Raphael Stevens

In this articleHEI-DELINEOAN-DESZG-DEDOWMT-NLORSTED-DKThis photograph shows turbines at the Borkum Riffgrund 2 wind farm, which Orsted owns 50% of.CharlieChesvick | iStock Unreleased | Getty ImagesDanish energy company Orsted wants to construct a large-scale offshore wind farm in the North Sea and link it to so-called “renewable” hydrogen production on the European mainland, with the project garnering support from several major industrial firms. Under the proposals, which were outlined on Wednesday, Orsted would develop a 2 gigawatt (GW) offshore wind facility and 1 GW of electrolyzer capacity, with the company claiming its plans would result in “one of the world’s largest renewable hydrogen plants to be linked to industrial demand.”The SeaH2Land development — which is supported by companies including ArcelorMittal, Yara and Dow — would also include 45 kilometers of hydrogen pipelines between Belgium and the Netherlands.The electrolyzer part of the project — to be built in two 500 megawatt phases — would use electricity from the wind farm to produce hydrogen.Among other things, partners involved in the development need to undertake a full feasibility study of SeaH2Land, while Orsted has yet to take a final investment decision. If all goes smoothly and the project gets the green light, however, both portions of the electrolyzer could be up and running by 2030.”As the world looks to decarbonise, it’s paramount that we act now to secure the long-term competitiveness of European industry in a green economy,” Martin Neubert, Orsted’s chief commercial officer, said in a statement.Described by the International Energy Agency as a “versatile energy carrier,” hydrogen has a diverse range of applications and can be produced in a number of ways.One method includes using electrolysis, with an electric current splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen. If the electricity used in the process comes from a renewable source such as wind or solar then some describe it as “green” or “renewable” hydrogen.The last few years have seen a number of businesses take an interest in projects connected to renewable hydrogen, while major economies such as the European Union have laid out plans to install at least 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolyzers by 2030.In March, a major green hydrogen facility in Germany started operations. The “WindH2” project, as it’s known, involves German steel giant Salzgitter, E.ON subsidiary Avacon and Linde, a firm specializing in engineering and industrial gases.Elsewhere, a subsidiary of multinational building materials firm HeidelbergCement has worked with researchers from Swansea University to install and operate a green hydrogen demonstration unit at a site in the U.K.The interest in hydrogen is not restricted to Europe. In a speech last November, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his country was proposing to launch what he described as “a comprehensive National Hydrogen Energy Mission.”Presenting the country’s budget earlier this year, Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s finance minister, referenced Modi’s announcement, adding: “It is now proposed to launch a Hydrogen Energy Mission in 2021-22 for generating hydrogen from green power sources.”The planet’s third biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, India’s attempt to embrace hydrogen and other renewable technologies — it’s targeting 450 GW of renewable capacity by 2030 — would, if fully realized, represent a significant shift for the country. More

Even the most meticulously organized vacation can be derailed by a positive Covid test.Travelers may face unexpected quarantines — either in hotels or state-owned facilities — or substandard medical services. Others may be denied the ability to take commercial flights or, if negative tests are required to return, to get home at all.Travel insurance can help defray quarantine and medical costs incurred abroad. But for those who want to fly home fast, that isn’t good enough.How to fly home after testing positiveLaunched in the spring of 2020, Covac Global transports people home if they have been diagnosed with Covid while traveling domestically or abroad.The team behind the company also operates a crisis response firm called HRI, which conducts security risk and “traditional medical” evacuations, said CEO Ross Thompson.The goal of Covac Global is to get our members home at the first sign of infection.Ross ThompsonCEO, Covac Global”No other solution on the market would transport you or cover a pandemic or contagious disease,” he said. “Now a few do, but they all either have geographic restrictions and require you to be hospitalized or that it is medically necessary for you to be evacuated.”Evacuations are triggered when a traveler tests positive for Covid and exhibits at least one symptom of the disease, which can be self-reported, said Thompson. Hospitalizations aren’t required.Covac Global returns travelers to their homes or to a local hospital — not the closest port of entry — and arranges flight doctors and land and air ambulances, too.”Going to the Covid-19 ward in a foreign hospital is a bad idea, both medically and psychologically,” he said. “The goal of Covac Global is to get our members home at the first sign of infection.”Covac Global has completed dozens of evacuations in the past year, from European cities to the Peruvian Andes, said CEO Ross Thompson.Courtesy of Covac GlobalThe key? Travelers have to sign up before they leave home.Memberships are available to residents of the United States and Canada but will open to all nationalities starting in May, said Thompson. Rates start at $675 for 15 days of coverage, which can be used over the course of 