'Squid Game' Season 2 Includes New Games, Contestant With A Crypto Background, Revenge Factor, Political Overtones
U.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid cyberattackBipartisan Bill Introduced to Protect Consumers' Privacy and Vehicle Data
Anatomy of Man City’s utter capitulation: Gvardiol’s nightmare and Guardiola’s shocking tactics
SINGAPORE: Every month, corporate employee Ms Xianggui from China's Jiangsu province generously sets aside a fifth of her 10,000 yuan salary (US$1,371) towards her ageing parents’ retirement fund. Like other single adults living in China without siblings, the 29-year-old, who asked to have her full name kept private, bears the weight of being the sole financial provider for her parents, both in their 50s. She began setting aside more money after learning that her parents would only receive around 300 yuan each month, post-retirement and now hopes to save at least 200,000 yuan in the next 10 years. Hers is a predicament faced by many “single-child families” in China, which comes as a result of the one-child policy and has riddled the country with demographic problems. “Many families in my village only had one child in response to national policies,” she told CNA, adding that she hopes the national scheme could soon be improved to increase payouts and reduce financial burdens faced by adult only-children. China’s pension system has been facing immense pressure in coping with a rapidly ageing population and declining birth rates, which has resulted in a declining pool of working-age people funding the system and more retirees looking to receive payments. While the government’s move to raise the retirement age from January 2025 is a step in the right direction, experts say that it is still not enough and more clearly needs to be done to support the national pension scheme. There is little money leftover for Ms Xianggui after deducting living expenses, retirement savings and allowances for her parents so she has had to postpone personal plans like buying her own house and getting married. "My parents’ monthly pensions are far too low, which deeply concerns me," she said, adding: "As an only child, the entire burden falls on me." A FRAMEWORK UNDER PRESSURE China ranked 31st in the world for pension systems, out of 48 countries, according to the 2024 Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index, scoring 56.5 with an overall C grade – a marginally better score than the 55.3 it received the previous year. But it received a dismal D for sustainability, highlighting concerns about the system’s ability to provide sufficient retirement income and maintain long-term financial viability. In comparison, Nordic countries like Sweden, Iceland and Denmark, known for their robust and well-balanced pension schemes, scored 74.3, 83.4 and 81.6 respectively, while Singapore’s Central Provident Fund system came in 5th with a score of 78.7. According to official statistics, China’s pension system covers more than 1.07 billion people across the country and is made up of three pillars. The basic pension system is led by the state, covering urban employees as well as urban residents and rural residents. Then, there's the voluntary employee pension plan from employers which has relatively limited reach. Finally, a private voluntary scheme that was launched in 2022 and continues to see low participation rates as of June 2024, with just over 60 million people opening new accounts. But despite the broad coverage, the difference in payouts among working classes remains huge, analysts said, noting that only around 503 million people, half of the more than 1.07 billion people, were considered eligible for generous urban pension plans. Average monthly payouts for urban workers and business owners amounted to around 3,326 yuan as compared to only 179 yuan which workers and residents in rural areas received. Ms Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a Maurice R Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told CNA that the sufficiency of payouts “still needed to be improved”. “The coverage ratio is impressive but the amount (that) people can withdraw is small,” she said. Those in prestigious fields, like former civil servants, doctors and schoolteachers, received the most generous benefits. On the other hand, migrant workers and others from rural areas were often excluded from higher-paying employment-based pension schemes, even if they had lived and worked in other cities for a long time. “Peasants and rural-to-urban migrants are the most disadvantaged in the pension system as most of them are enrolled in the resident-based track with the lowest benefit rate,” said Dr Huang Xian, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University. “Individuals with rural roots are always placed at the bottom of the hierarchy for benefit distribution as they are the most distant from the regime in socio-political status.” PENSION POT RUNNING DRY? Besides inequality and insufficient support particularly for migrant and rural workers, the entire pension system is facing a major challenge because the pot is believed to be running dry soon. In 2019, the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) warned about a potential depletion of pension funds for urban employees by 2035. That estimate was however made before the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, so analysts say the bomb may be ticking even faster. “A lot of the COVID-19 era pension or insurance health