₹369 crore <br /><br /></td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Anand Rathi Wealth<br /><br /></td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">₹45 crore <br /><br /></td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Edelweiss Advisory <br /><br /></td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">₹245 crore <br /><br /></td></tr><tr><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">Motilal Oswal Wealth Management<br /><br /></td><td style="border-left:solid #000000 1pt;border-right:solid #000000 1pt;border-bottom:solid #000000 1pt;border-top:solid #000000 1pt;vertical-align:top;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt;overflow:hidden;overflow-wrap:break-word;">₹27 crore <br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Anand Rathi has a dominant position in the distribution of financial products, with a focus on the growing HNI segment. Currently, Anand Rathi Wealth is present across 11 cities in India -- Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Chandigarh, Jodhpur and Noida with a representative office in Dubai.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="anand rathi rev" height="900" width="1200" msid="88029174" hostid="261"></div><br />SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/amazon-and-flipkarts-biggest-rival-in-buy-now-pay-later-just-raised-40-million/articleshow/88027181.cms">Amazon and Flipkart’s biggest rival in ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ just raised $40 million</a><br /><br /><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/stock-market/news/investment-platform-upstox-comes-up-with-quick-ipo-application-process-through-whatsapp/articleshow/88025420.cms">Investment platform Upstox comes up with quick IPO application process through Whatsapp</a><br />

Anand Rathi Wealth’s ₹660 crore IPO demands ₹125 GMP ahead of opening date

New Delhi, May 11 () A plea was moved on Monday in the Delhi High Court challenging the Centre and AAP government's decision to freeze dearness allowance (DA) of public servants and pensioners in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic.<p>The petition has contended that the decision to freeze DA of government employees has been taken at a time of rising inflation, especially in Delhi, where there has been an increase in prices of fuel, liquor and essential commodities.</p><p>Petitioner N Pradeep Sharma further contends that there is no financial emergency to take such a step as the Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF) has a corpus of around Rs 3,800 crore and according to news reports the PM CARES Fund has received donations of Rs 6,500 crore.</p><p>The petition was mentioned before a joint registrar via weblink and has been allowed for listing before an appropriate bench. The date of listing has not yet been decided, sources in the HC registry said.</p><p>The petition claims the decision to freeze DA is in violation of constitutional provisions and the Disaster Management Act does not give the government any power to withhold salary as it also includes dearness allowance.</p><p>The plea claims that the Centre and Delhi government have also decided to delay till July 2021 the proposed four per cent hike in DA in view of COVID-19 crisis.</p>The petition seeks directions to the Centre and Delhi government to "immediately release" DA to its employees and pensioners, saying that it would give a "morale boost" to the "health warriors" who are protecting people from the deadly coronavirus.  HMP SKV RKS  RKSRKS

COVID-19:Plea in HC against Centre, AAP govt decision to freeze DA

<ul class="summary-list"><li>President Donald Trump has a distant financial link to Sanofi, the French pharmaceutical company that produces a drug that is being trialed as a possible coronavirus treatment</li><li>The link was first highlighted by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-malaria-drug.html">The New York Times</a>, which described it as "small."</li><li>Calculations by Business Insider suggest the stake - held via a trust and a mutual fund - is worth no more than $1,305.</li><li>President Donald Trump has repeatedly endorsed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/malaria-pill-chloroquine-tested-as-coronavirus-treatment-2020-3">chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine</a> at his press briefings as an experimental treatment to fight COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.</li><li>Some of Trump's associates also have financial ties to Sanofi, according to The Times.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/?hprecirc-bullet">Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories</a>.</li></ul><p>President Donald Trump reportedly has a "small personal financial interest" in a drugmaker that produces hydroxychloroquine, a drug he has been <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-touts-chloroquine-for-covid-19-but-dismisses-risks-2020-4">enthusiastically touting</a> as a possible treatment for the new coronavirus, according to a Monday <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-malaria-drug.html">New York Times</a> report.</p><p>"As of last year, Mr. Trump reported that his three family trusts each had investments in a Dodge &amp; Cox mutual fund, whose largest holding was in Sanofi," The Times wrote. Sanofi is a French drugmaker that produces hydroxychloroquine pills under the brand name Plaquenil.<a href="https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/05/16/trump,.donald.j..2019.annual.278.pdf"></a></p><p>A mutual fund is a portfolio that pools together money from several investors and then invests across various asset classes such as stocks, bonds and other forms of debt.</p><p>Business Insider followed the paper trail and concluded that the holding has a maximum value of around $1,300, only slightly larger than similar holdings by Trump funds in Google parent Alphabet, FedEx, and the French bank BNP Paribas.</p><p>Here is the logic:</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;">The Dodge &amp; Cox holdings are mentioned in <a href="https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/05/16/trump,.donald.j..2019.annual.278.pdf">this disclosure form</a>, logged with the US Office of Government Ethics in May 2019.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;">Each of three family funds list a holding in the Dodge &amp; Cox International Stocks Fund, valued between $1,000 and $15,000.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;">The funds are managed by JP Morgan without any input from Trump.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;">According to <a href="https://www.dodgeandcox.com/pdf/shareholder_reports/dc_global_stock_fund_fact_sheet.pdf">a prospectus dated December 2019</a>, the Dodge &amp; Cox fund in question has Sanofi as its largest holding at 2.9%.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;">If all three Dodge &amp; Cox holdings are worth the full $15,000 - $45,000 in total - then a 2.9% share of that is $1,305.</p><p style="padding-left: 40px;">Assuming, each holding is the minimum $1,000 - a total of $3,000 - then the 2.9% stake would equate to $87.</p><p>Representatives for the White House did not immediately respond for comment. </p><p>President Donald Trump has repeatedly endorsed <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/malaria-pill-chloroquine-tested-as-coronavirus-treatment-2020-3">chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine</a> as experimental treatments to fight COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, starting around March 21.</p><p>Since then, Sanofi's share price has risen around 16%, from $78.67 at market close on March 20 to $91.12 at time of publication on Tuesday.</p><p>The drugs are often used for the prevention and treatment of certain types of malaria. They are also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and a few other conditions.</p><p>While large trials are underway, however, there is no clinical evidence so far that proves these drugs are effective against COVID-19. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency authorization of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for use in experimental COVID-19 treatment.</p><p>Trump repeated his endorsement of these medications <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-touts-chloroquine-for-covid-19-but-dismisses-risks-2020-4">during a Sunday evening press briefing</a>, stating that the US now has a stockpile of over 29 million hydroxychloroquine pills.</p><p>"What do you have to lose?" he said repeatedly, at one point adding: "If it does work, it would be a shame if we didn't do it early."</p><p>Others within Trump's circle also have ties to Sanofi, according to The Times.</p><p>One of Sanofi's largest shareholders is Fisher Asset Management, a fund set up by major Republican donor Ken Fisher.</p><p>A fund previously run by commerce secretary Wilbur Ross also invests in Sanofi, according to the report, though Ross said in a statement that he was "not aware" of the company's involvement with Sanofi, nor was he personally involved "in the decision to explore [hydroxychloroquine] as a treatment."</p><p>And according to <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/organizations/sanofi">ProPublica</a>, employees who were formerly compensated or employed by Sanofi went on to work at several federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, and the Office of Management and Budget.</p><p>Despite the optimism surrounding chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as potential COVID-19 treatments, the drugs can cause severe side effects, and misuse has led to poisoning and even death.</p><p>Short-term side effects of the medication include nausea, abdominal cramps, and vomiting. Serious side effects or prolonged treatment include liver failure, hearing loss, and muscle paralysis.</p><p>The <a href="https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2020/han00431.asp">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a> warned last month against taking the drug without medical supervision. Some people took nonpharmaceutical chloroquine phosphate, a chemical used to clean home aquariums, instead of the medications approved by the FDA.</p><p>The CDC added that overdosing on the medication or taking it inappropriately could lead to severe toxicity.</p><p>A man in Arizona died after self-medicating with a fish tank cleaner that contained chloroquine phosphate, according to Arizona's nonprofit health system <a href="http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate">Banner Health</a>.</p><p class="tagline"><i>Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you'd like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please email <a href="mailto:covidtips@businessinsider.com">covidtips@businessinsider.com</a> and tell us your story.</i></p><p><i>And get the latest <a href="/coronavirus-business-impact">coronavirus analysis and research</a> from Business Insider Intelligence on how COVID-19 is impacting businesses.</i></p>