12 months, and benefits begin two weeks after signing up.”We are currently doing an evacuation of a family from Ethiopia back to the U.S.,” he said. “Last week we evacuated a family from the Maldives back to New York — we picked them up via speedboat from their overwater villa, and transferred them right to a waiting private air ambulance.”Private medical evacuation for Covid is expensive, said Thompson, adding that transports can cost upwards of $200,000.While there are no restrictions on travel destinations, memberships don’t cover travelers on cruise ships or who attend large-scale events.What about CDC test requirements?The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention require air passengers to present a negative Covid test (or proof of recovery) before entering the United States.”Extremely limited” exemptions are allowed for emergency travel, according to the CDC’s website.  Covac Global’s services fit this exception, said Thompson, adding that the company has never been precluded from bringing a member home. Medical travel must be via certified air ambulance, under the care and recommendation of a physician, and detailed paperwork must be filed with the CDC, U.S. Department of State and Department of Homeland Security.Covac Global works directly with resorts and villa rental companies, including Exceptional Villas, Hermitage Bay Antigua and Jamaica’s Tryall Club (shown here).Courtesy of The Tryall Club”This is the only way a positive Covid-19 patient can enter the U.S.,” said Thompson. “We have had many people call up if a charter or even their own aircraft will be able to bring them home, and the answer is no.”The Tryall Club in Jamaica partnered with Covac Global to ensure guests had “every option” available to them while on vacation, said Arla Vernon Gordon, a director at the all-villa resort.Since February, nearly 40 guests have enrolled in the program but to date “no guest has had to use the service,” she said.A cheaper option for travelers who get really illA positive Covid test won’t kick in assistance from travel risk management company Global Rescue, but a hospitalization will.The company evacuates travelers who require hospitalization — for Covid infections or otherwise — and are more than 100 miles from home. Memberships are available to anyone, regardless of their country of citizenship.Global Rescue has signed up more clients and partners since the onset of the pandemic than in the company’s entire 16-year history.Dan RichardsCEO, Global RescueEvacuations are to hospitals (not homes) in members’ home countries, and there are no Covid-related exclusions, such as vacationing on cruise ships, said Global Rescue’s CEO Dan Richards.Short-term memberships start at $119 for individuals and $199 for families (which includes a spouse and up to six dependents).Global Rescue provides medical evacuation services for NASA and the United States Postal Service.Courtesy of Global Rescue”Global Rescue has signed up more clients and partners since the onset of the pandemic than in the company’s entire 16-year history,” he said.  Logistics involving Covid evacuations can “get tricky,” said Richards, adding that Global Rescue has evacuated Covid cases from remote regions, including a severe case from Guam to the United States.For travelers in North and Central AmericaMedical transport company Medjet transports its members to a hospital near home, if they are hospitalized 150 miles or more from their primary residence.Memberships are available to residents of the U.S., Canada and Mexico and cover worldwide repatriation. However, Covid-related assistance applies for travel within the contiguous United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America, Bermuda and the Caribbean, said Medjet’s CEO Mike Hallman.It can be just as difficult to be stuck in a hospital five states away as it is to be stuck in one halfway around the world.Mike HallmanCEO, MedjetThe company added Covid-related services in October of 2020, he said.”Unlike travel insurance, we have no specific exclusions like adventure travel, motorcycles, paragliding … so cruises are not excluded either,” Hallman told CNBC.”We were also able to get a member home from Australia early on in the pandemic, during the global level 4 travel shutdown,” he said. “That had a lot of complications, but we worked it out and got them back.”Medjet has transportation coordinators to track evacuation flights.Courtesy of MedjetMemberships start around $99 for eight days of international and domestic travel coverage. People often buy memberships for “big international trips” and don’t think about them for domestic travel, said Hallman.”It can be just as difficult to be stuck in a hospital five states away as it is to be stuck in one halfway around the world,” said Hallman.Around half of yearly transports take place after travelers have returned from a “big trip safely and then had an accident or health episode while traveling domestically,” he said. More

