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Emissions market to stay volatile Price volatility will become a key characteristic of carbon, as its price becomes ever more difficult to forecast accurately.
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ccording to a new report by energy experts GlobalData, the current European sovereign debt crisis has drastically reduced carbon demand, and hence its price in the trading market has also seen a steep decline. The failure of the international community to agree on a common goal in a post-2012 Kyoto framework has also damaged the confidence of the private sector, and played a role in lowering the price of carbon. Carbon is traded at national and regional levels in various markets, and future prices and stability have always been a concern for private players and policy makers. Several models have been developed to forecast the market price of carbon, although outcomes differ significantly. This is due to the nature of the carbon market, which is affected and driven by a complex set of subjective factors. Geo-climatic policies and energy policies, geo-politics, global economic growth, crude oil price, coal prices and the demand and supply scenario all help to drive and shape the carbon market. The European Union Allowances (EUAs) under the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the largest cap and trade carbon trading mechanism, followed by Certified Emission Reduction (CER) under Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Both of these programmes come under the Kyoto Protocol. EUAs and CERs are used to offset the same amount of CO2 emissions, but are not equal in price due to regulatory differences for the use of CERs in EU ETS. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) in Australia and the New Zealand Emission Trading
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Megger benefits from a enhanced cable testing portfolio, while SebKMT benefits from Megger’s strong technical and financial base.
The short-term view of the carbon market is pessimistic.
Scheme (NZ ETS) in New Zealand are also important and more regional and national markets will be operational in the future. Such developments are expected to boost the carbon market. The short-term view of the carbon market is pessimistic, as the prolonged European sovereign debt crisis, oversupply of carbon units, and uncertainties under the Kyoto Protocol are expected to keep prices low. The EU recession means that emissions will grow less than expected, in correlation to overall economic growth. As the EU shows signs of recovery from the recession, carbon prices will follow the same path, although this seems unlikely in the next few years. The economic conditions in the eurozone and outcomes of the Kyoto Protocol will determine the global price of carbon in the long-term future, with government commitments to tackling climate change dictating the scenario. The oversupply of allowances will keep pulling the price down long-term, although global macro economic conditions will also play a role, and prices will increase if India, China and Brazil also promise to meet certain targets by 2020. Apart from negotiations under Kyoto, various regional and national market mechanisms have emerged or developed to offset emissions, despite delays and setbacks. Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and emerging economies such as India, Brazil and China are actively developing their carbon markets. The current state of the market and its future success remains dependent on post-2012 international agreements and their fulfilment.
lobal electrical test equipment expert Megger has acquired SebaKMT, a leading player in power cable fault location and testing and in pipe leakage detection. The acquisition will allow Megger to greatly enhance its existing cable test product portfolio while SebaKMT will benefit from access to the exceptionally strong technical and financial resources of the Megger organisation. Following the acquisition, business will initially continue as usual for both organisations while a full evaluation is carried out of the opportunities in product development, manufacturing operations, and customer-facing sales and support services. Customers of both companies will, therefore, continue to obtain sales, service and support through the channels they are currently using. Peter Frank, Chairman of Megger Group said: “This acquisition is an outstandingly positive development for both companies and for their customers, not least because there’s a high degree of synergy between the Megger and SebaKMT product ranges, but very little overlap. The new organisation will therefore, be able to offer a truly comprehensive family of power test products, backed by unmatched technical expertise and strong readily accessible customer support in virtually every country of the world.” Dr Max Iann, the former owner of SebaKMT said: “It was important for us to find a partner that would enable SebaKMT to continue to grow successfully, and to strengthen its market position. Megger is the perfect partner, as the companies ideally complement each other in terms of product range and geographical coverage.” Following the acquisition of SebaKMT, Dr Iann has joined the board of Megger Group. The Vivax-Metrotech Group, formerly part of SebaKMT, has not been acquired by Megger. However, the current sales co-operation in Europe and the United States between Vivax-Metrotech and SebaKMT will continue.
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Megger acquires SebaKMT
The workflow route to excellence
Proficy Water Operations from GE-IP allows water/wastewater utilities to create more efficient work processes by integrating automated and manual tasks into a single efficient operation.
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n April this year, GE Intelligent Platforms (GE-IP) launched Proficy Water Operations, a Work Process Management (WPM) application developed for water/wastewater utilities and application, which builds on the capabilities of the company’s Proficy Workflow solution. Proficy Water Operations, GE-IP claims, helps utilities to easily document processes, transfer institutional knowledge and drive critical consistency and predictability into their operations. It enables digitisation of manual and automated processes with one tool across the entire facility – from plant operators and maintenance teams to field crews and leadership – creating electronic Standard Operating Procedures (e-SOPs) to guide operators, track actions for reporting, and align plant processes for rapid response to normal and unusual events. “With the e-SOP engine, you can quickly configure standard operating procedures and processes to solve problems,” explained Terry Biederman, Water Industry Leader, GE Intelligent Platforms. The e-SOPs provide stepby-step instructions for operators and take corrective action to remediate a problem. For example, an e-SOP procedure which addresses pump runtimes and maintenance is initiated when the pump reaches the run time maintenance threshold. A notification is sent directly to the assigned operators,
who can go out to the pump and take the steps outlined in the e-SOP to resolve the issue, whether it is changing the seals, repacking or inspecting them. Documents such as O&M manuals for the specific pump can also be displayed for the operator’s reference. Apart from condition-based events drawn from data coming in from the SCADA system, workflows can be triggered for time-based events like scheduled maintenance too.
Terry Biederman, Water Industry Leader, GE Intelligent Platforms
Proficy Water Operations WPM helps capture and digitise expert knowledge, and thus ensures that best practices become standard operating procedures. “WPM standardises and ensures that the procedures for taking care of problems are consistent across the board,” said Biederman. “So whether it is 30-year veteran or five year one,
they follow the same work procedure.” Also when the utility begins to digitise its manual or automated processes, it can re-visit them and develop the best way to address standard operating procedures. “You get to take the best of everything and do it right because you really don’t want to digitise a bad process,” said Biederman. The GE-IP executive prefers to define Proficy Water Operations as a “middleware” which integrates a utility’s operations side with its business side to drive operational benefits. He should know because in his earlier avatar as Director of Public Works (DPW) for Waterford Township in Michigan, Biederman oversaw a major project called ‘Platform Convergence Project’ which brought together the municipality’s disparate systems to a single WPM platform to minimise the impact of workforce retirements. In this instance, GE-IP’s Proficy Workflow WPM software was used to link the municipality’s SCADA, CMMS, and Document Management System (DMS), and standardise workflow procedures. Biederman explained: “You have WPM sitting in the middle, receiving real time operational data from the SCADA system. When a particular e-SOP gets triggered, it is also moved into the CMMS because an important part of resolving a problem is capturing the labour and time taken to solve it. In Waterford, I not only wanted to cover
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