Organising Project Finance

Modern project finance is understood as a method of finance, whereby the borrower is generally a standalone corporate entity, often a special purpose vehicle and, therefore, a single-project enterprise. The advent of large-scale securitisation of project finance debt instruments helped to attract significant institutional capital, which had shied away from infrastructure debt because of the risk/return profile. This chapter argues that despite what some economic theory might predict, the manner in which a project is financed imposes formal ‘constraining and enabling’ conditions at all phases of the built-asset lifecycle. Successful project organisation and delivery depends upon an adequate understanding of these dynamics. Project governance should also ensure that there is a system of a detailed post-project evaluation of costs and benefits. The need for new public infrastructure in the twenty-first century is growing at a time when public finances are constrained

9. Ecological Transition

The global climate emergency is the main concern of chapter 9, by D’Maris Coffman, Roberto Cardinale, Jing Meng and Zhifu Mi. Anthropogenic climate change is widely understood to be the greatest existential threat to human societies in the coming centuries. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 to coordinate a global response to the coming crisis. The IPCC’s publication of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (SR15) in October 2018 has helped to galvanize public opinion and has given rise to unprecedented climate activism. State actors now recognise a need for immediate action. Broadly speaking, possible responses to climate change fall into three categories: mitigation, adaptation and remediation. Mitigation means measures to reduce carbon and methane emissions or to enhance carbon sinks; adaptation means measures that ameliorate the effects of climate change on human populations; and remediation means intentional measures to counteract the effects of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including global warming and ocean acidification. There are inevitable trade-offs between the costs of mitigation and those of adaptation over decadal time horizons. Nevertheless, with all three responses, large-scale infrastructure investment is required, with varying degrees of involvement by state actors, multilateral organizations, other non-governmental organizations (including religious groups) and, most significantly, private capital markets. In the current climate, multilateral development banks (MDBs) have taken a leading role. The EIB particularly is in the process of rebranding itself as a Climate Bank for Europe following Emmanuel Macron’s call. The authors then explore the investment opportunities that arise as a result of the growing urgency of the low carbon transition

Measurement of the Branching Fractions for D^0 → π^-e^+v_e and D^0 → + K^-e^+V_e and Determination of │V_(cd)/V_(cs)│^2

Measurements of the exclusive branching fractions B(D^0→π^-e^+ν_e) and B(D^0→K^-e^+ν_e), using data collected at the ψ(3770) with the Mark III detector at the SLAC e^+e^- storage ring SPEAR, are used to determine the ratio of the Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix elements │V_(cd)/V_(cs)│^2 =0.057_(-0.015)^(+0.038)±0.005

Search for the decay D^0→K^0e^+e^-

A search for the decay of the charmed meson D^0→K^0e^+e^- is presented, based on data collected at the ψ(3770) resonance with the Mark III detector at the SLAC storage ring SPEAR. No evidence for this process is found, resulting in an upper limit on the decay branching ratio of 1.7×10^(-3) at the 90% confidence level

The Role of Bike Sharing in Promoting Transport Resilience

A resilient transport network, which is significant for urban sustainability and security, is characterized by its ability to recover from disruptions subject to natural and manmade disasters. Bike sharing could act as a viable alternative in the case of public transit disruptions given its flexibility and various social, environmental, and economic benefits. This study aims to estimate quantitatively the potential of bike sharing to promote transport resilience, by using autoregressive negative binomial time series model to investigate the effects of public transit closures on bike sharing demand in Washington, D.C. area during 2015–2017. We find that (1) bike sharing can act as a supplementary mode to enhance urban transport resilience in the case of complete transit closure; (2) the proximity of bike sharing docks to metro stations has a powerful effect on propensity to use a bike sharing program; and (3) extreme weather is one of major barriers to bicycling. Planners can enhance resilience of urban transport networks by fully considering the capacity and usage of bike sharing docks, as well as the coherence of metro stations and bike sharing docks, in distributing and rebalancing activitie

Influence of particle size and chemistry on the cloud nucleating properties of aerosols