The World Economic Forum predicts it will now take 135.6 years to reach gender equality — as the pandemic set the world back by a generation, delaying parity by about 36 years.Saadia Zahidi, a managing director at the World Economic Forum, told CNBC that “100 years to global gender parity was already not good enough — and now (it is) 136 years globally.””The pandemic has had a massive impact, and essentially rolled back a lot of the progress that was made in the past,” she told CNBC’s “Capital Connection” on Wednesday.If businesses want to have the … creativity and innovation that will get them out of the crisis, they need diversity, and so they need to think of this as a business investment as well.Saadia Zahidimanaging director, World Economic ForumOne reason why the gender gap has widened is that sectors hit hard by Covid-19 mostly employed women.”Whether that’s travel and tourism that’s shut down globally, or (the) consumer and retail sector that has been impacted in so many countries, these are large employers of women,” Zahidi said.A mother and her daughter look on as speakers address the crowd at a demonstration against mandatory Covid-19 vaccines in Sydney, Australia.Don Arnold | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesAnother factor is that many women took on extra responsibilities at home during the lockdowns as schools closed.”That has then meant a sort of a ‘double shift’ for women,” she said.The WEF said data from market research firm Ipsos suggest this “double shift” of paid and unpaid work contributed to an increase in stress, anxiety around job security and difficulty in maintaining work-life balance.Role of governments and companiesZahidi said governments have a “critical role to play” in closing the gender gap.For example, she said authorities could invest in infrastructure to care for children and the elderly, which would help because such responsibilities fall to women in “traditional” homes.Employers can also help women out of higher relative job losses and lower hiring rates in industries that are bouncing back, she added.”If businesses want to have the … creativity and innovation that will get them out of the crisis, they need diversity, and so they need to think of this as a business investment as well,” Zahidi said. More

Australian officials carry boxes containing some 8,000 initial doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine following their arrival on board a Royal Australian Air Force plane at the Port Moresby international airport on March 23, 2021, as Papua New Guinea raced to quell a Covid-19 surge overwhelming its fragile health system.Andrew Kutan | AFP | Getty ImagesThe coronavirus crisis that has gripped Papua New Guinea continues to worsen, as the Indo-Pacific nation waits in earnest for vaccines to arrive.In just one week — between March 22 and March 28 — there were 1,786 new reported cases of Covid-19 and 13 deaths, according to the latest report from the World Health Organization and the PNG National Department of Health.The weekly joint report said that as of March 28, noon local time, the island-nation reported 5,349 total cases and 49 deaths. It was the eighth consecutive week of increases.Papua New Guinea is a heavily forested nation of fewer than 9 million people that lies about 100 miles (160 km) north of Australia at their closest point.Prime Minister James Marape acknowledged last week there is “rampant community transmission.”Health system as ‘risk of collapsing’The situation on the ground in PNG is said to be dire and international organizations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have warned of an imminent collapse of the country’s overwhelmed health-care system.”The health system in PNG is at risk of collapsing, as health facilities managing COVID-19 are close to capacity and almost too stretched to provide regular basic healthcare,” MSF said.Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwardsThe Pacific island state has only about 500 doctors, less than 4,000 nurses, and below 3,000 community health workers, according to data the prime minister shared last year during an address to parliament. There are just about 5,000 bed spaces in hospitals, he added.MSF, which provides medical humanitarian assistance to countries in crisis, said that an increasing number of health-care staff in PNG tested positive for Covid-19, forcing them to quarantine at home. Health facilities managing the outbreak are close to full capacity, resulting in longer waiting times. PNG also has relatively poor health indicators, according to Kate Schuetze, Pacific researcher at Amnesty International.Additional personal protective equipment, testing capacity and human resources need to be considered fast to provide assistance to the already strained healthcare system.Ghulam Nabiinterim head of mission for Papua New Guinea at MSF”We’ve got already a poor health-care system and then you’ve also got high levels of comorbidities that are also going to impact with the Covid-19 crisis,” Schuetze told CNBC on Wednesday. “So, you have malaria in the country, you have multi-drug resistant tuberculosis as well as a range of other illnesses that could compound the impact of Covid-19.”A large number of people also live in rural or remote communities where it’s hard to access the same level of health care as those living in urban centers such as Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, she added.Strained health-care systemAccording to the joint report from WHO and the health department, only 7,061 Covid tests were conducted between March 22 and March 28 — that means 25.29% of those tests returned positive.Large-scale testing remains low across most of the country and there’s a shortage of tests kits as well as logistical difficulties, the report noted. That suggests the actual number of infections across the country may be significantly higher than what is being formally reported.As isolation wards filled up in hospitals, PNG turned a sports complex into a temporary field hospital for Covid-19 patients.MSF said on Friday that it is supporting local health services by providing staff and cartridges to analyze samples of polymerase chain reaction tests that are widely used to detect the coronavirus. Almost 40% of the people getting tested at one of the health facilities have Covid-19, according to MSF. The organization expects more cases in the coming weeks.MSF also said it only has enough testing cartridges to last up to two weeks.”Additional personal