care deficits created negative shocks,” said Ms Liu, adding that there was also a chance the national social security fund could be depleted even before 2035. According to a 2021 government report, China’s social insurance funds recorded the first annual deficit in 2020, after authorities cut corporate contributions to help companies offset the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. The funds’ combined revenues fell 13.3 per cent in 2020 while expenditures rose 5.5 per cent. The shift toward gig and informal workers also raises challenges for pension revenue collection, experts said. “The ability to collect revenue for social insurance is becoming very difficult because social insurance assumes that most of your workforce is formally employed and generally long-term employed under legal, contractual arrangements,” said Mr Mark W Frazier, a politics professor at The New School in New York City. Public pension expenditure in China accounted for about 5.4 per cent of its total GDP in 2023, an increase from 5.2 per cent in 2022 and 2021, according to data from Statista. Analysts say this figure, while seemingly moderate compared to advanced economies, is substantial for a developing economy like China. “The sustainability of that level of collection and payment depends on the future of the Chinese economy,” said Mr Frazier. “You can always lower the 5.4 per cent expenditure figure if you have a larger economy, but the absolute number of pension expenditures will keep increasing year by year.” Further faltering of the pension system also risks eroding public trust in the government’s ability to meet its obligations, analysts said, potentially destabilising societal equilibrium. China’s rapidly ageing population has been affecting the pension system’s sustainability – with more elderly citizens claiming retirement benefits and less working adults contributing to the pension fund. The population aged 60 years and above reached 297 million in 2023, accounting for more than 20 percent of the total population. This percentage is projected to increase to an astounding high of over 52 per cent by 2100 – meaning more than half the population will be elderly. The labour force has also been shrinking as the country’s declining fertility rate is now among the lowest in the world, at 1.1 children per woman. The imbalance has directly affected the country’s dependency ratio, the number of workers supporting each retiree, which is projected to fall from the current 2.95 to just 0.69 in less than 80 years, based on UN population projections, according to Mr Dudley L Poston Jr, a sociology professor at Texas A&M University. “As a result, financial risk and pressure are overwhelming,” said Dr Huang. In the meantime, pressure still remains on only children to shoulder the financial burden of their parents’ retirement. “The idea that a child is supposed to take care of the elderly, is a classic family value – not just China in particular but in a lot of (other) Asian countries,” said Ms Liu. "THE ENTIRE BURDEN FALLS ON ME" ‘Yang er fang lao’, a common Chinese saying, refers to the practice of bearing and raising children to look after you in your old age. But with the one-child policy implemented between 1980 and 2015, and the current low fertility rate, a whole generation of single-child families is bearing the weight of financially supporting ageing parents on their own. Ms Xianggui worries about her ability to support her parents long-term and has been conducting her own research on online platforms like Xiaohongshu about increasing pension contributions. She believes that it is “still possible” to increase her pension contributions to the maximum tier of 4,000 yuan annually. “Under this new plan (that I came up with), my father would contribute 8,000 yuan annually, and my mother 4,000 yuan into their individual pension accounts. Together, this could raise their combined pensions to over 1,000 yuan per month,” she said. While it’s a modest amount, she thinks the adjustment is “better than nothing” and “within” her financial capacity. The youngest of three children, Dove Long, an unmarried 41-year-old living in the city of Changsha, gives both her retired parents a fixed monthly allowance and even goes the extra mile to buy them supplementary private health insurance to “mitigate financial stress in case of major illnesses”. But despite earning a comparatively higher than average income of around 20,000 yuan (US$2743) per month, Ms Long said she still worries about her own retirement. For her, long-term financial security remains elusive. “Society generally expects children to take on the primary responsibility for their parents’ retirement,” she told CNA. “With the rising standard of living, I hope to have enough funds to enjoy a rich cultural and recreational life after retirement, such as frequent travel and participating in various interest classes,” she said. “My employer contributes to my pension insurance as required... but relying solely on social security pensions may not fully meet my future aspirations for a quality retirement,” she added. “Under the current system, the estimated pension (I get) might only cover basic living expenses, which falls short of fulfilling all my needs.” Life expectancy in China has risen to 78 years as of 2021, from about 44 years in 1960, and is projected to exceed 80 years by 2050. And longer life expectancies will mean more financial strain like the increasing costs of elder support and