Trump has a distant financial link to a pharma giant that makes the drug he's been pushing to fight COVID-19 - but it's probably worth less than $1,000

<br /><ul><li><strong>At an energy conference in New Delhi on 15 October, Khalid A Al-Falih, the chairman of <keyword id="152170" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Saudi-Aramco">Saudi Aramco</keyword>, announced plans to invest in India’s downstream <keyword id="84980" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="petroleum">petroleum</keyword> sector. <br /></strong></li><li><strong>Al-Falih explained that a number of segments were being considered such as petrochemicals, refining, crude <keyword id="6359072" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="oil">oil</keyword> storage and retail sales as well as solar energy.<br /></strong></li><li><strong>At the same conference, India’s PM <keyword id="6354477" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Narendra-Modi">Narendra Modi</keyword> also sat down with ministers and chief executives of oil companies and sought a review of payment terms for crude oil supplies. </strong><br /></li></ul><keyword id="50996" type="LOCATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Saudi-Arabia">Saudi Arabia</keyword>, the world’s largest oil producing nation, is preparing a slew of investments in India’s energy sector. At an energy conference in New Delhi organised by IHS Markit yesterday, Khalid A Al-Falih, the chairman of Saudi Aramco, announced plans to invest in India’s downstream petroleum sector. <br /><br />Al-Falih explained that a number of segments were being considered such as petrochemicals, refining, crude oil storage and retail petroleum as well as <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Industry/6rWpDOk6k1yMFdIjP6NZLP/Saudi-Arabia-BP-eye-major-Indian-solar-play.html">solar energy</a> He added that Saudi Arabia’s largest mining company, Maaden, was looking to make inroads into India’s fertiliser industry, specifically the production of phosphate fertiliser.<br /><br />His plans were echoed by his counterpart in the UAE, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the chairman of <keyword id="188274" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Abu-Dhabi-National-Oil-Company">Abu Dhabi National Oil Company</keyword> (ADNOC), who said that the company was assessing a range of potential pipeline projects in India.<br /><br />Earlier this year, in July, Saudi Aramco and ADNOC decided to join hands on <a href="http://www.saudiaramco.com/en/home/news-media/news/Ratnagiri-Mega-Refinery.html">a $44 billion refinery project</a> in Ratnagiri, which is in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The two state-backed oil producers are taking a 50% stake in the project, which is expected to produce 1.2 million barrels per day, while the other half will be owned by a consortium of Indian refiners such as IOC and BPCL. <br /><strong><br />A review of oil payment conditions</strong><br /><br />Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also sat down with the ministers and chief executives of oil companies at the conference. In addition to Al-Falih and Jaber, the meeting was attended by the CEOs of Russia’s Rosneft, the world’s largest listed oil producer by output, British Petroleum and Pioneer Natural Resources. <br /><br />Given the impact of rising oil prices on the rupee and India’s trade deficit, his motivations were clear. He sought a review of the pricing terms with major oil suppliers - which would include paying for imports in rupees - and encouraged a rise in global output through commercial exploration by OPEC nations in developing countries as a means to keep prices in check. Saudi Arabia is one of the largest suppliers of oil to India. <br />

Saudi Arabia has big plans for India's energy sector

2020 IPL auction will see these 332 players trying their luck under the hammer

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Village Properties</span></p><p class="caption">The mansion has been renovated since appearing in the 1983 film "Scarface."</p></div><p></p></div></div>The mansion prominently featured in the 1983 film "Scarface" is not actually in Miami but<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Montecito, California, 90 miles west of Los Angeles.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">For a year, the mansion sat unsold at a sky-high asking price of $35 million. Its price was then cut in half, to $17.8 million, in May of this year.<br /></span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Finally, the Mediterranean mansion has found a buyer in Pradeep Yohanne Gupta, CEO of private Houston-based investment bank IQ Holdings. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He paid only $12.26 million for the estate and hopes to use the house as his West Coast residence, <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/scarface-estate-sells-for-a-fraction-of-its-original-asking-price-1446673314">according to the Wall Stret Journal</a>.</span></p><p>Listing agent Robert Riskin told the Journal that the original ask was "<span>overpriced," and that the actual sales price accurately "reflects [the mansion's] value." The home was previously owned by Russian billionaire Sergey Grishin. </span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The 10,000-square-foot mansion is just as beautiful as you remember from the "Scarface" movie. It was recently renovated and includes </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">four bedrooms and nine bathrooms surrounded by Persian gardens and a wild number of fountains.</span></p>

The mansion from 'Scarface' just sold for about a third of its original $35 million ask

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://pictures.reuters.com/Package/2C0BF1ONHCAZ6?PBC=2C0BF1I3K5MC:2C04082YIBYGK:2C0BF1ONHCAZ6">Lucy Nicholson/Reuters</a></span></p><p class="caption">Buckets of oil volunteers carried from an oil slick along the coast of Refugio State Beach are seen in Goleta, California, May 20, 2015.</p></div><p></p></div></div>Volatility in the price of oil is at its highest level since 2009, as speculation in the markets about whether or not producers are ready to take action to try and boost prices, <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-11/oil-rebounds-after-tumbling-to-lowest-in-12-years-on-supply-glut">as first reported by Bloomberg.</a></p><p>Oil slumped to a 12-year low during trading on Thursday, but is up as much as 5% on Friday morning as the world's most important commodity bounces back.</p><p>Both major benchmarks, Brent crude, and West Texas Intermediate, surged back from big lows on Thursday. As of <span>10:30 a.m. GMT (5:30 a.m. ET) Brent is up by 5.1% to $31.59 per barrel, while WTI is up to $27.38, a gain of 4.5%.</span></p><p><span>The price of oil has been yoyoing massively in the past few weeks, with rises and falls of as much as 8% per day not uncommon. That volatility is reflected by the surge in the CBOE Oil Volatility Index, which has just passed its biggest peak since the 2008-09 financial crisis. The US based index jumped 7.3% on Thursday, and now stands at 77.79. Here's how that looks:</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Investing.com</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span>Volatility right now is being largely caused by consistent speculation about what OPEC is going to do with regards to a cut. Late on Thursday afternoon, a tweet <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/opec-meeting-tweet-from-wsj-2016-2">from a Wall Street Journal reporter</a><span> saying that OPEC is</span><span> "ready to cooperate on a cut" in oil output sent the price higher, and those gains have stuck so far.</span></span></p><p><span><span>Any major news, or even just chatter about a potential coordinated cut in the production of oil moves the market massively at the minute. A prime example came a couple of weeks ago, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/crude-oil-prices-after-opec-cut-reports-2016-1?r=US&amp;IR=T">when oil gained 8% in a single session after Russia floated the idea of a meeting with OPEC.</a> This surge <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/rosneft-says-speculation-about-an-output-cut-is-idiotic-2016-1">lead the boss of Russia's biggest oil producer, Rosneft, to call the market "idiotic".</a></span></span></p><h2>Commodity stocks surge</h2><p>In what's becoming a regular story for the markets, the oil pop has sent shares in resource and commodity companies soaring. Just after 10:30 a.m. GMT (5:30 a.m. ET) the five biggest mining companies listed on the FTSE100 make up five of the top seven stocks, buoyed by the oil rise.</p><p>Stricken Anglo American, probably the most volatile stock on the FTSE right now, is up by nearly 10%, further helped by a Bloomberg report that two firms are looking to buy Anglo's niobium and phosphate mines in Brazil. Here's the resources scoreboard:</p><ul><li><strong>Anglo American - up 10.59%</strong></li><li><strong>Glencore - up 6.87%</strong></li><li><strong>Rio Tinto - up 5.37%</strong></li><li><strong>BHP Billiton - up 6.25%</strong></li><li><strong>Antofagasta - up 5.42%</strong></li><li><strong>BP - up 3.64%</strong></li><li><strong>Royal Dutch Shell - up 2.32%</strong></li></ul>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pharma-bad-boy-martin-shkreli-pleads-fifth-amendment-congress-self-incrimination-2016-2">Watch Martin Shkreli laugh and refuse to answer questions during his testimony to Congress</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="E5eDRvMDE6gFeDkhSlbgnCdpBSAL6E8b" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Volatility in the oil markets is now higher than during the financial crisis

