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Ancillary services markets (ASMs) are gaining higher importance in renewable-based power systems. They, however, remain less explored than the energy markets (EMs) of different regions. For limited energy units, such as battery energy storage systems (BESSs), it is vital to investigate the relative predictability of the two markets as suitable bidding hours of a less predictable product are more challenging to identify, thus entailing less certain revenues. This paper develops forecast models of the two markets of three Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, and Norway – to quantify the difference in their predictability. Frequency containment normal reserves (FCR-N) are considered as a case of the Nordic ancillary service product. The dataset of 315648 datapoints contains three years (2019 – 2021) of their hourly FCR-N, and spot market revenues. Generalized additive models (GAMs) are used to develop week-ahead forecasts using smooth curves of hourly and daily patterns. The forecast allows both inter country – between same markets of different countries – and intra country – between different markets of the same country – comparison. The results show that the FCR-N markets of the Nordic countries are less predictable than their respective spot markets except for the case of Denmark due to its fixed hourly volumes. Moreover, the smoothing curves of FCR-N forecast models differ for each Nordic country despite their similar market requirements. This is in contrast to the Nordic spot markets where the smoothing curves indicate similarity in inter-country mar-ket behaviors. Considering market predictability differences in addition to their hourly prices is thus vital for BESS units performing multi-market bidding.

The 2019 Inter-governmental Panel (IPCC) Report on Climate Change and Land highlighted the urgency and scale of the environmental impact from human-induced landscape change. Palm oil has historically had a particularly negative reputation for driving deforestation, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, social exploitation and damaging health. In the eyes of many in the West, it is regarded as the world’s most hated crop. However, palm is highly productive compared with other crops and produces 40% of the worlds edible oil from only 5% of vegetable oil producing land and 0.4% of agricultural land in total. It has the potential to meet future demand for oil with minimum additional environmental and climate impact compared with other sources of vegetable oil. The related high value density has the potential to move millions of vulnerable smallholder farmers out of poverty. Given the conclusions of the IPCC Climate and Land Report, it is therefore important to re-examine the crop’s reputation in light of the accumulated evidence and to properly understand the full impacts across the environmental, health, social and economic factors. We present a comprehensive review of the benefits and risks of the crop across these dimensions and provide a new synthesis. We conclude that while oil palm has had a significant negative impact on habitat and biodiversity, it plays a minor role compared with poaching, illegal logging and threats from climate change. There are important opportunities for the industry to reverse this damage. Its reputation for negative health impacts are not backed up by the scientific evidence and indeed there may be health benefits from substituting some oils in the diet with oil palm. Positive social and economic impacts are most obvious in areas where proper market-led economies are in place, but there can be significant negative social impacts in less developed areas. We conclude that much of the reputation of palm oil is not based on a balanced interpretation of the scientific evidence. Provided future development is zero deforestation, does not occur on peat, uses methane capture technology at the mills, empowers indigenous smallholders and supports the regeneration of secondary forest, we conclude that oil palm can be the most environmentally, socially and economically sustainable means to meet future demand for vegetable oil. Indeed, with pro-active collaboration with relevant non-government organisations, oil palm can be part of the solution to reversing the degradation of tropical forest biomes

The elimination of the largest herbivores (elephants and rhinoceroses) from many forests in tropical East Asia may have severe consequences for plant species that depend on them for seed dispersal. We assessed the capacity of Malayan tapirs Tapirus indicus-the next largest nonruminant herbivore in the region-as a substitute for the lost megafauna in this role by studying their ability to disperse the seeds of nine fleshy-fruited plants with seeds 5-97mm in length. We combined information from feeding trials, germination tests, and field telemetry to assess the effect of tapir consumption on seed viability and to estimate how far the seeds would be dispersed. The tapirs (N=8) ingested few seeds. Seed survival through gut passage was moderately high for small-seeded plants (e.g., 36.9% for Dillenia indica) but very low for medium- (e.g., 7.6% for Tamarindus indica) and large-seeded (e.g., 2.8% for Artocarpus integer) plants. Mean seed gut passage times were long (63-236h) and only the smallest seeds germinated afterwards. Using movement data from four wild tapirs in Peninsular Malaysia we estimated mean dispersal distances of 917-1287m (range=22-3289m) for small-seeded plants. Malayan tapirs effectively dispersed small-seeded plants but acted as seed predators for the large-seeded plants included in our study, suggesting that they cannot replace larger herbivores in seed dispersal. With the absence of elephants and rhinos many megafaunal-syndrome plants in tropical East Asia are expected to face severe dispersal limitation problems. © 2011 The Author(s). Journal compilation © 2011 by The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation., This study was financed by the Copenhagen Zoo (tapir tracking) and the grant R-154-000-422-133 from the National University of Singapore to R. Corlett (feeding trials).