care. “As people grow older, it’s natural to expect that they might need more medical (help) so expenses will increase,” said Ms Liu. “That added cost will be another financial burden to the family.” Young adults also grapple with other ongoing financial burdens like stagnant wages and high living costs. Competition in the job market remains stiff and pressures are high, Ms Liu added. “The cost of childcare is (also) high,” she said. “This basically means (people) have to spend if they decide to have (a) child, so it’s a lot of expenditure. But the wage growth has stagnated.” SPEND OR SAVE? The financial realities have impacted many major life decisions for Ms Xianggui, who shared that she had been planning to buy a house with her fiancé in Hefei, one of China’s fastest growing cities famed for its blend of historical heritage and sci-tech innovations. The situation has been stressful, she said, adding that the couple has had to postpone their wedding in order to support her family. “My fiancé’s family is contributing the majority of (our) down payment while I can only provide 200,000 yuan as my parents are unable to support me financially,” she said. “He wants to work for a few more years to save up.” Rutgers University’s Dr Huang noted that citizens born under China’s one-child policy grew up in a relatively open and liberal era, different from their parents and have “a different approach to navigating challenges”. “They have better education and more exposure to new media in general, hold less trust in the government or lower expectations for the government’s social welfare responsibility,” she said, adding that they might seek alternative financial services instead of relying solely on state support. “However, they face similar challenges in balancing elder care and personal financial priorities compared to the older generations.” The unreliability of the pension safety net means most people “have no choice but to live on personal and family savings and assets after retirement”, said Dr Huang. “Older people... want to save, to prepare for either retirement or emergencies,” said Ms Liu. “This propensity to save discourages people from consuming, and the lack of household consumption is a very big problem dragging the Chinese economy now.” She noted that a failure to stabilise China’s pension system could stifle domestic consumption, with global repercussions. “If families realise they have better healthcare or broadly speaking, better social security, then Chinese families or consumers are willing to spend, rather than just save for the future,” she said. “The increase in consumption is also going to stimulate the economy.” NAVIGATING THE ROAD AHEAD China’s pension system remains at a crossroad and in September 2024, the government announced incremental reforms to raise the retirement age, aiming to ease financial pressures on the pension system. The move was long overdue, given that China’s retirement age – 60 for men, 55 for women in white-collar jobs, and 50 for women in blue-collar jobs – had not changed since the 1950s, analysts said. “Extending the retirement age will allow the pension funds to last for some additional years,” said Mr Poston. However, he cautions that it is not a silver bullet. “This will not be a permanent fix. It will only partly address the extremely serious demographic problems now facing China.” Mr Frazier, who also authored a book titled "Socialist Insecurity: Pensions and the Politics of Uneven Development in China", noted limitations of this measure and said long-term effects would not be felt until 2040 or 2050. “The costs of pensions are never placed directly on people in the current moment, but they are postponed decades into the future,” he said. The Chinese government has in recent years also sought to diversify the pension system with the introduction of private retirement savings schemes in November 2022. The introduction of individual retirement accounts (IRA) is a key component of this effort. These accounts, modeled after 401(k) plans in the United States, allow individuals to make voluntary contributions of up to 12,0000 yuan annually to supplement their public pensions. According to Dr Huang, who is also affiliated with the Rutgers Center for Chinese Studies, the IRA is a personal savings account, and not social insurance, “because it has no social pooling or risk sharing among individuals”. “By May 2023, more than 900 million households have participated in IRA, but the average savings put into it is less than 2,000 yuan per household.” It’s clear that there’s more to be done, with experts emphasising comprehensive reforms being essential to ensure its sustainability, with proposed solutions spanning structural changes, fiscal reforms, and innovative labour policies. Mr Frazier says the fragmentation in China’s pension system, with over 2,000 local governments managing funds independently, has led to administrative expenses being wasted. “If you centralise or even bring it to 31 provincial-level pensions, then you're going to save a tremendous amount of administrative costs,” he added. The Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index 2024 suggests increasing the minimum level of support for the poorest individuals. Another policy solution is to relax the country’s hukou household registration system, which experts say would improve eligibility and support for migrant workers and rural residents. Meanwhile, China’s reliance on payroll taxes to fund pensions is