WCA March 2016

From the Americas

Detroit’s Big Three to offer a Chinese-made model for sale in the USA.” In a collaborative article carried by both USA Today and the Detroit Free Press , Chris Woodyard and Greg Gardner reported that the Buick Envision crossover will go on sale this summer, helping to fill “ravenous demand” in the USA for smaller SUVs at a time when the Chinese economy has weakened. They also noted that the Buick is being imported over the objections of the United Auto Workers union (UAW), which wants it produced at home. Envision, which made its American debut in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, was a sore subject during the contract talks between GM and the UAW, concluded in November. The model – comparable to the Ford Escape, assembled in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Jeep Cherokee, now assembled in Toledo, Ohio – is large enough to be assembled profitably in the USA. “[General Motors] should reconsider this decision and place this product into one of their facilities in the United States,” the union said in a statement. (“GM’s Buick SUV Will Be First to Be Imported from China,” 4 th December) While GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, together with a number of Asian and European auto makers, have for years built cars in Mexico and elsewhere for import into the USA, China is a special case. About a decade ago, the fear was that cheaply made cars from China would engulf the USA market. Messrs Woodyard and Gardner recalled that Chinese makers even tested the waters at the same big Detroit auto show where Envision bowed in January. But the peril never materialised. Apart from questions about quality and engineering, China became the world’s hottest auto market. As domestic consumers grew wealthier, Chinese automakers had all they could do to satisfy their own market.  Now, Detroit’s Big Three (GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler) could become importers themselves. GM has always had the largest footprint in China, and Ford has been trying to make gains there. Will American consumers care if their cars are Chinese-sourced? Ian Beavis, a veteran auto executive who is now chief strategy officer for consulting firm AMCI Global (Terryville, Connecticut), thinks not. Mr Beavis told USA Today and the Detroit Free Press , “The country of origin is significantly less of an issue now than it ever was.”  The Buick brand has enjoyed immense popularity with Chinese buyers. Now, apparently impelled by expediency, GM sees a way to take advantage of a torrid market for SUVs at a time when its other factories are running full tilt. Hence the made-in-China Buick, to be imported from Yantai where the vehicle has been produced for about a year. Through the first 11 months of 2015 GM sold 127,000 of the cars in China, company spokesman Stuart Fowle told the two automotive reporters. The Envision has a two-litre, four-cylinder turbocharged engine with six-speed all-wheel-drive transmission. “To do it from scratch would take a long time,” said David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research. “You can get them [from China to the US] a lot more quickly.”

Energy Frustrated by erratic wind and sunshine, ‘green’ utilities look to an 1890s-era technology: pumped storage hydroelectricity While rising levels of wind and solar energy production are welcome news to proponents of clean energy everywhere, the surge in renewables has one very significant limitation. It comes, noted the Seattle-based journalist John Roach, “with the challenge of ensuring that electric power is available when customers want it, not just when the wind blows.” Writing in Yale Environment 360 , published by the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies of Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), Mr Roach described a technology from the late 19 th century that is winning converts today. Pumped storage hydroelectric facilities – like the $1.3 billion Cortes-La Muela expansion, completed by Spanish utility giant Iberdrola in 2013 – are typically equipped with pumps and generators that move water between reservoirs. Using excess electricity – generated, say, from wind turbines during a blustery night – water is pumped from a lower reservoir, such as behind a dam, to a reservoir at a higher elevation. Then, explained Mr Roach, when the wind ceases to blow or the demand for electricity spikes, the water “from on high” is released to spin hydroelectric turbines. (“To Store Renewable Electricity, Utilities Turn to Pumped Water,” 7 th December) While the time-tested method may have gone under the radar, it is not in eclipse. In fact, according to Vladimir Koritarov, an energy systems engineer at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, more than 98 per cent of installed storage capacity globally is pumped hydro. Among all energy storage technologies, Mr Koritarov told Yale Environment 360 , “Pumped storage hydropower is still the only one that is mature, reliable, proven, and commercially available to provide large utility-scale energy storage.” And now, prompted by the world’s embrace of solar and wind power to help combat global warming, utilities from Italy to China are building new pumped storage hydro facilities as a way of balancing supply and demand across electric power grids. According to the USA Department of Energy’s Global Energy Storage database, currently 292 pumped storage hydro facilities are in operation worldwide, with a total capacity of 142 gigawatts. Another 46 projects, with a total capacity of 34GW, are in development. According to Chi-Jen Yang, a research scientist at the Center on Global Change at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, pumped storage hydro is growing fastest

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2016