November 17, 2021

Huawei construit une vitrine iSuperSite en collaboration avec China Mobile Zhejiang et le China Mobile Design Institute

SHENZHEN, Chine, 17 novembre 2021 /PRNewswire/ — La vitrine iSuperSite de Huawei, une coentreprise avec China Mobile Zhejiang et le China Mobile Design Institute à Hangzhou, a récemment été agréée.

Le site a été mis à niveau avec la solution iSuperSite de Huawei depuis août de cette année. Les six cabines d’origine ont été remplacées par une seule, minimisant ainsi la consommation électrique du réseau. Le site a ensuite été sélectionné comme site de démonstration écologique et économe en énergie par China Mobile Zhejiang dans le cadre de sa campagne de réduction des émissions de carbone. Le site modernisé permet non seulement de réduire de moitié les frais d’électricité et de 75 % les coûts d’exploitation et de maintenance, mais aussi de diminuer les émissions de carbone de huit tonnes par an.

Économies de 50 % et plus

Avant la reconstruction, le site comptait six cabines et six systèmes de refroidissement distincts avec des espaces d’installation et des systèmes d’alimentation individuels. Toutefois, cela s’est traduit par un encombrement important, une faible efficacité du système d’alimentation et une consommation d’énergie importante.

Après la mise en œuvre de la solution Huawei iSuperSite, les alimentations, les appareils et les batteries des six armoires existantes ont été intégrés dans une seule. 80 % de l’espace au sol est ainsi récupéré, ce qui permet l’installation d’un système de production d’électricité Huawei iPV pour fournir de l’énergie solaire. Par rapport au système de production d’énergie photovoltaïque traditionnel, l’iPV de Huawei affiche un rendement énergétique supérieur de 20 % et des économies d’électricité de 2 000 dollars par an, ce qui équivaut à une réduction des émissions de carbone de 8 tonnes. Avant la mise à niveau, les frais annuels d’électricité du site s’élevaient à environ 3 500 USD.

Comparison before and after the "1 for 6" reconstruction

Le site modernisé fait écho à la campagne pour le pic de carbone et la neutralité carbone lancée par China Mobile le 15 juillet de cette année en termes d’économie d’énergie, de réduction de la consommation et de réduction des émissions de carbone. En ce qui concerne la campagne, China Mobile a résumé ses objectifs de développement futur en termes d’économie d’énergie, d’énergie propre et d’habilitation, et a défini les six voies suivantes : construire un réseau vert, promouvoir l’énergie verte, construire une chaîne d’approvisionnement verte, promouvoir les bureaux verts, renforcer l’habilitation verte et créer une culture verte.

Une batterie au lithium pour deux rôles

Pour garantir que la transmission du réseau n’est pas interrompue en cas d’incidents tels que la foudre ou les coupures de courant, une station de base de communication a besoin de chaînes de batteries de secours de différentes tailles.

Le Huawei iSuperSite remplace les batteries au plomb par des batteries intelligentes au lithium CloudLi, doublant ainsi la densité de puissance et transformant l’unité d’alimentation de secours traditionnelle en un système de stockage d’énergie intelligent. Plus important encore, la fonction d’auto-étalement intelligente de l’IA peut stocker de l’énergie pendant les périodes creuses et en décharger pendant les heures de pointe. Les économies d’électricité réalisées sur une année peuvent dépasser 1,5 milliard de dollars si tous les sites de communication de Hangzhou utilisent cette fonction (calculée sur la base du prix de l’électricité résidentielle présentant la plus petite différence entre les périodes de pointe et les périodes creuses).

En outre, Huawei réalise de manière innovante une gestion intelligente de l’énergie grâce à quatre fonctions : comptage intelligent, découpage de l’énergie de secours, définition du logiciel et audit de l’énergie, afin d’améliorer l’efficacité de la gestion, d’accélérer la réalisation des objectifs de réduction des émissions de carbone et de réduire les coûts de maintenance.

Le système d’alimentation intelligent prend également en charge l’O&M intelligente et à distance, ce qui permet de réduire les coûts d’O&M de 75 %, de déployer la 5G sans augmenter les OPEX et d’aider les opérateurs à s’engager dans une voie de développement durable impliquant des économies d’énergie, une réduction de la consommation et une réduction du carbone.

La convergence de la 5G, du cloud computing, de l’edge computing et des technologies d’IA dans le contexte de la « nouvelle infrastructure » a présenté un éventail diversifié de possibilités de transformation numérique. L’énergie, en tant que pierre angulaire d’une société numérique, donnera un élan au développement de l’économie numérique. Dans le cadre des objectifs nationaux de la Chine, qui consistent à atteindre un pic de carbone d’ici 2030 et à parvenir à la neutralité carbone d’ici 2060, diverses industries sont sur le point de subir une vaste et profonde transformation systématique. La conservation de l’énergie, la réduction de la consommation et la réduction des émissions de carbone sont essentielles pour assurer le développement durable de l’industrie des communications.