protective equipment, testing capacity and human resources need to be considered fast to provide assistance to the already strained healthcare system,” said Ghulam Nabi, interim head of mission for Papua New Guinea at MSF, in a statement.He added that MSF is calling on organizations in the region to act and mobilize quickly to increase their support to the Pacific nation.Access to vaccines and tackling misinformationPNG this week rolled out its vaccination drive using the 8,000 doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shots that Australia donated.The country’s prime minister Marape received his first dose on Tuesday, according to reports.Rising vaccine nationalism around the world is making it more difficult for small, developing nations such as PNG to access shots to inoculate their population.Many of them rely on a global vaccination initiative called Covax, which aims to ensure equitable distribution of shots in less wealthy countries. It is co-led by WHO, Gavi — the Vaccine Alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.Amnesty’s Schuetze said one of the challenges with the Covax facility is that not enough countries are donating sufficient money and resources, or supplying enough vaccines, to ensure a more equitable distribution.PNG is due to receive around 588,000 doses of vaccine from Covax by June.Australia, for its part, has reportedly asked the European Union to release 1 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine to PNG. It was initially contracted to go to Australia. Reuters reported last week that the EU has yet to respond to that request.Canberra has also reportedly asked the U.S., Japan and India — the other members of the informal Quad alliance — to help PNG.Meanwhile, vaccine skepticism and the spread of misinformation is making matters more complicated in the island-nation. Opposition leader Belden Namah reportedly asked the government to suspend the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, alleging it was exposing citizens to potential serious harm.The PNG government needs to do more to educate and inform the public about vaccines and health-care treatment on Covid-19, Amnesty’s Schuetze said. More

In this articleTBCPTHBRFThe global chip shortage that’s been a headache for auto manufacturers has actually been a boon for Indie Semiconductor, CEO Donald McClymont told CNBC Wednesday.”Whereas others are struggling, we’ve actually really profited,” he said in a “Mad Money” interview.McClymont’s comments came after Ford Motor announced earlier in the day it would cut back on car production at multiple North American plants as the industry grapples with a global chip shortage. Demand for semiconductors has spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic as consumers buy more electronics for their homes. Semiconductors are used in a range of consumer products, including phones, computers and increasingly electrified automobiles.Indie Semiconductor, which is based in Aliso Viejo, California, makes next-generation chips and software for the automobile industry. It supplies chips for applications including advanced driver-assistance and autonomous systems, connected driving, user experience and vehicle electrification.But while companies like have Ford struggled, Indie Semiconductor reports having a $2 billion backlog for orders.”We developed our supply chain kind of in our own image. We’re wholly focused on the automotive market,” McClymont said. “We picked suppliers who are also much the same and to that end, they make the right decisions for the auto market.”The private company is expected to turn into a public one within weeks after its blank-check merger with Thunder Bridge Acquisition II closes. Shares of the SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, rose 3.37% to $10.42 per share on Wednesday.The merger, which was announced in December, values Indie Semiconductor at about $1.4 billion. Indie Semiconductor wants to grow its reach in a $16 billion market for auto semiconductors, the company said citing IHS figures.Questions for Cramer? Call Cramer: 1-800-743-CNBCWant to take a deep dive into Cramer’s world? Hit him up! Mad Money Twitter – Jim Cramer Twitter – InstagramQuestions, comments, suggestions for the “Mad Money” website? [email protected] More

In this articlePFEIn order to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 moving forward, U.S. officials will have to convince skeptical parents to vaccinate their children, Dr. Peter Hotez said Wednesday.”There’s going to have to be a lot of public communication, and a lot of advocacy that needs to be done, because parents are going to be a bit skittish about … a brand new mRNA technology for their kids,” Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith.” Hotez’s comments came after Pfizer announced earlier in the day that its vaccine is 100% effective in kids ages 12 to 15. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company will submit the new data to Food and Drug Administration and other regulators soon. He added Pfizer will request an amendment to its emergency use authorization to include everyone 12 and older.”We are seeing adolescents going into pediatric intensive care units, they are getting sick, especially those with underlying risk factors,”  Hotez said. “If we’re going to actually interrupt virus transmission, we have to get to 80, 85% of the population vaccinated, now that we have the B.1.1.7 variant, which is so highly transmissible, and I think we could do that by including adolescents.”Hotez said he thinks the U.S. could get “maybe 75% of adults vaccinated” by summer, but warned that “we’re in a race with this B.1.1.7 variant,” which results in higher mortality and hospitalization rates. More