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>You might think that after enduring months of government scrutiny and becoming the subject of multiple state and federal investigations, Valeant Pharmaceuticals would not immediately return to the same behavior that sent its stock price careening down 90% since last October.</p><p>In that case, you are wrong.</p><p>Valeant CEO Joe Papa told attendees of Wells Fargo's healthcare conference earlier this month that the company would start raising prices toward the end of the year.</p><p>Since it's already September, Wells Fargo analyst David Maris thinks those increases may have already started.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">...on 9/16, Valeant increased the list price of three products: Atropine Sulfate Ophthalmic Ointment, PrednisoLONE Sodium Phosphate Ophthalmic Solution, and Neomycin-Polymyxin-Gramicidin Ophthalmic Solutions - each by 9.9%, according to data from Medi-Span CDI. </p><p>In doing this, Valeant is taking a big risk. Namely, it's just begging the government to continue examining its practices, which can only result in more skittishness from investors.</p><p>So why even take the risk? According to Maris the drugs in question only came up to $1.2 million in sales in the Q2 of this year - that's out of Valeant's $2.4 billion in sales that quarter.</p><p>We asked Valeant why the company is willing draw more fire from authorities this way, but the company has yet to respond to our question.</p><h2>Promises, promises</h2><p>Back in April, Valeant executives went to Congress and promised that they would lower prices around 10% across the board. They also said that they would lower the price of two heart medications, Nitropress and Isuprel, around 30% (that's after raising the prices of the drugs <span>525% and 212%, respectively).</span></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/valeant-ceos-answers-fall-short-at-wells-fargo-conference-2016-9">According to Papa at this same Wells Fargo conference,</a> he has not lowered the prices of Valeant's drugs. And he also said that discounts to Nitropress and Isuprel were only somewhere in the teens.</p><p>That's better than what hospitals had to say about <span>Nitropress and Isuprel. Bloomberg reported last week that most hospitals they asked said they weren't getting any discounts on the drugs.</span></p><p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-16/valeant-heart-drug-discounts-haven-t-materialized-hospitals-say">From Bloomberg:</a></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"'Despite their promises to Congress, we've seen no reduction in cost nor any improvement in communication,' said <a href="http://my.clevelandclinic.org/staff_directory/staff_display?DoctorID=15143" target="_blank" title="Online Profile" data-tracker-action="click" data-tracker-category="nav" data-tracker-label="inline_link.02">Scott Knoer</a>, chief pharmacy officer at the Cleveland Clinic. Knoer said his organization contacted Valeant repeatedly about a discount and didn't have their calls returned."</p><p>Valeant responded with a statement explaining the rebate program it has put in place for the heart drugs for hospitals that ask for it. It's pretty complicated stuff, but Valeant said it's "<span>working diligently to finalize" the program for hospital group purchasing organizations that stil aren't connected.</span></p><p>But again, o<span>f the 23 the entities Bloomberg contacted, only one said it was getting the discounts it negotiated with Valeant. Eleven said they weren't getting discounts on one or both of the drugs. The rest didn't respond.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Yahoo Finance</span></p><p class="caption">A year in Valeant</p></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><h2><span></span>About those rebates</h2><p>And here's the thing. Right now the pharmaceutical industry is having a come-to-Jesus moment about rebates as a system for paying for drugs.</p><p>This soul searching started in earnest earlier this month after public outcry over the price of lifesaving drug, EpiPen. <span>A package of two EpiPens cost $100 in 2007 but is now about $600 - an increase of around 500%. </span> After getting pummeled in the press, the company said it would ramp up patient assistance programs and its coupon system for patients in need.</p><p>But <span>Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) called all that a "PR stunt." Politicians are starting to realize that these assistance programs, coupons and rebates are just a way to preserve or disguise high prices.</span></p><p>They're also a way for middle men to take a cut of drug prices, according to frustrated drugmakers. These middle men are called PBMs. In exchange for their cut, they ensure that a company's drug is widely distributed.</p><p>From a recent Wells Fargo report:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>Pfizer's CEO and others also hit on another important theme that emerged from our discussions regarded rebating.</strong> Many companies expressed how, in their view, rebates have evolved from being a tool for paying moderate margins to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for their service to now being a way of purchasing access. This places a greater amount of control with PBMs and payers, while removing some of the decision making from physicians and patients. Many companies appear to agree that it would be helpful to the industry and better for patients if rebating was eliminated. While rebates have played only a minor role in the pricing debate so far, we believe they are bound to become a larger and important component of the discussion going forward.</p><p>Heather Bresch, the CEO of the company that makes Epi-Pen, Mylan, complained about this issue as well. It will likely be a topic of discussion on Wednesday as she faces Congress in a hearing about her price increases.</p><p>If the government really does start looking into rebates, this could be another risk to Valeant, putting it once again in the government's crosshairs.</p><p>So again, why would Valeant take any of these risks? Maybe because it doesn't really have a choice if it wants to make guidance (and man, it definitely does).</p><p>Once more, Wells Fargo:</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">We suspect that 2H16 EPS guidance is challenging for Valeant to make, as evidenced by Valeant's inability at our recent conference to strongly confirm its guidance. Valeant's 2H16 guidance implies approximately 155% incremental growth in adjusted EPS from 1H16, and, in part, relies on lower SG&amp;A and R&amp;D spending to support making its numbers. As we have previously stated, we do not believe this is a sustainable strategy, as cutting expenses does not increase prescriptions, and with weakness in prescriptions, Valeant is left with its previous strategy of price increases.</p><p>It's not a good look to be left with right now.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/worse-for-wells-fargo-fbi-getting-involved-2016-9">Things are getting worse for Wells Fargo and now the FBI is getting involved</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="tmajl3NTE68xref3pHmnhlSXxxoSV1Tx" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Valeant has started taking a huge risk