La solution Huawei iSuperSite intègre des technologies numériques, d’électronique de puissance et de TIC, ce qui aide les opérateurs à moderniser et à reconstruire les sites existants tout en économisant de l’énergie et de l’espace. Cette solution répond non seulement aux exigences de la couverture rapide des réseaux de communication à l’ère de la 5G, mais elle minimise également la consommation d’énergie, ce qui permet aux transporteurs d’atteindre leurs objectifs en matière d’émissions de carbone et de construire ensemble un avenir vert.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1688140/image.jpg

November 17, 2021

Overdose Deaths in US Top 100,000, CDC Says

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that 100,000 Americans died of drug overdose between May 2020 and April 2021 — a nearly 30% increase over the previous year.

While not an official count, the CDC says it can confirm 98,000 deaths so far during the period and estimates the total number will likely be around 100,300 after causes of death are made official. It can take months to investigate and finalize drug fatalities.

Experts say the increased availability of the deadly opioids, particularly fentanyl, is a major driver, accounting for 64% of overdose deaths.

Another factor is the COVID-19 pandemic which made it hard for drug users to get treatment or support.

“What we’re seeing are the effects of these patterns of crisis and the appearance of more dangerous drugs at much lower prices,” Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told CNN. “In a crisis of this magnitude, those already taking drugs may take higher amounts and those in recovery may relapse. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen and perhaps could have predicted.”

In a statement, President Joe Biden called the number a “tragic milestone,” and said his administration “is committed to doing everything in our power to address addiction and end the overdose epidemic.”

Overdose deaths are now more common than deaths from car crashes, guns and the flu. Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the U.S., killing 660,000 in 2019.

Source: Voice of America

November 17, 2021

Bonds, Stocks, Economy: How China’s Property Woes Are Spilling Overseas

Marco Metzler of Switzerland gets 2,000 new followers a day on LinkedIn, all watching to see what will happen to his money. Metzler invested $50,000 last month in the offshore bonds of real estate developer China Evergrande Group to see if he would get any returns. The former Fitch Ratings analyst is not expecting much. He’s out to prove a point about China’s troubled property sector by chronicling the fate of his investment on social media.

“I was concerned about what was going on, and from my past I’m able to read rating reports and also to see what’s going on in the world in economics, and I felt obligated to speak out to the world and to warn about that situation,” Metzler told VOA. “We didn’t invest to get the money back, so I’m fully aware this will be lost.”

Evergrande has struggled since last year, when the Chinese government began clamping down on the country’s property sector to rein in excessive debt and cap speculation.

Towering apartment blocks today extend far into the suburbs of major Chinese cities, but many flats are unoccupied, owned instead by absentee speculators and their banks. Evergrande Group, one of China’s biggest property developers by revenue, is now selling assets and may be staring down a massive restructuring to ease debt.

Companies or governments that invest in offshore bonds, and individuals who trade stocks listed outside mainland China and its $15.42 trillion economy, are coming to terms — albeit more quietly than Metzler — with the Chinese property crisis of 2021. These troubles are threatening bond returns, lowering some stock prices and could erode at least a quarter of the world’s second largest economy.

“I don’t think anyone debates the importance of the real estate market on the Chinese economy,” said James Macdonald, head of the property services firm Savills Research in Shanghai, who estimates real estate at 25% to 30% of China’s economy.

“If we do see a significant slowdown in the real estate market, it will have an impact in terms of domestic economic growth rates, and that could have a knock-on effect in terms of global economy,” Macdonald said.

As many analysts have noted, any major economic shocks that hit China, a country closely tied to the global manufacturing supply chain, and whose massive consumer base importers and exporters rely on, are inevitably felt around the world.

Property crisis: Evergrande and beyond

Evergrande is a bellwether firm that is more than $300 billion in debt. Hong Kong-listed shares in Evergrande have tumbled since February, though the developer averted default in October by paying interest on an overseas bond.

Another Chinese development giant, Kaisa Group Holdings, faces limited funding access and uncertainty over refinancing a “significant amount” of U.S.-dollar bond payments into next year “in light of ongoing capital-market volatility,” Fitch said in an e-mailed news release last month.

Smaller property developers are likely to rattle bond markets outside China because they are “less sound” than bigger ones, said Lillian Li, a vice president-senior credit officer at the Moody’s ratings service.