International audienceThe ability of an aerosol particle to act as a cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) is a function of the size of the particle, its composition and mixing state, and the supersaturation of the cloud. In-situ data from field studies provide a means to assess the relative importance of these parameters. During the 2006 Texas Air Quality ? Gulf of Mexico Atmospheric Composition and Climate Study (TexAQS-GoMACCS), the NOAA RV Ronald~H.~Brown encountered a wide variety of aerosol types ranging from marine near the Florida panhandle to urban and industrial in the Houston-Galveston area. These varied sources provided an opportunity to investigate the role of aerosol sources, chemistry, and size in the activation of particles to form cloud droplets. Measurements were made of CCN concentrations, aerosol chemical composition in the size range relevant for particle activation, and aerosol size distributions. Variability in aerosol composition was parameterized by the mass fraction of Hydrocarbon-like Organic Aerosol (HOA) for particle diameters less than 200 nm (vacuum aerodynamic). The HOA mass fraction in this size range was lowest for marine aerosol and highest for aerosol sampled close to anthropogenic sources. Combining all data from the experiment reveals that composition (defined by HOA mass fraction) explains 40% of the variance in the critical diameter for particle activation at 0.44% supersaturation (S). Correlations between HOA mass fraction and aerosol mean diameter show that these two parameters are essentially independent of one another for this data set. We conclude that, based on the variability of the HOA mass fraction observed during TexAQS-GoMACCS, composition played a significant role in determining the fraction of particles that could activate to form cloud droplets. In addition, we estimate the error that results in calculated CCN concentrations if the HOA mass fraction is neglected (i.e., a fully soluble composition of (NH4)2SO4 is assumed) for the range of mass fractions and mean diameters observed during the experiment. This error is then related to the source of the aerosol. At 0.22 and 0.44% S, the error is considerable (>50%) for anthropogenic aerosol sampled near the source region as this aerosol had, on average, a high HOA mass fraction in the sub-200 nm diameter size range (vacuum aerodynamic). The error is lower for aerosol distant from anthropogenic source regions as it had a lower HOA mass fraction. Hence, the percent error in calculated CCN concentration is larger for organic-rich aerosol sampled near the source and smaller for aerosol sampled away from sources of anthropogenic particulate organic matter (POM)

Gaussian limits for multidimensional random sequential packing at saturation (extended version)

Consider the random sequential packing model with infinite input and in any dimension. When the input consists of non-zero volume convex solids we show that the total number of solids accepted over cubes of volume $\lambda$ is asymptotically normal as $\lambda \to \infty$. We provide a rate of approximation to the normal and show that the finite dimensional distributions of the packing measures converge to those of a mean zero generalized Gaussian field. The method of proof involves showing that the collection of accepted solids satisfies the weak spatial dependence condition known as stabilization.Comment: 31 page

Localized Entanglement in one-dimensional Anderson model

The entanglement in one-dimensional Anderson model is studied. We show that the pairwise entanglement measured by the average concurrence has a direct relation to the localization length. The numerical study indicates that the disorder significantly reduces the average entanglement, and entanglement distribution clearly displays the entanglement localization. The maximal pairwise entanglement exhibits a maximum as the disorder strength increases,experiencing a transition from increase to decrease. The entanglement between the center of localization and other site decreases exponentially along the spatial direction. Finally,we study effects of disorder on dynamical properties of entanglement.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Technological Solutions to China's Carbon Neutrality in the Steel and Cement Sectors

China has set Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and carbon neutrality targets without providing expected industry-specific technological details. By focusing on the steel and cement industries in China, this study analyzes the energy consumption of different technology routes, decarbonization pathways of innovative technologies, and the synergistic impact of air pollutants. The study finds that the incumbent technology routes for steel and cement production have limited carbon reductions, and the deployment of innovative technologies (carbon capture, utilization, and storage [CCUS], electrolytic- and hydrogen-based, and scrap-based technologies) need to be accelerated to achieve carbon neutrality targets. We find that the net-zero emissions pathway relying upon innovative technologies needs less investment than the NDCs scenario. Furthermore, electric arc furnace deployment will be mainly concentrated in Jiangsu, Guangdong, and Sichuan, while CCUS should be mainly in Hebei, Shandong, Liaoning, and Jiangsu provinces. The increased electrification of innovative technologies in steel and cement requires a shift in energy inputs from fossil energy to electricity. A combination of strict climate change mitigation and air pollution control will have higher synergistic effects

A bipartite class of entanglement monotones for N-qubit pure states

We construct a class of algebraic invariants for N-qubit pure states based on bipartite decompositions of the system. We show that they are entanglement monotones, and that they differ from the well know linear entropies of the sub-systems. They therefore capture new information on the non-local properties of multipartite systems.Comment: 6 page