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.villagesite.com/properties/detail/mls_id/RN-10304">www.villagesite.com</a> and Getty</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>The house where Tony Montana made his iconic last stand in the movie "Scarface" has finally sold, after nearly a year and a half on the market.</p><p><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/scarface-estate-sells-for-a-fraction-of-its-original-asking-price-1446673314">As first reported in the Wall Street Journal</a>, El Fureidis, a plush estate in Montecito, California has just sold for $12.3 million (£8.2 million), about a third of the original asking price.</p><p>El Fureidis was put on the market by owner Sergey Grishin, a Russian billionaire, for around $35 million (£23.3 million) in May 2014, but he was unable to sell the property, and was forced to cut the price almost in half to $17.9 million (£11.9 million) in May this year.</p><p>When the house still failed to sell, Grishin, who is <a href="http://www.rosevrobank.com/about_us/rosevrogroup/">president and chairman of RosEvro Group</a>, a major consortium, was forced to drop the price by another $5 million (£3.3 million). </p><p>Listing for the house was done by estate agents Riskin Partners and Emily Kellenberger of Village Properties. Robert Riskin from Riskin Partners told the Wall Street Journal that the house was "overpriced" at first, and the $12.3 million £8.2 million) price tag "reflects its value."</p><p>The estate, which was designed by famous American architect Bertram Goodhue in the 1900s, only has four bedrooms, but has around 10,000 square feet of floor space. Other features include a Byzantine-influenced "conversation room", numerous swimming pools, and a gold leaf covered ceiling in the dining room.</p><p>Scarface - the movie most famous for the line "Say hello to my little friend!" - was partially filmed in the grounds of El Fureidis. The house served as the location for notorious gangster Tony Montana's wedding, and several other scenes in the movie.</p><p></p><p>The house was bought by a 59-year-old Texan businessman named Pradeep Yohanne Gupta. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Gupta said "I think we got it at a fair value,"adding that he hoped to spend Christmas in El Fureidis. Gupta is CEO of IQ Holdings, a private investment bank based in Houston. He intends to use the estate as his West Coast home.</p><p>According to the WSJ, Gupta insisted that he didn't buy the house because of its association with Scarface, but for its history and beautiful architecture. He said that being in the movie was just "a data point." </p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/volkswagen-announced-another-scandal-billion-vw-epa-2015-11">Volkswagen just announced another scandal, and it could cost them an additional $2 billion </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="10eGVteDpArxpq4D7DuMFeCLRfogMEEB" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The house from Scarface has sold for more than &#163;8 million

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Dado Ruvic</span></p><p class="caption">It has not been a good week for some mining giants.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Anglo American, the FTSE listed commodities giant, is in serious trouble, and is being forced to undertake <a href="http://www.investegate.co.uk/anglo-american-plc/rns/investor-day---radical-portfolio-restructuring/201512080800042830I/">what it calls a "radical" restructuring of its business</a> to try and weather the commodity crash storm. </p><p>The company unveiled a whole raft of changes to its business on Tuesday morning, and isn't lying when it says they'll be "radical."</p><p>The news of the changes came just one hour after another mining giant announced it is being forced into action to fight the commodity slump. British-Australian firm <a href="http://www.investegate.co.uk/rio-tinto--rio-/rns/update-on-aluminium-and-group-capital-expenditure/201512080700052896I/">Rio Tinto, revealed that it needs to cut capital expenditure</a> over the coming years.</p><p>For Anglo American, there are so many changes and cost cuts being put in place that it's pretty hard to keep up, but these are the most important:</p><ul><li><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The world's largest platinum miner is going to undertake a programme to </span><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;">dump roughly 60% of its total assets</strong><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. In 2014, the company reported having total assets of around £44 billion ($66 billion) so the consolidation could remove as much as £26.7 billion ($40 billion) from Anglo's balance sheet.</span></li><li>Anglo <strong>won't pay shareholders a dividend in 2015 or 2016</strong>, something that had been widely predicted. In November, an <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ffe93be2-9a6c-11e5-9228-87e603d47bdc.html#axzz3tcES0Ug7">analyst note from HSBC quoted by the Financial Times</a> suggested that Anglo could save around £730 million ($1.1 billion) by suspending its dividend.</li><li>It will <strong>cut costs by £2.47 billion ($3.7 billion) by the end of 2017</strong>. The cuts will come in three chunks; £1.1 billion ($1.6 billion) this year, £730 million ($1.1 billion) in 2016, and a final £670 million ($1 billion) in 2017.</li><li>Anglo will dispose of certain parts of its business, including its phosphate and niobium mining operations, hoping to raise around £2.7 billion ($4 billion).</li><li>The company's <strong>six businesses will be consolidated into just three</strong>; De Beers, the diamond mining arm, Industrial Metals, and Bulk Commodities.</li><li>De Beers' and Anglo American's London office will merge in 2017.</li></ul><p>Anglo American was already in the process of some restructuring, but says the new changes are part of a plan "t<span>o transform the Company's competitive position and create a more resilient business to deliver sustainable shareholder returns."</span></p><p>Speaking about the changes, the company's CEO Mark Cutifani said: "While we have continued to deliver our business restructuring and performance objectives across the board, the severity of commodity price deterioration requires bolder action. We will set out the detail of the future portfolio in February."</p><p><span>Essentially, Anglo is admitting that it is struggling to cope with the monumental slump in commodity prices. It is well known that the price of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/commodity-price-collapse-chart-from-macquarie-2015-11">pretty much every commodity has tanked over the past few years</a>. Bloomberg's all commodities index is down more than 50% since 2011, and as recently as last week iron ore hit its lowest level in 10 years.</span></p><p>Anglo's results reflect how much it is struggling right now. It recently reported that earnings were down 36% for the six months to June, compared with the same period in 2014. It was also forced to <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/anglo-american-third-quarter-trading-update-diamond-production-falls-2015-10">slash production for several of its commodities in October</a>.</p><h2>Investors are worried</h2><p>Unsurprisingly investors in Anglo are pretty worried about the company almost completely restructuring itself virtually overnight, and shares are tanking. The company's stock hit an all-time low on Monday afternoon, but things have gotten even worse on Tuesday morning. <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=LON%3AAAL&amp;ei=jqBmVpGJF8OcUtDHr6AL">Shares fell by more than 9% in early trade</a>, and while they have recovered a bit, losses are still around 5.5% so far. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Investing.com</span></p><p class="caption">Anglo American's shares plunged on the news that it was undertaking a "radical" restructuring.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Things may be bad for Anglo American, but at least it's not alone. The miner has become just one of a series of big commodity firms to take dramatic action to try and stave off the affects of the crash.</p><p>Earlier on Tuesday, <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-riotinto-results-preview-idUKKCN0QA13L20150805">Rio Tinto announced it will cut capital expenditure by more than 10%</a> to $5 billion in 2016, while in November, <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/lonmin-announces-270million-rights-issue-2015-11">platinum producer Lonmin sold off billions of shares</a> at a penny each to try and stave off total financial collapse.</p><p>Both companies followed on from the huge troubles Glencore has been facing. At one point in September, the company's shares lost nearly 50% over the course of a couple of days, and boss Ivan Glasenberg told reporters that <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/glencore-faces-balance-sheet-armageddon-2015-9">he was preparing for "Armageddon."</a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/buying-power-dollar-over-60-years-groceries-2015-12">How the buying power of your dollar has changed over the past 60 years</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="Zka3R5cDqzjmfG8P8X7sTSfdEbK7ZTFv" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

One of the world's biggest miners is taking 'radical' steps to avoid complete ruin