“We see that the offshore bond market has actually shown larger volatility than the domestic market in front of these regulatory crackdowns, including in the property sector,” Li said.

The Hang Seng Properties Index in Hong Kong, where foreigners are allowed to trade shares of Chinese companies, has lost about 1.2% year to date.

Municipal officials in some cities capped home purchase prices in September to deter speculators, further hobbling property momentum in China. The domestic property market could shrink by half a percent in 2022, Li said. Last month, prices for new as well as resale homes fell amid a fall in construction starts.

What happens next

Evergrande has offered its investors cash payment by installments as well as putting forth actual structures as repayment assets, the state-run China Daily news website says.

Central government officials hope to contain property speculation and leave property for people to occupy, the official Xinhua News Agency reports.

About $52 billion in Chinese property bonds will mature next year and $44 billion the following year, said Henry Chin, Asia Pacific research head with the real estate services firm CBRE. Other bond issuers will default, he forecasts.

No offshore investors want the bonds now, said Liang Kuo-yuan, president of the Taipei-based Yuanta-Polaris Research Institute, though he believes Taiwanese insurers and pension funds have invested in the past.

“Taiwan’s insurers more or less will buy high-yield and high-risk investment products, because the interest rates on policies they’ve sold in the past are too high,” Liang said.

Evergrande was once seen as the epitome of a Chinese property mainland market, Liang added. China’s real estate sector, the world’s largest, grew briskly from 2010 to 2018, says investment bank J.P. Morgan.

But not all is lost, some analysts say.

Investors in private equity for distressed debt could get a lift from China’s property spillover if companies look for new ways to repay debt, said Chin of CBRE. Some stock-buying vehicles have made money, too. Shares of the TAO-Invesco China Real Estate exchange-traded fund of Chinese stocks including Evergrande, for example, has grown 65% year to date.

But back in Switzerland, Metzler wrote on LinkedIn that Evergrande had “officially defaulted on overdue interest payments” and that his current company, DMSA, would file a bankruptcy case against the group. He calls China’s property market “a first domino” in a broader financial and economic crisis.

“The old system needs to come down before a new system will be established,” he told VOA.

Source: Voice of America

November 17, 2021

Delhi’s Air Pollution Crisis Prompts Shutdown of Thermal Plants, Schools, Colleges

With the Indian capital enveloped in a haze of toxic smog, authorities ordered six thermal plants in the city’s vicinity to shut temporarily, closed schools and colleges indefinitely and imposed work-from-home restrictions to control pollution levels that turned severe on several days this month.

A panel of the federal environment ministry has also banned construction activity until the end of the week and barred trucks, except those carrying essential commodities, from entering the city as part of the series of emergency measures.

Environmentalists pointed out that these steps would only marginally mitigate the air pollution crisis that grips New Delhi every winter.

“The emergency action is not a magic bullet that will address the pollution crisis,” said Anumita Rowchowdhury, executive director research and advocacy at New Delhi’s Center for Science and Environment. “It only ensures that it will not worsen the pollution but it will not clean the air.”

The world’s most polluted capital city has recorded levels for dangerous particles known as PM 2.5 that settle deep inside lungs many times higher than the standards set by the World Health Organization.

The haze that covers the city is a mix of fumes, including vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, construction dust, farm fires and fumes caused by the burning of waste in the open. In winter, the pollutants hang over the city due to low wind speeds.

City authorities in Delhi have told the Supreme Court they are considering a weekend lockdown, similar to what was implemented during the pandemic. If so, it would be the first of a kind “pollution” lockdown.

The toxic smog is not restricted to the capital city — skies across much of North India also turn grey at this time of the year leaving millions gasping for air.

But while Delhi has taken some steps to combat the dirty air by shutting down coal-fired power stations and switching most industry and public transport to clean fuel, the same standards have not been imposed by neighboring states, experts point out.

“Air does not respect political boundaries. The time has come to take a regional approach and scale up stringent action in the entire Indo-Gangetic plains,” said Roychowdhury. “For example, Delhi is the only city to have switched industry to natural gas, imposed clean fuel standards for vehicles and shut down coal plants. But the same needs to be done elsewhere. We really need to ramp up our energy transition.”

However, phasing out coal, which still powers 70% of India’s electricity grid, will not be easy. As North India battled its annual air pollution crisis, Indian delegates to the recent climate summit held in Scotland said developing countries were entitled to the responsible use of fossil fuels.

“How can anyone expect that developing countries can make promises about phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies?” Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav asked at the summit. “Developing countries have still to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication.”

India and China were blamed for watering down a commitment to phasing out coal at the summit.

