Month: March 2023

Rayonier’s New Zealand team has a deep respect for protecting wildlife including the beloved kiwi.

In the video above, our New Zealand management team joined with a number of community stakeholder groups at Te Kura o Te Teko (a full-immersion Māori school) to attend a kiwi naming ceremony before releasing two kiwi chicks into Omataroa Forest.

(The Māori are the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand. Kiwi are flightless birds native to the country and are a national symbol of New Zealand.)

The Omataroa Trust owns the land and has invested in environmental restoration including pest control and active kiwi management for the past two decades to ensure a sustainable population of kiwi for generations to come.

Partnering to preserve a threatened national symbol

Rob Schoonderwoerd, District Forester for our Bay of Plenty region, has worked with the Trust since the inception of the Omataroa Kiwi Project. The presence of kiwi and native falcons was discovered through a survey of vegetation in 2000, prompting the development of a pest control plan. (The New Zealand falcon is the country’s only falcon species and is the most threatened bird of prey.)

Initially there were only 12 Eastern Brown Kiwi found in or around the block. That population has now grown to 60 adult kiwi living and breeding in that area today thanks to careful management of these threatened birds.

Kiwi are the size of a domestic chicken and are the smallest living ratites (the group of animals that includes ostriches and emus). They also lay the largest egg in relation to their body size of any species of bird in the world. Kiwi are nocturnal, so they are more often heard than seen. If they survive to maturity (5 years), they can live for 50 to 100 years; however, predation is the biggest issue facing their survival.

Pest control and protecting kiwi chicks

Rayonier | Matariki Forests (RMF) is working with the Omataroa Kiwi Project to provide intensive trapping and pest control management, which largely targets stoats and cats. Buffer trapping is also being deployed beyond the 11,000-hectare (27,000-acre) reserve area.

The Kiwi Project team works with the Department of Conservation on the survivability of chicks using three techniques:

Incubation hatching at a special facility in Rainbow Springs in Rotorua, where the chicks are raised until they weigh 1,000 grams (2.2 pounds)In situ management of nests and chicksCrèching, where the chicks are sent to another region to be raised and are returned once they weigh 1,000 grams (2.2 pounds)

The two female chicks that were released at the event in the video above were hatched at Rainbow Springs and were named Hobson and Aroha (which means “love”) by the children at Te Teko school.

The kiwi were tagged with transmitters for monitoring and will be checked three weeks after being released into the wild. A key part of the Omataroa Kiwi Project is education, so we had the opportunity to teach the school children about the environment, predators and survival requirements of the kiwi.

A long-term commitment to stewardship

The kiwi management work being carried out by the Omataroa Kiwi Project along with pest control, education and training is crucial to the continued survival of kiwi in this forest. Thanks to Rob Schoonderwoerd’s work over the years, the Omataroa Trust has grown to be a valued partner, and the Trust has now invited Rayonier | Matariki Forests to partner on a more substantial sponsorship program.

We recognize our responsibility as a forest owner to support the sustained preservation of the Eastern Brown Kiwi and other native birds in this forest for future generations, and we are delighted to be part of this wonderful conservation effort.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The US workforce has a high demand for digital skills, yet many workers – particularly workers of color and those without higher education – lack these skills.Federal funds should increase access to digital skills training, by providing vital support to small businesses, drive economic mobility for individual workers, and benefit the broader economy.Prioritizing upskilling, especially within entry-level jobs, can close digital equity gaps and create business growth.

The digital divide is a complex issue that includes barriers to digital adoption and access. However, there is another key element of the issue that is too often ignored: the digital skills gap.

Earlier this week, the National Skills Coalition (NSC) released a report in conjunction with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta on the task at hand and what it means to close the digital skills divide in the workforce.

Here are the key numbers:

92%

92% of jobs available today require digital or likely digital skills – yet nearly one-third of US workers lack opportunities to build these skills.

23%

Jobs that require even one digital skill can earn an average of 23% more than jobs requiring no digital skills – an increase of $8,000 in annual income.

$27K

Businesses can save more than $27,000 per position when they offer upskilling opportunities, versus the cost of replacing a worker who departs.

What does this report tell us?

Across every industry and firm size, the US labor market shows an incredible demand for digital skills and workforce development. This is the reality we face today – not a projection of where jobs will be in the future. When we close the digital skills divide, we can create big payoffs for individuals, businesses, and the overall economy.

What should we do?

The answer lies in partnerships. Both the public and private sectors must work together to equip workers with digital skills. These skills must be both fundamental, like using a computer, and industry specific, like using bookkeeping software.

With an unprecedented federal investment in broadband deployment and adoption, there is no better time for government, private companies, and community organizations to collaborate.

Policymakers can use federal Digital Equity Act and Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funds to supercharge free or low-cost digital skills training programs. Such programs include Digital Navigators, in which local experts help folks understand the importance of digital skills and how to access available resources, like the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). Across the nation at Comcast, we’ve launched a network of Digital Navigators who are breaking down barriers to digital literacy and helping more people get and stay online.

As these federal funds are distributed, we have a special opportunity to bring digital skills resources to the communities that need them the most. This includes workers of color as well as small businesses and education providers, many of which rely on publicly funded programs to upskill employees.