<br /> This part of <keyword id="6361054" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="South-Delhi">south Delhi</keyword> is quite different, at least in terms of <a href="http://Give life a pause with your partner at Thekkady">pocket-friendly</a><a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Kerala-travel-Thekkady-Munnar/articleshow/54025730.cms"> </a>food. Just a stone’s throwaway from Delhi University’s south campus, <keyword id="3641926" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="satyaniketan">Satyaniketan</keyword> market boasts of 50 to 70 cafes. Take a look from one end and you can just see a series of neon signboards with glass doors. Mostly the café sizes here vary from 600 sq ft to 1500 sq ft. That’s all!<br />
<br />
At a time when most fancy eating places are getting exorbitantly high priced, thanks to the consistent inflation, here the deal is to serve tasty food at minimum price. The target group that these restaurants serve is students, who want good ambience and food without weighing down on any one's pockets.<br />
<br />
So we thought of walking into a few cafes and understanding what helps them keep prices within a limit. Toward the beginning of the market we discovered a new kid in the block, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Kerala-travel-Thekkady-Munnar/articleshow/54025730.cms">Canteen Till I Die</a>. Like most of the cafes here, this one too has ambient lighting, minimal creativity on the wall and looks quite creative yet quirky. If you are hygiene conscious, the open kitchen will make you feel safer. Casually we took a look at the menu and the right hand side of it was mind blowing! Cutting chai for Rs 20, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Kerala-travel-Thekkady-Munnar/articleshow/54025730.cms">Crispy noodles</a> for Rs 49, Bun <keyword id="985737" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="20" keywordseo="Maska">Maska</keyword> for Rs 30, French fries with dips for Rs 75. That was still okay. But wait, veg burger for Rs 30 and its chicken variant for Rs 50, Pizza for Rs 150, and <keyword id="3641927" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="punjabi-tadka-maggi">Punjabi Tadka Maggi</keyword> for Rs 45. Now these are the rates that you don’t expect at cafés in Delhi.<br />
<br /> We meet the founders of <keyword id="3641928" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="canteen-till-i-die">Canteen Till I Die</keyword> and dig deep into the pricing strategy. 28 year old Baldeep and Pradeep working with corporate firm <keyword id="179216" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="JC-Penney">JC Penney</keyword> are just like any of us, foodies. They dreamt of opening a restaurant. Having a full time job, their restaurant business isn’t just to mint money; rather they want to cater to the students who have limited budgets, but an eternal penchant for good food. <br />
<br />
So that way, the prices are made to lure the students for a feast, once every week. As the discussion proceeds, we get to know that monthly rent of 800 sq ft shop at this area is near to Rs 1.5 lakh. And then the staffs need to be paid and the electricity and other charges need to be taken care of. The menu lists out foods that are cheap on ingredients and fast to cook. So that way the guests aren’t made to keep waiting and in the process occupying the space. Moreover foods like burger, pizza or even for that matter <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Kerala-travel-Thekkady-Munnar/articleshow/54025730.cms">parantha</a> are quick to eat and the next guest can occupy the same table within 40 minutes.<br />
<br />
During the day time, that is between 12pm-4pm, there are almost 200 guests coming in. Though the café can accommodate not more than 60 to 70 at a time, the guests coming at a regular frequency during the college hours make it viable for the restaurant to serve each and every one.<br />
<br />
 Here we use our insights of the restaurant business and infer:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Kerala-travel-Thekkady-Munnar/articleshow/54025730.cms">Also read: ​ Give life a pause with your partner at Thekkady</a><br />
<br />
<strong>Soda is cheap</strong><br />
When they purchase in bulk a glass of soda may cost not more than Rs 3. And then the cafes add flavours. So including the cost of manpower and time, a mojito shouldn’t be more than Rs 20. So the margins are maintained.<br />
 <br />
<br />
<strong>Pasta</strong><br /> Pasta is another food item that you find anywhere and everywhere. In <keyword id="21474" type="COUNTRY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Italy">Italy</keyword>, pasta is supposed to be the farmers’ meal and hence cheap. Cafes don’t buy pastas from retail, they buy in bulk. Pasta is basically very inexpensive. The cost of pasta depends on what topping you are adding to it. So even after adding your preferred sauce be it red or white with some meat, there is ample scope to earn some good profit. And then you pay Rs 500 + taxes at a posh South Delhi pub and boast of a good meal.<br />
<br />
<strong>Pizza</strong><br />
You know the core ingredient of a pizza, right? Dough that makes pizza has only water and flour. While water is almost free, flour costs some paise and not even a rupee. Homemade pizza sauce is not very expensive. A home made pizza sauce would have tomatoes, water and spices. Cheese and toppings are the only costly.<br />
<br />
So that sums up why the cafes in Satyaniketan are cheap! Just in case next time you get wowy about the prices at any of the cafes here, let’s remind you that you don’t pay for food at a restaurant in GK or HKV, you just contribute to their monthly rent and electricity bill.<br />
<br />
<em>(Image: Femina)</em><br />
<br />

At
Delhi’s Satyaniketan, the cafes serve burgers for Rs 50 and shakes for Rs 25.
We find out how it is possible!

