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David Fickling Profile picture
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1 Jul, 4 tweets, 1 min read
This is very good on Australia's vaccine communication mess:

theguardian.com/australia-news…
I'm quite struck by this passage, which seems overconfident to me.

Nearly 1,000 people have died of Covid in Australia. We had multiple days of 20+ deaths *in Victoria alone* last winter. Image
Public health experts are trying to communicate age-specific risks in the best way possible so I have huge sympathy.

However, anecdotally so many people I speak to are *terrified* of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Communication isn't working effectively if that's the outcome.
People are not hearing "some age-specific risks of TTI are higher than those of Covid at this point in time in younger cohorts based on the current effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions".

They are hearing "experts say under-60s shouldn't take AstraZeneca".

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More from @davidfickling

David Fickling Profile picture
30 Jun
Does the head of Harvard's endowment understand how short-selling works?

Because this idea of using short positions as carbon offsets makes no sense to me.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
He's arguing that shorting an emitter's stock puts pressure on the company to change similar to activist investing, and raises its cost of capital.

I bet short-sellers wish it was that easy!
To the extent short-sellers have any effect on a company's cost of capital, it's by *bringing fresh information to the market* about its risk profile.

But you don't need the Harvard endowment to tell you that heavily emitting companies have a Net Zero problem! We all know this.
Read 7 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
24 Jun
If you think about the core business of a physical commodity trader — arbitrage of time, place and quality — this makes a lot more sense.
Storage (owning a lot of oil tanks, or taking advantage of price rises while your tankers are steaming across the seas) has long been key to the business.
The storage opportunity in a renewable economy is enormous, whether it's buying cheap midday solar and holding it for the evening grid load peak or doing the same on a seasonal basis for summer or winter cooling and heating loads.
Read 5 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
20 Jun
High costs and disruptions in the shipping industry aren't likely to vanish quickly as the pandemic fades:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
The immediate problem is that shipping containers are in the wrong place, piling up in North America and Europe because hard-pressed vessels have been returning to port empty so as to save time.

This shows up in the differential container rates for outbound and return voyages:
That price dislocation is a good thing, giving container lines a strong economic incentive to move boxes to where they're most needed.

Compare the price gap that's opened up on ex-China routes to the stability of the transatlantic passage on that chart:
Read 9 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
19 Jun
Something I don't think is widely understood is that the U.S. Department of Defence has for generations been one of the single biggest drivers of vaccine development and deployment globally.

Far more important than the Gates Foundation or any pharma company, IMO.
This arguably starts with George Washington inoculating the Continental Army against smallpox during the Revolutionary War.

But then later, yellow fever, adenovirus, typhoid, hepatitis A and B, meningococcal, influenza ... the list goes on.
It doesn't really make much sense for private companies to invest in vaccine development because thr business model — one shot and you're protected, ideally for life — is just terrible from a profit point of view.
Read 4 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
15 Jun
Is a nuclear power plant on the edge of China’s 60 million-strong Pearl River Delta megalopolis on the verge of an emergency? It doesn’t look like it — but that doesn’t mean there’s no cause for concern:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl… via @bopinion
@bopinion The worrying thing in this incident isn't the leak of nuclear fission products, but the leak of information.

It shouldn't require CNN, the U.S. Department of Energy, and a French utility to tell the world what's going on at a Chinese power station.
@bopinion The most important part of the CNN report, IMO, isn't the raw information about a nuclear fuel leak (which seems pretty routine) but the insight we get about how nuclear regulation appears to be conducted in China:

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/14…

https://t.co/S5QVtEoykH
Read 7 tweets
David Fickling Profile picture
13 Jun
Solar panel prices are rising for the first time in years thanks to the surging cost of polysilicon.

If the solar industry doesn't deal with its Xinjiang problem, this could be just the start:

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Polysilicon is the key raw material for solar power. The core of a solar panel is a thin slice of polysilicon.

About 45% of the world's polysilicon comes from Xinjiang, and three of the four biggest producers have alleged links to the forced labour of Uyghur minorities.
Polysilicon prices right now are at their highest levels in 2012.

This is quite a big deal. Persistent high prices (of up to $450/kg) for polysilicon during the 2000s are probably the main reason no one expected solar power to get cheap back then.
Read 15 tweets

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