But in India, environmentalists said the country’s concerns were genuine. “The dilemma that India faces is, how quickly can it make the transition from coal?” said Chandra Bhushan, who heads the Delhi-based International Forum for Environment. “While coal does contribute to air pollution and climate change, we cannot shut down coal right away and replace it with renewables in a hurry. This is going to be a process.”

Meanwhile, the severe air pollution has led to a public health emergency with many residents in Delhi and other North Indian cities struggling with respiratory problems and doctors warning it is a serious health hazard.

The dirty air kills more than a million people every year in India according to a report by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, a U.S. research group.

Source: Voice of America

November 17, 2021

US Reportedly Negotiating Deal with Pfizer to Purchase 10 Million Doses of Experimental COVID-19 Pill

News outlets say the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is planning to spend $5 billion to purchase Pfizer’s new experimental antiviral pill designed to treat COVID-19, enough to cover 10 million courses of treatment.

The revelation comes a day after the U.S. drugmaker announced it had signed a deal with Geneva-based Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed public health group, to authorize generic drugmakers to produce its experimental COVID-19 pill for 95 countries.

The deal will make the pill available for low- and middle-income countries comprising about 53% of the world’s population.

Pfizer says its new pill, called Paxlovid, reduces the risks of hospitalization and death by nearly 90% in people with mild to moderate coronavirus cases. Independent experts recommended ending Pfizer’s study because of its encouraging results.

Tuesday’s agreement between Pfizer and the Medicines Patent Pool coincided with Pfizer’s application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to authorize use of the drug on an emergency basis.

“It’s quite significant that we will be able to provide access to a drug that appears to be effective and has just been developed, to more than 4 billion people,” said the Medicines Patent Pool’s Esteban Burrone.

Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders, said the organization is disappointed the agreement does not make the pill available to all countries.

“The world knows by now that access to COVID-19 medical tools needs to be guaranteed for everyone, everywhere, if we really want to control this pandemic,” she said.

Pfizer will not receive payments on sales in low-income countries, where fewer than 1% of its COVID-19 vaccine doses have been provided. It also will waive royalties on sales in all countries covered by the deal while COVID-19 remains a public health emergency.

The Medicines Patent Pool announced in October that another U.S. drugmaker, Merck, agreed to allow other companies to make its COVID-19 pill available in 105 poorer countries.

Merck says its antiviral pill reduces the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 by half when administered soon after the appearance of the first symptoms.

The Biden administration has pledged to spend about $2.2 billion to purchase about 3.1 million doses of Merck’s pill once it has been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. An FDA advisory panel will meet on November 30 to discuss Merck’s COVID-19 pill. British drug regulators granted authorization for Merck’s pill earlier this month.

Despite decisions by Pfizer and Merck to share their COVID-19 drug patents, Pfizer and other vaccine-makers have refused to release their vaccine formulas for broader production.

Source: Voice of America

November 17, 2021

White House: 10% of Kids Have Been Vaccinated in First 2 Weeks

The White House says about 10% of eligible kids aged 5 to 11 have received a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine since its approval for their age group two weeks ago.

At least 2.6 million kids have received a shot, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday, with 1.7 million doses administered in the last week alone, roughly double the pace of the first week after approval. It’s more than three times faster than the rate adults were vaccinated at the start of the nation’s vaccination campaign 11 months ago.

Zients said there are now 30,000 locations across the country for kids to get a shot, up from 20,000 last week, and that the administration expects the pace of pediatric shots to pick up in the coming days.

Kids who get their first vaccine dose by the end of this week will be fully vaccinated by Christmas, assuming they get their second shot three weeks after the first one.

Pace varies among states

State-by-state breakdowns of doses given to the age group haven’t been released by the White House or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but figures shared by states show the pace varies. About 11% to 12% of children in that age group have received their first doses in Colorado, Utah and Illinois, but the pace is much slower in places like Idaho (5%), Tennessee (5%) and Wyoming (4%), three states that have some of the lowest rates of vaccination for older groups.

The White House was stepping up its efforts to promote kid vaccination, with first lady Jill Biden and the singer Ciara taping a video Wednesday encouraging shots for kids.

The first lady also visited a Washington pediatric care facility along with Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Washington Mystics’ Alysha Clark and the Washington Wizards’ Thomas Bryant.

“You’re the real heroes,” Biden told newly vaccinated kids. “You have your superpower and now you’re protected against COVID.”

Biden also warned parents against misinformation around the vaccines and emphasized their safety.

“I want you to remember and share with other parents: The vaccine protects your children against COVID-19,” she said. “It’s been thoroughly reviewed and rigorously tested. It’s safe. It’s free, and it’s available for every single child in this country 5 and up.”

Source: Voice of America