<p>Matching output to demand is hard with wind and solar power. The answer is to store surplus juice on the grid until it is needed</p>
<p>ON OCTOBER 28th a battery factory opened in Concord, North Carolina. That was good for an area which has seen dark economic times, but the event made few headlines. Perhaps it should have made more, though, for this factory's owner, Alevo, a Swiss company, is not in the business of manufacturing cells for torches, mobile phones or even laptop computers. Rather, it is making batteries that can store serious amounts of electricity--megawatt-hours of it. And it plans to sell them to power-grid operators.</p>
<p>To start with, the new batteries will be used to smooth the consequences of irregular demand through the day by absorbing electricity during troughs and regurgitating it during peaks. If that pans out, it will eliminate the need for gas-powered "peaker" stations which fire up quickly when needed, but are expensive to run. It would also allow non-peaker stations to operate more efficiently. Alevo reckons that if a grid as big as America's Western interconnection (which supplies the west of the United States and Canada) were to use 18GW-worth of its batteries the grid could save $12 billion a year. Though the company has no North American contract yet, it does have an agreement to deploy its batteries in Guangdong, China.</p>
<p>Smoothing the operation of existing grids, however, may be only the beginning. In the longer run, optimists believe, batteries like these, or some equivalent technology, are the key to dealing with the problem not just of irregular demand, but of irregular supply. As the unit cost of solar and wind energy drops ever closer to that of power from fossil fuels, the fact that the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine becomes more and more irksome. It is not just the great power-gap that is night which matters. As the chart below shows, even during the day--and even in deserts--the amount of sunlight can vary from minute to minute. And the wind, of course, is equally fickle.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Cheap grid-scale storage would overcome these irregularities. Renewables could then compete on cost alone. And there are many ideas for how to make this happen. Some, such as Alevo's, are ready to be sold. Others work in laboratories but have yet to be scaled up for use in the real world. Others still are little more than twinkles of varying plausibility in their inventors' eyes. But if even one of them is up to the task, then renewable energy may, at last, be able to stand on its own, rather than having to be subsidised and regulated into existence.</p>
<p>At the moment, grid-scale storage is dominated by pumped hydro. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, an American think-tank, 140GW-worth of this is installed around the world, with a capacity of 1.4TWhr. Pumped storage requires friendly geography. You need two reservoirs separated by a good gap of altitude. But it is then just a matter of linking them with pipes and using turbines that, if turned by falling water, generate electricity, but, when fed electricity, turn the other way to pump that water whence it came. Send it uphill when power is cheap, and let it flow down when there are spikes in demand, and you have a nice little business.</p>
<p>Not everywhere, though, has compliant hills and valleys. And pumped storage takes a long time, and a lot of money, to build. Technologies that start small, but can be scaled up as needed, are often a better answer.</p>
<h3>Batteries now included</h3>
<p>The immediate future of grid-scale storage, then, probably lies with real batteries rather than topographical ones. At least, Alevo thinks so. At full capacity, the firm's factory in Concord should be able to turn out 16.2GWhr-worth of them a year. And Alevo is not alone. Tesla is building an even bigger factory near Reno, Nevada (see "Brain scan: Tesla's electric man") to make batteries for its electric cars and for local and grid storage.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Several stations that use batteries to regulate the output of wind farms have already been built, or are under construction. In Sendai, Japan, Toshiba is creating one based on lithium-ion batteries. This should open in 2015. It will have a maximum power of 40MW, and will be able to run at that rate for half an hour. The Notrees Battery Storage Project, which opened in Texas in 2013, uses lead-acid batteries--sophisticated versions of the type found in petrol and diesel cars. It has a maximum power of 36MW and could run for 40 minutes at full tilt. Another Japanese project, of 34MW, in Rokkasho, uses sodium-sulphur batteries. And one in Alaska, of 27MW, uses nickel-cadmium ones.</p>
<p>As that list suggests, many types of grid-scale battery technology are available. Alevo uses electrodes made of lithium iron phosphate and graphite. These are connected by an inorganic sulphur-based electrolyte, a combination, the firm claims, that is particularly propitious because cycling between charged and discharged states produces only a 1°C change in the battery's temperature. This should eliminate the risk of overheating, to which some sorts of lithium-based cells are prone.</p>
<p>There are types of battery that actually require high temperatures to work. In sodium-sulphur cells of the sort deployed at Rokkasho both of those elements need to be liquid, meaning the battery has to be maintained at a temperature of 300-350°C. And an approach being developed by Donald Sadoway of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would use two sorts of liquid metal, separated by a liquid electrolyte. The clever thing about this design is that, by picking a dense metal such as a mixture of antimony and lead, a light one such as lithium, and an electrolyte whose density falls between the two, the three substances will float as separate layers in a container, rather as oil separates from vinegar in a salad dressing.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Despite their superficial differences, one thing all these batteries have in common is that the energy they contain is stored chemically within their electrodes. This has a consequence, at least for those with solid electrodes. The constant change in the electrodes' composition as they are charged and discharged gradually wears them out. This limited lifespan is one reason using batteries for grid-scale storage is still pricey. Indeed, Alevo's claim that its batteries can undergo more than 40,000 cycles of charging and discharging without noticeable loss of function is an important part of its sales pitch.</p>
<p>An alternative approach, known as a flow battery, does not suffer from this difficulty. A flow battery's energy is stored in its electrolytes (of which there are two, separated by a membrane), rather than its electrodes (see illustration 1). Not only does that stop the electrodes wearing out, it also means that there is no upper limit, based on the sizes of those electrodes, on how much energy such a battery can store. Its capacity depends instead on the size of the tanks used to hold the electrolytes.</p>
<p>Flow batteries are a much less developed technology than standard batteries, but they are beginning to become commercially available. Many of those on sale at the moment (by firms such as Gildemeister of Germany and UET of Washington state) use vanadium-based electrolytes. Vanadium is a good material because its multiple ionic states mean it can be used to store energy without having to involve other reagents, and thus complicate the design.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, vanadium is expensive. But systems that use cheaper materials are being developed. Several firms are trying zinc and bromine in electrolytes and others iron and chromium. Ideas still in the lab include flow batteries based on cheap organic compounds called anthraquinones. If these prove robust enough to commercialise, they will be strong competitors in the grid-scale storage market. But they will not be alone. For batteries are not the only route to the destination.</p>
<h3>Pumped up</h3>
<p>If the engineers at Gravity Power in Goleta, California, get their way, even pumped storage is in line for a makeover. Their approach, it should be said from the outset, is one of the most twinkly of the twinkling eyes in the field. Even if it ultimately fails it shows the originality of thought that is being brought to bear on the problem.</p>
<p>Instead of two large reservoirs at different altitudes on a hillside, Gravity Power proposes two water-filled cylindrical shafts--one wider than the other--dug into the ground (see illustration 2). The shafts will be linked top and bottom to form a circuit, with a combined pump-turbine, similar to the ones used in conventional pumped storage, in the upper link. The wider shaft will contain a huge cylinder, made either of the rock the shaft is cut through or of concrete, to act as a piston.</p>
<p>When the pump-turbine is opened, the piston sinks, driving water around the circuit and through the turbine, generating power. Spin the device the other way using electricity, and the reversed water flow pushes the piston up again.</p>
<p>How much energy this arrangement can store depends on how deep the shafts go. And that is where it gets tricky, for some serious civil engineering will be needed if the idea is to work. Gravity Power proposes the shafts descend hundreds of metres. This will require large thicknesses of suitable rock--in practice this will probably be limestone, which is soft enough to cut into--so deployment will be limited not so much by geography as geology. And making a good seal between piston and shaft will hardly be trivial. So it will be expensive. A unit 700 metres deep, with a main shaft 26 metres across and a return shaft (or penstock) of about a tenth of that, would cost $170m. It would, though, be able to store about 200MWhr of energy, with an output of 50MW. Building one that size is years away, but the firm hopes to start work in 2015 on a demonstration plant near Penzberg, in Germany, with a depth of 140 metres, a capacity of 500 kWhr and an output of 1MW.</p>
<p>Nor is Gravity Power's approach the only one to rely on underground spaces and friendly geology. Another is to fill a subterranean cavern with compressed air. For that, the cavern needs to be hermetically sealed and this means using an underground salt dome that has been hollowed out by solution mining (ie, the salt has been extracted with hot water).</p>
<p>Given such a cavern, compressed-air storage is a bit like classical pumped storage, except with a gas, rather than a liquid. Air is pumped into the cavern, increasing its pressure, and then let out to drive a turbine. But there is a catch: gases heat up when compressed and cool when they expand. For compressed-air storage to work, therefore, the air released from the cavern has to be heated (usually by burning natural gas), otherwise it would freeze the turbine. That makes compressed-air storage inefficient--one reason there are only two grid-scale examples of it in the world (one in Germany, the other in Alabama).</p>
<p>This would change if the heat of compression could be captured, stored and recycled. And that is the goal of LightSail Energy, a firm based in Berkeley, California. LightSail has developed a small, but still grid-scale, compressed-air system that sprays water into the compression chamber, to cool the air as its volume shrinks. The air is then stored in a set of tanks with a total volume of 42,000 litres, and the water, with its heat load, is put into two tanks that have, in total, about a quarter of the volume of the air tanks.</p>
<p>At the moment, this device can store 700kWhr of energy, but that should rise to 1.1MWhr when (as is the plan) it is pressurised to 300 atmospheres instead of the current 200. That is a fraction more than one of Alevo's battery packs, which store 1MWhr. For comparison, the Alabama salt dome can store 2.9GWhr.</p>
<p>If heat is to be stored at scale some inventors would prefer to simplify the process, get rid of the compressed air, and concentrate on sequestering the heat itself. Isentropic, a company in Fareham, Britain, plans to employ the compression and expansion of a gas (in this case, argon) to create heat and cold respectively in two large containers of gravel--one of the cheapest solid heat-storage media imaginable. Once again, a pump-turbine is involved. It does the compression and expansion when electricity is abundant, and when it is scarce the gas flow, and thus the heat flow and therefore the whole process, is reversed.</p>
<p>Nor are these ideas the end of the list. Several firms, from giants such as ABB of Zurich, to minnows such as Berkeley Energy Sciences, a neighbour of LightSail, are pushing giant flywheels as at least part of the answer. Another suggestion--for filling in the shortest irregularities in supply, those lasting a few seconds or minutes such as are caused by the passage of a cloud in front of the sun--is to use supercapacitors, which store electricity as an actual electric charge, rather than converting it into chemical or physical potential energy of a non-electric form. At the other end of the scale as far as the size of the gap in supply is concerned, namely the nocturnal hours when solar energy cannot operate, several research groups are trying to use molten salts (usually sodium and potassium nitrates) to store heat gathered during the day and then, at night, raise steam for generators with it.</p>
<p>And there is one further idea around that, though it relies on new storage technology being developed, does not rely on that technology being developed specifically for grid-scale storage. This is to use the fleet of electric cars that its proposers hope will take over from ones driven by internal-combustion engines over the course of the next couple of decades.</p>
<p>In the imaginations of such people, the batteries of these cars (which would, when idle, be attached to the grid in order to charge them), could be employed as a giant storage network, to be plundered with the car owners' permission at times of peak demand. It is an intriguing thought--but the overlap between those times and the times cars are most likely to be on the road might scupper it in practice. As might the answer to the question about how ubiquitous electric cars will actually become. For that will depend on the future success and affordability of batteries.</p>
<p>The path from startup to success is littered with corpses, and an awful lot of business models depend for their putative profit on what is, according to your point of view, either a subsidy or a factoring in of the economic externalities (in the form of climate change) imposed by fossil fuels. In particular, Germany's Energiewende and California's Renewable Energy Programme have, by requiring a large fraction of those jurisdictions' electricity to be renewable, helped fuel the boom.</p>
<h3>Your bill, sir</h3>
<p>The world would no doubt be a better place if the externalities imposed by fossil fuels were properly accounted for in the price of electricity. But that is a hard sell, not least because of disagreements about those externalities' true size. In the meantime, it is better if grid-scale storage can be rolled out without taxpayer support.</p>
<p>That is the main reason for watching the example of Alevo. It says it can make money even in unsubsidised grids, because it has been ruthless about reducing manufacturing costs and simplifying the technology as far as possible.</p>
<p>This is a businesslike approach. If it works, and others prove able to mimic it, then the cost of running a grid, and thus the price of electricity, will fall. That alone will be a good thing. But success will change the very nature of such a grid, enabling it to absorb more wind and solar power even if this is a consequence unintended by the grid owners. How much more is yet unknown, for fossil fuels (particularly natural gas) are getting cheaper too. But renewables will no longer be fighting the battle with one hand tied behind their back.</p>
<p>The world would no doubt be a better place if the externalities imposed by fossil fuels were properly accounted for in the price of electricity</p>
<p>Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist</p>
<p></p>