increasingly unsustainable as the workforce shrinks. To increase contributions to the pension pot, Ms Liu pointed to untapped revenue sources. "Right now, China doesn't really have property tax, for example and I think capital gain tax in China is fairly minimal or is completely non-existent," she said. Dr Huang emphasised the urgency of broader fiscal measures. "The demographic crisis can easily turn into a fiscal crisis for the government," he said. "Redistribution and changing the taxation system are crucial to managing these challenges." A more radical approach, as suggested by Mr Frazier, is to delink pensions from employment to create a universal basic pension. “You have to consider ways to introduce reforms that would guarantee pensions for people in an economy in which, over 40 years, there may be 40 different jobs, 40 different employers,” he said. China’s demographic decline has led others like Mr Poston to propose immigration as “the only answer” to replenish the labour force and alleviate pension funding pressures. “China needs to turn to immigration to get them out of this quagmire. The country’s several attempts to implement policies to increase the birth rate have not worked, and they will not work.” However, he also acknowledges the challenges. “It will not be easy to introduce and implement an active immigration policy in a country with little experience with immigration, few preferences for immigrants, and a seemingly deep-rooted belief in racial purity held by many leaders in the Chinese Communist Party.” For millions of Chinese citizens, the stakes are high, and the path forward remains fraught with challenges. “To be honest, I do have concerns,” said Ms Long. "I worry that by the time I retire, there might be insufficient pension funds or a decline in the quality of services." "However, I hope the government and society will continue to address these issues and improve the system to ensure it remains reliable."When President Joe Biden stopped by former President Jimmy Carter’s home in Plains, Georgia, in April 2021, it was more than just a show of respect from one commander in chief to another. It was the first time in the 40 years since Carter left the White House that any of his seven successors had visited him in his hometown. Carter had a hot-and-cold relationship with the fellow members of the exclusive club of presidents — more cold than hot, in fact. From his reelection defeat in 1980 until his death Sunday, he was the odd man out, distant from the Republicans and Democrats who followed him and often getting on their nerves because of his outspokenness. He did not join his fellow presidents on the high-dollar speaking circuit, nor did he team up for many joint humanitarian missions. He was rarely consulted by incumbents except when he forced his way into some issue and made himself hard to ignore. When all of the living presidents gathered to welcome Barack Obama to the White House in 2009, Carter was the one standing slightly off to the side, removed from his chummy peers physically and metaphorically. Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president, has died at 100 To many of his successors, he was a thorn in their side, always doing his own thing even if it conflicted with official foreign policy. What he considered principled, they considered sanctimonious. While other former presidents generally held their tongues out of deference to the current occupant of the Oval Office, Carter rarely stood on ceremony. “I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents,” he said in 2010. He parachuted into trouble spots as an election observer, traveled to North Korea as a freelance negotiator and spoke out on Middle East politics. Often to the consternation of whoever happened to be in the White House at the time, he would meet with ostracized autocrats such as Syria’s Hafez Assad and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega. When Carter earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, the award committee openly characterized it as a rebuke of President George W. Bush for planning to invade Iraq. “Jimmy Carter’s not real keen on clubs,” Douglas Brinkley, author of “The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter’s Journey Beyond the White House,” said in an interview before the former president’s death. “The idea that he needs to be in photo ops with these other presidents is not his MO. His heroes in politics were Anwar Sadat and Mahatma Gandhi, not Bill Clinton or George W. Bush.” Carter understood that he irritated the other presidents, but he evinced little concern about ruffling their feathers. “As he has aged, he was not constrained by political considerations,” said Jack Watson, who served as Carter’s White House chief of staff. “Carter has spoken with a frankness that has not always endeared him to others. But he calls it as he sees it.” Photos: Former President Jimmy Carter through the years The pattern was set as soon as he left office in 1981 after being defeated by Ronald Reagan. The relationship between the two was “strained,” Carter later said. He considered Reagan dim and dangerous, and the Republican reciprocated, never inviting his predecessor to the White House during his eight years there. Carter wrote in one of his books that when he traveled during the Reagan administration, he learned that “the U.S. ambassadors had been instructed not to give me any assistance or even to acknowledge my presence.” When his official portrait