The NSC’s findings reiterate why I am so proud of the work Comcast has been doing for so long and why we are proud to call NSC a valued partner. Over the last decade, we have grown our Internet Essentials program, the largest and most successful broadband adoption initiative in the industry. Through that program, more than 10 million individuals have become broadband subscribers.

And through Project UP, our $1 billion commitment to help advance digital equity, we’re partnering with organizations like CodePath, Hispanic Federation, NPower, and Per Scholas to create equitable access to skills and training so more people secure good jobs and climb the economic ladder.

One of the featured states in the NSC report is Illinois, which Comcast is proud to serve. 90% of the jobs in that state require digital skills. That’s why we’re working with local organizations like City Colleges of Chicago to ensure students can build critical digital skills.

The pandemic accelerated digital transformation. The importance of not only digital access but also digital skills is clear, and so is the path forward. The NSC’s report lays out a roadmap to close the digital skills divide, through increased public investments in digital skill-building.

With this knowledge in hand, let’s continue to build and nurture partnerships across the public and private sectors to give everyone the opportunity to succeed in today’s digital world.

Broderick Johnson is Executive Vice President, Public Policy & Executive Vice President, Digital Equity.

Originally Published on about.bnef.com

NEW YORK and LONDON, March 3, 2023 /3BL Media/ – Electricity grids are the backbone of the energy transition, yet the networks we have today are not ready for the future. At least $21.4 trillion needs to be invested in the electricity grid by 2050 to support a net-zero trajectory for the world, according to a new report from BloombergNEF (BNEF). The New Energy Outlook: Grids report, published today, provides a more detailed breakdown of the grid analysis presented in BNEF’s New Energy Outlook 2022 Net Zero Scenario.

The total investment comprises $4.1 trillion to sustain the existing grid and $17.3 trillion to expand the grid for new electricity consumption and production. Annual investment triples from $274 billion in 2022 to $871 billion per year in the decade preceding 2050. Significant policy intervention is required to realize this scale of investment in the grid. This includes streamlining the permitting processes to reduce the number of permits required for a project, consolidate the review process among different agencies, and establish clear time frames for approval. To ensure grid modernization can accelerate, reforms are needed to create right incentives for utilities to pursue digitalization and grid flexibility.

Annual expenditure on distribution networks more than triples to about $533 billion by 2050, from $147 billion today. As renewables expand, grid expenditure leans towards building greater redundancy in the distribution grid, enabling bi-directional flow, and enhancing remote monitoring. Transmission lines continue to play an important role to connect markets, balance power between distribution grids, improve system reliability and carry electricity from remote generators across the network.

Power lines expand tremendously. BNEF estimates 80 million kilometers in grid growth between 2022-50, more than enough to replace the global electricity grid today. This breaks down to about 68 million kilometers of above-ground lines, 12 million kilometers of underground cables and 0.2 million kilometers of submarine cables.

“We must effectively double the size of the global electricity grid by 2050. This future grid needs to be smart, flexible and responsive, enabling us to harness the full potential of renewable energy rather than be bogged down by it.” said Sanjeet Sanghera, Head of Grids & Utilities at BloombergNEF and lead author of the report.

Digitalization, which helps improve and extend the utilization of the grid infrastructure, represents 24%, or $5.1 trillion, of total investment to 2050. Most of this goes toward implementing automation and control of the power system or to increasing monitoring and situation awareness. Digital deployments also help extend the lifetime of aging assets, avoid costly new power lines and affordably maintain reliability for both demand and generation connections – thereby cutting across all the drivers of grid investment.

“The legacy grid was built for the industrial revolution and outperformed our wildest expectations,” said Sanghera. “But the project ahead is to decarbonize the global economy by connecting terawatts of renewables and electrifying as much as possible of the end-use economy. The technologies, policies and strategies utilities will need to accomplish this goal are different from those that made the grid so successful in the past.”

The expansion of the electricity grid will strain supply chains. Copper demand from grids reaches 13 million tons by 2030, up from 5 million tons today, and then continues growing towards 23 million tons in 2050. Power grids will be the top consumer of copper among energy transition technologies in 2022-50 under the net zero scenario.

This research forms part of a series of reports diving deeper into country and sector results from BloombergNEF’s New Energy Outlook. As part of this series, BloombergNEF today also published a separate report New Energy Outlook: Industry, focusing on the key technologies needed to decarbonize industrial sectors. A link to the press release can be found here.

BloombergNEF will publish New Energy Outlook reports for the US, Europe, China, Japan, India, and Australia over the coming months.

Contact
Oktavia Catsaros
Bloomberg
+1-212-617-9209
ocatsaros@bloomberg.net

About Bloomberg
Bloomberg is a global leader in business and financial information, delivering trusted data, news, and insights that bring transparency, efficiency, and fairness to markets. The company helps connect influential communities across the global financial ecosystem via reliable technology solutions that enable our customers to make more informed decisions and foster better collaboration. For more information, visit Bloomberg.com/company or request a demo.

About BloombergNEF
BloombergNEF (BNEF) is a strategic research provider covering global commodity markets and the disruptive technologies driving the transition to a low-carbon economy. Our expert coverage assesses pathways for the power, transport, industry, buildings and agriculture sectors to adapt to the energy transition. We help commodity trading, corporate strategy, finance and policy professionals navigate change and generate opportunities.