We've Almost Solved the Biggest Problem With Solar And Wind

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Matching output to demand is hard with wind and solar power. The answer is to store surplus juice on the grid until it is needed</p>
<p>ON OCTOBER 28th a battery factory opened in Concord, North Carolina. That was good for an area which has seen dark economic times, but the event made few headlines. Perhaps it should have made more, though, for this factory's owner, Alevo, a Swiss company, is not in the business of manufacturing cells for torches, mobile phones or even laptop computers. Rather, it is making batteries that can store serious amounts of electricity--megawatt-hours of it. And it plans to sell them to power-grid operators.</p>
<p>To start with, the new batteries will be used to smooth the consequences of irregular demand through the day by absorbing electricity during troughs and regurgitating it during peaks. If that pans out, it will eliminate the need for gas-powered "peaker" stations which fire up quickly when needed, but are expensive to run. It would also allow non-peaker stations to operate more efficiently. Alevo reckons that if a grid as big as America's Western interconnection (which supplies the west of the United States and Canada) were to use 18GW-worth of its batteries the grid could save $12 billion a year. Though the company has no North American contract yet, it does have an agreement to deploy its batteries in Guangdong, China.</p>
<p>Smoothing the operation of existing grids, however, may be only the beginning. In the longer run, optimists believe, batteries like these, or some equivalent technology, are the key to dealing with the problem not just of irregular demand, but of irregular supply. As the unit cost of solar and wind energy drops ever closer to that of power from fossil fuels, the fact that the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine becomes more and more irksome. It is not just the great power-gap that is night which matters. As the chart below shows, even during the day--and even in deserts--the amount of sunlight can vary from minute to minute. And the wind, of course, is equally fickle.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Cheap grid-scale storage would overcome these irregularities. Renewables could then compete on cost alone. And there are many ideas for how to make this happen. Some, such as Alevo's, are ready to be sold. Others work in laboratories but have yet to be scaled up for use in the real world. Others still are little more than twinkles of varying plausibility in their inventors' eyes. But if even one of them is up to the task, then renewable energy may, at last, be able to stand on its own, rather than having to be subsidised and regulated into existence.</p>
<p>At the moment, grid-scale storage is dominated by pumped hydro. According to the Electric Power Research Institute, an American think-tank, 140GW-worth of this is installed around the world, with a capacity of 1.4TWhr. Pumped storage requires friendly geography. You need two reservoirs separated by a good gap of altitude. But it is then just a matter of linking them with pipes and using turbines that, if turned by falling water, generate electricity, but, when fed electricity, turn the other way to pump that water whence it came. Send it uphill when power is cheap, and let it flow down when there are spikes in demand, and you have a nice little business.</p>
<p>Not everywhere, though, has compliant hills and valleys. And pumped storage takes a long time, and a lot of money, to build. Technologies that start small, but can be scaled up as needed, are often a better answer.</p>
<h3>Batteries now included</h3>
<p>The immediate future of grid-scale storage, then, probably lies with real batteries rather than topographical ones. At least, Alevo thinks so. At full capacity, the firm's factory in Concord should be able to turn out 16.2GWhr-worth of them a year. And Alevo is not alone. Tesla is building an even bigger factory near Reno, Nevada (see "Brain scan: Tesla's electric man") to make batteries for its electric cars and for local and grid storage.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Several stations that use batteries to regulate the output of wind farms have already been built, or are under construction. In Sendai, Japan, Toshiba is creating one based on lithium-ion batteries. This should open in 2015. It will have a maximum power of 40MW, and will be able to run at that rate for half an hour. The Notrees Battery Storage Project, which opened in Texas in 2013, uses lead-acid batteries--sophisticated versions of the type found in petrol and diesel cars. It has a maximum power of 36MW and could run for 40 minutes at full tilt. Another Japanese project, of 34MW, in Rokkasho, uses sodium-sulphur batteries. And one in Alaska, of 27MW, uses nickel-cadmium ones.</p>
<p>As that list suggests, many types of grid-scale battery technology are available. Alevo uses electrodes made of lithium iron phosphate and graphite. These are connected by an inorganic sulphur-based electrolyte, a combination, the firm claims, that is particularly propitious because cycling between charged and discharged states produces only a 1°C change in the battery's temperature. This should eliminate the risk of overheating, to which some sorts of lithium-based cells are prone.</p>
<p>There are types of battery that actually require high temperatures to work. In sodium-sulphur cells of the sort deployed at Rokkasho both of those elements need to be liquid, meaning the battery has to be maintained at a temperature of 300-350°C. And an approach being developed by Donald Sadoway of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology would use two sorts of liquid metal, separated by a liquid electrolyte. The clever thing about this design is that, by picking a dense metal such as a mixture of antimony and lead, a light one such as lithium, and an electrolyte whose density falls between the two, the three substances will float as separate layers in a container, rather as oil separates from vinegar in a salad dressing.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p>Despite their superficial differences, one thing all these batteries have in common is that the energy they contain is stored chemically within their electrodes. This has a consequence, at least for those with solid electrodes. The constant change in the electrodes' composition as they are charged and discharged gradually wears them out. This limited lifespan is one reason using batteries for grid-scale storage is still pricey. Indeed, Alevo's claim that its batteries can undergo more than 40,000 cycles of charging and discharging without noticeable loss of function is an important part of its sales pitch.</p>
<p>An alternative approach, known as a flow battery, does not suffer from this difficulty. A flow battery's energy is stored in its electrolytes (of which there are two, separated by a membrane), rather than its electrodes (see illustration 1). Not only does that stop the electrodes wearing out, it also means that there is no upper limit, based on the sizes of those electrodes, on how much energy such a battery can store. Its capacity depends instead on the size of the tanks used to hold the electrolytes.</p>
<p>Flow batteries are a much less developed technology than standard batteries, but they are beginning to become commercially available. Many of those on sale at the moment (by firms such as Gildemeister of Germany and UET of Washington state) use vanadium-based electrolytes. Vanadium is a good material because its multiple ionic states mean it can be used to store energy without having to involve other reagents, and thus complicate the design.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, vanadium is expensive. But systems that use cheaper materials are being developed. Several firms are trying zinc and bromine in electrolytes and others iron and chromium. Ideas still in the lab include flow batteries based on cheap organic compounds called anthraquinones. If these prove robust enough to commercialise, they will be strong competitors in the grid-scale storage market. But they will not be alone. For batteries are not the only route to the destination.</p>
<h3>Pumped up</h3>
<p>If the engineers at Gravity Power in Goleta, California, get their way, even pumped storage is in line for a makeover. Their approach, it should be said from the outset, is one of the most twinkly of the twinkling eyes in the field. Even if it ultimately fails it shows the originality of thought that is being brought to bear on the problem.</p>
<p>Instead of two large reservoirs at different altitudes on a hillside, Gravity Power proposes two water-filled cylindrical shafts--one wider than the other--dug into the ground (see illustration 2). The shafts will be linked top and bottom to form a circuit, with a combined pump-turbine, similar to the ones used in conventional pumped storage, in the upper link. The wider shaft will contain a huge cylinder, made either of the rock the shaft is cut through or of concrete, to act as a piston.</p>
<p>When the pump-turbine is opened, the piston sinks, driving water around the circuit and through the turbine, generating power. Spin the device the other way using electricity, and the reversed water flow pushes the piston up again.</p>
<p>How much energy this arrangement can store depends on how deep the shafts go. And that is where it gets tricky, for some serious civil engineering will be needed if the idea is to work. Gravity Power proposes the shafts descend hundreds of metres. This will require large thicknesses of suitable rock--in practice this will probably be limestone, which is soft enough to cut into--so deployment will be limited not so much by geography as geology. And making a good seal between piston and shaft will hardly be trivial. So it will be expensive. A unit 700 metres deep, with a main shaft 26 metres across and a return shaft (or penstock) of about a tenth of that, would cost $170m. It would, though, be able to store about 200MWhr of energy, with an output of 50MW. Building one that size is years away, but the firm hopes to start work in 2015 on a demonstration plant near Penzberg, in Germany, with a depth of 140 metres, a capacity of 500 kWhr and an output of 1MW.</p>
<p>Nor is Gravity Power's approach the only one to rely on underground spaces and friendly geology. Another is to fill a subterranean cavern with compressed air. For that, the cavern needs to be hermetically sealed and this means using an underground salt dome that has been hollowed out by solution mining (ie, the salt has been extracted with hot water).</p>
<p>Given such a cavern, compressed-air storage is a bit like classical pumped storage, except with a gas, rather than a liquid. Air is pumped into the cavern, increasing its pressure, and then let out to drive a turbine. But there is a catch: gases heat up when compressed and cool when they expand. For compressed-air storage to work, therefore, the air released from the cavern has to be heated (usually by burning natural gas), otherwise it would freeze the turbine. That makes compressed-air storage inefficient--one reason there are only two grid-scale examples of it in the world (one in Germany, the other in Alabama).</p>
<p>This would change if the heat of compression could be captured, stored and recycled. And that is the goal of LightSail Energy, a firm based in Berkeley, California. LightSail has developed a small, but still grid-scale, compressed-air system that sprays water into the compression chamber, to cool the air as its volume shrinks. The air is then stored in a set of tanks with a total volume of 42,000 litres, and the water, with its heat load, is put into two tanks that have, in total, about a quarter of the volume of the air tanks.</p>
<p>At the moment, this device can store 700kWhr of energy, but that should rise to 1.1MWhr when (as is the plan) it is pressurised to 300 atmospheres instead of the current 200. That is a fraction more than one of Alevo's battery packs, which store 1MWhr. For comparison, the Alabama salt dome can store 2.9GWhr.</p>
<p>If heat is to be stored at scale some inventors would prefer to simplify the process, get rid of the compressed air, and concentrate on sequestering the heat itself. Isentropic, a company in Fareham, Britain, plans to employ the compression and expansion of a gas (in this case, argon) to create heat and cold respectively in two large containers of gravel--one of the cheapest solid heat-storage media imaginable. Once again, a pump-turbine is involved. It does the compression and expansion when electricity is abundant, and when it is scarce the gas flow, and thus the heat flow and therefore the whole process, is reversed.</p>
<p>Nor are these ideas the end of the list. Several firms, from giants such as ABB of Zurich, to minnows such as Berkeley Energy Sciences, a neighbour of LightSail, are pushing giant flywheels as at least part of the answer. Another suggestion--for filling in the shortest irregularities in supply, those lasting a few seconds or minutes such as are caused by the passage of a cloud in front of the sun--is to use supercapacitors, which store electricity as an actual electric charge, rather than converting it into chemical or physical potential energy of a non-electric form. At the other end of the scale as far as the size of the gap in supply is concerned, namely the nocturnal hours when solar energy cannot operate, several research groups are trying to use molten salts (usually sodium and potassium nitrates) to store heat gathered during the day and then, at night, raise steam for generators with it.</p>
<p>And there is one further idea around that, though it relies on new storage technology being developed, does not rely on that technology being developed specifically for grid-scale storage. This is to use the fleet of electric cars that its proposers hope will take over from ones driven by internal-combustion engines over the course of the next couple of decades.</p>
<p>In the imaginations of such people, the batteries of these cars (which would, when idle, be attached to the grid in order to charge them), could be employed as a giant storage network, to be plundered with the car owners' permission at times of peak demand. It is an intriguing thought--but the overlap between those times and the times cars are most likely to be on the road might scupper it in practice. As might the answer to the question about how ubiquitous electric cars will actually become. For that will depend on the future success and affordability of batteries.</p>
<p>The path from startup to success is littered with corpses, and an awful lot of business models depend for their putative profit on what is, according to your point of view, either a subsidy or a factoring in of the economic externalities (in the form of climate change) imposed by fossil fuels. In particular, Germany's Energiewende and California's Renewable Energy Programme have, by requiring a large fraction of those jurisdictions' electricity to be renewable, helped fuel the boom.</p>
<h3>Your bill, sir</h3>
<p>The world would no doubt be a better place if the externalities imposed by fossil fuels were properly accounted for in the price of electricity. But that is a hard sell, not least because of disagreements about those externalities' true size. In the meantime, it is better if grid-scale storage can be rolled out without taxpayer support.</p>
<p>That is the main reason for watching the example of Alevo. It says it can make money even in unsubsidised grids, because it has been ruthless about reducing manufacturing costs and simplifying the technology as far as possible.</p>
<p>This is a businesslike approach. If it works, and others prove able to mimic it, then the cost of running a grid, and thus the price of electricity, will fall. That alone will be a good thing. But success will change the very nature of such a grid, enabling it to absorb more wind and solar power even if this is a consequence unintended by the grid owners. How much more is yet unknown, for fossil fuels (particularly natural gas) are getting cheaper too. But renewables will no longer be fighting the battle with one hand tied behind their back.</p>
<p><br id="__tmp">The world would no doubt be a better place if the externalities imposed by fossil fuels were properly accounted for in the price of electricity</br></p>
<p>Click <a href="https://subscriptions.economist.com/nwcd">here</a> to subscribe to The Economist</p>
<p></p>