was ready to be hung in the White House in 1983 during Reagan’s first term, Carter asked that there be no ceremony so as not to have to stand next to the man he did not respect. To Reagan, Carter was a useful foil he could regularly blame for the nation’s troubles, while Carter just as frequently assailed his successor’s policies as heartless, unwise or ill considered. Carter forged closer ties with President George H.W. Bush, and the two teamed up with Secretary of State James Baker to help end the long-running Contra war in Nicaragua. “I had a better relationship as a former president with Bush and Baker than any other president,” Carter said in a 2015 interview. But even then, there was tension. When Bush and Baker sought United Nations authorization to use force to counter Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Carter privately lobbied members of the Security Council to vote against the United States. Some top Bush officials, including Dick Cheney, then the defense secretary, considered that almost treason. Editorial: For Jimmy Carter, the presidency was prologue It was hardly better with his own party, though. Carter had a prickly relationship with Clinton even though both were moderate Democrats from the South — or perhaps because of it. They got off on the wrong foot when Carter as president sent 19,000 Cuban migrants to Fort Chaffee in Arkansas in 1980 over the objections of Clinton, then the state’s governor. A subsequent riot by the migrants politically damaged Clinton, who went down to defeat that November along with Carter, a loss the governor blamed on his fellow Democrat. Once Clinton reached the White House, relations hardly improved. Carter irritated Clinton by chiding the new president for sending his daughter, Chelsea, to a private school in Washington instead of to a public school as the older man had done with his own daughter, Amy. Clinton was so peeved that he snubbed Carter days later at the 1993 inaugural festivities. Clinton considered Carter a loose cannon but agreed to let him travel to North Korea in 1994 during a period of tension over the country’s nuclear program. The former president cut a deal, called the White House to let it know and then went on CNN without first talking with Clinton about it, boxing in the sitting president. Three months later, Clinton sent Carter to Haiti along with two other emissaries who together forced a military junta to surrender power and accept U.S. troops. But once again, when Carter returned to Washington, he went on CNN before meeting Clinton for breakfast and a planned joint news conference. Clinton was furious and shouted. Carter shouted back. Carter was critical of his fellow Democrat after revelations of Clinton’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky, which led to his impeachment in 1998 for perjury and obstruction of justice. But Clinton nonetheless swallowed any irritation and flew to Atlanta in 1999 to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. “To call Jimmy Carter the greatest former president in history, as many have, however, does not do justice either to him or to his work,” Clinton said. Carter was more critical of George W. Bush, particularly over the Iraq invasion in 2003. “I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” Carter declared in 2007. He softened somewhat when attending the opening of Bush’s presidential library in 2013, making no mention of their rift over Iraq and instead praising the Republican for helping end a war in Sudan and fighting poverty and the AIDS epidemic in Africa. “I’m filled with admiration for you and deep gratitude for you about the contributions you’ve made to the most needy people on Earth,” Carter told Bush. Jimmy Carter’s 1979 visit to Thornridge recalled as the former president turns 100 There was less overt tension between Carter and Obama, but little warmth, either. Carter was annoyed at being left off the program of live speakers at Obama’s nominating convention in 2008, but Carter supported the younger man’s efforts to expand health care for the indigent at home while criticizing the continued use of drone strikes to target terrorists overseas, even at the cost of civilian casualties. Oddly, Carter had more sympathy at first for President Donald Trump, telling Maureen Dowd of The New York Times in 2017 that “the media have been harder on Trump than any other president” and offering support for his efforts to make peace with North Korea while knocking both Clinton and Obama. But his feelings hardened by the second half of Trump’s term. After Carter sent Trump a letter about China policy, the sitting president called him on a Saturday night in April 2019 to discuss it, interrupting a dinner with friends in Georgia. Trump seemed delighted that the two agreed on China. But two months later, Carter publicly suggested that Trump had actually “lost the election and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump fired back, dismissing Carter as a “terrible president” and a “forgotten president.” The only president Carter forged a genuine friendship with was the one he beat in 1976, Gerald Ford. The two could hardly have been more different — the stoic Midwesterner and the Southern peanut farmer — but after both had left office, they found themselves together on a long Air Force flight to Cairo along with Richard Nixon in 1981 to represent the United States at the funeral of Sadat, the assassinated Egyptian leader. With Nixon breaking the ice, Carter