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You Searched For "pradeep phosphates listing price" and got 15 results

Oligarch who founded Russia's largest fertilizer and coal companies warns the world faces food crisis without an end to the conflict in Ukraine

Urooba Jamal

Anand Rathi Wealth’s ₹660 crore IPO demands ₹125 GMP ahead of opening date

Bhakti Makwana

COVID-19:Plea in HC against Centre, AAP govt decision to freeze DA

PTI

Trump has a distant financial link to a pharma giant that makes the drug he's been pushing to fight COVID-19 - but it's probably worth less than $1,000

Rosie Perper,Rosie Perper

Saudi Arabia has big plans for India's energy sector

Dilsher Dhillon

2020 IPL auction will see these 332 players trying their luck under the hammer

BI India Bureau

The mansion from 'Scarface' just sold for about a third of its original $35 million ask

Dennis Green

Volatility in the oil markets is now higher than during the financial crisis

Will Martin

Valeant has started taking a huge risk

Linette Lopez

The house from Scarface has sold for more than &#163;8 million

Will Martin

One of the world's biggest miners is taking 'radical' steps to avoid complete ruin

Will Martin

At Delhi’s Satyaniketan, the cafes serve burgers for Rs 50 and shakes for Rs 25. We find out how it is possible!

Suchayan Mandal

We've Almost Solved the Biggest Problem With Solar And Wind

Business Insider

Grid-Scale Storage: Smooth Operators

The Economist

The Fed says the economy is doing just fine

Akin Oyedele

The house from Scarface has sold for more than £8 million