and Ford surprised themselves by discovering more in common than they had anticipated — including a shared antipathy for Reagan, who had run against both of them. In years to come, Carter and Ford teamed up repeatedly to monitor foreign elections, promote health programs and write joint opinion pieces on various issues. Dr. Donald R. Hopkins: Jimmy Carter worked tirelessly to eradicate a deadly parasite in Africa Before he died in 2006, Ford asked Carter to give one of the eulogies. “Jerry and I frequently agreed that one of the greatest blessings that we had after we left the White House during the last quarter-century was the intense personal friendship that bound us together,” Carter said at the service in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Perhaps their relationship was better than the others because Ford came before Carter and, therefore, never had to contend with him as a predecessor making life difficult. For those who followed him, Carter remained a hassle. Biden, who was the first senator to support Carter’s original White House bid in 1976, was largely spared this test as the former president headed into his latter 90s. “It was no secret that Carter was not a member in good standing of the ex-presidents’ club, in part because he never accepted their code,” Jonathan Alter wrote in “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life” (2000). Most of them recognized that Carter could be useful in the right circumstances, he added. “The challenge for them was managing their high-maintenance predecessor.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Is Canada running out of time to make its buildings net zero?None
Penticton council asks for more feedback before green lighting leash-optional areasFOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — The New England Patriots are focused on the future following their 25-24 loss to the Indianapolis Colts . The Patriots (3-10) were officially eliminated from playoff contention with the loss Sunday, meaning that this week’s bye in many ways will begin the process of the coaching staff and front office evaluating the roster for 2025. The good news is that this group has shown plenty of grit this season, playing seven games that were decided by one score. The bad news is that the Patriots are just 2-5 in those games. Though New England’s bye comes late in the season, coach Jerod Mayo said the timing is perfect for a team that is feeling the effects of its shortcomings . “A much-needed bye week, not only physically for the players but also mentally, just being able to hit the reset button and come back, put some good games together and continue to build for the future,” Mayo said. “That has to be our goal.” Tight end Austin Hooper said the seed that needs to be planted over the final four games is finding a way to limit the mistakes — namely penalties and trouble finishing drives — that have hampered the offense throughout the season. “We’ve got to execute at a higher level. We can’t beat a team before you stop hurting yourself,” Hooper said. “It’s not for lack of effort, just things that happen out there that get you scars in this league.” This was the most balanced performance by the offense this season, with 222 passing yards and a season-high 200 yards rushing. It shows progress under new coordinator Alex Van Pelt, which is something to build on over the final four games. Red zone efficiency. It continues to be the most glaring deficiency for the Patriots’ offense. They were 2 of 6 on Sunday and rank 30th in the NFL, scoring a touchdown only 44.7% (17 of 38) of the time inside the 20-yard line. TE Hunter Henry. He finished with seven catches for 75 yards, which is his seventh game this season with five or more receptions. He leads the team this season with 58 catches for 610 yards and continues to be a dependable option for quarterback Drake May as he navigates his rookie season. K Joey Slye. He made 3 of his 5 field-goal attempts, including a 54-yarder in the second quarter. Most of the conversation following the game was about his NFL record-long 68-yard attempt that came up short as time expired. But because of the 1-point loss, he was lamenting the 25-yard attempt he missed wide left just before halftime. “I take full responsibility for this,” Slye said. “Every point for this team matters with how we play complementary football with offense, defense and special teams. So, whenever I am out there, I have got to score points.” Henry left the game in the first quarter after a helmet-to-helmet hit. He was able to return in the second quarter and finished the game. 7 — Number of penalties called on the Patriots, costing them 88 yards. Five penalties (four accepted) were called on the offensive line. That included one for holding on Mike Onwenu that nullified a touchdown run by Rhamondre Stevenson in the first quarter and forced New England to settle for a field goal. The Patriots have a bye this week. They visit the Arizona Cardinals on Dec. 15. AP NFL coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL
Xcel Energy Inc. stock outperforms competitors despite losses on the daySeason of scamsThe 13 office buildings in Richmond, B.C.’s Airport Executive Park – a business park located on 35 acres of green space – date back to a time when climate change and carbon footprints weren’t part of mainstream discussions and long-term environmental control programs. But as more companies set climate and sustainability targets, many are actively working toward reducing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions within their operations and supply chains. Fiera Real Estate Canada – the current owner of Richmond’s Airport Executive Park (AEP) – is aiming to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, partly through the installation of electric heat pumps that will replace its gas-fired heating systems, which date back to the 1980s and early 2000s. The company’s net-zero ambitions are emblematic of the significant commitments national building owners are making that will help Canada reach its target of net-zero building emissions by 2050. And while 25 years from today may seem like a long time, experts warn Canada isn’t making progress fast enough to achieve its goal. The clock began ticking in 2021 when the federal government adopted the , aiming for net-zero emissions by 2050, with an interim target of GHG reductions hitting at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Released this year, the says there are more than 564,000 commercial and institutional buildings across the country, and because the majority are expected to still be in use in 2050, most will require extensive upgrades and retrofitting to reach Canada’s net-zero goal. “It’s hard to see how we’re going to achieve the interim standards for the building sector by 2030, and if we don’t reach them, the climb to 2050 is going to be a lot harder,” says Thomas Mueller, president and chief executive officer of the Canada Green Building Council (CAGBC), which supports the building industry’s transition to green structures and sets national standards for zero-carbon buildings. Updated in July, the council’s focus on maintaining high energy efficiency in new buildings and reducing carbon emissions in older structures by replacing fossil-fuel-burning equipment. It estimates that Canada needs to convert at least 3 per cent of its buildings to net-zero emissions a year and invest billions in making buildings greener. A recent from CAGBC and the Delphi Group – a Canadian climate and sustainability consultancy – identifies the most-needed upgrades in buildings to be LED lighting, triple-glazed windows, roof insulation, high-efficiency ventilation systems, as well as computer control systems that reduce heating and cooling when rooms are not in use. These upgrades require major structural changes and are why most building owners are conducting feasibility studies and putting refits into their 10-year plans, says Tonya Lagrasta, vice-president and head of ESG at commercial real estate services company Colliers Canada. However, she says: “The price tags for things like window replacements can have owners of older buildings falling off their chairs.” The Pembina Institute, a clean-energy think tank, decarbonizing Canada’s commercial and residential building sector will require more than $400-billion in upgrades. It also concludes that more incentives must be put in place. Since grants are often difficult for governments to finance and administer, tax credits to stimulate investment are more practical, says Mr. Mueller. However, a challenge is that several provinces and cities have building codes that include specifications that vary from the federal standards. “It is a real hodgepodge of standards across the country and that is contributing to confusion,” says Terry Bergen, Victoria-based managing principal of RJC Engineers, a building science consultancy. For retrofits, there is also a misconception that high efficiency comes with higher operating costs. But recently, a lot of studies have been released that demonstrate a high return on investment by making these changes, says Duncan Rowe, a Toronto-based principal with RJC Engineers. At the same time, Mr. Rowe acknowledges that it’s not economical or ecologically practical to speed up the replacement of nearly-new equipment just to meet a standard. In other words, upgrades should be aligned with the life cycle of equipment. In the case of Airport Executive Park, the heating systems were several decades old and in need of replacement. While the newly installed systems are less than a year old, the expectation is that annual energy cost savings for all the property’s buildings will be as much as 50 per cent. In the long term, achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 is an interim step toward a goal of being fully net-zero energy – producing as much clean energy as consumed with on-site clean and renewable sources, such as solar, wind or geothermal, Ms. Lagrasta says. Net-zero energy is achievable because technology is advancing, says Mr. Rowe. For instance, solar technology is becoming affordable and can be efficient at powering some buildings, but it needs the right conditions. If a building owner has a large roof area, solar is a practical solution, though it won’t be sufficient for an office tower with a small roof. However, there are also developments in photovoltaic glass that can turn windows into power sources, Mr. Rowe says. Ultimately, economics – not politics – will persuade building owners to invest in green technology, Ms. Lagrasta says. A study by Colliers found tenants are willing to pay a premium of an average of 8 per cent to be in a building with a high sustainability rating. “Building owners value their assets and political winds come and go. But it will become harder to attract and retain tenants in an older building that is falling behind the curve,” Ms. Lagrasta says.How to build (and rebuild) with glass